Blue skies abound

A friend of mine likes to make finite element models of bird skulls.  We all need a hobby.  I suspect she does this in order to investigate various aspects of avian head evolution and whatnot. At least, I think that’s why she does the modelling, I never sought clarification since I was too busy cooing at the disembodied bird heads in the freezer. Anyway, digression is the enemy of cogency and I suspect a pun about headless chickens coming on.

Another friend who makes a living via more mainstream employment demanded to know why my bird-beheading friend bothered to pursue such seemingly ‘pointless’ research when there were far more pressing problems for inquiring sorts to solve. ‘Why’, she wished to know, ‘would anyone bother with bird skulls when the Common Cold is still at large, not to mention all those diseases that need curing like cancer and dementia and the Tories?”

Why severed bird heads should be considered a more fruitful area of research than eradicating the Conservative Party is probably seldom considered by the wider world (headless chicken anyone?).   But, the question of why some fields of scientific research receive funding when they lack an obvious remit, or the potential for immediate application, is frequently asked of scientists and politicians alike.

This kind of research, where enquiry is undertaken solely in the spirit of endeavour and discovery, is often called ‘blue skies’ research.  It’s the research that deals with ‘Why?” alone and not, “Why? And how will it benefit economic/societal progression?” 

Searching for theoretical bosons at CERN; calculating how fast certain theropods could run; wondering whether there are other universes beyond our own and working out how birds are related to each other are all examples of blue skies or ‘basic’ research.  They’re interesting topics but any advances in our understanding of them will not really impact our chances of survival nor will they answer our most immediate needs in tangible ways.

So why should such topics receive money, some of which comes from taxpayers, when money is so tight and other causes have far more pressing financial requirements?  Is there room for this kind of enquiry in societies where human suffering is so prevalent? This is a good question and one that people are keen to ask when every penny counts.

There are numerous reasons why basic research is essential to the economic and social health of everyone:  Research undertaken without the constraints of a prescribed agenda can create new fields of enquiry, which can throw up all sorts of useful applications.  The potential discoveries and technologies that do eventually arise from basic research are often non-predictable yet hold the capacity to revolutionise. The infrastructures, techniques and protocols established in undertaking basic research often evolve from their original purpose to benefit other areas of science, medicine and engineering when co-opted opportunely.

If you want examples then the World Wide Web, which grew from Tim Berners-Lee’s ENQUIRE hypertext –linked network at CERN is a nice one smug techy types like to bandy about.  

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes’s 1911 experimental verification of superconductivity, which has since resulted in superconducting magnets facilitating the operation of MRIs, and thus the detection of a whole host of medical conditions, is a favourite of mine.  If I’d discovered that certain materials have no electrical resistivity when they get a bit chilly I’d consider it a good day in the lab. If some other crazy cats used my discovery for life saving purposes about 66 years later I might allow myself a ‘Go Me!’

And therein lies one of the factors that render blue skies research less desirable than agenda-driven studies in times of financial woe: 66 years.   It’s not that long a time in the greater scheme of things but the first MRI scan of a human body was performed in 1977. Kamerlingh Onnes died 51 years too early to see his discovery put to such noble use (But he did win a Nobel prize for his discovery and cooler still, he had a crater on the moon named after him. Actually, speaking of cool, the Onnes effect, which refers to creeping of superfluid helium is also named after him. God I love Wiki.)

It can take time for discoveries to turn in to technologies that save the lives of people with no interest in condensed matter, but surely the wait is worth it?  I should point out that Onnes’s work in cryogenics, which lead to the discovery was already an area that lent itself well to application. Superconductors are everywhere and the field is still a very active.  It isn’t surprising that so many applications have resulted from the initial discovery though I still think the use of superconducting magnets in MRI scanners is an excellent example of the shear utility of scientific enquiry. 

However, as a once-practicing paleontologist I’m only too aware that there are numerous other areas in science that don’t promise so many useful outcomes, whether predictable or not.  It would take a pretty shrewd dino buff to convince a hardened advocate of more restrictive funding programs that knowing that velociraptors were feathered or not has any bearing on the problems of modern life.  This leads me to my next argument that, in addition to science often taking time to earn its keep, it grows incrementally via the assimilation of multiple intellectual collaborations to deliver a synthesis of knowledge that can serve a whole host of functions.  It is entirely reasonable to state that without a thorough understanding of what information the fossil record provides us, combined with an appreciation of the degree of fidelity and completeness of that information (which is what palaeontologists ultimately aim to achieve) scientists in general could not have built the modern evolutionary synthesis. 

We now have other tools with which to deepen our understanding of evolution such as molecular biology but we still rely upon the fossil record to temper our understanding of the evolution of life and to provide it with an appropriate temporal context.  It is also perfectly reasonable to state that following on from this comprehensive understanding of evolution and its many subfields of study, we would have a hell of a way to go in terms of understanding biosphere stability, how to feed people, how to combat microbial and viral diseases, how to heal people, how to understand other life forms and how to predict the state of our own future as a species. 

Of course that doesn’t all stem from palaeontology (don’t worry I’m not delusional) but it demonstrates how collaboration between fields and small advances in certain areas that have little to do with application in their own right, all contribute to understanding the world around us.  Science is a vast network of interlinked subfields, some immediately applicable, others humming along in the background widening knowledge, deepening understanding and laying the foundations for further enquiry.  If you isolate some of those fields from financial support and positive public perception you will eventually start to encroach onto other areas that boast a better output of handy results.

Is there a future for palaeontological study?  If people remain interested then yes there is, even when the field is surpassed in its sense of urgency or perceived importance by other trendier fields. Who knows if this will be the case, but this brings me to the last point in my argument for all science for all people: the future.

In the future we will witness new technological advancements (themselves borne of the field of science as it stands today), which will allow us to probe the universe to increasingly smaller and increasingly vaster scales.  New discoveries at these hitherto inaccessible regions of the universe will raise new questions and may resolve old mysteries.  But we will only get to these hidden new worlds by trying and testing and, occasionally failing in our endeavours to reach them.  The machines to take us to this future will be the particle accelerators and detectors, the synchrotrons and the microscopes, rockets, telescopes and computers whose development we are funding today for whichever research we so desire.

Science takes time, collaboration and agenda-less enquiry to reach all the conceivable nooks and crannies of our reality and to throw out the occasional MRI scanner/car/computer/cancer treatment/iPod.  The machines and fields we fund today will help to address the problems we have tomorrow.

So can we really justify nebulous curiosity when our problems today are so clearly defined?

The answer is yes.  It has to be yes.