Money, money, money...but what about curiosity?

The Life Science Sector Deal is good news for UK science... but does money really make the world go around?

Money, so goes the cliche, makes the world go round. So it should be with great fanfare that we greet the Life Science Sector Deal, initial arrangements of which were struck at the tail end of last year.

The deal brings together the government with universities, charities and more than 25 businesses – large and small – to make a joint commitment to invest in all parts of the United Kingdom all in the name of building and sustaining a knowledge economy.

It’s good news. Really, it is. One shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. And, at a time of Brexit uncertainty this could certainly be considered a gift. So why am I left feeling a touch empty?

I get the sense politicians think if they pour money into the ‘science machine’ it will, eventually, pay out.

I think it is the direct collision of the pragmatic and the idealistic. Government say they want a knowledge economy, but what they really mean is they want a very advanced and technical resource economy. They still want business to make and sell ‘units’ – be they products or services – just as once we dug the ground and sold the coal. It’s just now they acknowledge that development of the ‘units’ will more than likely involve some exceptionally brilliant science and technology.

I get the sense politicians think if they pour money into the ‘science machine’ it will, eventually, pay out. The thing is, science is not simply an industrial activity. Yes, it can be – indeed it is incredibly successful at being so. And yes, much of the hype surrounding the ability of science and technology to rescue the economy is justified, but to marry scientific endeavour quite so formally to profit is rather desperate short-termism in my view.

In a recent interview on the excellent Sam Harris podcast, Professor Jennifer Doudna – credited with the invention of the Crispr gene editing system ­­­­– made the case that it is so very often curiosity driven research that yields the most useful technological breakthroughs. Crispr is a perfect example; when it was discovered, Professor Doudna and her colleagues were not thinking about a monetiseable gene-editing tool. They were just interested in the immune system of bacteria.

I’d like to ask the politicians to just for a moment consider the act of scientific endeavour an integral part of being a civilised people. To best serve us, perhaps science shouldn’t live or die by the profit and loss sheet. It’s not dissimilar I would argue to an effective judicial system. Legal aid alone in England and Wales, for example, is now estimated by The Ministry of Justice to cost the taxpayer around £2bn a year. It’s expensive, and there are critics of the system, but I have never heard of a government initiative which attempts to maximise the financial return of this investment. And rightly so, the rule of law is a central tenant of our society – it’s the cost of civility; a bill that has to be paid. But so, surely, is science?

I am not suggesting free reign here – of course there should be checks and balances. What I am suggesting though is that government should be funding the science that business won’t – namely basic research. Science that benefits the greater good of the people – in all of its forms, not just economic – should be considered just as strongly as the science that will fill the coffers. To end up with a thriving knowledge economy, we must remember why people want – and work very hard to gain – scientific knowledge in the first place.

Money doesn't make the world go round. Conservation of angular momentum does. We know this because of the curious mind of Johann Kepler. A curious mind driven by a deep need to understand the fundamentals of our universe ­­– and we make a mistake if we shut the door to that kind of science.

 

Phil Prime Managing Editor Laboratory news