Tuberculosis 95 (2015) 87e88
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Tuberculosis journal homepage: http://intl.elsevierhealth.com/journals/tube
EDITORIAL
Let's keep dancing
Looking back over my career, it is clear that my major preoccupation, pleasure and productivity has been to increase the breadth and depth of things that I don't know. While some of this stuff has filtered down into facts e in the form of peerreviewed publications e these often feel like a sad betrayal of the fleeting, exciting moments of insight that preceded them. I find myself leaning towards a Groucho Marx view that any fact that I know is not worth knowing. My heart sinks when I have to list publications as a measure of my professional activities. The pain can be eased by a mental rendition of Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing”. The dancing is important. I can't imagine that I was able to get myself out of bed every morning if the endpoint was just that little pile of facts and publications. The dancing occurs on the cusp between the known and the unknown. While we tend to portray science as an exercise in gathering facts, there is a distinguished tradition of holding the unknown rather than the known to be the true topic of interest. From Socrates, “I know one thing: that I know nothing”; to Newton, “To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”; to Descartes, “I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance”. I like very much a quotation from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg that Michael Stumpf pointed out: “The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance.” More recently, Stuart Firestein produced a very readable book e “Ignorance: How it Drives Science” e arguing that a focus on questions rather than on answers as the substance of science captures more truly the day-to-day realities of a research scientist, and at the same time offers important opportunities to enhance public understanding and engagement with the scientific enterprise. Let me attempt a case study. Some while ago I had an interview with Michael Waldholz who was exploring in retrospect the impact that had been achieved by the Grand Challenges in Global Health Programme sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We had received $20 million to support a project on “New drugs for the treatment of latent tuberculosis infection” e what
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tube.2014.12.011 1472-9792/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
had we done with this? Well, we didn't produce a blockbuster drug that transformed TB control. We generated loads of hits and a few leads, and lots of publications. Was this a costeffective utilization of resource? A quick check on Google reveals that of course there are people out there quantifying this sort of thing, and it looks as though we were comfortably in the upper end of a consensus that ranges from 0.6 to 5 papers per $100 K funding. What it really feels like to me, however, is that we spent $20 million creating a ripple that spread across the pond. The ripple was the interface between the known and the unknown and largely involved replacing the known conviction that we all understood that there was something called “latent tuberculosis” by a more useful appreciation that this is a largely unknown and diverse range of conditions offering the potential for multiple interpretations and practical interventions. Getting the ripple moving involved an invigorating exercise in collective creativity as well as the introduction of novel technologies, including conditional expression systems and live imaging modalities. In its wake, it has opened up a wide range of exciting new territories for thought and experimentation. It seems to me that this is how science works. Does everyone see things in the same way? Living on the crest of an occasional ephemeral wave and dying in the graveyard of publications? I suppose not. I suppose that the system works because each one of us finds within it some particular combination of activities that stimulates our mental pleasure centres. If you happen to have a bit of Calvinism in your upbringing, it may seem more like a process of mollifying centres of pain and guilt, but it's all the same in the end e just a business of brain chemicals. So, heterogeneity at the population level, what about the individual level? Is there some unguarded moment when I scroll through my list of publications and experience a transient flush of pride? Well, very likely. The human mind is like bacterial genetics in that everything that can happen does happen; the issue is how frequently it happens and what are the selective pressures that favour its expansion or suppression. I can't help wondering what made Socrates so damn sure that he knows nothing. “The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits, upwards; e the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the ink-horn.” The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
88
Funding:
Editorial / Tuberculosis 95 (2015) 87e88
Douglas Young*,1 MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK
None.
Competing interests:
Imperial College, London, UK
None declared. *
Ethical approval:
Not required.
MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK. E-mail address: [email protected]. 6 January 2015
1
Dr Douglas Young is a former Editor-in-Chief of Tuberculosis.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Tuberculosis journal homepage: http://intl.elsevierhealth.com/journals/tube
EDITORIAL
Let's keep dancing
Looking back over my career, it is clear that my major preoccupation, pleasure and productivity has been to increase the breadth and depth of things that I don't know. While some of this stuff has filtered down into facts e in the form of peerreviewed publications e these often feel like a sad betrayal of the fleeting, exciting moments of insight that preceded them. I find myself leaning towards a Groucho Marx view that any fact that I know is not worth knowing. My heart sinks when I have to list publications as a measure of my professional activities. The pain can be eased by a mental rendition of Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing”. The dancing is important. I can't imagine that I was able to get myself out of bed every morning if the endpoint was just that little pile of facts and publications. The dancing occurs on the cusp between the known and the unknown. While we tend to portray science as an exercise in gathering facts, there is a distinguished tradition of holding the unknown rather than the known to be the true topic of interest. From Socrates, “I know one thing: that I know nothing”; to Newton, “To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”; to Descartes, “I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance”. I like very much a quotation from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg that Michael Stumpf pointed out: “The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance.” More recently, Stuart Firestein produced a very readable book e “Ignorance: How it Drives Science” e arguing that a focus on questions rather than on answers as the substance of science captures more truly the day-to-day realities of a research scientist, and at the same time offers important opportunities to enhance public understanding and engagement with the scientific enterprise. Let me attempt a case study. Some while ago I had an interview with Michael Waldholz who was exploring in retrospect the impact that had been achieved by the Grand Challenges in Global Health Programme sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We had received $20 million to support a project on “New drugs for the treatment of latent tuberculosis infection” e what
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tube.2014.12.011 1472-9792/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
had we done with this? Well, we didn't produce a blockbuster drug that transformed TB control. We generated loads of hits and a few leads, and lots of publications. Was this a costeffective utilization of resource? A quick check on Google reveals that of course there are people out there quantifying this sort of thing, and it looks as though we were comfortably in the upper end of a consensus that ranges from 0.6 to 5 papers per $100 K funding. What it really feels like to me, however, is that we spent $20 million creating a ripple that spread across the pond. The ripple was the interface between the known and the unknown and largely involved replacing the known conviction that we all understood that there was something called “latent tuberculosis” by a more useful appreciation that this is a largely unknown and diverse range of conditions offering the potential for multiple interpretations and practical interventions. Getting the ripple moving involved an invigorating exercise in collective creativity as well as the introduction of novel technologies, including conditional expression systems and live imaging modalities. In its wake, it has opened up a wide range of exciting new territories for thought and experimentation. It seems to me that this is how science works. Does everyone see things in the same way? Living on the crest of an occasional ephemeral wave and dying in the graveyard of publications? I suppose not. I suppose that the system works because each one of us finds within it some particular combination of activities that stimulates our mental pleasure centres. If you happen to have a bit of Calvinism in your upbringing, it may seem more like a process of mollifying centres of pain and guilt, but it's all the same in the end e just a business of brain chemicals. So, heterogeneity at the population level, what about the individual level? Is there some unguarded moment when I scroll through my list of publications and experience a transient flush of pride? Well, very likely. The human mind is like bacterial genetics in that everything that can happen does happen; the issue is how frequently it happens and what are the selective pressures that favour its expansion or suppression. I can't help wondering what made Socrates so damn sure that he knows nothing. “The subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits, upwards; e the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the ink-horn.” The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
88
Funding:
Editorial / Tuberculosis 95 (2015) 87e88
Douglas Young*,1 MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK
None.
Competing interests:
Imperial College, London, UK
None declared. *
Ethical approval:
Not required.
MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK. E-mail address: [email protected]. 6 January 2015
1
Dr Douglas Young is a former Editor-in-Chief of Tuberculosis.
