WHILE everyone else is planning to celebrate the start of the new
millennium, scientists from Britain and the US gathered in Washington DC last
week to hold a wake, mourning the collapse of science as the second millennium
draws to a close.
Peer review is in tatters, tight finances are driving scientists into the
arms of corporate sponsors, and the lack of job security puts senior scientists
in cutthroat competition with their students, speakers told a symposium at
George Washington University. One even declared that all major discoveries have
been made, so scientists will have little left to do.
鈥淭he crisis of funding is real. Science has reached its limits of growth,鈥�
said John Ziman, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Bristol.
Although spending on science has doubled every 15 years for three centuries,
research now absorbs so much government money
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鈥攁round 3 per cent of national income in the developed nations鈥�
that 鈥渋t couldn鈥檛 conceivably double again鈥�, he said.
Yet perpetual growth in financial support is 鈥渢he basic assumption鈥�
underlying science. Senior scientists train an unending stream of new scientists
on the assumption that their jobs will be financed by expanding budgets, said
Ziman.
Cutbacks in government funding force scientists to turn to industry for
financial support, but companies often have a strong commercial interest in
pushing research in a particular direction, he warned.
Tight funding also undermines peer review, which decides who receives
government funding, said Horace Judson, the historian at George Washington who
organised the symposium. Because of tight budgets, panels of scientists who sift
through grant proposals are forced to deny funds to an increasing number of
high-quality projects. In addition, the grant review process has become highly
politicised. Grants are no longer awarded solely on merit, as the government
attempts to spread funds beyond the most elite institutions. 鈥淭he people who do
the grant reviews are afflicted by a type of weariness. It is a tedious,
depressing process,鈥� said Judson.
Julian Jack, deputy chairman of The Wellcome Trust, the largest
nongovernmental supporter of biomedical research in Britain, said shrinking
government support for research has generated conflicts between senior
scientists and younger researchers. Many professors are no longer willing to
advise or supervise young scientists because they see them as rivals for
increasingly scarce financial support. Senior scientists 鈥渢end to exploit them
rather than foster their careers,鈥� said Jack.
Tight budgets also mean that scientists are less willing to tackle
risky projects, Jack said. 鈥淵ou get a lot of safe science.鈥� As a result, he
said, the trust has started to set aside about 3 per cent of its budget for
鈥渒ite-flying ideas鈥�.
Another festering issue is scientific fraud and misconduct, said
Kristina Gunsalus, associate vice-chancellor for academic affairs at the
University of Illinois. The field of science has grown so quickly that
scientists can no longer 鈥減olice鈥� themselves effectively, and academic fraud is
more widespread than scientists are willing to believe, she said.
But author John Horgan had an even more dismal prediction: that
nothing exciting is left to discover. 鈥淪cience will be hard pressed to make any
truly profound additions to the knowledge that it has already generated,鈥� he
said. Instead, future scientists will simply focus their work on details of the
great ideas dreamt up by their predecessors.
Even Bill Clinton鈥檚 science adviser, John Gibbons, admitted that science has
problems. But he was more optimistic than most. 鈥淚 cannot subscribe to the
notion that science and its partner, technology, are in a crisis or at least a
crisis of impending disaster.鈥� And he dismissed the idea that there are no more
discoveries to be made. 鈥淲e are still quite secure in our ignorance.鈥�