Cryo-electron microscopy, scientific convergence and - again - why we need to fund basic science

Cryo-electron microscopy has won the Nobel Prize for chemistry this year, and while I did not expect it to make it quite so fast, nobody can deny the importance of the technique. As I wrote two years ago, it's a prime example of a tool-driven scientific revolution. And it has charted completely new vistas in the determination of the structure of biological molecules; entire protein assemblies, viruses, proteins too unruly to be symmetrically crystallized using x-ray crystallography.

But it's also an example of what we can call scientific and technological convergence. Often when a prize is awarded for a discovery or invention, it makes it sound like that discovery or invention stands on its own. But as the saying goes, no scientific advance is an island.

One of the most important things to realize about cryo-EM is how many fields had to co-evolve for it to become a reality. There was the long development of microscopy, of course, but two other inventions were absolutely critical in making the technique possible: detectors and computers. Computing power enabled by Moore's Law and cheap hardware combined with key advances in image-processing software have revolutionized a lot of fields in the last few years, from facial recognition to photography. 

And cryo-EM is not an exception. Joachim Frank who is one of this year's winners made his mark in the 80s and 90s by developing image processing software and mathematical techniques that could combine 2D microscopy images into a composite 3D picture. As important as the image processing was the development of detectors; one key invention made in 2013 that allowed much better signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution really seems to have pushed the method into a new realm of possibility (it's worth noting that a Nobel Prize was awarded for CCDs a few years ago - another very important technological advance). Finally, there had to be a way to introduce water into the experimental setup; this seemingly mundane process took quite some time to, well, crystallize.

So, computers, electronics and lab technique: all scientific tools, modern versions of string-and-sealing-wax science, all enabling groundbreaking new chemistry and biology. It's quite clear that the failure to advance on any of these fronts would have crippled the development of cryo-EM. 

Why is it important to realize this? For two reasons. Firstly, it really underscores how no scientific advance stands by itself, how it piggybacks on not just other developments in the same field but on those in other fields. The Wright brothers' rickety plane was a marvel of their innovative thinking, but it was also a marvel of, among other fields, materials science, aerodynamics and mechanical engineering.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly for our times, this recognition shows why it's crucial to support and fund basic science in multiple areas because it's only their co-evolution that can lead to an invention like cryo-EM. Simply funding the 'hottest' fields is not enough, because even the hottest fields have emerged from the nexus of several other fields. Scientific convergence is the answer to the question perpetually asked by lawmakers: "What is this good for?". A few decades ago they could have asked that question about some esoteric mathematical image processing technique, they could have asked it about new software, and they could have asked it about new ways to freeze biological samples. By themselves these were interesting phenomena, but nobody could have predicted their convergence in cryo-EM. That is why funding research across the board is so important, because it's all connected.

We have no idea whether politicians in the current climate will understand this interdependence of different fields that makes a major scientific advance possible, but a Nobel Prize for cryo-EM should at least help us make our case.

Let's embrace this new era of private science funding

This week, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced an initiative to give $3 billion dollars to UCSF for funding biomedical research. The tagline accompanying the funding in which they promised to “cure, prevent or manage all diseases in our children’s lifetime” drew scorn from scientists, but the bigger message of their philanthropy should not be lost on us. In an era where public funding of science has been steadily flagging and more and more researchers are finding it depressingly hard not just to fund their own research but even to contemplate pursuing basic research in the first place, initiatives like the Chan-Zuckerberg gift to UCSF are not just helpful but essential. Even if the research arising from the funds does not cure a single disease, by recruiting influential researchers and giving them money to explore their favorite areas in basic science, there is little doubt that the funding will have an impact on biomedical research. The most important discoveries arising from this initiative will be ones that cannot be anticipated, and that's what makes it especially important.

Private funding of science ideally should not raise any eyebrows; it only does so because most of us are young enough to have lived in an era of mainly publicly funded research. In fact private funding of science has a glorious history. Just to quote some specific examples, William Keck was an oil magnate who made very significant contributions to astronomy by funding the Keck Telescopes. Gordon Moore was a computer magnate who made significant contributions to information technology and proposed Moore's Law; along with the Keck foundation, his organization has been funding the BICEP experiments. Fred Kavli who a few years ago started the Kavli Foundation; this foundation has backed everything from the Brain Initiative to astrophysics to nanoscience professorships at research universities.

A few years ago, science writer William Broad wrote an article in the New York Times describing the private funding of research. Broad talked about how a variety of billionaire entrepreneurs ranging from the Moores (Intel) to Larry Ellison and his wife (Oracle) to Paul Allen (Microsoft) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last two decades to fund a variety of scientific endeavors ranging from groundbreaking astrophysics to nanoscience. For these billionaires a few millions of dollars is not too much, but for a single scientific project hinging on the vicissitudes of government funding it can be a true lifeline. The article talked about how science will come to rely on such private funding in the near future in the absence of government support, and personally I think this funding is going to do a very good job in stepping in where the government has failed.

The public does not often realize that for most of its history, science was in fact privately funded. During the early scientific revolution in Europe, important research often came from what we can call self-philanthropy, exemplified by rich men like Henry Cavendish and Antoine Lavoisier who essentially did science as a hobby and made discoveries that are now part of textbook science. Cavendish's fortune funded the famed Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. This trend continued for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The current era of reliance on government grants by the NIH, the NSF and other agencies is essentially a post-World War 2 phenomenon.

Before the war a lot of very important science as well as science education was funded by trust funds set up by rich businessmen. During the 1920s, when the center of physics research was in Europe, the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundation gave postdoctoral fellowships to brilliant young scientists like Linus Pauling, Robert Oppenheimer and Isidor Rabi to travel to Europe and study with masters like Bohr, Born and Sommerfeld. It was these fellowships that crucially allowed young American physicists to quarry their knowledge of the new quantum mechanics to America. It was partly this largesse that allowed Oppenheimer to create a school of physics that equaled the great European centers.

Perhaps nobody exemplified the bond between philanthropy and research better than Ernest Lawrence who was as much an astute businessman as an accomplished experimental physicist. Lawrence came up with his breakthrough idea for a cyclotron in the early 30s but it was the support of rich California businessmen - several of whom he regularly took on tours of his Radiation Lab at Berkeley - that allowed him to secure support for cyclotrons of increasing size and power. It was Lawrence's cyclotrons that allowed physicists to probe the inner structure of the nucleus, construct theories explaining this structure and produce uranium for the atomic bombs used during the war. There were other notable examples of philanthropic science funding during the 30s, with the most prominent case being the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton which was bankrolled by the Bamberger brother-sister duo.

As the New York Times article notes, during the last three decades private funding has expanded to include cutting-edge biological and earth sciences research. The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, for example, is making a lot of headway in understanding neuronal connectivity and how it gives rise to thoughts and feelings; just two months ago they released a treasure trove of data about visual processing in the mouse cortex, an announcement that gave some academic scientists heartache. The research funded by twenty-first century billionaires ranges across the spectrum and comes from a mixture of curiosity about the world and personal interest. The personal interest is especially reflected in funding for rare and neurodegenerative diseases; even the richest people in the world know that they are not immune from cancer and Alzheimer's disease so it's in their own best interests to fund research in such areas. For instance Larry Page of Google has a speaking problem while Sergey Brin carries a gene that predisposes him to Parkinson's; no wonder Page is interested in a new institute for aging research.

However the benefits that accrue from such research will aid everyone, not just the very rich. For instance the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation which was funded by well to do individuals whose children were stricken by the devastating disease gave about $70 million to Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The infusion partly allowed Vertex to create Kalydeco, the first truly breakthrough drug for treating a disease where there were essentially no options before. The drug is not cheap but there is no doubt that it has completely changed people's lives.

But the billionaires are not just funding disease. As Broad puts it in his article, they are funding almost every imaginable field, from astronomy to paleontology:

"They have mounted a private war on disease, with new protocols that break down walls between academia and industry to turn basic discoveries into effective treatments. They have rekindled traditions of scientific exploration by financing hunts for dinosaur bones and giant sea creatures. They are even beginning to challenge Washington in the costly game of big science, with innovative ships, undersea craft and giant telescopes — as well as the first private mission to deep space."

That part about challenging government funding really puts this development in perspective. It's hardly news that government support for basic science has steadily declined during the last decade, and a sclerotic Congress that seems perpetually unable to agree on anything means that the problem will endure for a long time. As Francis Collins notes in the article, 2013 saw an all time funding low in NIH grants, and it’s not gotten much better since then. In the face of such increasing withdrawal by the government from basic scientific research, it can only be good news that someone else is stepping up to the plate. Angels step in sometimes where fools fear to tread. And in an age when it is increasingly hard for this country to be proud of its public funding it can at least be proud of its private funding; no other country can claim to showcase this magnitude of science philanthropy.

There has been some negative reaction to news like this. The responses come mostly from those who think science is being "privatized" and that these large infusions of cash will fund only trendy research. Some negative reactions have also come from those who find it hard to keep their disapproval of what they see as certain billionaires' insidious political machinations - those of the Koch brothers for instance - separate from their support of science. There is also a legitimate concern that at least some of this funding will go to diseases affecting rich, white people rather than minorities.

I have three responses to this criticism. Firstly, funding trendy research is still better than funding no research at all. In addition many of the diseases that are being explored by this funding affect all of us and not just rich people; for instance, the Chan-Zuckerberg funding is geared toward infectious diseases. Secondly, we need to keep raw cash for political manipulation separate from raw cash for genuinely important research. Thirdly, believing that these billionaires somehow "control" the science they fund strikes me as a little paranoid. For instance, a stone's throw from where I live sits the Broad Institute, a $700 million dollar endeavor funded by Eli Broad. The Broad Institute is affiliated with both Harvard and MIT. During the last decade it has made important contributions to basic research including genomics and chemical biology. Its scientists have published in basic research journals and have shared their data. The place has largely functioned like an academic institution, with no billionaire around to micromanage the scientists' everyday work. The same goes for other institutes like the Allen Institute. Unlike some critics, I don't see the levers of these institutes being routinely pulled by their benefactors at all. The Bambergers never told Einstein what to do.

Ultimately I am a both a human being and a scientist, so I don't care as much about where the source of science funding comes from as whether it benefits our understanding of life and the universe and leads to advances improving the quality of life of our fellow human beings. From everything that I have read, private funding for science during the last two decades has eminently achieved both these goals. I hope it endures.

Note: Derek has some optimistic thoughts on the topic.

This is a revised and updated version of an older post.

On gravitational waves and the virtue of patience

From MIT physicist and science writer Alan Lightman - author of the wonderful "Einstein's Dreams". He is describing how the scientists whose work led to the groundbreaking discovery of gravitational waves this month knew they were in for the long haul when they proposed the pie-in-the-sky project LIGO in the 70s. It also seems to be a message the country needs to embrace in the Era of Quarterly Expectations. (Hat tip: Tom Levenson)

"The world at large, and the United States in particular, has developed an unfortunate need for instant gratification. We live not only in the age of information. We live in the Age of the Now. We grow impatient with printers that cannot churn out 10 pages per minute, or with computer screens that take 30 seconds to boot up. We avoid investing in companies that do not promise payoffs within a few years. Federal research and development, as a fraction of gross domestic product, has been going down and down. Perhaps even our foreign policy has been plagued by a hurried view of the world, seeking immediate results. 

In science, as in many other precincts of the Age of the Now, too often we celebrate the instant discovery, the sudden breakthrough, the quick and glamorous result. Drever, Thorne and Weiss, and the many scientists and institutions that supported their dream, did not seek instant gratification. They had a vision, and they wandered the desert with that vision for 40 years."

Billionaires and science prizes: "Fund the science, not the prizes"

Physicist Lawrence Krauss has a good piece decrying recent billion-dollar science prizes like the Breakthrough Prize which billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg are giving out to leading scientists in Oscar-style extravaganzas, and I have to say I largely agree with his criticism. Quite aside from the simple fact that gunning for any prize is terrible motivation for doing science, I have always been skeptical about how much of a difference exactly these prizes make in terms of public appreciation of science, let alone in terms of getting young people interested in science.

As Krauss puts it, it's not just a simple question of whether these recognitions are "good" or "bad" for science (they're probably not bad per se); it's a question of whether the cost to benefit ratio is worth it and whether there are simply better ways in which a billionaire can spend his or her billion dollars on science. I also tend to agree with his cynical-sounding but valid point that the most palpable impact of these prizes is probably to raise the public profile of the benefactors themselves rather than the recipients. Nor are the prizes, as glittering as they seem, the ultimate honors; as Krauss accurately observes, all the prize winners would almost certainly trade their awards for a Nobel Prize if they had a chance. Simply put, money can't really buy you prestige.

Krauss's recommendation for what to do instead with all that money is simple: instead of putting a billion dollars into a prize for an individual or specific discovery, fund actual science instead. One of the reasons is simply the magnitude of what could be done: a simple calculation leads to the rather alarming conclusion that a billion dollars would fund about two hundred and seventy postdocs for a year. In fact, as any academic who is cash-strapped and constantly jousting for a dwindling percentage of NIH or NSF grants knows, even a million dollars could serve as a healthy injection of funds into a moribund project. Here's Krauss on how spreading the wealth around could do a great deal of good, especially in fields in which the government is increasingly stepping back.

"But a larger problem is that these prizes are not an efficient use of funds. Instead of funding science prizes, these billionaires should try funding the science itself. Take particle physics—one of the main specialties in which Breakthrough Prizes have been awarded. In that field, government funding has been cut back significantly, and budgets have been flat or declining for years. The $27 million awarded by Yuri Milner, in 2012, would have funded perhaps two hundred and seventy new postdoctoral fellowships that year, or a smaller number of postdoctoral fellowships combined with endowed faculty positions. That could more than double the current number of young researchers in the field. With a larger group of young, talented, and ambitious scientists finding gainful employment, the likelihood of jumpstarting some new and exciting research would be significant. (The benefit to young scientists, meanwhile, would be far greater than that created by giving more money to older scientists whose work has, in all likelihood, already been recognized and well supported.)"

Krauss's words remind me of a past blog post in which I had commented favorably on private funding of actual science and had cited very successful endeavors like the Broad Institute and the Kavli Institute as well as scientific projects funded by people like Larry Ellison and Paul Allen. It seems quite clear to me that these people have done a lot more good for science than what they would have had they put their billions into annual prizes given out by Hollywood celebrities in rock concert-like events with performances by actual rock stars. This is exactly what Krauss gets to at the end of his piece:

"My advice to would-be billionaire prize-makers is simple: set up independent foundations from which good young people and the institutions they are part of can receive support. This will allow more scientists to pursue careers that might otherwise be cut short due to the current, and unfortunate, lack of public funding. If you want glitz, spend your money on yachts; if you want to have an immediate impact as a force for good, then help the poor. But if you want to help the scientific enterprise, prizes aren’t the way to do it."

Is this the dawn of a golden age of private science funding?

Paul Allen is just one example of billionaires who are productively
funding cutting-edge and important science (Image: Forbes)

Last year, the BICEP2 experiment dropped a bombshell in the physics world by announcing potential evidence for gravitational waves from inflation as well as support for the quantization of gravity. The news was all over the place. Unfortunately the discovery turned out to be premature to say the least, and within a few months it turned to dust. But that's not the point of this post. What was less appreciated was the fact that BICEP2 was prominently funded by the Keck Foundation and the Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation. William Keck was an oil magnate who made very significant contributions to astronomy by funding the Keck Telescopes. Gordon Moore was a computer magnate who made significant contributions to information technology and proposed Moore’s Law. Fred Kavli who died last year started the Kavli Foundation; this foundation has backed everything from Obama’s Brain Initiative to astrophysics to nanoscience professorships at research universities.

It is with this background in my mind that I was very pleased to read an article by William Broad in the New York Times from last year about the private funding of research. Broad talks about how a variety of billionaire entrepreneurs ranging from the Moores (Intel) to Larry Ellison and his wife (Oracle) to Paul Allen (Microsoft) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last two decades to fund a variety of scientific endeavors ranging from groundbreaking astrophysics to nanoscience. For these billionaires a few millions of dollars is not too much, but for a single scientific project hinging on the vicissitudes of government funding it can be a true lifeline. The article talked about how science will come to rely on such private funding in the near future in the absence of government support, and personally I think this funding is going to do a very good job in stepping in where the government has failed.

The public does not often realize that for most of its history, science was in fact privately funded. During the early scientific revolution in Europe, important research often came from what we can call self-philanthropy, exemplified by rich men like Henry Cavendish and Antoine Lavoisier who essentially did science as a hobby and made discoveries that are now part of the textbooks. Cavendish’s fortune funded the famed Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. This trend continued for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The current era of reliance on government grants by the NIH, the NSF and other agencies is essentially a postwar phenomenon. 

Before the war a lot of very important science as well as science education was funded by trust funds set up by rich businessmen. During the 1920s, when the center of physics research was in Europe, the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundation gave postdoctoral fellowships to brilliant young scientists like Linus Pauling, Robert Oppenheimer and Isidor Rabi to travel to Europe and study with masters like Bohr, Born and Sommerfeld. It was these fellowships that crucially allowed young American physicists to quarry their knowledge of the new quantum mechanics to America. It was partly this largesse that allowed Oppenheimer to create a school of physics that equaled the great European centers and produce a roster of scientists whose students continue to win Nobel Prizes.

Perhaps nobody exemplified the bond between philanthropy and research better than Ernest Lawrence who was as much an astute businessman as an accomplished experimental physicist. Lawrence came up with his breakthrough idea for a cyclotron in the early 30s but it was the support of rich California businessmen – several of whom he regularly took on tours of his Radiation Lab at Berkeley – that allowed him to secure support for cyclotrons of increasing size and power. It was Lawrence’s cyclotrons that allowed physicists to probe the inner structure of the nucleus, construct theories explaining this structure and produce uranium for the atomic bombs used during the war. There were other notable examples of philanthropic science funding during the 30s, with the most prominent case being the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton which was bankrolled by the Bamberger brother-sister duo.

As the New York Times article notes, during the last three decades private funding has expanded to include cutting-edge biological and earth sciences research. The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, for example, is making a lot of headway in understanding neuronal connectivity and how it gives rise to thoughts and feelings: to advance its goals the institute managed to lure away one of the most insightful neuroscientist in the world from a tenured faculty position at Caltech - Christof Koch. The research funded by twenty-first century billionaires ranges across the spectrum and comes from a mixture of curiosity about the world and personal interest. 

The personal interest is especially reflected in funding for rare and neurodegenerative diseases; even the richest people in the world know that they are not immune from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease so it’s in their own best interests to fund research in such areas. For instance Larry Page has a speaking problem while Sergey Brin carries a gene that predisposes him to Parkinson’s; no wonder Page is interested in a new institute for aging research. However the benefits that accrue from such research will aid everyone, not just the very rich. As another example, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation which was funded by well-to-do individuals whose children were stricken by the devastating disease gave about $70 million to Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The infusion partly allowed Vertex to create Kalydeco, the first truly breakthrough drug for treating a disease where there were essentially no transformative options before. The drug is not cheap but there is no doubt that it has completely changed people’s lives.

But the billionaires are not just funding disease. They are funding almost every imaginable field, from astronomy to paleontology:

“They have mounted a private war on disease, with new protocols that break down walls between academia and industry to turn basic discoveries into effective treatments. They have rekindled traditions of scientific exploration by financing hunts for dinosaur bones and giant sea creatures. They are even beginning to challenge Washington in the costly game of big science, with innovative ships, undersea craft and giant telescopes — as well as the first private mission to deep space.”

That part about challenging government funding really puts this development in perspective. It’s hardly news that government support for basic science has steadily declined during the last decade, and a sclerotic Congress that seems perpetually unable to agree on anything means that the problem will endure for a long time. As Francis Collins notes in the article, 2014 saw an all time funding low in NIH grants. In the face of such increasing withdrawal by the government from basic scientific research, it can only be good news that someone else is stepping up to the plate. Angels step in sometimes where fools fear to tread. And in an age when it is increasingly hard for this country to be proud of its public funding it can at least be proud of its private funding; no other country can claim to showcase this magnitude of science philanthropy.

There has been some negative reaction to the news. The responses come mostly from those who think science is being “privatized” and that these large infusions of cash will fund only trendy research. Some negative reactions have also come from those who find it hard to keep their disapproval of what they see as certain billionaires’ insidious political machinations – those of the Koch (not Christof Koch!) brothers for instance – separate from their support of science. There is also a legitimate concern that at least some of this funding will go to diseases affecting rich, white people rather than minorities.

I have three responses to this criticism. Firstly, funding trendy research is still better than funding no research at all. In addition many of the diseases that are being explored by this funding affect all of us and not just rich people. Secondly, we need to keep raw cash for political manipulation separate from raw cash for genuinely important research. Thirdly, believing that these billionaires somehow “control” the science they fund strikes me as a little paranoid. For instance, a stone’s throw from where I live sits the Broad Institute, a $700 million dollar endeavor funded by Eli Broad. The Broad Institute is affiliated with both Harvard and MIT. During the last decade it has made important contributions to basic research including genomics and chemical biology. Its scientists have published in basic research journals and have shared their data. The place has largely functioned like an academic institution, with no billionaire around to micromanage the scientists’ everyday work. The same goes for other institutes like the Allen Institute. Unlike some critics, I don’t see the levers of these institutes being routinely pulled by their benefactors at all. The Bambergers never told Einstein what to do.

Ultimately I am a both a human being and a scientist, so I don’t care as much about where the source of science funding comes from as whether it benefits our understanding of life and the universe and leads to advances improving the quality of life of our fellow human beings. From everything that I have read, private funding for science during the last two decades has eminently achieved both these goals. I hope it endures.

Adapted from a previous post on Scientific American Blogs.

Maryland Congressman asks the NIH to fund more young scientists

Maryland Congressman Andrew Harris

Now here's something that you don't get to see everyday - a politician taking (the right kind of) interest in the NIH's activities and asking the agency to support the most important ideas in basic biomedical research by funding young scientists. Maryland Congressman Andrew Harrison's thesis is that whatever money the NIH might have left after all the funding cuts is being spent on scientists in their 40s and beyond; he is mostly alluding to the depressing fact that most academic researchers now receive their first big RO1 grant at the age of 42. Harris says this is a mistake.

The problem, as he sees it, is that cutting-edge science is a young man's game, and it is also unlikely to be the game of someone who has already achieved his or her biggest hits:

"Every year the National Institutes of Health receives almost $30 billion in federal funds to invest in biomedical research. The bulk of that money goes to researchers who are in many cases esteemed in their fields — but also, in many cases, beyond the age when most scientists make their most important contributions to their fields.  

A study for the National Bureau of Economic Research from 2005 examined the age at which over 2,000 Nobel Prize winners and other notable scientists in the 20th century came up with the idea that led to their breakthrough. Most were between 35 and 39. Yet the median age of first- time recipients of R01 grants, the most common and sought-after form of N.I.H. funding, is 42, while the median age of all recipients is 52. More people over 65 are funded with research grants than those under age 35."

The Congressman makes another two observations that are cogent; first, that the NIH often funds glamorous research at the expense of more basic research, and second, that the NIH also seems to fund interesting projects that nonetheless seem far less important than research into humanity's most pressing problems like Alzheimer's disease.

"For many fields, particularly those that don’t have immediate commercial applications or sex appeal for grant-making nonprofit groups, the N.I.H. is a vital source of money. We’ll never know what breakthroughs were missed because young investigators were not provided with the resources necessary to pursue unique ideas over the last 15 years. They may have had the idea that would have led to a cure for ovarian cancer, Alzheimer’s disease or pediatric cardiomyopathy. 

...Today we see too many grants going to things like creating a video game for moms to teach them how to get their kids to eat more vegetables, or studying the creation of a social security system in southern Mexico. Such projects may have value to some, but is creating a video game really more important than researching a cure for Alzheimer’s?"

I have no problem seeing where Harris is coming from - the paucity of funds for young scientists is one of the biggest barriers for newly minted PhDs to consider academic research these days - but I am not sure the "young is great" theme applies as much to biomedical researchers as to, say, theoretical physicists. In fact a study which I blogged about a few years ago pointed out that because their work involves raw brain power more than anything else, theoretical physicists are the most likely to produce great breakthroughs in their 20s and early 30s; no wonder that the physics done by young Turks like Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg was called 'Knabenphysik' - the physics of youth.

As that study indicated however, with experimental sciences like biomedical research things are different, and many biomedical breakthroughs came from scientists at a relatively advanced age. There has been no synthetic organic chemist winning the Nobel Prize in his or her 20s for instance, and even the great Robert Burns Woodward - widely considered to be a true prodigy in chemistry if there ever was one - had to wait until his 40s to be recognized. When it comes to sciences like organic chemistry or molecular biology it's not a question of raw IQ; it's a question of spending those 10,000 hours to learn the tricks of laboratory manipulation, to assimilate the existing literature and, because of the great complexity of biological systems, to develop a feel for their workings. This inevitably takes time, even for very smart people.

Thus while I think Harris's heart is in the right place and we undoubtedly need more grants for young people, the real strategy should be to fund interesting ideas irrespective of age. I fear that Harris's proposal, if carried out to its logical conclusion, might achieve the opposite effect - it might alienate older researchers who are still very much capable for bright ideas. To fund the best science, all we have to do is to fund the best science.

Note: I did not even notice until much later that the Congressman is Republican. This gives me hope that I haven't turned one hundred percent cynical yet.