Translating Basic Research to Benefit Society

Transcript:Translating Basic Research to Benefit Society:
Translating Basic Research to Benefit Society Javed Iqbal LEAP program, Kolkata 21 February 2019 Why Government Should Fund Basic Research? Measuring the impact of research: Why government should fund science and at what level? How great are the benefits, and are they greater than the level of investment? Government’s responsibility is to fund basic research which will eventually lead to wealth, health & national security. Hence demands for accountability & assessment Science not always seen as high political priority e.g. health, education, pensions How to persuade governments to invest more? The Dichotomy of Basic and Applied Research! “Basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress.” Vannevar Bush, 1945 The conceptual dichotomy of basic and applied research has proven to be an enduring one. The late Daniel Koshland viewed basic and applied science as “revolutionary” and “evolutionary,” respectively, summarizing the difference thus: “Basic research is the type that is not always practical but often leads to great discoveries. Applied research refines these discoveries into useful products.” Credit: “Lost in Translation—Basic Science in the Era of Translational Research” The Dichotomy of Basic and Applied Research! Basic research discoveries, such as semiconductors and the structure of DNA, have revolutionized electronics and biology, making possible the laptop computer on which this presentation is made and the molecular research to which so many of us have devoted our careers. Basic Research and Serendipity! Marie Curie described how her discovery of radium, which presaged the therapeutic use of radioisotopes, was purely serendipitous: “When radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it.” Basic Research and Serendipity! In her Nobel banquet speech, Christiane Nüsslein-Vollhard recalled her discovery of the Toll gene in Drosophila: “We started out in our research with a deep interest in understanding the origin and development of pattern during embryogenesis. None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.” Basic Research and Serendipity! American Society for Microbiology member Carol Greider was pleasantly surprised when awarded the Nobel Prize for her ground breaking work on telomeres, which may lead to advances in the treatment of cancer or the amelioration of aging, she emphasized the following: “We didn't know at