Recently I was asked to review a scientific manuscript on causation, life and information ... by no means for the first time. As often before, the author was unknown to me, so I did a bit of searching. Oh what a familiar profile they presented: a recently retired scientist with a strong and long publication record in medical biochemistry (some others have been physicists, engineers, geneticists and medics), now free to pursue their real passion for deep theoretical enquiry into life itself. Looking over my publications database, with the exception of a few philosophers, the list of authors shows such a strong bias towards retired old men (and one or two retired women that deserve honerable mention) that it cannot reasonably be a coincidence. Is this because it takes a whole career in science to reach the level of wisdom where one can make meaningful discoveries in this more profound field?
I don’t think so.
Passion and money
The core of science is, as it has always been, an insuppressible curiosity about the way the world works. Real scientists are explorers, venturing as far and deep as they can into unknown strata of hidden truth, hewing out knowledge and understanding, gifting it to humanity: a contribution towards the glory of being human.
The problem is that this sort of thing does not “align” with a modern university’s view of itself. Purely academic pursuits are way out of fashion. The modern university declares itself “a business” and its core activity (apart from teaching, which we all do anyway) is to get money from grants. The whole point of an academic employee is to get money from grants.
Most grants of significance come from government agencies and are subject to extremely constraining criteria, few of which are anything to do with science, most of which concern the guarantee of ‘societal benefits’. The UK government insists that “fundamental research is critical to productivity and economic growth” (Lane 2009) - is that the only allowable justification? Others have pointed to a long decline in what is often pejoratively referred to as ‘blue sky’ science funding (Linden, 2008), but just look at what UK Innovation and Research call ‘blue skies’: AI traffic management and genetic engineering of food crops *. Science has been replaced by engineering in official minds. Policy makers set the agenda for science as a mixture of natural ‘emergencies’ (climate, biodiversity, obesity etc.) and lucrative opportunities for research teams purporting to find technical solutions for them. Universities seem to happily agree, or silently submit to such a narrow techno-utilitarian prospectus.
Do you see the problem? Deep theorising about any fundamental question is not going to get funded on that basis, so is officially a waste of time. By pursuing deep theory instead of the sort of fashionable problem solving that funding agencies like to pay for, a scientist is effectively making themselves redundant. I already know of two senior scientists (in good universities) that were shown the door specifically because they were ‘too academic’ and we need not speculate too hard about the fate of such theoretical pioneers as Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs (of boson fame) if they were working in the present conditions.
The root of all evil
For many in UK universities, it has been a long time since an official research meeting was about anything other than how to get money, or how much money we have or need, or who has what money and where the next lot of money may come from. Research is no longer about research, it is just a vehicle for getting money in exactly the same way as window cleaning, car fixing, hairdressing and selling groceries are fundamentally about getting money, rather than the things they advertise to their clients: it is a business.
Mind you, it is not nearly as profitable as those other services I just mentioned. In fact, as a business idea, research is really quite hopeless. The typical academic scientist in the UK now spends more time in futile grant application writing than they spend in doing the research the grants are supposed to fund. Actually it is worse than that because the few grants they succeed in getting (success rate of the order of 10%) go towards salaries for the postdoctoral workers who do the research, leaving the academics to spend their time writing more grant applications and “administering” the ones they “won”. Research time is taken up with reports and meetings and all the bureaucracy needed to manage a grant under the suspicion of funding agencies who operate on the premise that the moment a scientist is allowed any freedom, they will use it to study what they want to, rather than ‘what we tell them to’. The term ‘academic freedom’ is quaint indeed.
Escape to the academic hills
As the pension pot grows to a point where life without a salary becomes viable, a way out of this yoked plough pulling emerges. The ranks of retired scientists with a penchant for deep theoretical enquiry is growing. This happy band of unpaid academics, perhaps fulfils the same role as those ‘gentleman scientists’ of the 18th and 19th centuries who used their independent means to fund their curiosity. Between them and us now, there was a brief period when academics were free to study profound questions. From their work, we gained some of the greatest discoveries of the modern era. That was before grant funding agencies took over science via mind bogglingly wasteful competition and hypersensitivity to public accountability. What are we to conclude from the current insistence that professional research must either be justified by one of the United Nations ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or backed by industry? That science is purely instrumental, problem solving under commission; the scientist like a plumber come to fix a leaking tap. Perhaps it is part of a wider trend that redefines all artistic expression as entertainment (justified in terms of paying customers), where sports and other quintessentially human activities are valued for their financial returns rather than for the love of human life. The world is richer than it has ever been in history and yet we are unable to afford any human pursuit other than to acquire more (desperately needed) money.
So dear readers, in this time of the bottom line, leave the old scientists to their uneconomic theorising - it’s a nice alternative to the crossword puzzles and games of bridge over the care-home coffee table. But if anyone was seriously wondering where the next really big discovery is going to come from … well they might have to rely on those still research-active pensioners willing to serve humanity, despite having been put out to grass.
References
(Lane 2009) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1175335)
(Linden, 2008 https://doi.org/10.1186/1747-5333-3-3)
* The UK's research funding agencies now all gathered under one quasi government organisation - see https://eandt.theiet.org/2020/10/15/blue-sky-projects-get-ps109m-public-funding
see also https://www.aria.org.uk/. Not surprising when you realise they are led by a group of technology company bosses.
To see another problem for creative research : https://avi-loeb.medium.com/would-albert-einstein-end-up-in-academia-in-2024-5d7bf37a3e31
