Scientific Freedom

Planck once said that science advances one funeral at a time: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”4 Hence the folly of using peer review to assess virtually all proposals, the current custom. (Location 91)

It’s been forgotten that we did not need special arrangements for finding the Einsteins in the past. There was enough flexibility in the system to allow them to emerge, but that’s been removed in the quest for efficiency. (Location 142)

They included Steve Davies, at the University of Oxford, whose Venture Research project (1985–91) “Understanding Molecular Architecture” led to the development of small artificial enzymes for efficient chiral selection. This led him in 1992 to set up a company, Oxford Asymmetry, which he sold in 2000 for £316 million ($475 million) to a German firm, Evotec. He has since gone on to found six companies in other areas of science while remaining an academic committed to research. (Location 158)

Does not Dionysius, then, seem to have declared there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions? (Location 762)

It does not follow, of course, that we can automatically attribute the high and unprecedented rates of economic growth of the Golden Age to those simple policies. There may be other reasons. But, as a follower of Solow, my working hypothesis throughout this book has been that unconstrained creativity eventually leads to new opportunities and new growth. Conversely, although directed creativity may sometimes be advantageous in the short term, it eventually leads to diminishing returns and falling growth. (Location 972)

Very few new ideas emerged from the suffocating environment imposed by religious dogma during the Dark Ages, for example. Creativity is a delicate plant. Everyone who has had an idea is usually plagued by doubt and uncertainty. Is it really original? Is it correct or valid? Does it matter? For creativity to flourish, it does not necessarily need encouragement. Indeed, since its origins are not understood it may be impossible to encourage. But intellectual pioneers need environments that accommodate dissent, as I tried to explain in my Pioneering Research. (Location 989)

Leaving aside the history of its interpretation, would it be correct to describe the Penzias–Wilson research as transformative? I do not think it would. One might as well ask whether Planck’s or Einstein’s original work were relevant in today’s language, a question that would hardly have occurred to them. They simply did what they thought was important. There were no other considerations. In the Penzias–Wilson case, they set out to explore radio emissions from the Milky Way. The field of radio astronomy was growing rapidly in 1963 although it was still in its infancy. (Location 1130)

Creativity works best when it is free from constraints. If someone had said to Max Planck, “We don’t understand thermodynamics. You’re a clever chap, why don’t you look at it?,” I doubt if he would have spent 20 weeks on it rather than the 20 years that proved necessary, because he would not have been working on his problem. (Location 1210)

The state of mind which furnishes the driving power here resembles that of the devotee or the lover. The long-sustained effort is not inspired by any set plan or purpose. Its inspiration arises from a hunger of the soul. (Location 1233)

Discovery has become impersonal. There are few defining names or living legends that might resonate in the imaginations of future commentators or inspire the young. We seem to have turned research into a faceless industry. Is it any wonder that young people are turning away from science? (Location 1506)

I have already mentioned that the Big Bang is virtually the only cosmological show in town. As a further illustration, Lee Smolin, in his The Trouble with Physics (2007), points out that string theory—which is concerned with understanding the very fabric of space and the structure of all matter—now has such a dominant position that “it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field,” despite the fact that, as Smolin carefully explains, it has many serious defects. Mavericks without independent funding, however, must conform or select another topic from a funding agency’s à la carte menu, and not only in physics. (Location 1631)

Responsibility shared is responsibility declined. (Location 1928)

Thus, he made the remarkable discovery that one could do original and highly creative work developing new products without necessarily uncovering any new science. (Location 2225)

Academics are now made constantly aware of their accountability to their various taskmasters and of the need to justify their existence with respect to a host of extraneous responsibilities placed on them.6 Such shackles are, of course, all too familiar to people in other walks of life, but until recently the universities had generally been exempt. Sadly, however, the bureaucrats, backed up by the politically correct, have now decided that the universities should no longer be excluded from their tender mercies, justifying their decision on the grounds that the academic sector would thereby be more efficient. At first glance, this might seem sensible. (“First glance” is, of course, the bureaucrat’s weapon of choice. Closer inspection is rarely encouraged, acknowledged, or allowed.) (Location 2281)

Unfortunately, the major snags are that efficiency measurements require goals to be specified, and their specification is usually based on external considerations. The vast majority of academics rarely have a say. (Location 2288)

What might a Fifth Revolution comprise? If we could project ourselves forward a few decades, I would hope that people then might be saying its seeds were sown around 2007 when it finally became obvious that: Real per capita global economic growth is declining. Technology is derived from major scientific discoveries made decades ago. Managed creativity can at best produce only what its managers specify. Efficiency and accountability can sometimes be the worst possible policies. We must begin to create a twenty-first-century Planck Club. Managed creativity (by which I mean creativity directed toward a specific objective or confined in any way) may sound like a good idea, but as my wizard tried to warn us (see Poster 3), we do not understand creativity. In these circumstances, the best we can do is to give those rare individuals who seem capable of transformative thinking the freedom to bring their ideas to fruition. (Location 2334)

Efficiency and accountability have their places; there is little harm in insisting that researchers who know where they are going and when they expect to get there should justify details of their trips. But putative members of the Planck Club should hold themselves accountable only to Nature herself. It took 20 years for Planck to reach his goal, but he had no idea how long it would actually take nor could he have precisely specified it when he set out. What was his efficiency? The question is irrelevant, of course. (Location 2343)

rises in student numbers will have on the concept of the university as an institution. How do they expect that the university’s once automatic association with excellence can continue unquestioned when 50% is the proportion usually associated with average? (Location 2367)

long as our teachers regard their work as simply giving so many courses for undergraduates, we shall never have first-class teaching here. If they have to teach graduate students as well as undergraduates, they will regard their subjects as infinite, and keep up that constant investigation (or research) which is necessary for first-class teaching. (Morison 1969, 335–336) (Location 2372)

addition to these, the other social burdens (as opposed to intellectual) being heaped on the universities means that academics must spend so much time meeting deadlines and generally fighting the fires that bureaucrats love to start that they have little time for calm contemplation. We should not be surprised, therefore, if the number left with sufficient energy and inspiration to raise their game to excellent and beyond, as required for Planck Club membership, seems to have fallen close to zero in recent times. (Location 2384)

“To meet the needs of the world around it, its research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power.” (Location 2403)

“Teaching and research in universities must be inseparable if their tuition is not to lag behind changing needs, the demands of society, and advances in scientific knowledge.” “Freedom in research and teaching is the fundamental principle of university life, and governments and universities, each as far as in them lies, must ensure respect for this fundamental requirement.” (Location 2405)

After all, science itself is a global discipline. Nationalism has no role whatsoever—it would make no sense claiming to be the first Briton to discover the quantization of energy, for example. (Location 2427)

immediate. In the main, however, we consider that the universities if given a clear statement of any general or particular situation and a clear indication of what is wanted will of their own volition come to the right decision in the light of their particular circumstances. We, like the universities, recognize that external demands will grow, but we are confident that our main task is to interpret such demands as we feel it legitimate to the universities and to leave the universities to adjust themselves to the changing environment. The delegation of responsibility, we believe, is essential if the health of higher education is to be maintained. (Location 2461)

Between 1945 and 1979, UK academic researchers won approximately 41 Nobel Prizes in the sciences—perhaps the ultimate in international quality assessments. That is an average of more than one a year, an extraordinarily high rate for such a relatively small country. For most of this period the dual-support system was still largely intact and among other things provided for “well-found” laboratories that created environments in which researchers could respond quickly to new ideas without the need to involve external assessors. Between 1980 and 2006, the equivalent number was 10, or one every 2.6 years. That fall is not so enormous, of course, and apologists have argued that the reduced figure is still reasonable considering Britain’s size. However, six of those prizes were awarded to scientists working at such institutes as the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology, which strived to ensure that personal freedom was protected, and one worked in industry. Thus, the changes have resulted in almost a tenfold decrease in the rate at which Nobel Prizes are won by researchers at UK universities, and for these universities, at least, loss of autonomy would seem to be related to the apparent loss in creativity. (Location 2476)

Thus, the United Kingdom has moved from a regime where autonomy was rigorously protected to one where lip service only is paid to this ideal, as is now also the case generally elsewhere. The primary agent of that autonomy—the UGC—was eliminated solely on misplaced ideological grounds. Its efficiency was above reasoned reproach. (Location 2484)

However, there would still be a major snag. Restoring some of the old universities to Magna Charta status or creating new ones to the same standard would probably be strongly opposed because it would inevitably mean that only a small proportion of universities could claim to be first-class. That could be a serious problem, but there might be another way of satisfying society’s understandable wish to provide higher education for a substantial proportion of the population. The limits of secondary education have systematically been extended everywhere over the past century or so. We could take this process to its next logical step by regarding secondary education as being complete only after, say, three or four years of study at a normal university. In that regime, therefore, a newly defined higher or tertiary education would begin at a full-fledged Bologna Magna Charta university after this extended secondary phase had been completed, a proposal that would not be substantially different from the measures the UK government is now proposing for England, for example. (Location 2493)

Colleges and universities tended to choose their leaders from the ranks of the faculty, often with academic qualifications outweighing administrative skills. To some extent, many academic institutions still follow that model…. Now, however, there is increasing pressure to recruit executives from the private sector armed with skills in business management but without work experience in academic administration. As a result, academic planning, budgeting, and day-to-day administration is becoming like the management processes developed for the private sector and increasingly reflects values that conflict with the traditional values of university governance. (Waugh 2003, 85) (Location 2523)

As the trend continues, students will increasingly be regarded as customers, and academic research as a supplier of commodities. The commercial pressures on academic research are all too familiar, especially as companies are cutting back on their in-house exploratory research. The pressures from customer-students to provide such user-friendly courses as cosmetics, costume design, and the culinary arts are already increasing.14 In the circumstances where governments are tending to focus on short-term pragmatism, who, in the absence of an organization like the UGC, would argue that a university education should be as demanding as possible? Customers often go for the easiest or cheapest options. (Location 2528)

The cancerous growth of consensus and other bureaucratic scourges could prove disastrous. In the academic sector, freedom is being curtailed because some influential people fear that otherwise freeloaders will exploit it. (Location 2579)