When President Obama said in his Inaugural Address, “We will restore science to its rightful place,” the scientific community breathed a deep sigh of relief, shed tears of joy, and gave itself a collective high-five. The stimulus package contains major investments in scientific research, with budget increases for science that we have not witnessed for decades. And yet, while I am hopeful about those changes, as a scientist I feel obligated to ask: Is the science community ready to capitalize on this coming renaissance?
With science receiving more money, greater public awareness, and the president’s support, it behooves scientists to reflect upon how we study and practice our fields. To maximize our effectiveness, we must dismantle the longstanding tradition within the science disciplines of dividing scholarship into two major pillars, basic and applied. If the scientific community can bridge the divide between those two approaches, then our scholarship, our community, and our world will be better for it.
What is the difference between basic and applied science? The term basic research is often used to imply fundamental work, involving analytic theoretical investigations to reveal new physics, or experimental characterization to elucidate new phenomena, and a number of other approaches. The term is typically used in the “discipline” sciences, namely math, physics, chemistry, and biology. Applied research refers to work carried out in engineering departments, including materials science and chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering. Generally speaking, basic research deepens and expands scientific understanding, while applied research focuses on utility.
Traditionally, scientists who practice those two kinds of research have looked down on each other. Basic researchers will not do applied work because they think it is “not deep enough,” and applied researchers will not do fundamental work because they consider it “not real enough.” Exacerbating the matter, departments tend to segregate the basic and applied disciplines. Too often the chemistry department works independently of the chemical-engineering department.
More and more, we are recognizing great opportunities to develop new and creative ideas at intersections between disciplines. Physicists participate in this exciting era of advances in biology, from understanding protein folding to developing new anti-cancer drugs. Mathematicians work with chemists for a focus on applications, like the design of new molecules. Chemists work closely with physicists to create new phases of materials. And biologists draw new connections to chemistry and physics at the atomic scale. Yet today’s interdisciplinary approach is still not nearly as evolved as we need it to be in our current crisis. Not only must different disciplines come together to solve today’s problems, but basic and applied scientists must also combine their research.
To meet our global needs — such as cheap, clean energy conversion, high-density energy storage, and abundant clean water — we will require (1) advances in our understanding of the basic properties and mechanisms that make materials do what they do (for example, convert sunlight into electricity or store hydrogen), and (2) ways to make new materials and increase our manufacturing to a level that can make a difference on a worldwide scale. And here’s the real opportunity: (1) cannot change the world alone — nor can (2). Only the combination of the two will allow us to accelerate the pace of innovation. In the past, basic researchers who have made the first kind of scientific discovery have thought, “Someone else can use this new insight to make something of it,” while applied researchers who have made the second kind of discovery have thought, “Someone else can go back and figure out why compound ABC works best.” But the new materials needed to save the world will be far too complex for that kind of piggyback exploration; only genuine collaboration throughout the scientific-discovery process will allow us to meet the challenges of today’s most pressing global issues. Yes, we absolutely need to understand the fundamental behavior of the materials that make up our world, but relating their behavior to utility will have a greater impact. And yes, we absolutely need to engineer manufacturable devices, but true breakthroughs will only occur in the context of maximum understanding.
Since that approach is indeed uncommon, there are few examples of its potential. Yet the collaboration that yielded one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, the transistor, illustrates the clear benefits of bringing basic and applied researchers together. In the 1940s, William B. Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter H. Brattain led a team at Bell Laboratories that was highly interdisciplinary, with physicists, chemists, and engineers working closely together. Brattain was the applied scientist, able to build almost anything; Bardeen focused more on basic science, able to provide crucial insight upon interpreting the data; and Shockley worked in both camps. Even though the scientists ended up personally at odds, their discovery benefited tremendously from the focus and creativity that an interdisciplinary team’s different perspectives and skills brought to their work. The three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Government financing now provides the strongest incentive for basic and applied sciences to work together. The National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy often require large grants to be filled by teams that combine both basic and applied approaches. Unfortunately, the scientific community’s modus operandi and academic culture are so entrenched that all too often the research is still done in a highly segregated manner.
If the scientific community is going to change, the impetus must come from within. Basic and applied scientists must come together in their common excitement to solve a problem, not because of their common need to obtain financing. That is, scientists must recommit to being problem-driven rather than grant-driven — and with that recommitment should come an openness to all types of approaches. If we stay entrenched in our traditional ways and old divides, scientific discoveries will still occur, but not quickly or reliably enough. Simply put, business as usual will not allow us to respond to the urgent crises that we are facing.
For science to save the world — which it must — science must save itself from its status quo. Practicing a new science that fuses basic and applied approaches and draws on multiple disciplines could spur the innovation we desperately need.
Jeffrey C. Grossman is the group leader of the Computational Materials Science Group, and the executive director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, at the University of California at Berkeley.
http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 55, Issue 37, Page A28