On the importance of idle curiosity in research

In the book “The Idea Factory,” the CEO of the then monopolized telephone services American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T)) in the US (circa 1880-1930) decided that although the business was highly profitable as a result of the massive laying down of cable across the world, hiring someone who could advance an understanding of how the telephone actually worked was needed. He decided that a more fundamental understanding of electricity and sound would improve the business model and overall telephone services. He hired a physicist from the University of Chicago who was offered a salary of $25,000/year to head up the project. This person was thrilled to just be able to obtain employment, given that a PhD in those days was no guarantee of employment, even when graduating from an elite university.

When the newly appointed physicist asked the CEO “what is my job?” he responded — you are to spend your time in “idle curiosity” so you can think and perform experiments. So began the independently funded and famous Bell laboratories, designed so that its faculty could walk its outdoor paths, think great thoughts and perform solution-agnostic experiments. More Nobel Prizes were won by the faculty at that institution than all other private free-standing research facilities in the US. Imagine what it felt like to be hired by a powerful CEO of a company and being told spend all your time in idle curiosity. Yet without that level of trust in the very process of science itself, the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device, information theory, the Unix operating system, and several programming languages would not have occurred. This approach led to eleven Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards.

This story illustrates that a key element of success in research is the recognition of the value that idle curiosity brings to a scientific project. It is inefficient and costs money, time and resources. Yet without it, the foundational knowledge needed to drive innovation cannot emerge. The CEO of AT&T’s idea to let “scientific inquiry run its natural course” was not only visionary but demonstrated his trust in scientists and the process of science itself. And remember science is a process, not a result and is “true whether you believe it or not”, to quote Neil deGrasse Tyson.

In the USA, the current approach is to render the process of science “more efficient.” Disguised with efficiency as its goal, the approach is not only disingenuous, it is untrustworthy. That no one in the current administration is either a practicing scientist or even a former practicing scientist, may speak to the naiveté of such action. The new administration may respond that they know how to manage the results of science as they have used it to build their companies and make products. Despite this inexperience, they are sure they know what is needed for a “course correction” to occur in the process of scientific inquiry. While this type of blind conceit is an outrage to those actually practicing science, as well as to the universities and institutions whose job it is to promote and manage scientific inquiry, it strikes this practicing scientist that their disguised rancour against science that values scholarly output without any profitable outcome in mind, must be eliminated. This approach to the current system is clearly a move more intended to produce outrage and anger, than to improve its efficiency. It is a power play in its most egregious form, and the collateral damage should not be underestimated.

Sadly, the new administration has set the tone that the real “enemy within” is those world-renowned universities, scientists and national institutes of health sections that fund the most well trained and brilliant minds whose foundational work has led to new and profitable drugs, new and profitable devices and all the knowledge needed to generate them. Any practicing scientist working to advance knowledge in a field, and anyone in a leadership position at a major university, understands the short-sightedness of this approach. While the collateral damage to those ordinary Americans will be significant, as long as those with the power and control can see profit, while their attitude is disguised as “concern about inefficiencies in government,” they may well succeed.

When these same policymakers board an airplane and put their lives in the care of a pilot who is assumed to have been properly selected and trained, another story emerges. While, expertise, and the “idle curiosity” needed to produce it, may require that someone has studied and understood quantum electrodynamics sufficiently to engineer and wire the motherboard is assumed, policymakers just want to take off and land safely and not be bothered by thinking about all it took to make air flight safe. As most people have no idea how or why their cellphones work, or what it takes for a surgeon to train and become expert in their field, the diligence, hard work and dedication of the scientists behind such products or activities are now being thrown by the wayside.

The question is what level of damage will it take for the public to lose its trust when the current administration has such disdain for scientific inquiry that it favours massive funding reduction in the name of efficiency? While scientific inquiry, with its ability to withstand repeated peer review, will suffer, so will millions of people. What we now know about the health of all earth’s living species, be they bacteria, plants or animals, and what we know about modern devices, be they communication devices or air flight, will no longer develop. The world is not a friendly place for know-it-alls, it requires scientific inquiry to advance an understanding of its hidden secrets. This process is inefficient, requires money and time and most importantly requires trust in the expertise of those fortunate enough to be given the opportunity and a workplace in which to dabble in “idle curiosity.” Nature, it turns out, “doesn’t care a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men.” (Galileo Galleri letter to the Grand Duchess Christina). But nature needs to be understood, its secrets decoded and its wrath tamed if we expect to survive in the mist of its constant and unpredictable change.