It Can't Happen Here?

Recently, it was announced that the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to three West German scientists, Drs. Harmut Michel, Johann Deisenhofer, and Robert Huber, for their work on the x-ray crystallographic analysis of photosynthetic reaction centers from bacteria. This deserved award marks the third time in the past 2 decades that Nobel committees have recognized important plantrelated research. The other awards honored Dr. Norman Borlaug’s leadership work on breeding “green revolution” crops so important to developing countries (1 970), and Dr. Barbara McClintock’s unique solitary achievement in discerning transposable genetic elements in maize (1 983). The work on photosynthetic reaction centers has profoundly affected research in the photosynthesis field. When coupled with the application of molecular biological techniques, this research has opened new vistas for studying photosynthetic processes. Dr. Michel, who happened to be in the United States at the time of the announcement, was interviewed by a reporter from the Washington Post. A story appearing on October 20,1988 carried a quotation by Dr. Michel stating, “ln the U.S. this research would not have been funded.” The quotation went on to state, “The long-term funding that was necessary is not available in the U.S.” If the U.S. (01 any other country’s) scientific establishment, including investigators, funding agencies, and institutions, is unable to mount efforts equivalent to Dr. Michel’s in fertile scientific areas, other major research opportunities are bound to be missed as well. Has Dr. Michel identified a failing of U.S. science? Projected U.S. national scientific efforts include major challenges to human ingenuity and discipline. New largescale focused commitments are now being considered. The sequencing of the human genome and the construction and use of the superconducting supercollider for studying the nature of matter are examples. The pursuit of the means to harness nuclear fusion is another example of a long-standing ongoing research commitment. The national effort to investigate AlDS also exemplifies a sustained commitment to research and development. These multimillion-dollar national goal projects, however, are clearly not what Dr. Michel must have had in mind. The reference is to less publicity-attracting projects of a more limited Scale that are investigator-initiated, very long term, and often interdisciplinary, with the chance of a major breakthrough always overshadowed by a pronounced risk of failure. it is the kind of project that almost certainly would be received poorly by many peer review committees. Reviewers tend innately to be conservative in the face of budgetary pressures. They favor current and proven methodology and thinking in attacking problems over departures from conventional wisdom in concept or approach . Truly exploratory research projects often involve long development times since, frequently, the hypothesis being advanced is based on fragmentary data, and, oftentimes, few proven approaches are available. Such projects are risky to all of the parties involved. To the investigator the downside could be professional oblivion, to the institution it might mean an “unproductive” staff member, and to the funding agency it could mean a long-term mortgage with uncertain payback. Nevertheless, these kinds of projects must receive an investment of research moneys because they offer the possibility of achieving the unachievable or of revolutionizing thinking or approaches to whole fields. The crucial elements for this type of pursuit are the excellent scientific credentials of the investigator(s), appropriate resources, intellectual freedom, and stability of support. The inference to be drawn from Dr. Michel’s statements is that the public research funding system in the U.S. has no equivalence to the Max-Planck lnstitutes with their intellectual freedom and funding flexibility that provide the environment for such exploratory research. Yet, in the U.S. there are, indeed, some laboratories including, perhaps surprisingly, some federal laboratories (e.g. National Institutes of Health and government-supported contract laboratories such as Brookhaven National Laboratory or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and industrial laboratories (e.g. IBM, Bell Laboratories) that do provide the atmosphere required for such research. The key to the success of these laboratories is a marriage between available resources and enlightened management. The majority of the research community, however, is at the discretion of reviewers and the federal funding agencies to provide the flexibility and acceptance to engage in this genre of research, but this discretion is not exercised