The value of science

In these days of austerity, with the next budget cut more severe than the previous one, it seems that everything that does not have an immediate impact on “the economy” stands the risk of being trimmed. The short-term thinking associated with this is terrifying in many ways. It may take generations to build a decent society, but it appears that things can be demolished at a surprising rate.

I am not going to rant about basic social values and how it is the responsibility of those that are well off to help those that are less fortunate. There should be no need for that, since the morality ought to be obvious (although... many of today’s politicians still seem incapable of understanding). What I want to raise are a few simple points concerning the value of basic science, where progress is often slow and where the tangible products may be few and far between.

If it is the case that research needs to have immediate and measurable impact outside the hallowed halls of the Academy in order to be worthy of support, then most blue sky thinking and “simple” furthering of knowledge will surely starve. Entire disciplines will have to be abandoned.

Maybe this is right and proper? Who needs these areas of research anyway? If they don’t contribute, get rid of them! Tradition? What kind of argument is that?

Let’s try to put value on a couple of things that we might consider giving up. How about Astronomy? Do we really need to understand our place in the Universe? Does it matter if we don’t know how stars are born, evolve and die? Who cares about black holes and such crazy things, anyway? Uh... Quite a lot of people, it seems. Astronomy research may not contribute much to economic prosperity, but... it certainly provides “entertainment” and stimulates debate and discussion among experts and excited amateurs. I personally think that, if you were to ask a typical person in the street if issues involving space are worth exploring then you would likely get an answer in the affirmative. If you consider the wow factor, then surely the spectacular images from the Hubble space telescope (and other missions) have immense value.

In a related area, let’s consider an example from history; Albert Einstein and his wonky-space theory of gravity from 1915. Completely useless, right? Exciting and thought provoking, but contributing to the economy? You must be having a laugh! Certainly, the impact of Einstein’s theory of relativity was rather less than immediate. But... and I think this is a really big but, it has been considerable. You may not need to worry about the details, but... if it were not for the corrections from general relativity then the Global Positioning System (GPS) would quickly lose accuracy. In today’s world of automatic navigation this could lead to chaos. It may have taken almost a century for this impact to be realized but it cannot be ignored today. Of course, if he had been assessed according to today’s rules then poor Albert would probably not have been given the chance to complete his theory.

Let’s see… another example of scientific blue sky thinking and playing around without particular thought of impact... The internet. Now... What’s the actual monetary value of that?

I could go on with this, but let’s consider a contrasting case instead. Why not take a look at some science that has had obvious and immediate impact on society? How about the economy work that politicians like to use as motivation for the current climate of austerity? The main idea is that you can get an economy back on track by cutting back, a bit like you give the trees in an orchard renewed life by a severe trim every now and then. Surely, this work was worth supporting? Indeed, it had immense impact on society (I can see it in my bank account!), and a pretty direct one at that. Funny thing though; It may be that this piece of work was flawed. Apparently the two economists made a basic error in a spreadsheet, which meant that they did not consider all the relevant data. If you fix this, then the conclusions could point in a slightly different direction. So there we are. I’m not sure what the take home message is. Perhaps we learn that research not having direct impact on society could be a good thing?

At the end of the day, we need to worry about what we are doing to the next generation(s). If we teach them that efforts are only useful if they lead to an immediate return, what kind of society are they going to build (for us to retire in)? We must allow our kids to dream and think big (sometimes wild and a bit crazy), not necessarily be realistic and down to Earth all the time. This is a perfect job for science. We need to keep looking beyond what happens tomorrow. Otherwise tomorrow might never come.