What is Great Science?

At the symposium on cardiovascular regenerative medicine, Professor Amy Wagers presented their interesting result on Strategies to Reverse Age-related Dysfunction in the Skeletal Muscle and Cardiovascular System: Based on the discovery of the aged mice's hearts are thicker and stiffer, which means greater possibility of heart failure, they raised this question: can the ageing process of heart be reversed? They supposed some factors in direct contact of the heart might be highly related with such process. Mice are joined together by surgical technique, with or without merging circulation system. Among the young-old pairs, they found a change in the heart wall: the heart weight-to-tibia length ratio wa significantly lower in old mice exposed to a young circulation comparing to an old circulation after 4 weeks of parabiosis. After further protein screening, they identified GDF11 as a protein that declines in ageing mice. This was later reconfirmed by injecting GDF11 into old mice to restore the protein to levels similar to those of young mice, and the result was the older mice experienced a reversal in the thickening of heart muscle tissue. Later they published this result on Cell.

When hearing this result, Etai turned around: "This result shows why we want a young partner!" I just couldn't help laughing.

What is great science? In my view, it's not decided by which institute you are working in, nor by in what journals you publish your result. Great science comes from the work of great minds, which is to change or renew the understanding of the world we are inhabiting, such as the work of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Dmitri Mendeleev. All their achievements share a general feature, that is they came from the combination of intensive thought, massive calculation and confirmatory experiments. When we look back into history, we can clear see how their work changed our perspective on the world and thus drove the development of human civilization.

Great science is the solid basis of technology. Technology is directly related with productivity, that's why many people believe that technology is the decisive force of social evolution. However, while thinking this way, it is extremely easy for people to ignore the contribution of basic science research.  Today, an indisputable fact is, the scale of technology has already exceed the scale of science. 

Currently, most countries are facing up the threat of economic depression. Accordingly, there's an effort to reduce funding for scientific research, and it has already come into effect. Also during this symposium, when it came to question time, an old researcher argued with NIH administrators for nearly ten minutes on why they wouldn't continue to sponsor his research,"...go and read my poster, you'll know how encouraging results we've had. Why should they spend that amount of money on primate research?!" It was really embarrassing moments. 

Generally, I do agree with the decision of reducing funding for scientific research in these difficult times. Even I am also engaging in research, I would still hold the point that, not everyone can work out  great science. Scientific research, as well as art, is the outcome of human society development, in other word, scientific research is kind of luxuries rather than necessaries for the ordinary people. Then how can many so called scientific researchers raise their families by doing research? It's time to reassess what  is desirable science. Just as what I've mentioned above, great science most probably comes from those scientists who are talented, well-trained and able to keep moving in their lifetime, and only to these people should the funding goes. During the several years as a PhD candidate, I already witnessed talented and mediocre researchers doing so differently on the way of research, and how we consumed the massive investment in the research area without producing anything but papers. I don't think people should have too much sympathy for those who have to making a living by doing scientific research-if we are sympathetic, who is going to pay for their salaries and those dispensable projects? Can most tax payers agree with our sympathy? I guess not.

The most challenging part is, scientific research is not as simple as"The best, or nothing." So the criterion for great science, especially in subjects that related with biology and life science, is of most importance. As what are the great science that must be financed, I think everyone in different area would give a unique answer. For me, I think research such as the one of Amy Wagers group can serve as an example.