Why Science Is More Than Discovery: It’s How We Change the World.
Science as an act of societal collective creativity.
Its easy to forget, but science is an act of creativity.
Most scientists are creatives.
While it is not the wild flings of the imagination we associate with musicians or artists, science is still about bringing something new into existence.
Science is in fact an act creativity that is becoming more collective and more societal in nature. In this era of scientific turmoil is more important than ever to adapt how we think about science.
Science is a method for uncovering truth
Science is not a body of knowledge. It is not an opinion. It is a method.
As a method it is a way of approaching how we determine what we think is true is actually true.
It is the method that gets us the closest to the truth.
And that method is not about arrogant reclamations about what is true, or empty criticisms. It is about criticism based on evidence, on knowledge and reason - in that order.
It is also about adapting what we think is true when there is new evidence that does not align with what we think to be true.
Science creates new knowledge
Science is ultimately a method for creating new knowledge. It creates a better understanding of the world around us.
We need new knowledge and we must appreciate that science is how we create new knowledge.
That’s why we fund science. We all pitch in to hunt down the knowledge that can’t be found any other way. We don’t seek the knowledge that will turn us a profit tomorrow—that’s what businesses are for—but the knowledge that will support a permanently better life. We do science that is speculative and strange because that’s where the breakthroughs will come from, the frontiers of knowledge where our intuitions stop working, where predictions fail, and where the things that seem sensible are unlikely to be important. We do this with public funding because it produces public goods. The things we discover are too important to be owned; they must be shared.
Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History
How do you think a decrease in public funding of science would affect our lives?
Science is how we change the world
Science does not stop at the creation of knowledge.
It is also about creating new ways to change the world around us. It is about finding ways to apply knowledge.
Once you get more into production or refinement of something it begins to shift towards engineering. Although the distinction between science and engineering has a fuzzy border. However, engineering can also be very scientific in that as improvements are made they are tested.
This illustrates that the more we advance science, the more we bring different disciplines together, the more the fuzzy border between science and engineering becomes.
Engineered cell therapy: the fuzzy border between science and engineering.
I have learned to appreciate the fuzzy border between science and engineering by helping to develop and implement the T2EVOLVE project. T2EVOLVE is an EU funded project that is part of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI).
Engineered cell therapy, particularly CAR-T cell therapy has been a revolution in hematology. However, it is a complex therapy that is challenging to implement as it evolves modifying human cells to make them better at fighting cancer.
Thus, the access to these therapies is limited. T2EVOLVE is a public-private partnership aimed at improving access by improving education, improving the preclincal models used to develop these therapies, implementing standards for how we monitor the effects of these therapies and optimising the process of administering CAR-T therapy.
What is different about engineered cell therapy is that is relatively easy to make modifications to the cells to have desired effects. It is more like engineering than the process of finding new therapeutic compounds.
It makes it possible to even create an entirely personalized therapy. However, that creates a challenge: Do we have to go through a 10 clinical trial cycle for each new version of an engineered cell therapy?
The answer to this question requires the perspective of many different disciplines and stakeholders from patients, clinicians, industry, regulators to even hospital systems.
Realising the full potential of engineered cell therapy requires a societal level collective effort.
Do you know of any big science projects actively seeking public engagement?
Science as a creative endeavor
There are many features that science shares with more typical creative endeavors.
We don't know where we are going.
Just like a sculpture who says the statue is already in the block of marble he is just removing the stone around it, in science we are just trying to uncover what is already there. As such our preconceptions of what it is are often wrong. Unexpected findings serve as a sort of intellectual springboard for science.
The upshot of this is that it is difficult to clearly enunciate the true value of science at the start of scientific project. It is also hard to predict when the knowledge created by science will translate into something useful for changing the world around us.
Creativity and uncertainty are cozy bedfellows.
Science is societal collective creativity.
Scientists were the first social media enthusiasts.
The original scientific journals consisted of letters written between scientists. After that, it was common to have multiple comments on published papers and live comments in meetings.
It's inescapable. Good science requires the combined efforts of many. More and more, it requires the combined efforts of everyone.
As science advances, it pushes more and more into what it means to be human and even holds forth the potential to change what it means to be human. Also, science is only as useful as it is accepted.
It is important that we pay attention to the intersection of science and humanity making sure that patients and society are partners in the scientific process.
We can create new knowledge, but if no one wants to apply that knowledge, what's the point?
In reality, it is never that simple, but this illustrates the point that science should be done not only for society but also by society.
What does that mean?
It means that science should be done in clear consideration of the intended impact. Impact is the long term transformation to which scientific findings and advancements contribute.
Without defining that impact why would society want your science?
This does not preclude basic science by any means. It is indeed more important to define the impact of basic science.
By its very nature basic science is more powerful. It has the potential to discover something that was never known before which could be dramatic in the acceleration it enables. Think about the discovery of DNA. Or the discovery of insulin.
Basic science has much more potential to make big changes.
But, those big changes are dramatic when coupled with an impact orientation. Take for example the development of GLP-1 based drugs was fundamentally structured by a focus on the real-world impact of improving diabetes outcomes.
Researchers’ persistent drive to understand how gut hormones influence insulin secretion led to the discovery of GLP-1, a hormone with preserved antidiabetic effects in patients with type 2 diabetes. This impact-driven approach not only unraveled the mechanisms behind the “incretin effect,” but also inspired the creation of powerful new therapies GLP-1 receptor agonists and DPP-4 inhibitors that have transformed diabetes care by improving glycemic control, promoting weight loss, and reducing cardiovascular risk.
The breakthrough was possible because scientists remained focused on translating basic discoveries into tangible benefits for people living with diabetes, illustrating how a commitment to societal impact can guide and accelerate transformative innovation.
Pure translational work is less dramatic. When you are defining the impact of basic science, you have more of a license to be highly speculative, which is always more fun. When you couple that with an impact-orientation you are on the path to major breakthroughs.
Science, like a lot of creative efforts, gets stuck.
Major problems can hold back an entire fields of scientific endeavor. Underpinning these bottlenecks is often a less than optimal collaboration across a field. People may not be aligned on a standard or may not be cooperating enough to get to a point where there is sufficient data to clearly answer questions.
Science also very often gets stuck in its translation into something useful, the final step in the innovation process. It takes an average of 17 years to translate research findings into clinical impact. For example in medical science there is a whole list of life-changing breakthroughs that have been promised for a long time:
Precision medicine
Digital health
Slowing down ageing
Curing cancer
Regenerating organs
Genetic risk prediction
But they all seem to be stuck mostly due to limitations like those described above.
When science gets stuck it is not like when individual creatives get stuck because they lost inspiration, science gets stuck because it is an act of creation that is trying to change the current and complex system or it gets stuck because biology is much more complex than anticipated.
Either we cannot sort our what to do about a particular problem, or there is empirical evidence that something works but we can't explain why it works. Complexity clogs the gears of science.
It also gets stuck when no one drives the transition from the knowledge generation phase to the implementation phase.
Science is curiosity fueled iteration
The scientific process is about iterative cycles. Observe, hypothesize test, interpret refine, hypothesize. So are the creative arts. Often in museums you will find early sketches of famous paintings. The Mona Lisa was not painted in a day.
The best science is iterative and expansive. If when findings are made that can move forward to the implementation or engineering phase there is often a continued if not increased need for more iterative spins of the science cycle. These are iterative cycle branches that look at the problem and the science from slightly different angles.
Why does having the right understanding of science matter?
Ultimately as Mastroianni puts it, science is about creating a better life. Its important to stand up for science not because its a nice to have or a luxury. Its our only hope for bettering our lives.
The race to avoid the problems new technology creates.
New technological advancements like AI stoke a lot of fear. You can be an ostrich and stick your head in the sand when it comes to new technology and just hope that it will just away. It won't.
While you have your head in the sand someone else will be taking the science and the resulting technology forward.
The answers to the problems new technology creates will come from science. We are in a race to produce solutions for the problems new technology creates. By turning away from science we will certainly lose that race. But also treating science like some sort of stamp collecting discovery exercise handicaps us severely in that race.
New technology has always been both good and bad.
Lets take for example the technological advancement of lighting homes with candles. It was great when it happened but it also created a very big risk that the candles might tip over and burn down the house.
If at that time we said "oh, this new candle technology is bad, let's not light our houses anymore" where would we be? Instead science and technology pushed forward to create electricity and the light bulb. It took some time.
“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The difference now is the process of creating knowledge and the technology to make that knowledge useful is much more complex and occurs more rapidly.
The case for big projects in science.
Science is the quintessential big project endeavor. Particularly when you look at it from the perspective of going from new knowledge generation to impactful implementation. Meaningful science almost requires a big project to push new frontiers forward.
This is why we are all scientists.
Anyone that tells you there is no role for the public in science has a narrow view of what science is.
The collective creativity nature of science will continue to expand as more and more enabling technology increases our ability to produce new knowledge and ways of implementing that knowledge.
To stay relevant and to maximize the potential and minimize the risks of science there are a few mindset shifts we need to make.
Three Mindset shifts
From siloed to impact oriented science: The path from new scientific knowledge to useful implementation is no longer a series of siloed efforts. We need to consider ourselves leaders who are shepherding a vision of the future from discovery to translation to implementation. Along that journey different disciplines and different stakeholders will have a more or less prominent role. The thing is new advances don't just need a leader, they need dozens, hundreds or even thousands of leaders.
Viewing science as a solution to the new problems technology creates: As scientists and society we are responsible for the potential harm science and resulting technology bring. Therefore we need to continue to drive the science to create new knowledge that will help us minimize the harms of the technology we create.
From a scientists only approach, to science as a societal effort: We must strive to involve multiple disciplines and multiple different kinds of stakeholders in science.
The best way to do this is through big projects, consortia, that involve multiple disciplines and multiple stakeholders working together under one vision. To stay relevant engage in at least one big project that addresses the bottlenecks that limit the realization of full potential of science.
What to do next.
To summarize it is important to realize that science:
Is a creative endeavor.
Is how we change the world.
Is increasingly requiring collective efforts.
Is the only way we are going to avoid the problems that new technologies like AI create.
Will only fulfil its potential to change thee world with a shift in mindsets towards viewing science as an act of societal collective creativity.
The next step is to either form a big science project or double down on your efforts in an existing big science project. This goes for scientists and non-scientists.
Everyone should have at least big project that gives meaning to their work. Get engaged in a Big Science Project
I would like to hear about your ideas for big science projects or about ongoing big science projects to possible feature here in the Big Project Collective.
I am opening up a limited number of free calls to think through some big project ideas or challenges.
If just want to learn more about how to put more meaning into your work through big projects join the Big Project Collective.
I was very surprised when I came across this beautiful work and how under appreciated it was he on a substack. A medical biochemist and an academic researcher, and I'm very much understand the beauty of science.
I wanted to say thank you so much Scott for giving me something different from the regular substack creativity and writing and money making article. Thanks Sir 😊