I went to the formal launch of the Institute for Origins last Friday. This is a virtual center at UCL that includes staff from a number of different departments all working together under a theme of origins – the clue is in the name. All very interesting, but the most inspirational aspect of the launch was a talk (actually, more of a speech) given by Sir Paul Nurse on the subject of “science and curiosity”. The basic premiss was that organisations, governments, funding agencies etc. need to foster blue-skies research (and research doesn’t get much more blues-skies than origins), and not to get involved with too much by way of directing operations or only supporting applied research. OK, he was quite measured and also said that not everything and anything should (or could) be funded, and that scientists do need to justify their work to the tax-payers. And, by extension, that we do need to seek out ways (as and where they exist) of contributing to national wealth creation, or addressing the “big themes” . But it was an absolute delight to hear someone so eloquent (and, dare I say it, revered as a scientist) talking about people doing science for the sake of curiosity. In times of uncertainty about the (financial and ecological) future it made one feel good about being a scientist. I do hope he’s advising the UK Government about future funding priorities.
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The Bleet by Ian Wright
Thoughts of a scientist who is no longer "career young". The Bleet is supposed to be half-way between blog and tweet, although it used to mean "blogger elite" (hardly myself). Onomatopoeically pleasing to a grumpy old man. See also, the Urban Dictionary.
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Origins and curiosity
- Date:
- Tuesday, 03 Mar ch 2009 - 15:20 UTC
Last updated: Tuesday, 03 Mar 2009 - 15:20 UTC
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Comments
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Perhaps he was inspired by the recent letter in the THES, which was mentioned on David Colquhoun’s blog? There seems to be plenty of of good sense about science over at UCL. His post also refers to an earlier post on an article by Peter Lawrence entitled The Mismeasurement of Science, that I thought was very good.
And right on schedule, I got an announcement today about a new grant competition from the NSF called “Human Origins: Moving In New Directions (HOMINID)” (awesome acryonym!).