To get big results, scientists need the freedom to ask big questions

Editors' Note

More Flux

Why are so many Americans distrustful of science? Maybe it's because the health landscape is constantly changing, and most people's contact with science is limited to health news they read in the paper or see on the TV news. And because health is the one thing that personally affects us all, people tend to pay attention.

It does get confusing. Hormone replacement therapy is a classic example. For years, menopausal women took HRT to alleviate the symptoms of menopause. Research later showed a higher incidence of breast cancer in HRT patients … but other research showed that HRT reduced the risk of heart disease in women. And now, it's generally accepted that the risks of HRT outweigh the benefits. No wonder people are skeptical.

Although most people would like findings to be definitive, science seldom deals in absolutes. It is based on the preponderance of scientific evidence available at that time. The pace of progress in science is slow and incremental. This may surprise people, because it's only the breakthroughs that are covered in the media (although where science is concerned, less and less everyday). You don't hear about the years and sometimes decades of work that make the breakthroughs possible.

Science marches forward because new techniques, devices and ways to measure and test are being developed all the time – so persistent scientific mysteries and old problems can be looked at in entirely new ways. That's how something that was considered valid 20 years ago might not be considered valid today.

"A useful analogy is to compare the telescope that Galileo used centuries ago and the Hubble space telescope used by astronomers today," said Tim Murphy, a low-temperature physicist at the lab. "If you look at it from a broad perspective, both Galileo and the modern astronomical community are investigating the same thing (the known universe) but the tools and methods have advanced so much that new discoveries are happening all the time even though they are looking at the same sky that Galileo viewed through his telescope hundreds of years ago."

So it's not surprising to see a material that was first studied in the 1960s being studied again today at the Mag Lab.

It helps to understand the scientific method, which isn't exactly like most people think it is. You may be surprised to hear much of the research at the Mag Lab does not begin with a hypothesis. It's not so much, "I think this will happen when I put this material in the magnet," but more like, "I wonder what will happen when I put this material in the magnet." (That said, they don't just plunk a sample into a high magnetic field and hope some exciting behavior arises; the study is directed and not frivolous).

So what does the research begin with? Asking a question (even if it's "I wonder what will happen
if … ?"). Scientists then try to answer the question by designing experiments. They observe, collect and analyze data, which may then lead to some sort of hypothesis. And of course, the steps and outcomes must be repeatable, so that anyone doing the same experiment would get the same results.

The "I wonder what …" approach to science explains why scientists around here sometimes refer to their work as "curiosity-based" science. Although we in the communications side of the lab often wince when they say that (because taxpayers, who make the research possible, might not appreciate paying the salaries of people who are curious for a living), this approach is vitally important to maintaining our nation's standard of living.

If American physicist Isidore Rabi hadn't wondered about the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei in 1930, exploratory surgery would still be the norm today. That's because Rabi was the first to discover the nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon. His work, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize, laid the foundation for today's MRI scanners, which revolutionized diagnostic medicine.

The importance of basic research cannot be overstated. Scientists need the freedom to pursue their curiosity, to get the time, space and funding to ask "what if?" So what if the answers sometimes change? Each time someone questions a result, reinterprets an answer or chases after the answer to a new question in earnest, we're that much closer to understanding our still-mysterious world.