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The Sociology of Science and Scientif ic Creativity I
t is an open secret among basic researchers that they are generally unable to predict the impact of their latest results, much less whether the work will yield something useful to society. John Q. Public finds this astounding—don’t we researchers have goals and targets? What’s our business plan? In fact, the goal of basic chemical research is to create and understand chemical materials and processes well enough to predict their properties. This mission applies to the gamut of chemistry, analytical included, whether the researcher is probing a new transducer for molecular flux, the energetics of a luminescent chemical reaction, or a theory of IR photoionization. The impact of one researcher’s results on the flow and developments of other basic knowledge in chemistry is often anticipated—perhaps even eagerly—but the prediction is inherently vague. The true outcome will depend on other scholars’ thinking and on future research, and these complexities cannot be known ahead of time. We are not inside one another’s heads. In the context of basic research, the actual use of a chemical phenomenon commands only secondary attention; not understanding the principles puts you in a poor position, except empirically, to control or usefully exploit the chemistry. Chemists are better at guessing the general impact of a very original experiment and its results on chemical knowledge than the details of that impact. We are generally poor guessers about technological impact. I have long been bothered by the illogic of federal agencies that are chartered to support basic science requiring research proposals to justify the research in terms of societal benefits. This forces the researcher to try to answer the question of usefulness without knowledge of the research outcome; naturally, the researcher guesses. For the same reasons, I cringe whenever I hear comments decrying support of curiosity-driven research or requiring the goal of a useful product. Let me turn to the creative process. If you, the reader, are a researcher, where/why/how did you have your last great idea? Do you even remember having it? Was it a “Eureka!”
© 2006 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
moment or a gradual dawning, or have you had some of both? Do your dreams center on, “To what use can I put this chemical?” (a goal-oriented mind) or “What happens, and why, when I mix A with Z?” (curiosity/understanding-oriented). The triggers for “Eureka!” or dawning tendencies may well differ for goal- and curiosity-oriented thinking, and many people, I suspect, are wedded to one or the other. I know I am. Many chemistry researchers will not subscribe to either extreme, because they manage to comfortably marry their creative thinking about chemistry with an acceptable notion that it might be useful to go in this or that basic direction. In the real world, of course, outstanding examples of both the extreme and middle ways of thinking are needed for a discipline to prosper; it would be very, very bad for chemical creativity if we were all clones, like Dolly the sheep. The above are an Editor’s musings about the sociology of scientific creativity, as a lead-in to a salute to science sociologists. A recent news report focused some attention on a tobe-announced plan for a National Science Foundation initiative to “give policy makers the ability to reliably [evaluate] returns received from past R&D investments and to forecast a likely return from future investments.” This is a visionary goal—and it will be hard to attain—but it has the dual importance of admitting the need for and making a commitment to such a study. I applaud these impending efforts to understand us researchers, since we understand ourselves so poorly. I encourage the sociology researchers to not just send us questionnaires, but to take the trouble to “live” in a science community in order to gain an appreciation of the considerable diversity of scientific culture. I urge all of you to support this effort when it crosses your path; the answers to the origins of creative invention and discovery are important.
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