Science Research: A Love Story
Are we in love with free science, or the rigid career process?
My personal tutor in Imperial College London is a 60-year-old physicist who conducts research in the field of electromagnetic materials. He’s a stout emeritus professor who can rap quantum physics nonstop for an hour in his signature German accent, with eyes brimming with the passion and curiosity of a 20-year-old, but with a grin emanating the confidence of an established researcher. Although he reached the zenith of his career (while losing almost all of his hair), I still saw frustration from him.
“I really wish I had the time and the funds, to do some free research.” he complained in our student bar, together with us celebrating the end of year.
An Old Love Story
For centuries, from Sir Isaac Newton to my dear professors in Imperial, all researchers fell in love with the free, unbridled science which only deal with the intriguing design of nature, rather than the incessant demands from institutions and corporations. Probably for my personal tutor, he just wants to build a 1.35 million Volt Tesla Coil for no other reason than pure curiosity.
But reality is far from ideal, this love for free science does not help researchers feed their family. They have to marry their whole academic life to the more financially tangible — -publications. The only way to get a tenure and attract research funding is through producing large number of frequently-cited publications. In this way, a researcher’s career depends almost entirely on publications, causing no drive to teach, and no drive for administration, but there are more problems than these.
For a 50-Carat Diamond Ring
In pursuit of top-notch publications, a war is on. Equipped with state-of-the-art spectrometers, researchers race to be the first to find the most groundbreaking results — that 50-Carat diamond ring which wins a publication in Science or Nature, or even a Nobel prize.
But what about the less significant, less expected data that never went published, but comprises 99% of every researcher’s data pool? The answer is, they are relegated to a dusty USB driver, ignored, or lost, together with the billions in investment funds and countless lab hours needed to generate them. This makes science research absurdly wasteful, is it possible to make something out of this data?
Trash or Treasure
Many groundbreaking discoveries were found by accidents, Penicillin was discovered in a contaminated bacterial culture, Teflon was first synthesized in a failed experiment to find new refrigerant. An unexpected result generated in a potentially faulty experiment is often the key to ground breaking discovery. The company that I currently works for, MaterialsZone, is dedicated to make full use of this unexpected and unpublished data. It builds an open science marketplace for researchers to publish their data and gain access to other researchers’ otherwise ‘lost’ data. If someone finds some value in a piece of data, they can purchase licensing or ownership directly from the owner, allowing researchers to be awarded for their shared data.
Sharing with Trust
Researchers are sensitive when it comes to sharing data. So MaterialsZone is developing 5 levels for data sharing, catering for the different needs of privacy and shared work:
- Private mode, where the data is only accessible by the researcher
2. Team mode, where data is shared within lab group
3. Consortium mode, where multiple teams can co-work on a specific data set
4. Marketplace mode, where the data is subject to license or ownership purchase on our immutable blockchain ledger
5. Public mode, where the data is fully accessible for public reviewal
For A Better Love Story
Researchers love science, but they married publications. Do they really conflict each other? We have a dream that a researcher’s career process can converge to the dancing spirit of free science. We hope our online automated lab notebook will save time in data processing, we hope our blockchain marketplace will generate a new revenue stream and make research effort more valuable. So that I want my professors say:
“I finally have the time and the funds, to do some free research.” And of course, see them in our student bar more often.
We are starting a closed beta soon. If you are interested in using our platform as your lab’s data management, analysis and sharing tool, feel free to contact us for more info over Twitter, LinkedIn or email us
