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Report urges NIH to adapt to a new scientific revolution

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A scientific revolution is underway that, if harnessed effectively, will transform everything from health care, to energy production to food. So says a new report issued today by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and discussed in a members forum hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. The report is targeted specifically at the biomedical community to, as the authors write, “help delineate an important new research model” that has already begun reshaping health science and has the potential to do far more.

Dubbed “convergence” by the multi-disciplinary panel of prominent researchers who authored the report, the revolution is essentially the integration of the physical sciences and engineering with biology. The outcome, the authors say, is a set of conceptually new approaches that will allow scientists to tackle some of the most complex and intractable challenges of the century – including the cancers and degenerative diseases that are expected to plague an aging population over the next fifty years.

The union of life science with the physical sciences and technology is not new, the report notes, but dates back to the first use of X-rays for medical imaging. What has changed is the pace and the degree to which the disciplines are converging around specific problems, bringing together the molecular and genomic tools of biology with a design approach more characteristic of engineering.


Panelists pointed to MIT’s new Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in Cambridge as a place where convergence is occurring on an institutional level. From the outset, the institute was conceived to put biologists and engineers under one roof, fostering developments such as the design of nanoparticles to deliver minute quantities of drugs only to cancerous cells.

So far so good, but as the authors point out, the revolution will require more than facilities; it will need new ways of organizing funding agencies so that cross-disciplinary work can be effectively monitored and supported. University departments with their traditional academic boundaries also need to develop new flexibility. The peer-review of convergent science and the regulation of its products also requires a new kind of expertise.

The MIT report makes specific recommendations for how the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research, can adjust to better support the convergence revolution. It notes that funding levels since 2004 have not kept pace with inflation, effectively putting the agency into an ever-tightening noose. The competitive squeeze this puts on researchers tends to discourage creative risk-taking and interdisciplinary science.

Not surprisingly the report recommends that Congressional funding for NIH be increased to meet or beat inflation. Other recommendations include reforming peer review and setting up convergence centers at institutions across the US that would support small cross-disciplinary teams. The panel discussion also revolved around strategies for training the next generation of scientists to think in convergent ways. The report concludes with a tantalizing glimpse of all the areas where a convergence approach could lead to game-changing developments in energy, climate and agriculture.

Generations ago, Renaissance thinkers such Leonardo Da Vinci set the bar for intellectual breadth. Perhaps solving the world’s problems will come down to more scientists – and more policy makers – summoning their inner Leonardos.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Robert Pawlosky said:

    I am sorry the title should be “Evolution” NOT “Revolution”. Most of the piece highlights evolutonary trends. I do not see an instance of Revolution in the substance of the article. Also, I hardly think the report is news worthy.

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    Kate Bazilevsky said:

    Scientists discovered that the great Leonardo da Vinci was correct in his assumptions – humans ARE biorobots (see Catalog of human population). Every person gets a program at birth. These programs are recorded in “Shan Hai Jing” or “The Classic of Mountains and Seas”. Also, it was found that “I Ching” and “Tao Te Ching” are commentaries to “Shan Hai Jing”.

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    John Joseph Paul said:

    Perhaps a more specfic term than covergence would be

    CONSILIENCE

    : the linking together of principles from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory

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