Scientific Activism: Challenging staid dogma with fresh ideas that explain more, Pollack states, is a core element of improving a scientific enterprise that has been progressively eroding. Science has become increasingly conservative. Challengers are viewed with suspicion, the prevailing response being something like this: “Your idea cannot be right, for if it were, certainly someone would have thought of it earlier.” This attitude has permeated the granting systems, which have become conservative — a problem now broadly recognized.
Pollack began challenging both the NSF and the NIH grant systems in the early 2000s, to open their doors to ideas that challenge mainstream views. Initial efforts consisted of letter-writing campaigns organized to alert the granting agencies to the seriousness of the problem. Out of these campaigns came the NSF “Frontiers in Biological Research” program and an NIH workshop that eventually led to the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Description of some of the proposals is available in a paper entitled: Revitalizing science in a risk-averse culture: Reflections on the syndrome and prescriptions for its cure. Cellular and Mol. Biol. 51: 815-820, 2005.
Later, Pollack served as an external adviser to the National Science Board (which governs NSF) in their Task Force on Transformative Science – whose recommendations led to a dramatic increase of transformative programs at NSF. The term “transformative” now runs deeply through the Foundation’s website. Similarly, with the NIH, Pollack was the main academic speaker at 2007 workshop on “Fostering Innovation” which was attended by top NIH administrators and a panel of distinguished scientists including two Nobel Laureates. The 40-minute talk offering various remedial solutions, some radical, starts at 1:17. Again, recommendations from this workshop and others, including one on the peer-review system, began opening the NIH to be more receptive to transformative ideas.
Despite these gains, Pollack suggests, still, the problem persists. The main obstacle to the hoped-for scientific revolutions is the culture: the entrenched orthodoxies feel it is not in their best interest to entertain views that challenge their long-held beliefs. Hence, challenges are often ignored or repressed, no matter how promising they may be. If revolutions are to happen, Pollack argues, it will be necessary to get the attention of the leaders of the prevailing scientific orthodoxies. Some mechanism needs to be put in place to make sure that happens.
For this purpose in 2009 Pollack proposed to then-President Obama that he set up the Institute for Venture Science. This $4 Bil per year institute is designed to support so-called “high-risk, high-return” research that has the potential to turn the scientific world upside down. The funding mechanism is now in place, and is being sourced from private funds. Please read more about this Institute below:
The Institute for Venture Science (IVS) was founded in 2013. Gerald Pollack is the founding Executive Director.
https://ivscience.org/
The IVS funds scientific inquiries into high-risk/high-reward theses that challenge conventional thinking. By virtue of their break with ideas that may have become more tradition than forward looking concepts, these fresh challenges may lead to fundamental breakthroughs in understanding.