Science is not about discovery. It is about repetition.
Then, what is left for creativity?
I have been studying predominantly science since 2005, give or take. Science taught me to be disciplined and to follow a method of thinking and to develop experiments to falsify hypotheses.
Be bold!
Don’t think about the budget!
You have to do better, you can do better!
professors always told me. I always had the feeling that science was the magic of creating and inventing the impossible, the art of achieving what no one else had achieved so far. It was intense and worth-full. Still, it was necessary doing my first end-to-end experiment (which surprisingly only happened in the final years of the University), to realize that the new and the bold did not matter that much. The important notion was to be able to compare both the experimental design and the experimental results with others who have done the same.
I cannot be bold and discover new stuff if I must repeat what others have been done, I confessed to myself. The paradox was evident: I had to seek novelty while copying others.
As fancy it may sound, science is mostly the art of making reproducible experiments. This simple description is the base upon which scientists can claim what they claim. Anyone, anywhere, given the same conditions, can repeat the experiment and expect exactly the same results.
Nevertheless, every scientist on Earth is conspicuously seeking the new, looking for being the first to discover the holy grail. It does not matter if it is the elixir of immortality, the infinite energy source, or the proof of God.
The urge for being first is casting a shadow on a deeper problem. In a recent paper, D. A. Eisner reviewed evidence showing that the way science is organized encourages bad science. The author points that uncontrolled factors in the experiments and bad design and/ or statistical analysis are paving the way to distrust between scientists and, consequently, undermining general people’s trust in science. In a very recent post in Retraction Watch, it is covered that Elsevier just pulled 26 papers about COVID-19. These papers were somehow spreading a fictitious narrative between Start Trek and COVID-19.
We are definitely reaching a tipping point.
It is not necessary to think much about the subject to know that the disaster is real. People are praising scientists with distrust and the scientists’ confidence in themselves will be impacted further down the line. If scientists are not ethical in their procedures, the vaccines they develop are not ethical either. Distrust is catastrophic.
Perhaps it is a much better and honest conclusion that science is not a place for creativity after all, and no safe place for the bold and for the unique minds. Those who have the chance to be bold, to pursuit crazy and bolder ideas are the lucky ones in an ocean of expected and presumed reproducible actions and peer validation. A needle in the haystack.
As the world grows into a place where knowledge and expertise have unfolded into increasingly and surprisingly high levels of skepticism, scientists must not take any risk in doing what they do best, which is paving the way for progress.
In conclusion
Scientists must refrain themselves to be creative in finding ways to publish faster and in higher ranked journals. They must keep the focus on the real world meaning of their research. For sure the best option is to test the reproducibility of experiments in a much more attentive and routine approach to science, but we all know where that path leads to in terms of a future career in science: a dead end.
For the sake of humankind, let us leave creativity aside in science. Shall we?
