In 1883, the British physicist Joseph John Thomson wrote his master’s thesis, _A Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings_, exploring the fluid dynamics that govern the motion of phenomena like smoke rings and circular underwater vortices. The essay laid the mathematical foundation for knot theory (the study of closed loops in three-dimensional space), showed that single rings could be stable, and gave an explanation for chemical bonding. There was just one problem: The idea was wrong.
Thomson’s paper rested on luminiferous ether — a hypothetical invisible substance scientists then believed filled space — which was ruled out just four years later by the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887. However, it was from this failure that Thomson gained the insight that atoms are not indivisible, but rather have discrete pieces. The result of this was his 1897 discovery of the electron, which won Thomson the Nobel Prize.
History shows that many of science’s greatest breakthroughs emerged from ideas that initially failed. Yet modern research increasingly punishes the very kind of ambitious failure that makes paradigm-shifting discoveries possible. At the Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI), where I am Chief Scientific Officer, we encourage high-risk, high-reward research.
We generally have one interpretation of “high reward”: that the scientific value of success in the research project would be significant. First, it means a high probability of failure. When undertaking research into areas in which there has been little progress — take a field like quantum information as an example — this kind of risk is understandable.
Here, “safe” research is insufficient. If inquiries into a quantum theory of gravity had a high probability of success, the problem would have been completed long ago. In these cases, we seek to overcome low odds of success with high numbers of attempts; the value of a single success often outweighs the costs of hundreds of failures by a large margin both in scientific and later economic terms.
For instance, the cost to Edison’s team of testing and discarding over six thousand candidate materials was a drop in the ocean of profits from successfully identifying carbonized bamboo as a viable filament for the lightbulb. The expected outcomes are such that we should strongly encourage researchers to undertake high-risk, high-reward research. The second meaning of “high risk” is the cost of failure in personal or professional terms.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
