Thursday, December 3, 2015

For Researchers, Risk Is a Vanishing Luxury

Chronicle of Higher Education
Author: Paul Voosen
December 3, 2015

A couple of years ago, as science was deep in a rut of flat federal financing, Roberta B. Ness, vice president for innovation at the University of Texas School of Public Health, toured the country, urging scientists to take on innovative, high-risk research. Such work, though prone to failure, can overturn whole scientific paradigms. Expand assumptions, she said. Change points of view.
Science has always balanced traditional lines of investigation with radical, divergent hypotheses. Follow her methods, she told them, and they could become risk takers themselves.