Risk is scary, even in academic research

A couple days ago I wrote about a recent article on how the grant process might be hindering cancer research. While money is critical to enabling experimental research, money isn’t the only reason a researcher might choose a less groundbreaking but safer path; there’s also fear of failure. Truly cutting-edge work is risky because it explores the unknown. People love sexy, unsolved questions, but they usually care only if you find the right answer. If you spend five years proving a molecule doesn’t cure cancer, who cares? All the more embarrassing if you spent a few million dollars along the way.

As in business, there are various methods for lowering risk in research. You can increase the diversity of your portfolio by pursuing multiple, parallel research paths, so if one dies you’ve still got the others. (Too bad for the grad student working on the one that died.) You can make incremental improvements to already-proven, existing techniques. You can do what everyone else is doing, because they’re getting published and funded, and if you fail, you won’t look like the lone idiot. You can work long and hard and smart. You can do all these things and still lose.

But you can also do some of these things and win.

Related posts:

1. Wikipedia list of academic microfluidics research
2. How commercializable is microfluidics research?
3. Taking risks in research: the NIH grant process
4. Risk-taking in pharma vs. venture capital
5. 3 Myths about academia