The data obtained from these interviews built a picture of the issue of basic, blue skies research from the interviewees' perspective. The interviewees gave their views on broad topics such as: academic freedom, funding, personal experiences, the constraints of goal-orientated research, selection and management of innovative research, and external influences affecting the research process. These themes are discussed in turn, explaining the majority views of the interviewees.
Academic freedom
The interviews reflected an overall consensus over the meaning of blue skies research as curiosity-driven, innovative, uncertain of where the research was leading, and with an unclear time frame. Individual curiosity was seen as something within the researcher, as described by this scientist:
" Essentially curiosity is something that resides within an individual. The most successful laboratory in biology in the world judged by Nobel prizes is the laboratory of molecular biology in Cambridge. The man who ran it is on record as saying that all they did was interview you and if they liked what you were talking about, they would say: 'Right, here's your money. All you have to do is to come into tea in the afternoons and tell us what you're getting on with, and talk about it' and you just got ahead."
A pathologist also illustrated the importance of academic freedom:
"Something to be revered and fought to maintain, against ever-increasing mechanistic pressures to conform to job descriptions and other restricting influences."
Funding of innovative research
The interviewees believed that while they saw a place for goal-orientated research, they also felt that some funding should be channelled towards curiosity-driven research, which could hold the key to future discoveries, as clarified by one scientist:
"I'm not asking that this is the only way that people should be funded. But I'm simply asking that there should be a proportion. That amount of funding could be set aside and administered differently. It is based upon trust, and the trust is based upon the ability of the researcher to infect you with their enthusiasm."
Most scientists felt that five years of research funding would provide enough evidence to reveal how well researchers are spending the grant, and whether the research warranted further support. Short-term contracts may not offer the security needed to encourage researchers to invest their time in curiosity driven research. One scientifically orientated medical director described the potential impact of short term funding on innovative research:
"Without any doubt, the funding that has been most effective from my point of view, has been that which goes on for at least five years. If you've got to justify yourself after one year, you won't be doing anything more than next step research."
Many innovative discoveries cut across various disciplines, even though most UK funding sources are restricted to one speciality. The interviewees felt that there should be more cross speciality funding for innovative research. A medical director describes the issues:
"The scientists don't care and neither should the funders – unless the research drifts too far away from your specific remit as a funder. And that's where the single speciality funders like us are in trouble."
Personal experiences
The scientists' experiences revealed how constraints imposed by research proposals, such as outlining a possible goal and time frame, and focusing on a specialist interest, denied researchers the opportunity to explore a problem without a particular application in view. They gave examples of applying for 'safe' funding, rather than pursuing what they really felt to be important, and of 'game-playing' by applying for fundable projects, but using the money for more innovative research. Some people may not consider this to be a matter for concern, but the public who often donate the funds to support research need to appreciate the contribution that basic blue skies research makes towards major research discoveries. This reinforces the importance of a clear explanation to the public and policy makers about curiosity-driven research. These views concur with the literature describing the impact of the research assessment exercise, tight time frames on creativity in research [44].
The scientists' personal examples of research findings that bore little resemblance to the initial plan reflected how their research path could not have been anticipated and would have been difficult to submit as a proposal.
One scientist describes his experiences:
"We started by wanting to understand the role of smooth muscle cells in atherosclerosis. We used a technique of genetic hybridisation and found that smooth muscle cells behaved very much like bone cells under certain circumstances. This wasn't what we were interested in to begin with but we pursued it. And out of that initial experiment in 1999 we identified a whole bunch of genes. It took about 10 years to work out what one of the genes was and that's led to a whole new area of biology which has shown that that protein converging may be brought to conditions where patients die prematurely of cardiovascular disease."
They also gave examples of the freedom needed to involve researchers from unrelated disciplines and described how difficulties could occur when a research proposal is tailored to fit a specialist interest:
"As an oral pathologist, I have done research with surgical colleagues involved in anal and rectal tissues, aiming to help increase understanding about Hirschprungs disease. This caused raised eyebrows in the dental school that employed me."
The constraints of goal-driven research
The discussion of goal-driven research focused on its constraints, which could lead researchers to apply for safe research, and on the process of game playing that occurred when spending the grant. It became clear from the interviews that constraints were imposed on the innovative researcher by goal-driven research applications. Therefore, the funding may need to focus on one avenue of research even though the scientist may see that the research could be of more value if it were allowed to move in another direction. If the goals are clearly outlined and the money sought from one speciality or organisation an innovative researcher may not be able to follow a curiosity-driven path, as the research can only be planned if one knows what the likely outcome is! A clinically orientated medical director explains:
"If you say 'I want to do a project on this particular cell-signalling system to show that (a) goes to (b) goes to (c) and it will cost £100,000', and you give them £100,000, you have a duty to insist that the project is well planned, and properly funded."
The scientists described how promising researchers sometimes coped with the current funding system. They would find it easier to apply for a project more likely to be funded, even though this practice could deny them the opportunity to do what they really wanted to do:
"The system demands this – the researcher knows this. I used to ask PhD students and Post Docs the simple question: 'Are you working on what you really, really want to work on?' And very, very rarely did I get the answer 'yes'. The answer to my question is usually 'I'm working on what I get funded to do. I have kids at school, family etc. And I have to survive – I have to apply for what I can judge to be fundable. And how do I judge that? By looking at what is already funded.' So the system corrupts. The system itself isn't corrupt – but it is corrupting."
One scientist explained how he dealt with the restrictions imposed with goal-driven proposals:
"And so I partly used money that I had managed to get to also do the work for which I knew I couldn't directly get money if I'd submitted a research proposal – this is primarily the reason. And I know from experience, that when I have applied in the past by putting grants in, I was simply told that it was far too ambitious, you couldn't do it! They didn't see where I was going. They didn't know whether I could be trusted, I'm sure, but there you are."
These approaches could perpetuate the problem of inadequate support for curiosity-driven research by disguising the need for freedom for innovative scientists. Despite the accepted need for some progressive research, several scientists felt that the ability of innovative researchers to be creative was neither recognised nor supported:
"I'm not asking for a system where we throw the baby out with the bath water. I'm perfectly happy that there's a lot of progressive work that has to be done, which requires technical skills and knowledge. What I'm worried about is that some individuals are losing out. And we as a consequence as a society are losing out."
Selection of innovative scientists
Key attributes of those who select innovative researchers were described as trust, judgement, giving a free rein, picking the person rather than the proposal. Suggested attributes of the innovative researcher included enthusiasm, the ability to challenge accepted thinking and to explain their research in simple terms:
" I would need to be able to get you excited about wanting to do something that may be off the wall. And what we're talking about here is not just basic blue skies, it's about irreverence – about not being prepared to accept the story that's being given."
These views are supported in the literature, which describes similar key elements for innovative scientific thought [6].
A clinically orientated medical director suggested that success with funding could spring from having a prior track record that could then draw the trust, and with it more freedom with spending:
"They usually learn their trade in the department and then begin to apply for support in their own right. That is their opportunity to draw attention to their peculiar worth as a novel thinker."
However, this could stifle the innovative researcher as their chosen project may have already been guided into a more popular, 'safe' line of research.
Another clinically orientated medical director felt that there was not a problem with selection by suggesting that:
"The person who has the hunch will always find funds. Actually I don't think fundamentally there are all that many obstacles – you just have to know what the rules are and go along with them."
This approach exposes the difficulty in deciding how much of the current limited resources should be devoted to innovative curiosity driven science, given the current expensive nature of research.
Managing blue skies research
There was enthusiasm for the continuing value of research, although two scientists contrasted the current scientific climate with research discoveries made before 1970:
"With the dual funding system before 1970, one stream funded the libraries, and all the other things necessary to be the best, and another stream went to the universities, not earmarked, for research, on the grounds that they felt they had a responsibility to make sure that research was going to proceed. Each head of department received his share, which he divvied up among his staff. Some people would do wisely and some would not. You can't tell. Wisdom is a retrospective judgement. You can't warn them, but the people that I'm talking about, such as Huxley and other scientists – they got the money, which came through the department, and they never applied for a grant. Now it's true that research was cheaper in those days – workshops were part of our training, but that isn't really the issue. It's the principle rather than the amount of funding."
If the scientific community supports more curiosity-driven research, it is important to explore how this should best be managed. The scientists and clinicians acknowledged how difficult it is to find people who were unbiased and had the knowledge to assess new innovative research, as described by a scientifically orientated medical director:
"It is actually very, very difficult. There was a time with molecular biology, which was then very new, when there were hardly any people in a position to judge the quality of the work. I remember one particular project about ACE genes, which was turned down, but subsequently proved to be extremely well done. It was initially turned down because the chap who was acting as the chair had his own bias. And this is a very dangerous situation. It is very difficult to get people who are small, but rapidly developing, to benefit from unbiased assessment."
The constraints that the RAE and peer review process impose on the selection of research applications by reviewers, are encapsulated in these comments by two scientists:
"Absolutely disastrous! Peer review has destroyed interdisciplinary research. We don't know where to put that kind of research money."
"Now, supposing that you're one of the reviewers and it's not your money. You wish to be responsible and so you prefer a group application to an individual application because that increases the odds. You prefer something about which a lot can be written as distinct from something that is a bit thin because that spreads the best. You prefer that you're more internationally known and so you choose something that is already recognised internationally. It's not that these people are wicked – the people who sit on these panels are doing the best that they know how. They've been asked to do a job."
Both clinicians and scientists recognised the need for an alternative system to assess, support and manage curiosity driven research projects allowing researchers more freedom than the existing system allows. Most interviewees felt that five years would allow the research to show its potential, after which time further funding support could be provided.
External influences on scientific freedom
The philosophy of some UK universities such as Cambridge is "the pursuit of education and research at the highest level of excellence, with a core value of freedom of thought and expression [45]." However there were concerns that this philosophy may have been overtaken by commerciality within some UK universities that need to more funding:
"I think the universities have not held their intellectual properties very well. I spent half my life where you sign away your rights on day one. And so there's never a relationship between the money you get and what you do. I may do something that ends up creating a lot of wealth, but I would get no share of that and quite rightly too. So one's judgement is never involved in saying: 'that's more likely to be profitable'. I fear that this might be a problem in universities today. Judgements are now being made about what looks as though it might make money. And that's not what universities should be about."
The interviewees believed that it was important to be honest with the public about justifying their financial support for researchers. They were sometimes under pressure from the media and the public to offer an anticipated practical application and a time frame, which may encourage bold unsupported claims.
"We have to explain it, you know. After all the money has been given by donors, you owe it to them to provide a clear indication as to why the reviewers and the panel members should actually make an award."
Throughout the discussions the scientists were concerned about the development of a culture where researchers may pursue a fundable project, rather than seek research to further understanding.
Differing views between scientists and clinically orientated medical directors
The scientists were on the whole concerned about the future of curiosity driven research for gifted scientists in the UK. If young scientists are trained in a goal-orientated environment, the potential for them to undertake innovative research may be hampered. The clinicians were less critical of the existing system and felt the allocation of funding to be about right. As those who influence grant provision may be clinically orientated, they may, despite their awareness of the importance of curiosity driven research, opt to focus on research proposals that can be more easily evaluated.