Sir Carl Popper famously said, “By making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague...; and in order to escape falsification, astrologers destroyed the testability of the theory”;(1) In reply legendary Thomas Kuhn says that “The History of Astrology during the centuries when it was intellectually reputable records many predictions that categorically failed. Not even astrology`s most convinced and vehemant exponent doubted the recurrence of such failures. Astrology cannot be barred from the sciences because of the form in which it`s predictions are being cast.” (2)
As soon as we try to understand the role and significance of prediction, we are talking about definite objective, goal to be followed in certain direction in times ahead. And mind well, when the goal is far illuminated as shining as the coveted prize like Nobel then we should really listen to Salvador Luria, a Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1969. He says, “The goal in science should be to find out things- not to win a prize…Yet, in conversations with some of my younger colleagues, I get a sense that it has become a goal, and that is not good. I think it would be better if there were no prizes.”
As P. Balaram pointed out in his recent editorial: “Most professional scientometric analysts have little feeling for science itself, hoping that insights might emerge from impersonal quantitative methods. In recent times practicing scientists, often physicists, have entered the field of scientometrics; bringing with them increasingly complex ways of analyzing the exploding volume of scientific literature.”(3)These lines and talk about ‘Reinventing the Research University in India’ he delievered in Jawaharlal Nehru University on 31st August 2009 ignited my curiosity about ability of scientific mind in speculating future; both about discovery/invention and prizes.(4)
Thomson Reuters have recently come up with the practice of declaring Citation Laureate, a step in the direction of predicting Nobel Laureate. Surprisingly, Thomson Reuters had predicted Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak as probable winners for year 2009 Nobel Prizes for their discovery "of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase". In order to validate their claim Thomson Reuters said that “Citations are lagging indicators as to research but leading indicators as to peer system, prizes.” They owe their methodology to the cumulative work of Eugene Garfield who argues that “Nobel Laureates publish five times the average number of papers but their work is cited 30 to 50 times the average contributing to high h-index among the peer community.” (5)
How do scientific breakthroughs happen?
Before ascertaining actual correctness of forecast or prediction we should know what are the distinct features by which we assess the “Breakthrough” in the array of discovery and inventions so to qualify it one of the pioneering work waiting for global recognition. Possibilities about Breakthrough are explained by Martino(6)as:
a)Breakthrough should never cause surprise because it is inevitable.
b)Some breakthroughs are surprising but they are of no value to forecaster
c)While breakthroughs are not inevitable, they should be surprising for only those people who are not watching them
So, if we read above three possibilties in the context of work done by Moed the visualisation of new scenarios in prediction making will be less difficult. Moed says, “ The use of citation analysis in research evaluation is more appropriate (when) the more it is formal, open, scholarly founded, supplemented with expert knowledge, carried out in a clear policy context with clear objectives, stimulating users to explicitly state basic notions of scholarly quality and enlightening rather than formulaic.” (7)
I think predictability of discovery/invention is an issue of larger significance than that of award itself. Degree of Evitability or inevitability of discovery/invention matters in this world of “Big Science, Competition and National Innovation Systems”. Martino (ibid pp.211) makes a strong case of inevitability of inventions and at the same time explains the hindrances in the process of innovation due to compartmentalisation of science and due to restricted access of scholarly literature. He says, “...compartmentalisation of knowledge causes unnecessary duplication of work i.e. it forces multiple invention through stifling the normal diffusion of innovation....improving information storage and retrieval systems for scientific and technical information, that much work is repeated simply beacause it is buried in the literature and is not available for the people who need it.”
Then Martino explains the roadblocks in assessing signals providing information about forthcoming events. Two hurdles are described; a) People in general do not recognise possibility of signals and b) Signals are buried in noise. Further this analysis emphasise role of ‘pattern formation’. Pattern is formed by our attention to each signal(research) becoming meanigful when placed in the context of preciding one. Even two kinds of errors may occur at this level; a) Failure to recognise that two or more research works are interrelated and 2) Failure in connecting two research areas to form overall pattern of wider research front.
In In Kuhn’s words, “Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community’s willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.” (8)
According to May, “Although the history of science is full of revolutions, scientists do not expect them or look for them (by definition –because the revolution involves the overthrow of the paradigm that represents the scientist’s concept of ‘truth’)”
He continues: Standard methods for forecasting future developments in technology cannot predict the impact of major breakthroughs or ‘revolutions’ in basic science that might lead to radically new technology and a fundamental change in the way wars are fought. While such revolutions cannot, by definition, be predicted in any detail, it is possible to identify many of the broad factors that are involved in turning scientific breakthroughs into feasible technology.”
Eventually our knowledge about future, even if it is dependent on quantitaive techniques of forecasting is bounded by famous lines of Einstein:” Not everyhting that couunts can be counted, and not everything that can be be counted counts."
References:
1)Karl Popper, Conjecture and Refutations, 1963
2)Kuhn, Thomas, Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research (1997) ,
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Ed. Imre Lakatos, Alan Musgrave
3)Balaram P. Current Science Vol.96, No. 10, 25 May, 2009
4)David Pendlebury, Discover the Power of Quantitative Analysis, The Art &
Science of Identifying Future Nobel Laureates, Presentation made at DST,
New Delhi on 5th Nov. 2009
5)Eugene Garfield, Identifying Nobel Class Scientists and the
uncertainties thereof, Thomson ISI, European Conference on Scientific
Publication In Medicne and Biomedicine, Sweden, 2006
6)Joseph P. Martino, Technological Forecasting for Decision Making,
American Elsevier Publishing Company, New York 1972
7)Henk F. Moed (July 2005), Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation,
Springer
8)Kuhn T S. The structure of scientific revolutions. Third edition,
University of Chicago Press (1996)
9)May, Andrew (2001), Science forecasting: predicting the unpredictable,
Journal of Defense Science From a sign hanging in Albert Einstein`s
office at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton
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