Don’t kill curiousity-driven research

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys

In a eureka moment at 9.05am on 10 September 1984, Alec Jeffreys realised that incredibly variable patterns in the structure of DNA could be used to distinguish one individual from another.

The rest, as they say, is history. This insight opened up a new field of scientific investigation that has since helped to solve numerous crimes, and answered questions and disputes over personal identity, paternity, immigration, conservation, and cloning. Last year in the UK more than 17,000 crimes were solved through the use of a DNA fingerprint.

Now, in an interview commissioned by Leicester University to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his discovery of genetic fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys is calling for the protection and maintenance of the sort of blue skies, fundamental research which, he says, underpinned his insight.

The entirely unexpected discovery of DNA fingerprinting highlights the fact that, “Unfettered, fundamental, curiosity-driven research is the ultimate engine of all scientific and technological evolution,” Jeffreys says. “You lose that at your peril.”

While the UK’s Research Councils seem to be doing their best to keep blue skies research going, Jeffreys says, “I’m not sure the Government have full got that message.”

Aiming for the unknown unknowns

Jeffreys is also critical of setting out priorities and strategies to address “Known Unknowns” that channel research to solving the obvious problems. Whilst addressing such problems is important, so is dealing with problems you didn’t even know existed. These are far less likely to be solved by industry, Jeffreys suggests.

Focusing on ‘Known Unknowns’ has become increasingly fashionable. Biology, like particle physics before it, now revolves around large teams of scientists, each specialising in a particular aspect of any experiment. The average number of authors on a paper has ballooned. “What they are doing is delivering research which is to some extent predictable because otherwise you would never set up this gigantic organisation in the first place,” Jeffreys believes.

Typical of the new science is the Human Genome Project, which while clearly being very valuable is, Jeffreys argues, “basically factory science”. He added, “I’m saying you have to have a mixed economy. You don’t put all your eggs into this great common basket that will deliver answers to questions that you can define, because the far more exciting thing is that it delivers questions that you never knew existed, and that to me is infinitely more valuable because that sets the future agenda.”

Jeffreys has been at Leicester University for 32 years, and his belief in fundamental science is one of the reasons he has chosen to stay, in spite of plenty of tempting offers to go elsewhere. Any move would involve giving up hands-on science and becoming a research manager, more involved in managing teams and money.

The great thing about the early days of science commercialisation, he says, was the fact that the scientist came up with the idea, and people who knew about business took over to turn that idea into reality. “The model tends to be now a scientist has to be an entrepreneur, has to be a business manager. It’s ridiculous. Really the average scientist doesn’t want to be involved in all this commercialisation. They like to see their baby taken off their hands and adopted very rapidly into a good home where it’s going to generate heaps of cash and maybe do a bit of public good.”

It was a decision he faced soon after the discovery of DNA fingerprinting. “I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life running a production line.”

The interview in full: http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/25th-anniversary-of-dna-fingerprinting/interview-with-professor-sir-alec-jeffreys-1