In this conversation I talk to Donald Braben about his venture research initiative, peer review, and enabling the 21st century equivalents of Max Planck.

Donald has been a staunch advocate of reforming how we fund and evaluate research for decades. From 1980 to 1990 he ran BP's venture research program, where he had a chance to put his ideas into practice. Considering the fact that the program cost two million pounds per year and enabled research that both led to at least one Nobel prize and a centi-million dollar company, I would say the program was a success. Despite that, it was shut down in 1990.

Most of our conversation centers heavily around his book "Scientific Freedom" which I suspect you would enjoy if you're listening to this podcast.

Links

Scientific Freedom

Transcript

audio_only

[00:00:00 ]

 

This conversation. I talked to Donald breathing about his venture research initiative, peer review, and enabling the 21st century equivalent of max Planck.

Donald has been a staunch advocate for forming how we fund and evaluate research for decades. From 1980 to 1990, he ran BP's venture research program. Where he had a chance to put his ideas into practice. [00:01:00 ] Considering the fact that the program costs about 2 million pounds per year and enabled research, that book led to at least one Nobel prize and to send a million dollar company.

I would say the program was success, despite that it was shut down in 1990. Most of our conversations centers heavily around his book, scientific freedom, which just came out from straight press. And I suspect that you would enjoy if you're listening to this podcast. So here's my conversation with Donald Raven.    

would you explain, in your own words, the concept   of a punk club and why it's really well, it's just my name for the, for the, outstanding scientists of the 20th century, you know, starting with max blank, who looked at thermodynamics, and it took him 20 years to reach his conclusions, that, that matter was, was quantized.

You know, and that, and, he developed quantum mechanics, that was followed by Einstein and Rutherford and, and, and a [00:02:00 ] whole host of scientists. And I've called, in order to be, succinct Coley's they, these 500 or so scientists who dominated the 20th century, the plank club. So I don't have to keep saying Einstein rather for that second.

I said, and it's, it's an easy shorthand. Right. And so, do you think that like, well, there's a raging debate about whether the existence of the plank club was due to sort of like the time and place and the, the things that could be discovered in physics in the first half of the 20th century versus.

Sort of a more or more structural argument. Do you, where do you really come down on that? The existence of the plank club? [00:03:00 ] W well, like, yeah, so like, I guess, I guess it's, tied to sort of like this, but the question of like, like almost like, yeah. Are you asking, will there be a 20th century, 21st century playing club?

Do you think, do you think it's possible? Like, it's sort of like now right now. No, it's not. because, peer review forbids it, in the early parts of the 20th century, then scientists did not have to deal with, did not necessarily have to deal with peer review. that is the opinions of the, of the expert of the few expert colleagues.

they just got on, on, Edgar to university and had a university position, which was as difficult then as it is now to get. But once you got a university position in the first part up to about 1970, then you could do then providing your requirements were modest, Varney. You didn't [00:04:00 ] need, you know, huge amounts of money.

Say. You could do anything you wanted and, you didn't have to worry about your, your peers opinions. I mean, you did in your department when people were saying, Oh, he's mad. You know, and he's looking at this, that, and the other, you could get on with it. You didn't have to take too much attention. We pay too much attention to what they were doing, but now in the 21st century, consensus dominates everything.

And, it is a serious, serious problem. Yeah. So I, I seriously believe that keeps me what keeps me going is that it is possible for there to be a plane club in the 21st century. It is possible, but right now it won't take, it won't happen. I mean, re there's been reams written on peer review, absolute huge, literature.

and the, but, but most of it seems to have been written by, by people who at least favor the status [00:05:00 ] quo. And so they conclude that peer review is great, except perhaps for multidisciplinary research, which ma, which might cause problems. This is the establishment view. And so they take steps to try to ease the progress of multidisciplinary research, but still using peer review.

Now. Multidisciplinary research is essentially is, is absolutely essential to venture research. I mean, because what they are doing, what every venture researchers, the researcher is doing is to look at the universe. and the world we inhabit in a new way. So that's bound to create new, new disciplines, new thought processes.

And so the, when the conventional P, when the funding agencies say, there's a problem with multidisciplinary research, they're saying that's a problem with venture reserves. Yeah. And so therefore we won't have a plank club until that problem is [00:06:00 ] solved. And I proposed the solution in the book. Of course.

Yeah, exactly. And so I guess, so with the book, I actually think of it as it's just like a really well done, an eloquent, almost like policy proposal, like it's, it's like you could, I feel like you could actually take the book and like hand it to. A policymaker and say like do this, I guess you could, so, I guess to put it, but like clearly nobody's done that.

Right? did you, do you ever do that? Like, did you actually like go to,  government agencies or even  billionaires? Like the, the amount of money that you're talking about is almost like shockingly small. what, what are, what are people's responses of like, why not do this?

Patrick Collison as being the only billionaire who has responded, I've met about, I don't know, half a dozen billionaires. And, they all want to, they all want to do things [00:07:00 ] their way, you know, they all want to, which is fair, which is fair enough. They all want to, sees a university through their own eyes.

They are not capable of saying opening their eyes and listening to what scientists really want to do and to get what scientists really want to do. You've got you. You just can't just ask them straight off. You've got to talk to them. For a long time before they will reveal what they want really want to do.

And then only a few of them will be capable of being a potential member of the plank club of the 21st century state. But it's a wonderful process. It's exciting. And I don't know why. well, I, I think I do actually, why the conventional authorities do not do this. And I believe that for, the reason this is more or less as follows that, for 20, 30 years following the expansion of the universities in about, about 1970 for political reasons.

[00:08:00 ] no, not at all for, for scientific reasons that, there was a huge expansion in the universities and, and, and a number of academics. I really really mean it's factors of three, two, three, four, or something like that, depending on the country. Really huge. And, so therefore the old system where freedom for everyone was more or less guaranteed, which is what I would advocate freedom for everyone as a right.

So, what we have done now is to develop absolute selection, rules, absolute selection rules for selecting venture researchers. And, and, and that's taken, you know, that's taken some time to develop them, but they work well. And, and, and open up the world to a complete ways, new ways of looking at it.

Yeah, look, I mean, the, the, the track record seems very like very good, right? Like you, you, you, you [00:09:00 ] enabled research that would not have happened otherwise and led to Nobel prizes. Right. Like, I don't, I don't see how it could, what evidence one could present that your method works more so than that. and so it's, so yeah.

Well, well, over the years you see, the, the scientists to work in for, for the funding agencies. they have advised politicians on the ways to ration research without affecting it. And they have come up with the way, the method of peer review, which is now a dairy girl, you know? it's absolutely essential.

Yeah. Every to every funding agency in the world, I've not come across one that does not use it well, apart from our own operation, of course we don't use it. but we, we find ways around it. And that's the conventional wisdom is that there are no ways around, [00:10:00 ] there are no way. peer review is regarded as the only way to ensure research excellence.

People keep saying that it's the only way, but we have demonstrated with the BP venture to search you and this and that UCL, that there is another way. And, a