Question: which field of science do you think needs the most publicity or support?

Susan Cartwright answered on 19 Jun 2015:

The short answer is that we should support all fields of science, because we never know where the next breakthrough is going to come from.

There are fields of science that tend automatically to receive public support, such as medical research – but it’s important to realise that many technologies that are now essential in medical treatment didn’t come from medical research (practically all the technologies used for medical imaging – X-rays, MRI scanners and PET scanners – come into this category, for example). Basic research in biology or biophysics, e.g. trying to understand how large molecules fold up, doesn’t have immediate medical applications but may become essential in the future.

I think the fields of science that most need extra publicity are the quiet ones that don’t automatically generate headlines, such as taxonomy (the field of science dealing with the naming and classification of species). It’s not very glamorous, and it doesn’t sound very important – but if we don’t understand what species there are in a given (perhaps economically important) ecosystem, how can we hope to protect it from damage or exploit it safely? Many drugs still originate from natural chemicals – how can we search for these effectively if we don’t even know how many different species there are to look at?

It is also important to recognise that the flashy, glamorous part sof a scientific discipline might not seem to be important to society, but they are often what attracts people to study that field, and those people subsequently choose to specialise in fields that do benefit society. For example, most of the students who apply to study physics here at Sheffield cite particle physics or astrophysics as inspirations, and you could argue that particle physics and astrophysics aren’t very useful (be careful, though: a lot of analytical techniques now used in applied research, such as the high-energy X-rays produced in synchrotron radiation, grew out of particle physics technology) – but most of those students subsequently choose to focus on different areas of physics, such as making better solar panels. You can think of particle physics and astrophysics as the advertising that gets students to buy the product, or the trailer that gets them into the cinema.

Also, publicity and support are not the same thing. I’m sure that military research gets lots of support in many countries, but not necessarily much publicity!

So, on the whole, I’d say that we (the public, the government, the scientific community) should try to support as broad a scientific programme as possible, and not try to second guess which areas are going to yield the most fruit. There’s a quote used by Michael Faraday, one of the pioneers of electromagnetism, who attributes it to Benjamin Franklin (nowadays remembered as one of the founders of the USA, but in his day a noted scientist): “…as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact, ‘What is its use?’ Dr Franklin says to such, ‘What is the use of an infant?'” In other words, don’t neglect areas of science that don’t seem to be worth much now – you never know what they’ll be when they grow up.