August 3, 2004
Visiting the Cliff... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
There's an approach in both science and engineering called "visiting the cliff." It goes by many names, but it refers to deliberately creating the situation you're ultimately trying to avoid, or playing "what if" a basic belief wasn't true.
And why would you do this? Because then you can see what actually happens. Before you think these are the habits of adrenalin junkies, the truth is: unless you go there, you don't know what the characteristics of a situation are. And until then, you're only imagining the way it would be.
I was reminded of this concept of "visiting the cliff" when Nobel Laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner joyously announced that his team had successfully synthesized a deadly prion from scratch, in an attempt to create a similarly deadly version of mad cow disease without benefit of cow.
No doubt about it — that's called "visiting the cliff."
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Let's remember there's some scientific controversy as to whether these prions — a sort of misfolded protein — are the sole agent for causing mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob, its human counterpart. Dr. Prusiner posited this hypothesis over twenty years ago, well before his Nobel Prize and well before anyone would take it seriously. In the meantime, multiple scientific efforts have attempted to synthesize prions, and then perform the four crucial next steps: introduce the prions into animals, see if the animals get sick, inject the sick animals' brain tissue into other animals, and then see if those animals get sick. If you make it to the end of the line, you've got something. And that's exactly what Prusiner's group did.
Fast upon the announcement, there was vocal scientific criticism, some suggesting contamination in the lab, or that it's not really prions doing all the damage. Such immediate criticism of a respected scientist is unusual, and part of the reason is that every scientist alive today has been trained to believe that only viruses and bacteria can cause disease.
I don't care who you are — running counter to the prevailing paradigm is top of the list for "visiting the cliff."
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Going back to Dr. Prusiner's experiment, you can't help but be impressed with the patience it took. Besides synthesizing the prions and prepping the lab mice, they had to wait 300 days before the mice even began to get sick. (Or didn't.) And then tissue from the brains of these diseased critters was injected into the next set. Then this crowd had to get sick, too. (Or didn't.)
So, what keeps these scientists going? And I think I know. All the while, they're thinking, thinking, thinking, trying to put the puzzle together, trying to come up with a solution. Yes, they're tending the experiment, but they're doing so much more.
People ask me all the time how to get kids interested in science, but kids have no patience. And teaching them science has limited career preparation value. (Hey, we don't teach law in grade school, in hopes they'll become lawyers.) So knowing what real science is like, who among our children might make good scientists?
I'd say any child who truly loves to solve puzzles, and who, when you say, "Don't go over there. it's dangerous," makes a beeline for whatever it is you're referring to. It may make you crazy, but science needs these kids — it's a glorious combination.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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