Let the blue sky ease your hangover

Well hello there! Welcome to 2017… we trust the hangovers are beginning to wane? No? Fear not – let us ease the pain with the balm of science funding...what better way to ease into 2017?

Ok, so back in November last year Theresa May promised an investment of an extra £2 billion per year for research and development by 2020 – to much muted approval by the scientific community it has to be said. By all accounts this is perhaps the biggest national injection of funds in recent decades – but (…oh why does there always have to be a ‘but’?) this won’t come without some strings.

Essentially, on the other end of those strings will be the treasury – stony faced, awaiting some financial dividends for their ‘generosity’. It is not entirely clear as to how the money will be allocated, but it seems that most of it will go directly to applied R&D through a new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. This will be aimed at supporting cross-disciplinary “collaborations between business and the UK’s science base”, according to Treasury documents, and will “set identifiable challenges for UK researchers to tackle”.

As has been the pattern with national science funding for many a year – any kind of scientific endeavour has to have an economic imperative. But who is to say from where the next multi-million pound breakthrough is to come? No amount of political arrogance should stand in the way of our innate drive to understand. And if financial reward is what they seek, then even more reason not to curtail that drive.

However, if you are reading this and getting increasingly frustrated at our grasp – or lack of – on the reality of the current economic situation, then consider the origins of the term ‘Blue-Skies research’ its self. For this we have to thank an argument between cardiovascular scientist Julius Comroe and a prominent US politician. In 1976 Comroe took umbridge at President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defence after he dismissed basic research by claiming “I don’t care what makes the grass green!”. Comroe claimed that Wilson might just as well have said “I don’t care what makes the sky blue!” – which of course was calculated to perfection, for Comroe had an ace up his sleeve in the form of a 19th Century British physicist.

Citing the work of John Tyndall, Comroe unleashed a barrage of practical breakthroughs that had come from one apparently simple finding. In 1869 Tyndall explained the blue colour of the sky by using a glass tube into which he introduced certain vapours. In doing so, he also inadvertently uncovered many more discoveries – each with untold economic potential. He developed a test for optically pure air, demonstrated how lung airways remove particles from inspired air before reaching the alveoli, amazingly Tyndall also discovered how penicillium bacteria could successfully destroy mould – 50 years before Fleming. He also showed how a light beam followed a curved route, leading to the later development of the flexible gastroscope and bronchoscope.

For Comroe, Tyndall’s work proved to be the perfect argument for the fact that important discoveries are often curiosity-led rather than goal-driven. The US Congress – no doubt with a rush of dollar signs flashing before their eyes – became convinced and the funding of the newly termed ‘Blue Skies research’ continued. And with that time to breath in the blue, blue sky and remember it is scientific curiosity that will eventually repay national investment, not tinkering politicians.

[caption id="attachment_57328" align="alignnone" width="500"] John Tyndall explains the blue colour of the sky – and
unknowingly paves the way for a rather handy phrase[/caption]