Public fascination is drifting toward “cartoon science.” The real breakthroughs are the ones that already work and need help to scale.
In our attention economy, public enchantment with science is increasingly drawn to what Anjana Ahuja has identified as comic book style endeavors in her Financial Times column: We are living in the age of cartoon science. Flying cars, colonizing Mars and cloning “war dogs” are the latest in a growing line of fantasy-flavored projects. Meanwhile, solutions to pollution, climate change and disease fall by the wayside, as the goalposts for ambitious science take on an entirely new form.
When enormous private funding is directed toward bringing back the dodo, what is left for clean air or for vaccines?
Jean-Claude Burgelman, Director of the Frontiers Planet Prize, responds in his letter, Let’s focus research more on what already works. In the 'less glamorous’ areas of science, he argues, there is no shortage of solutions. What we have is an implementation gap to bridge. That means letting go of the idea that progress on a crisis must come as a silver bullet or a single technological marvel. Some of the most important advances look far less cinematic: cleaner water, restored ecosystems, healthier communities.
“Their value lies not in their novelty, but in their effectiveness and scalability.”
Bold science deserves our enthusiasm, and it should keep it. But ambition has another side: finding the solutions that already work, then backing them with the funding and support to reach more people, more quickly.