“Why are you crying, son?” asked the gray-haired gentleman when he came upon a little boy in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square.
It was mid-April, flowers all abloom, weather perfect. The young boy was no more than five years old. He looked pitiful, with large dewdrops dripping from both eyes and his nose sniffling. His T-shirt was ripped under the left arm and he was sitting alone on the edge of the wooden bench. The boy looked up at the gentleman.
A goat climbs a tree in Morocco, April 2013
“Where’s your mommy or daddy?”
“Dunno. My mommy told me to wait here.”
“Don’t be scared. I’m sure she will return in just a few minutes. Where did she go?”
“I’m not scared.” And then he started crying again.
“So why are you crying? What’s so sad?”
More sniffles. Then the boy said, “My mommy never lets me climb on the goat statue. That’s what I want to do.”
“Why not?” asked the gentleman.
“She says that I could fall off and get hurt. She says that kids aren’t supposed to climb on it and if I do the other kids will also want to. So what?”
“What does she want you to do at the park?” asked the gentleman, becoming interested.
“I dunno. She wants me to play with the other kids.”
“Don’t you want to do that? I see a lot of kids about your age running around.”
“No. I want to climb on top of the goat.”
“What would you do there, on top of the goat?”
Long pause. The tears were gone now, and the little boy’s eyes had a mischievous gleam.
“I’d sit there and look around and pretend I was exploring. I did it once when my mommy wasn’t watching. Everything looked different up there. I could see across the street, and the birds seemed closer. It was exciting. I dreamed that…”
“Yes, go on. What did you dream of?”
The boy’s head drooped and then he whispered, “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. There’s my mommy coming.”
The gentleman stepped aside and watched as the little boy slid off the park bench and walked sullenly away beside his mother. They passed directly in front of the goat, but the boy’s stare never budged from the pavement as they disappeared into the distance.
This is the beginning of an article I published in The NIH Catalyst (2000; May-June, p. 7) in which I stressed the danger of placing too much emphasis on applied, medical research at the expense of basic research. Basic research is about exploration, not exploitation, about imagining and painting a new world, not photographing the existing one. With luck, there will be benefits gained from the basic research, maybe, maybe not for quite a while. Basic research means taking chances, failing at times, money invested, not lost. It’s about dreams and adventures, and it’s vital for ultimate success.
In my Catalyst article I describe a basic scientist forced to give up her basic research on gene expression in order to gain funds to support her laboratory. I write, “She carries out a research program, but she lacks the enthusiasm that drove her pre- and early postdoctoral years. She is a realist and will make contributions to science…She will no longer let her mind roam creatively in minefields. She is not excited about her work; she is anxious to have her grant renewed.
“I recognize the realities of limited resources and the desire for immediate solutions, but…research in science is more than a business. Who can do one’s best work when it is assigned?
Who can be as excited about somebody else’s idea as one’s own? How can we look ‘across the street’ if we must always play on the pavement with everyone else, doing the same thing as everyone else?”
I wrote this sixteen years ago, but it’s as true today as it was then.
But there’s a new factor today: Trump! Our President-elect. He’s a business tycoon and surrounds himself with other obsessive business enthusiasts. It’s all about money. He plans to run the government as a business – for profit – because that’s all he knows and all he cares about. He’s dangling the “grants” in front of us, telling us that we’d better stop our exploring to fit his vision: no more dreaming, no more adventure without immediate profit. He’s the mommy forbidding the little boy – the dreamer who wants to climb the goat so he can see across the street and be closer to the birds – from speaking to strangers.
Please, let’s not stop dreaming. Let’s speak to strangers, and refugees, and all the rest of mankind, like ourselves. Let’s not substitute exploitation for exploration, or profit for knowledge. Let’s insist that humanity trumps glitter.
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