Resistance to change is natural. This is especially true of fundamental scientific change among scientists who have long dwelled in their fields. Ideas that challenge their perceived truths and associated personal standings are often dismissed or ignored, irrespective of actual merit. They are resisted most strongly if the challenge is deemed serious. But the challenge cannot succeed without getting the attention of the very scientists most attached to the “accepted” truth. Hence, an effective revolution-promoting design takes measures to leverage the attention of scientists attached to a prevailing paradigm. Therefore, the Institute will nurture the challenge.

Breakthroughs cannot be legislated. Everyone wants a cure for cancer, a new source of green energy, and a cleaner environment. The temptation is to channel resources into those important areas. Julius Comroe’s now-classic book, Retrospectroscope, provides evidence that channeling does not work: he outlines the most significant breakthroughs in cardiovascular disease treatment and shows that all of them came from primary discoveries unrelated to the cardiovascular system. Thus, a legislated focus on clean energy will not necessarily bring the new scientific principles that lead to game-changing technologies. Relevant ideas may come from unpredictable sources. The laser came from the chance discovery of photon coherence; the transistor came from an unexpected feature of crystalline impurities. Hence, an essential principle for encouraging breakthrough science avoids any kind of top-down management of scientific directions.

Person A accuses company B of careless manufacturing practices, resulting in the death of a family member. The matter goes to court. The judge marches up to the podium, turns around to reveal his face… and who is he? He is vice-president of said company. This scenario is embarrassingly close to the operative mode of the current peer-review system. Subject experts, typically the field’s leaders, are recruited to judge their challengers. If the challenge succeeds, then those standing to lose most are the reviewers themselves. The result of this conflict-of–interest scenario is as predictable as in the company scenario above. Standard peer review may work well for incremental science; but for paradigm-shifting proposals it is the antithesis of what is needed for achieving the best result. Hence, fair review involves reviewers who have nothing to gain or lose from the verdict.

Envision Einstein, scratching his head at the patent office in Zurich while daydreaming about subjects arcane such as relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect. What Einstein enjoyed was time to think. Asked how much thinking time was available to a random selection of working scientists, responses ranged between “zero” and “very little.” There is no need to belabor the obligations that now inundate scientists, ranging from the drafting of multiple grant applications, to endless administrative reporting, to the preparation of an obligatory number of papers (that few scientists will ever have time to read). Although revolutions may start by tripping over the unexpected, figuring out what the unexpected might imply cannot be done without thinking, and thinking requires time. Thus, any system promoting revolutionary science acts to reduce the amount of time scientists are obliged to spend on extraneous distractions.

Stumbling on the unexpected poses a problem for today’s scientists. While dogged pursuit may bring fresh and even revolutionary understanding, deviating too far from the straight and narrow pathway carries the risk of jeopardizing fundability; deviation therefore flirts with professional suicide. This insecurity-based fear of deviating from convention is therefore a powerful inhibitor of discovery. In an effective system, the investigator must have the freedom to pursue any interesting clues. Thus, any system expecting to generate revolutionary science provides the necessary freedom for scientists to deviate from the straight-and-narrow pathway.