Perspective: A solution to the limited frontier of science.

Five years. That’s the amount of time I spent watching my grandmother slowly slip away from me. Each day that passed during those five years, I, my grandmother's youngest grandchild, slowly faded from her memory. First, it was forgetting directions. Then, it was forgetting to turn off the stove. Then, it was wandering off onto the highway in the middle of the night. Then, it was forgetting me. That was the hardest part. In five years, I went to countless fundraising walks, trying to raise money to find some sort of cure, some sort of discovery, some sort of way to bring back the woman who I spent each summer with. Want to know one thing that never crossed my mind during those five years? Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. 

The reality is that if you ask many people what they believe to be the greatest scientific discovery, you will get many different answers. Sure, if you surveyed people across the same field, you might hear a trend of responses, but if you survey the general public, I am sure the answers will differ. That is because the answer will be based on perspective, a perspective that is impacted by individual experience. While my STEM-oriented self agrees with Nielsen and Collison and many other journalists, that the scientific frontier is dwindling, my 16 year old self praying for an answer to a seemingly unsolvable problem disagrees with them. She still feels that there is more to be discovered; a discovery that will triumph any development in quantum mechanics. 

Just as explorers found it more and more difficult to discover uncharted land, I, too, believe that scientists will struggle to find field altering, monumental discoveries. However, if we switch our perspective, we can see all the problems that need solving, whether that be a cure to Alzheimer's disease or a new, clean energy source to help combat climate change. While these discoveries might not be as exciting for many research scientists, these solutions would profoundly impact the public and excite the average person. Not everyone understands electromagnetism or binary fission, but I would bet that nearly everyone has been affected by a loved one with a disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s. Shifting our perspective on science will help maintain the excitement and passion for the field, while also maintaining confidence in the dollars that fund the research being conducted. 

According to Collison, Nielsen, and Aschwanden, science is hard, really hard. It is harder than it ever has been. It requires more time, more people, and more money. Reading both of these articles can make science feel hopeless, in some ways. But it doesn’t have to feel this way. Perspective is everything. I am not trying to say we should completely stop the way we’re doing science, but if you look at science in a different way, it can feel hopeful and invigorating. You don’t have to discover something that drastically transforms the world of science as we know it, but you can discover something that drastically changes life as we know it. There are a world of problems that need solving, and that is what makes science meaningful to me.