Smart Development

Recherche scientifique et idées reçues

Mar 7, 2013 Robert Langer

CAMBRIDGE – Après ma thèse en 1974, j'ai eu la chance extraordinaire de travailler avec Judah Folkman de la faculté de médecine de Harvard. Le Dr Folkman pensait que la progression des tumeurs pouvait être bloquée en supprimant leur source d'alimentation. Il a émis l'hypothèse selon laquelle les tumeurs produisent une substance appelée facteur angiogénique tumoral qui induit la croissance des vaisseaux sanguins à proximité, leur fournit des nutriments et les "nettoit". Il pensait que ce processus, l'angiogenèse, est d'une importance cruciale pour la survie de la tumeur.

Cette théorie allait à l'encontre des idées reçues. Les scientifiques qui ont examiné les demandes de subvention de Folkman ont dit que l'apparition de nouveaux vaisseaux sanguins était simplement due à une inflammation, et non au facteur angiogénique tumoral. Mais Folkman a persévéré et a finalement démontré que cette substance existe. Aujourd'hui, 40 ans après, ce type de substance a permis de traiter plus de 10 millions de personnes atteintes de maladies néovasculaires telle la dégénérescence maculaire et de nombreuses formes de cancer.

J'ai vécu une expérience analogue alors que je travaillais dans son laboratoire. Je cherchais à isoler les premiers inhibiteurs de la croissance des vaisseaux sanguins (des substances de poids moléculaire élevé). Il fallait pour cela développer un test d'activité biologique pour observer l'inhibition de la croissance des vaisseaux sanguins.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 5 Comments on this article

Amira Khaled Mar 13, 2013

sometimes the fight against conventional wisdom is very very hard ..thank you for this wonderful article ..
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Nils-Göran Areskoug Mar 11, 2013

A Confirmation from Stockholm.
Robert Langer provides a series of beautiful examples as proof of a core insight: that true progress requires a transgression of the frontier of science controlled by funding agencies. If the implementation of creative ideas all the way along the path towards useful and effective innovation goes beyond the horizon of political imagination (as often the case among bureaucrats in a small country with state-governed agencies) neither “adequate interdisciplinary training” (Health Care’s Voyage) nor “willingness to challenge the dogma” may be sufficient to melt the ice. Crucially, the recognition and inclusion of new modes of creative cognition are needed to enable crossdisciplinary fertilization. As the value for society of the products of a great inventive mind (epitomized by Langer’s bio) is measured in terms of their usefulness to human quality of life it is by no means surprising if the sources of inspiration need to originate from domains outside strictly scientific disciplines. Here comes the option to enrich scientific thinking by experiencing arts and culture and to learn to understand the sociology of values that build human societies.
One surprising conclusion from Transdisciplinary Dialogues with Nobel Laureates in 2001 was the emphasis on their concern and deep involvement in the cultural roots that had nurtured them and provided them with the tools of imagination and creative processing until the moment of their key discovery. Science evolving in society thus seems to share roots with the origin of creative cognition in a more distinct way than is generally recognized.
Technologic advances may well depend more on a permissive context of cultural environment than intradisciplinary self-breeding. The challenge invites sociology of sciences to work towards better solutions of its primary task - and to rethink forms and processes to allow more of transdisciplinary and crossfaculty integration: How to overcome the thwarting influence of anemic abstractions in the conceptual framework of administrators whose experiential competence have been distorted by political bias?
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Procyon Mukherjee Mar 8, 2013

Robert Langer's learning on the limits of conventional wisdom is actually universal and applies to social engineering area as well, where conventional wisdom or rather the 'wisdom of crowds' have fallen prey to information cascades.

In the infinite world of apathy to take the unconventional step, the one which does not have a history of success is the one that is more likely to work; but for the herds, who want to stick together in good times and bad times, we have a deluge of abnormal good and abnormal bad, as equally likely possibilities.
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Nathan Coppedge Mar 8, 2013

It is clear to me that especially in medicine, the difference between a specialist and a bad student is dramatic, and can have dramatic consequences.

In an economic context, we are just learning that some variables are 'conscious', and some paradigms exponential. What Dr. Langer seems to be saying is that it is the same way in medicine. That sounds profound and encouraging. Perhaps someone should develop a general rule of medicine that affects research developments. Perhaps there is one. And maybe some conservatives are reacting to philosophy, and not medical or business practice.
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Zsolt Hermann Mar 7, 2013

The conclusion of the article is very exciting and it can actually offer a glimmer of hope for all of us stuck in the depth of the ongoing and deepening global crisis.
We seem to have concluded that evolution, ever changing existential conditions do not apply to modern humans, thus all our discoveries, inventions, our main body of knowledge is good enough to provide the basis for our ongoing existence.
As the article rightly suggests at the same time the cutting edge of classical research "quietly" pushed, and still pushing the boundaries of our perception of reality, and especially through the prisms of quantum physics, and the various quantum theories many of our long held dogmas started to break down. And this even within the same framework we have been researching so far.
The global crisis, that goes way beyond economics, politics or finances, basically engulfing our whole present human system is a good example of it, when previous, seemingly perfectly suitable, working methods and tools have become obsolete, moreover destructive.
Today most of human invented, created institutions are slipping through our fingers and while we try to use, and reuse all previously know and refined solutions instead of improvements we get worse states. This is all because the conditions of the system we exist in have changed, almost none of the conditions we based our previous lifestyle on remained intact.
The definition for the state of mind the last paragraph of the article points at is "faith above reason".
This is very different from the definition "faith" as it is normally used.
"Faith below reason" is a state when we ignore common sense and stubbornly believe in something that has no known natural foundations, but we choose to believe in it against reason for traditional, cultural, religious reasons.
"Faith within reason" is the usual, classical, dogmatic scientific approach, when we only believe in what we can grasp, evaluate and prove within our resent framework, with our present mind.
"Faith above reason" is the state when we examine, fully understand where we are, what is available within the present framework, but the available data, while on one hand proving the deadlock within the present framework points at a possibility solving the problem "above reason" using a different "state of mind".
To achieve that possibility requires a "leap of faith" but not fully blindly, but based on how we know for fact that with our present mind we cannot solve our present situation, and solution can only come by "changing our present mind to a new one".
"Faith above reason" is only possible after the full, honest, maximally precise examination of the present state, understanding the futility of the present state, understanding the necessity of changing the observer's point of view, starting anew.
The whole of humanity stands at this stage today, we have to fully understand where we are, why we have arrived here into this dead end, how we simply cannot solve our present crisis with our previous and present methods and tools, and we have to embark on a new discovery in "faith above reason", changing ourselves, the observers first.
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