Thoughts from the President

December 6, 2024 - The Illusion of Basic and Applied Research

Dear Danforth Center Community,

In remarks during her acceptance of the Danforth Award for Plant Science yesterday, Toby Kellogg spoke eloquently about the value of basic scientific research, which can be defined as research aimed towards better understanding of the natural world. Traditionally, basic research is contrasted with applied, or problem-solving, research that focuses on specific, practical solutions. Seeking to understand separated oscillating fields would be considered basic research in physics, while research for the purpose of improving satellite communications would be considered applied. But the problem with this basic vs. applied distinction is, it’s an illusion! Without research on separated oscillatory fields, for which Norman Ramsey and colleagues won the Nobel Prize in 1989, development of practical satellite communications would not be possible. The basic and applied distinction does not work well for me.

In Toby’s case, her work to understand natural diversity and evolution of the grasses was considered basic research, that is, until a few decades ago when plant genome sequencing teams realized they needed Toby to understand the new data. Toby and her lab team of evolutionary biologists provided key insights to interpret the complexities of plant genomes, which contributed vital information for breeders in crop improvement programs. When I ponder Toby’s contributions, I think about how she’s helped us understand the natural world of plants, and how she’s enabled countless crop breeders to work more productively and quickly.

I see the active integration of basic and applied research every day at the Danforth Center. In a Gates Foundation-funded project, for example, we’re seeking to develop and improve cassava traits for breeders and smallholder farmers through an entirely new approach: targeted epigenetics (if you trust me here, I’ll spare you the details of epigenetics!). Collaborating teams at the Danforth Center, UCLA and the University of Hawaii are discovering new epigenetic mechanisms in plants and applying them to make disease-resistant cassava. It’s a collaboration that does not distinguish between basic and applied contributions.

Basic research provides the foundation on which application-directed research is done. But like a house, why consider the foundation as something separate from everything else?  Setting a distinction between basic and applied research, or valuing one more than the other, are pointless exercises. That basic idea certainly applies here at the Danforth Center.

Jim Carrington,
President and Chief Executive Officer

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