July 2006

Innovation in science not an easy sell

by David A. Jackson, DC, CEO, Research and Clinical Science

When it comes to science, it can sometimes be painful ‑‑ even dangerous ‑‑ to be innovative. I doubt whether a single revolutionary idea was ever embraced by the scientific community or the public at large (which usually follows the scientists' lead in such matters) at the time it was presented.

Galileo, as we know, was twice called before the Inquisition for offering his theory that the earth wasn't the center of the universe. Eventually, he was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to life behind bars (the "merciful" judges allowed him to serve his imprisonment under house arrest because of his age and ill health).

At about the same time (1628 to be precise) William Harvey offered the theory of the circulation of blood and was ridiculed and ostracized by the scientific community of the day.

After a few centuries of such behavior, you'd think we would have become more open minded about scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, we still resist any change in our belief systems.

In the early 1930s, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar originated the white dwarf star theory (a precursor to the Black Hole theory) but one of his "colleagues" ‑‑ Sir Arthur Eddington ‑‑ launched a vicious attack against him. Eddington felt threatened because Chandrasekhar's theory conflicted with his own, which he refused to acknowledge was outdated and incorrect. Other physicists silently agreed with Chandrasekhar yet were afraid to argue with the more famous Eddington.

Eventually, Chandrasekhar was forced to leave England because of the ridicule he was subjected to there. He moved his research to the University of Chicago in 1937. Finally, when other scientists developed the Black Hole theory that validated his ideas, he was vindicated. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics ‑‑ 50 years after his colleagues refused to speak up in his support.

Barbara McClintock endured a mere 32 years of ridicule for her work in mobile genetic elements before winning the Nobel prize in 1984.

As recently as last year, we had another example of this type of reaction. In 2005, two Australians won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for establishing that bacteria cause stomach ulcers.

According to an article in The New Scientist: "The pair's claims provoked a fierce backlash from the medical establishment, which held to the dogma that ulcers were brought on by stress and lifestyle, and could not be cured. By revealing a simple cure, the researchers also threatened to destroy huge and lucrative global markets for the existing anti‑ulcer drugs, which simply eased symptoms... At conferences, the two scientists were subjected to abuse and ridicule."

Such closed‑mindedness isn't exclusive to medicine and physics.

The Wright Brothers were considered lunatics by many less visionary people. Scientific American magazine published stories about them, dubbing them "The Lying Brothers" for their claims of flight. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone was rejected by the British Post Office on the grounds that "England has plenty of small boys to run messages." The incandescent electric lamp was described as a "completely idiotic idea" when Thomas Edison first announced it.

Ironically, as reported in the PBS series, "Who Made America?" when Westinghouse introduced an AC generator to compete with Edison's DC system, critics claimed AC power was a menace to human life and publicized New York State's use of the Westinghouse AC generator as its official means of execution. Westinghouse and Edison waged an ongoing court battle over electricity known as The Seven Years War.

We see the same thing happening in chiropractic. When anyone, particularly a technique developer or a researcher, comes up with a new idea or innovative way of doing things, there is a predictable backlash from the establishment. Those in power don't want to change the status quo, to risk admitting that maybe some of their notions or methods aren't perfect.

In his "Guardians of the Gate," Jacques Rivière wrote: "Orwell's Thought Police are all too real... It is not our political thoughts they police, but the current paradigm. Today, the Paradigm Police crop up in a variety of unremarkable guises. Most often, it is to style themselves as myth busters of one sort or another or as the guardians of the gates of unreason... Whatever their guise, the Paradigm Police are invariably present wherever innovators and discoverers of the new are derided and attacked."

The reasons for these attacks aren't difficult to discern. After all, despite their self‑righteous claim to seeking the truth, "experts" don't want mere "upstarts" to prove them wrong. In chiropractic, we have a small group of elite "researchers" who have designated themselves as the Paradigm Police. They are the ones who decide ‑‑ for themselves, our colleges, the profession, and all of us ‑‑ what constitutes "correct" science and research. Stray from the path they paved and you risk their wrath.

The Sept. 6, 2001 issue of New England Journal of Medicine listed several factors motivating these arbiters of "proper research." In a review of a book called "Great Feuds in Medicine," the NEJM noted that "researchers who aspire to greatness ought to have a thick skin. Before ascending to the pantheon of medicine, most of these heroes had to suffer through bitter attacks on their work and their character. Pasteur, Freud, Harvey, Bernard, Salk, Semmelweis ‑‑ each was prey to criticism, envy, competition, resistance, and dismissal before, with the passage of time, their contributions were accepted and acknowledged. The scientific process is revealed to be less pure and pristine than many imagine. Nationalist bias, professional entrenchment, institutional bureaucracy, religious sentiments, and cultural tradition all influence the development and adoption of medical knowledge, and thus have an impact at least as important as the scientific method itself."

Envy, bias, entrenchment, competition, and bureaucracy are things we have in abundance in this profession. One or more of those motives usually comes into play whenever one technique developer accuses a competitor of fraud, one practitioner files a board complaint against a neighboring doctor, or one researcher belittles a colleague's study. These are the motives that have fueled a century of intra‑professional animosity and conflict.

I'm not sure we'll be able to get past the personal and professional jealousies and pettiness that has marred all of science since before Galileo's time, but I think we owe it to ourselves and our patients to try. We need to stop being, and listening to, the Paradigm Police who say that trying something new ‑‑ whether it's looking into subluxation correction as a way to enhance the immune system or trying new and innovative ways to fund chiropractic research ‑‑ is inherently wrong.

Chiropractic itself is a relatively recent innovation, which was and still is ridiculed. That experience should make us open our eyes and our minds to new ideas and ways of doing things. Chiropractic was founded on DD Palmer's ability to restore hearing. Let's hope it can also help eliminate the blindness caused by ignorance, fear, and envy.

(Dr. David Jackson is chief executive officer of Research and Clinical Science ‑‑ RCS ‑‑ a private sector research program exploring issues of subluxation correction and chiropractic care as they relate to health and wellness. Previously, he served as president of the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance and Creating Wellness Alliance and was owner/operator of several private practice offices in California and Idaho that specialized in high‑volume, family wellness‑based care. For more information on RCS, call 800‑909‑1354 or 480‑303‑1694, or visit the RCS website at www.rcsprogram.com. Doctors of chiropractic may log on to a special limited‑access area of the site by using the username DC1 and password RESEARCH.)