Nobel Laureate calls for research in ‘outdated’, unexplored areas

It is not always research with billion-dollar investments that lead to innovations: Martin Chalfie

Research in basic, failed, unexplored and outdated areas lead to inventions and innovations, Nobel Laureate Prof. Martin Chalfie has said. Mr. Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was delivering an online lecture titled, “The Continuing Need for Useless Knowledge”, that is part of a series of lectures being conducted by the Central University of Kerala, Kasaragod. He said it was not always research with billion-dollar investments which brought in innovations. Often, research in rather more basic areas and ideas thought to be outdated made big discoveries. Mr. Chalfie discussed the role of failure in scientific discovery. He elaborated this concept with the examples of many Nobel Prize winning works, including his work on developing green fluorescent proteins (GFP) as a biological marker.