Science research might not seem much like digging a tunnel or building a railroad, but hear me out.

The continental railroad versus the chunnel – Did you know?

It took seven years to build the transcontinental railroad. and join the east and west coast of the USA, separated by more than 3,000 miles

The Chunnel that connects England to the continent of Europe was a six year endeavor that cost 12 billion pounds

Multiple routes to a final goal

You know the saying “many hands make light work.” It’s not exactly news that tackling a job from many angles can multiply individual efforts. The longer or harder the job, the more it helps to have all hands on deck. In the case of the railroads or the chunnel, they likely completed the task in half the time it would have taken if they’d worked on it linearly.

Science discovery often works much the same way, with different groups of scientists tackling the same complex problem from two very different directions.

For example, at the Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard, where I currently work, researchers are trying to combat antibiotic-resistance by asking genome-related questions, like “what is different about the DNA of the resistant bacteria?” Meanwhile, at Draper (where I previously worked), engineers are developing a clever device that uses engineering tricks to solve the same problem by reducing antibiotic overuse. Pairing the device with a throat swab can tell your doctor in a few hours exactly what antibiotic will be effective at treating your ills, eliminating the overuse of ineffective antibiotics that leads to resistant strains of bacteria.

Each company leverages their particular strengths in the quest for a solution.

All options on the table as a means of getting to the best option

Maybe, like me, you’re thinking: that’s obvious! When you’ve got a super tough problem, it only makes sense to try lots of different possible solutions, to not put all your eggs in one basket. That’s nothing new. It’s why the NIH gives out multiple grants for the same sorts of research.

Optimizing evolution – Communication makes things better

Here’s where the train analogy comes in. There was a lot of effort that went into making sure the two groups building the Transcontinental Railroad and the Chunnel met in the middle. Because if not, the efforts of both sides would be wasted.

How often do you think groups of scientists, working in different directions, miss each other completely – maybe because they don’t even know that someone else is working on the same problem? Instead of breaking through to match the the group working on the other side, each group just keeps on tunneling, working, studying, their own path, without ever reaching the end. That’s sad.

What would make it more likely that two groups of researchers coming at a problem from different directions would find a solution? I recently came across someone who digs into publications, collecting and categorizing similar work. Could this be a clue about a low-cost, high-impact way to improve the random-walk of science discovery??

Free communication makes things even better

There’s a lot of talk about Open Science and Open Science principles (do a Google search and start down the rabbit hole!). In order to be truly useful, science must be aware (of other efforts) as well as open.