NEW ORLEANS -- It was a telling moment during a special session on the "moonshot" cancer initiative at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting here -- "Maximizing Cancer Cures: How Do We Get There?" -- when outgoing AACR president and panel moderator Jose Baselga, MD, PhD, asked the attendees how many thought that the moonshot was misnamed.
By a show of hands, Baselga diplomatically declared a tie, but to many in the audience it seemed that about two-thirds of the hands were raised in favor of a misnaming.
And what perhaps carried a little more heft to that opinion was that among those with hands raised was NCI acting director Douglas Lowy, MD.
Panelist William G. Kaelin Jr., MD., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, pointed out the differences between science and engineering, noting that timelines, deliverables, and moonshots are part of the language of engineering.
For truly transformative science to get done, he said, you don't want your most creative scientists held to timelines and deliverables because they are not capable of thinking what can be done in a set amount of time.
"This is not to say they shouldn't be held accountable for the resources they are given, but you don't want people marching in lines with blinders to opportunities and unexpected results about what could be expected to be the basis for truly out-of-the-box discoveries."
Kaelin said that while engineering needs people to work in teams, in science you "might want 10 people going in 10 different directions or you risk herd mentality ... I think it's important to get the sociology right and remember that cancer is still fundamentally a scientific problem with some engineering aspects mixed in."
See our story here on Vice President Joe Biden's address on the moonshot initiative at the AACR meeting.
'Moonshot' for Cancer: A Good Metaphor?
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