Lesson plan
Transformative research
Transformative research is a term that became increasingly common within the science policy community in the 2000s for research that shifts or breaks existing scientific paradigms. The idea has its provenance in Thomas Kuhn's notion of scientific revolutions, where one scientific paradigm is overturned for another. Classic examples are the Copernican Revolution, Albert Einstein's theories, the work of Watson and Crick, and plate tectonics theory. The term has most been used by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), but it also shows up within other agencies. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH) the phrase is sometimes rendered as 'translational research' or 'high-risk, high-reward', which is defined as "research with an inherent high degree of uncertainty and the capability to produce a major impact on important problems in biomedical/behavioral research." NIH also has a Transformative Research Projects Program - R01. Within the European Research Council, the term is 'frontier research.' National Science Foundation (NSF's) National Science Board defined transformative research as "research that has the capacity to revolutionize existing fields, create new sub-fields, cause paradigm shifts, support discovery, and lead to radically new technologies." NSF announced August 9, 2007 that its board had endorsed a proposal by former NSF director Arden L. Bement, Jr.…
Article summary
Transformative research is a term that became increasingly common within the science policy community in the 2000s for research that shifts or breaks existing scientific paradigms. The idea has its provenance in Thomas Kuhn's notion of scientific revolutions, where one scientific paradigm is overturned for another. Classic examples are the Copernican Revolution, Albert Einstein's theories, the work of Watson and Crick, and plate tectonics theory. The term has most been used by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), but it also shows up within other agencies. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH) the phrase is sometimes rendered as 'translational research' or 'high-risk, high-reward', which is defined as "research with an inherent high degree of uncertainty and the capability to produce a major impact on important problems in biomedical/behavioral research." NIH also has a Transformative Research Projects Program - R01. Within the European Research Council, the term is 'frontier research.' National Science Foundation (NSF's) National Science Board defined transformative research as "research that has the capacity to revolutionize existing fields, create new sub-fields, cause paradigm shifts, support discovery, and lead to radically new technologies." NSF announced August 9, 2007 that its board had endorsed a proposal by former NSF director Arden L. Bement, Jr.…
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.