TED'S TAKE: FINDING THE EDGE OF THE TRACK

Grand Touring (GT) race cars are set up and built to have the weight in different places. The driver’s seat is father back (as close to the rear wheels as possible) and low (as close to the floor as possible). This lowers the center of gravity to allow for better traction off the corners. But it also means the driver can’t see the edges of the track.

Those edges have curbing roughly three feet wide with rumble strips.

Given the driver’s line of sight, these rumble strips inform where the curb begins and ends. A driver uses their judgment to steer the car into a corner and literally “find” the edge of the track. Over the first few laps on a particular track, a driver uses their line of sight on the car’s fenders as a reference point to “mark” the edge of the track allowing them to  efficiently manage the car through the conners.

Said simply: a driver uses curbing to “cut” corners. Why? The car can go faster which is, after all, the point.

Conceptually this process – finding the edge – applies to other areas including cancer research funding. With today’s reduced federal funding and greater competition for limited private funding, researchers, from universities to governmental entities, need to find the edge of the track.  and use that edge to become more efficient.  

We are all stewards of scarce resources, but in the past there was robust federal funding and less need to be as efficient allowing perhaps more indirect costs than necessary.

Today’s funding environment forces such efficiencies and stands to better serve public interest, forcing organizations to better-defined projects and collaborate. 

This “edge” finding applies to not just funding, but also the traditional approach to research discoveries. We tend to incrementally explore science, which results in research funding that moves at a snail’s pace. How do we find the edge? By changing how we distribute research funds. By putting less priority on the “right” universities and organizations, and –instead prioritizing the thinkers and visionaries who may not be with the favored universities or organizations.

Investments in basic science – the “other end”of the field – does not inherently have an associated return on investment but it is where true discoveries lie – the why and how things work.

When we  find the “edge of the track” cancer research funding will go faster. It will be more efficient and effective. And it will achieve greater heights.