Payoff Quotes (3 quotes)
I like to do high-risk and high-payoff kind of research. And I had a gut feeling that MIT was a cool place to be with people who are fearless.
As quoted in Anna Azvolinsky, 'Fearless About Folding', The Scientist (Jan 2016).
It is the constant attempt in this country [Canada] to make fundamental science responsive to the marketplace. Because technology needs science, it is tempting to require that scientific projects be justified in terms of the worth of the technology they can be expected to generate. The effect of applying this criterion is, however, to restrict science to developed fields where the links to technology are most evident. By continually looking for a short-term payoff we disqualify the sort of science that … attempts to answer fundamental questions, and, having answered them, suggests fundamentally new approaches in the realm of applications.
'A Scientist and the World He Lives In', Speech to the Empire Club of Canada (27 Nov 1986) in C. Frank Turner and Tim Dickson (eds.), The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1986-1987 (1987), 149-161.
We should willingly take risks in supporting new projects. The tendency is to play it safe when funding is low, but we need to remember that the greatest risks have the greatest payoffs.
From keynote address, 'Will Innovation Flourish in the Future?' (2002), as adapted for Opinion article in The Industrial Physicist (Dec-Jan 2003-03), 8, No. 6, 24. The address was presented at Conference, 'Infrastructure for e-Business, e-Education, e-Science, and e-Medicine', at Scuola Superiore G. Reiss Romoli in L’Aquila, Italy (Jul 29-Aug 4, 2002).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
