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Zombie‐Science and Beyond

According to Haitian Creole lore, a zombie is a dead person brought back to life using magic. By analogy, zombie-science is research that should be dead, but magically lives on. So what is the origin of zombie-science in groundwater, why does the magic still work to keep research alive, and finally, do we really still have the capacity for innovation? Not every paper written can—nor should be—an innovative blockbuster. Thomas Kuhn’s view on progress in science was that more than just revolutions were needed and “something different must necessarily go on in between” (Kuhn, 2000). That something is what Kuhn called normal science—the incremental work of embellishing ideas and filling in details. Zombie-science is essentially normal science run amok, the land where embellishments and detail-filling never die. In some areas of groundwater, normal science, apparently uninterrupted by revolutionary spurts, has been in progress for more than 50 years. The cost is represented by an inefficient use of human capital in research, stagnation of the field, and journals full of information that only few care about. The cost of research-not-done on key problems is unknowable. I attributed stagnation in the past to comfort with research paradigms; unwillingness to part with methods, facilities, and field sites; or the maturing of the field. Undoubtedly, these factors contribute, but my view has shifted to simply linking zombie-science to a lack of funding. Some fields, most notably, medical science, (e.g., neurobiology, molecular genetics) are awash in full-time researchers taking their studies in unique directions. It is possible to do good science without money. But broadly speaking, even zombie magic cannot put life back into research founded on collections of ordinary data, routine project work, and too little time. Given the present economic conditions and the depressed government support for water sciences, perhaps the best we can hope for future funding is something like the status quo.