RTA Speaker Series: Research to Practice with Dr. Lee Kern
Written by Esi-Gyapeaba Essien and Ella Rossetti
On June 17th, Lehigh University held its third speaker event for their Research Translation AcceLUrator (RTA) and STEM-Summer Institute (STEM-SI) interns, led by Dr. Lee Kern, Professor and Director of the Center for Promoting Research to Practice.
Dr. Kern primarily discussed the gap between research and the execution of a concept through practice. Research is a systemic understanding of what you’re studying, whereas practicing your research is actually applying it to the real world.
On average, there is a 17-year lag between knowledge being studied to it being incorporated into society. Dr. Kern shared that 80% of medical research dollars do not even make it to the point of public impact.
One example she gave was about scurvy. Many people had identified that citrus helped negate scurvy in 1601. However, the main researcher wasn't confident or focused enough on his efforts, so he was disregarded. In 1747, the first tests began, but through experimentation, they accidentally boiled out the Vitamin C, which was essential to curing scurvy, and then concluded the hypothesis was wrong. In 1795, sailors started implementing citrus into their diet, and in 1865 that's when the British merchant marines finally solidified that sailors needed to detour specifically to get citrus as it was concluded to prevent scurvy.
Through that 100 year process, the flaw of the researcher's conviction, an improperly implemented experiment (which boiled away the actual cure), dismissal of the theory by scientific backers who couldn't understand why citrus could help with illness, and the expenses of keeping fresh unboiled citrus on board, added up to a 100 year journey to cure the sea malady.
Dr. Kern tied this to academia, discussing how long research can get because of testing and trials, but how fruitless the labor can be because of academic publishing. Professors in academia get promoted based on how much they publish, so many professors don't stick to one idea. Instead, they pump out as much content as possible in their field in the hopes of tenure and pay raises. They are densely packed articles that can be innovative, but aren't as developed.
RTA specifically discourages pumping out content and encourages spending time and resources on research because of the impact it could have on the world when given more time. RTA also helps spread research, as another barrier of academia is the fact that most research articles are locked behind paywalls of academic journals, limiting the reach of the findings.
Dr. Kern highlighted how implementation science is something all academics and entrepreneurs need to learn, as it is a science that cancels out the barriers and integrates change into local conditions. Implementation science helps bridge the gap between research and practice, aiming to improve the impact of inventions in relation to the public.
The Four Stages of Formative Evaluation, and other charts displaying implementation science, were shown to help students grasp how essential thoughtfulness and research is to shortening the gap between research and execution. Providing support to scientists, consumers, academics, and all the other people involved with the creation of a project is key.
Asking the hard questions even to your superiors, contemplating how to engage consumers so they understand what you’re trying to launch, and making sure the world is ready before investing resources and time is something very important to every entrepreneur.
As Dr. Lee Kern said, we have to consider, “Why are we doing it this way? Why don't we do it for this conclusion?”