Much of the past decade has been spent worrying about the potential toxicity of nanomaterials. We have had numerous government-funded projects, scores of publications by environmental groups, intense lobbying demanding the labelling of nanomaterials, and even a law suit. But while the developed world agonises over the use of nanomaterials, much of the rest of the world is simply getting on with using them.

As I’ve travelled the world over the last year I’ve seen numerous applications of nanomaterials that would allow them to come into direct contact with the environment – whether through ingestion or release into watercourses – with applications ranging from coatings on fruit to building materials and textiles. In addition there are numerous catalytic applications, such as removing ethylene in fruit storage facilities in order to prevent ripening. Nobody I spoke to had any idea of what would happen to these materials over the course of their lifetime, and probably didn’t much care either. Many of these applications would and could never be used in Europe or the US, but in other parts of the world where economic need takes precedence over human or environmental  issues, they are being increasingly applied.

So while much of the ire of environmental groups has been directed at the potential use of nanomaterials by large corporations, Kraft, L’Oreal and the like, their use by small companies in the developing world has gone largely unnoticed. And the use of nanomaterials is virtually undetectable, the technologies to screen large amounts of fruit and vegetables for traces of nanomaterials doesn’t exist.

The real threat to the environment doesn’t come from “greedy multinationals trying to ram untested materials with unknown effects” down people’s throats, but from small companies from Africa to China trying to make an extra shilling, rupee or yuan.

There has been plenty of discussion from all quarters about how the UK failed to grasp the significance of nanotechnology, and instead spent years fretting over heath and safety implications. Without any real nanotechnology related activity in UK industry, worrying about the potential downside is like spending all your time planning what you will do if you win the lottery. But you have to be in it to win it.

The UKs Nanotechnology knowledge Transfer Network, the body charged with”accelerating innovation in nanoscale technologies” has contributed an article to Nanotechnology Nowlooking at responsible nanotechnology. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s a good round up, but after ten years of dealing with every part of the UK government that touches on nanotechnology, from the Treasury to DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) I can’t remember anyone extolling the potential economic benefits of nanotechnology, and it’s a real tragedy.

The UK has thousands of word class scientists beavering away on everything from graphene to cancer treatment and instead of being encouraged and aided to spin out their research into world-class companies, the government attitude is solely concerned with what might happen if someone “accidentally” inhaled a kilo of carbon nanotubes or managed to munch their way through a family sized bucket of fried chicken laced with quantum dots. It is probably why our rankings indicate that there is not too much difference between India and the UK as a place to commercialise nanotech.

Iran has always been a source of fascination, a place of ancient culture and history and now a country making a lot of noise about science and technology, so I was pleased to be invited by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council to attend the Iran Nano 2011 exhibition in Tehran.

As I’d spent the previous few days in Taiwan at the Taiwan Nano 2011 exhibition, it was a good opportunity to contrast the two events and try to judge whether there was any truth to the claims that Iran is becoming a world-class player in nanotechnology.

The unique aspect of Iranian nanotechnology is that because of the various international sanctions over the past thirty years it’s not the kind of place where you can just order an AFM or an electron microscope from a major US or Japanese supplier. As a result there was lots of home made kit on display, from sputtering systems, through surface analysis to atomic force microscopes. Looking at the results, the home grown kit was certainly more than adequate, with the main difference being the red LED displays and 20 turn potentiometers, things that have been long since replaced by digital control in the rest of the world. Does that stop an AFM from producing decent results though? Probably not. There was also a lot of discussion about selling this very low cost instrumentation outside Iran, although I suspect that IP issues may then become a concern.

So, Iranian scientists have engineered their way around the embargo on selling high tech equipment of Iran – and there was no shortage of high-end laptops on display either – but so often science is not about how much stuff you have in your lab, but what you can do with it.

The human resource development programs in Iran were also impressive. Iran has no shortage of universities, and it is also a big country with a significant population. There was mention of the country producing over 800 nanotechnology PhDs a year which is a huge number when compared with the rest of the region. A major part of one of the ceremonies I attended was the award of cash prizes to research students and small businesses, and that is always a great motivator.

There is plenty going on, much more than one would expect, so how has Iran managed to achieve this? It’s a combination of political support (and well done to the various scientists who managed to achieve this) and coordination. INIC runs the whole show, something describes as “Supreme supervision in realization of goals and programs.” This ranges from involving school children in nanotechnology to commercialisation and international development of technologies, and having a single coordinated and focussed vision rather than a set of squabbling and overlapping agencies seems to be something we all can learn from.

One of the other impressive parts of the program is the creation of the Tech-Market Services Institute, which specifically focuses on commercialisation of nanotechnologies and shows what good coordination can achieve.  Not so much an incubator as a collection of third party experts whose services are subsidised by INIC, the goal is to make the transition from basic research to commercial products as smooth and painless as possible, leaving academics to worry about the technology rather than legal or financial issues. This provides a pathway from assessing the level of technology readiness through assistance with patenting, documentation, market surveys, business plan writing, standards & certification, financial aid and venture capital and finally international marketing. Nice touches such as paying 80% of patenting costs seem to really encourage commercial development, with the remaining 20% paid for through the program if the patent application proves successful.

So what of the claims that Iran is becoming a world player in nanotechnology, ranking fourth in the world in terms of publications? Certainly the amount of papers published in international journals is rapidly increasing, and using this as raw data to justify being a world power is no more than many academics departments do. Discussing this with senior editors at some of the higher impact journals indicates that although the volume is high the quality is not, but it is improving. One would not expect Iran to be at the level of Germany, but it is among the best of the developing economies.

In terms of commercial products there were many on display. Agriculture was well represented, with fertilisers, pesticides, coatings to reduce fruit spoilage and even catalytic systems to remove ethylene from fruit storage facilities. Construction materials were another large area, with a wide range of building materials on display. Absent were areas such as semiconductors and medical devices, but once again their absence illustrates that INIC is focussing much more on the solutions demanded by Iranian industry rather than trying to compete with more advanced economies. There is also substantial work going n the the field of renewable energy with some large investments taking place.

Simon Brown, who also attended the exhibition, was similarly impressed, and raises questions about the proliferation of nanomaterials and whether adequate safety testing is being performed before they are deployed.

So Iranian nanotechnology seems to be in rude health. It has plenty of funding, political support at high level and most importantly, plenty of smart people involved. It is also developing stronger international links, hosting the meeting of the Asia Nano Forum and attracting exhibitors from companies and organisations based in Europe and Asia. I don’t think that Iran will be challenging the US and Germany as the best places to commercialise nanotechnologies anytime soon, but I suspect that the aim is more to support domestic industry and in that respect things seem to be working out rather well.

The list of new and emerging technologies enabled by the convergence of nanotechnology, life sciences and information technology is one item longer today following the announcement from the University of Glasgow about inorganic biology.

The project head, Lee Cronin explains that “All life on earth is based on organic biology (i.e. carbon in the form of amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars etc) but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.

“What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology.”

But professor Cronin has just used a number of phrases, perhaps intentionally, which will trigger yet another debate about playing God, worries about what happens when they escape from the lab and take over the world, and brings up the subject of responsible versus irresponsible innovation.

Whether developing a technology such as inorganic biology is classified as responsible or irresponsible depends as much on your ethical and religious views as it does on the science. The only sure thing is that the technology will be developed anyway once the genie is out of the bottle, and as with many other technologies we have to attempt to manage them in a way that gives us the best shot at producing beneficial effects.

Responsible innovation is something that seems to be trending, at least in Europe, as a way of ensuring that new and emerging technologies do not create any unpleasant side effects. To some extent it seems similar to the precautionary principle, which has been used as an argument against everything from GMO’s to nanotechnology, and can be used as an effective tool to sway political opinion against any new technology.

I would suggest, however, that thinking about responsible innovation should start only when technology reaches the stage of commercialisation, and that everything up to that point is just scientific curiosity. The howls of “what if science creates a monster?” have to be balanced against the progress that science has made over the past three hundred years, and while the products of science have not always been beneficial, we can live lives free of cholera and access whatever information we want whenever we want. It is impossible to see, from the lab bench, the final application of  any technology – neither the inventors of the transistor or science fiction writers predicted the mobile phone, and I can’t remember anyone in the dot.com era predicting Facebook or Twitter.

So responsible innovation should be something for companies to practice rather than scientists, just like open innovation. It’s an idea that fits nicely alongside the drift towards sustainability, shifting from the linear take-make-waste model that has been used ever since the industrial revolution to a more cyclical zero waste one enabled by life sciences. But the concept of responsible innovation needs more definition. Was the development nuclear weapons responsible innovation, as some would argue that they ended the Second World War and prevented a third one, or does their acquisition by rogue states such as North Korea render the whole field irresponsible? Was the development of polymers responsible, as it enabled huge advances in quality of life, or irresponsible as much of the plastic waste produced ends up in land fills or in the world’s oceans?

While industry is changing, and far more questions are being asked about safety and ethics than in the mid twentieth century, the idea of responsible innovation becomes far more dangerous in the hands of governments and regulatory bodies. An increasing number of publicly funded projects require applicants to answer all kinds of questions about the ethics and sustainability of the proposed research. Adding a fluffy ill defined term such as ‘responsible’ to the mix raises the risk of research being judged by personal rather than scientific criteria. It would certainly irresponsible to start demanding answers about responsibility too early, and before defining an end use or application of the technology, something that would risk putting the brakes on innovation and add to regulatory confusion. The use of nanotechnology in food, drugs or solar cells, for example, requires vastly different regulatory structures, even if the same nanomaterials are used for each application.

Is inorganic biology responsible or irresponsible innovation? It is way too early to answer that question, and we shouldn’t even try until we know what it will be used for. It may even prove to be a scientific dead end, and much of the debate about ethics, safety and regulation will end up as productive and relevant as the debate about ‘gray goo.’

The White House Emerging Technologies Interagency Policy Coordination Committee (ETIPC) has developed a set of principles (pdf) specific to the regulation and oversight of applications of nanotechnology, to guide the development and implementation of policies at the agency level.

I’m glad to see that it addresses those two old bugbears, the confusion between risk and hazard and the prejudging of issues without reference to scientific evidence (my italics below).

Nanomaterials should not be deemed or identified as intrinsically benign or harmful in the absence of supporting scientific evidence, and regulatory action should be based on such scientific evidence. Where there is evidence of either safety or likely harm, the corresponding regulatory actions are usually clear. For some statutes, the mere existence of a hazard, regardless of the probability of it causing harm, may trigger some form of regulatory action. In general, however, and to the extent consistent with law, regulation should be based on risk, not merely hazard, and in all cases the identification of hazard, risk or harm must be evidence-based. In applying these principles, regulators should use flexible, adaptive, and evidence-based approaches that avoid, wherever possible, hindering innovation and trade while fulfilling the Federal Government’s responsibility to protect public health and the environment.

It is an approach which appears to diverge slightly from the European adoption of the precautionary principle, which states that “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.”

As with any regulation, the problems will arise not from the the original wording, but through its (mis)interpretation and inconsistent application.

I’ll leave the professional report readers such as 2020Science to wade through the Friends of the Earth’s latest broadside against nanotechnology which claims that it “isn’t green enough.”

This brief report in “The Australian” neatly sums up the argument, which is that although nanotechnology has been spoken of as a solution to some aspects of climate change, it is is less green than other alternative approaches such as sitting still and waiting for the world to end, and therefore it shouldn’t be funded.

Some of the arguments are clearly rather silly and selective. Claiming for example that “the energy conversion efficiency of nano solar panels was 10 per cent less than conventional silicon panels” is rather unfair given the stage of the development of the technology and ignores the amount of R&D going into areas such as organic photovoltaics. Similarly claims that “processing may also involve the use toxic chemicals and solvents, and the release greenhouse gases such as methane” could be applied to almost every area of human activity, or indeed inactivity.

Technology always needs to be seen over time, and the fact that Stephenson’s Rocket wasn’t as fast as a galloping horse in its first trial probably led to similar calls for the technology to be abandoned.

Perhaps the most depressing thing is that in order to make the argument that nanotech isn’t green enough, Friends of the Earth has to waste its (and our) time shooting down some of the wilder claims about nanotechnologies, while ignoring much of the rational scientific work that going on.

What I’d love to hear from an environmental group is a rational argument about nanotechnology. How do we encourage applications that could limit climate change and protect the environment while monitoring and averting any unintended risks and consequences? Carping from the sidelines may create a few sound bites, but it won’t change government policy and nor will it stymie human creativity when it comes to applying technology.

To have a real impact, environmental groups need to make themselves part of the debate rather than sitting in the corner sulking with their backs to the everyone.

Reading reports of government plans for the regulation of nanotechnology sometimes feels like being on death row. The outcome is inevitable, and all you can do is hope that it will be short and painless. The European Commission has been debating regulations for the best part of a decade,and now apparently has been given a deadline of 2011 by the European Parliament to “properly regulate nanotechnology.”

Plastics & Rubber Weekly reports that the Belgian Environment Minister, Paul Magnette proposed five elements that should be included in nanotechnology legislation, including

• A register of nanomaterials used within the EU is established, so regulators can trace the origin of any nanoparticles to their source if they cause health or environmental problems.
• Manufacturers and retailers inform consumers of the presence of nanomaterials in their products
• Regulations provide for risk evaluation and management of nanomaterials at an EU level
• Member states also draft integrated national strategies for nanotechnology risk management, information dissemination and monitoring
• Claims made on labels of products containing nanomaterials are controlled

As with any legislation the devil will be in the detail, and that will determine whether the result is to shift all production of basic nanomaterials out of the EU or simply create a lot of meaningless labels that consumers won’t understand. Unfortunately, that plays into the hands of pressure groups who managed to influence public opinion against all forms of GMOs based on some rather dodgy science, and leaves companies using nanomaterials between a rock and hard place. Do they add a (nano) suffix to ingredients and risk a consumer backlash, or do they simply fudge the definition – many commonly used materials contain quite a range of particle sizes, and so adjusting to the mean size to 100.001nm could easily sidestep any EU legislation.

But the bottom line is that anyone involved in nanomaterials would like the politicians to make their minds up about regulation. Many companies are unwilling to spend large sums on developing technologies and products they may be outlawed or perceived differently by consumers as a result of pending legislation. The sooner that rules are in place the easier it will be to justify developing nanomaterial based products.

Ever since someone choked a mouse with carbon nanotubes in an attempt to prove their toxicity, people have been running round giving huge doses of nanomaterials to everything from bacteria to fish. Of course the huge doses involved, far in excess of anything that would be encountered in the real world, could be equally well used to prove that bananas are dangerous.

In the same spirit, a team of researchers have determined in the words of New Scientist that “Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions” the lead reseracher seems to have a bit of an issue with nanom aterials anyway, stating that “These particles are developed with the express purpose of killing things.” Hmmm.

As one commenter points out the tub dosed with 55 micrograms of silver nanoparticles per gram of sludge, which is allegedly a concentration of silver similar to levels often found in waste water, is some 35 micrograms above the level where silver recovery is economically viable.

However, the results are inclusive, leading the researchers to conclude

a) that further experiments are necessary, “including the setting up of a complete wetland ecosystem to measure how it might be affected by waste water containing silver nanoparticles” and

b) that if the results were replicated on a large scale, it could “further contribute to concerns about global changes in climate”.

This all leads me to conclude that New Scientist is becoming less scientific and more like the Daiy Mail.

An MEP attempts to inhale some carbon nanotubes

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are an odd and under worked bunch. In order to fill their time they built a second parliament building in Brussels and spend every fourth week shuttling between Brussels and Strasbourg while submitting expense claims.

The Devil makes work for idle hands, and according to Chemistry World the latest scheme from Brussels is to require labelling of any electronic device containing nanomaterials (all of them!). Oh, and while they are at it, how about banning nanosilver and multiwall nanotubes “in electrical and electronic products” for good measure?

It’s a bizarre and badly thought out proposal, and as Chemistry World points out

It remains unclear precisely what the MEPs deem to be nanomaterials. If they follow the definition used in the Novel Foods directive, then it would mean any material engineered or manufactured to be of the order of 100nm in at least one dimension. This, however, would lead to every electronic product requiring labelling…The sense behind banning long multiwalled carbon nanotubes is more apparent; for example, there is some evidence that they may behave like asbestos when inhaled. But even then, the nanotubes have to be free for inhalation, which would not be the case if they were bound up in an electrical product.

But who knows how MEPs think. Do they think that computers work as a result of large crystal bowls filled with carbon nanotubes being left in draughty places, or is inhaling finely ground iPhones through a rolled up €500 note all the rage in the toilets of the European Parliament?

It seems to be a clear case of make laws first, worry about the facts later.

Some poor science (or at least poor science reporting) from Denmark where Otto Melchior Poulsen of the National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NFA) claims that “We can, on a scientific basis, draw a parallel between the nano boom and the asbestos scandal.”

The scientific basis seems to be “that test animals used for research in his institute on carbon nanotubes got pleural cancer, a disease many workers exposed to asbestos also caught.” The report doesn’t go into any more details, such as whether they were short or long nanotubes or what dose of nanotubes was administered to the animals so we are firmly in Daily Mail territory here.

No one is suggesting that nanomaterials should be squirted around willy-nilly, but putting out this sort of story seems designed to scare rather than inform. Some of the reports that claim to ‘prove’ the dangers of nanotubes have used such huge doses that the animals would have suffocated anyway, and I once met a US scientist who claimed to have data that nanotubes (once more of uncertain type) made rats live for up to 50% longer.

As with all toxicology we are gradually building up a body of knowledge which can be used to reduce risks, but as I often find myself explaining, nanotechnology is rather different to asbestos or even plastics.  It’s a set of technologies that was developed when we had both the tools to see what what we were producing, and a huge amount of data about the safety (or otherwise) of materials produced in the twentieth century.

Here’s the difference between nanotubes and asbestos. Pay attention now, it is important.

When the first nanotubes were examined under an electron microscope, researchers wondered if they could cause similar health problems to asbestos fibres. When asbestos was first being used we didn’t have electron microscopes and people thought that radiation and cigarettes were good for you. As a result asbestos was used everywhere, whereas carbon nanotubes are tightly monitored.

Canada has become the latest country following the UK and Australia to ban nanotechnology in organic food. Dag Falck, organic program manager at Nature’s Path Foods explains:

“Genetic engineering is a definable science: splicing genes into crops. With nanotechnology there are at least 1000 different applications, all unregulated with unknown risks.”

As the Canadian organic folks don’t seem to have got around to actually defining what nanotechnology is yet, one suspects that they are rather jumping the gun. It is rather confusing though as FoE, to their credit admit.

Homogenizing milk and grain milling create nanosized particles—milk molecules and wheat flour dust—but would not be considered products of nanotechnology….Nano Green Sciences, Inc. sells a nano-pesticide that they claim is “organic.” Other natural pesticides, such as pyrethrin and copper, could contain nanoparticles and nanosilver could be used to clean vegetables of bacteria.

I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on organic food regulation, but I was rather under the impression that ‘organic’ simply meant free from anything ‘artificial,’ as we discussed  when the UK Soil Association also banned all things nano. It would seem that the natural/man made division would catch all engineered nanomaterials anyway, so explicitly banning them is as much a waste of time as banning cloned sheep from being in organic pigeons or grasshoppers from dancing on the moon.

Abolish Science Now!

As an adjunct to my previous post, Science today reports on a new report from the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies (The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States) which seems to conclude that biotech crops are good for farmers and the environment, with the usual caveats and uncertainties of course.

So fourteen years after the press and environmental groups declared GMOs to be bad, we now find that they are, in general, quite good in both environmental and economic terms. It’s a reasonable time lag, and I think we’ll see something similar for nanotech, synthetic biology and most other emerging technologies. However the meme that GMO’s are bad is so well entrenched that it may take another ten years and a lot more science to reverse it.

And this gets to the nub of the issue between science and society. Any anti technology movement, from smashing up Spinning Jennies to ripping up GMO crops or disrupting nanotechnology meetings takes as long for scientific evidence to overcome as it does to win the peace in the Malay Peninsula or Iraq.

In the meantime, how many people have to die from preventable diseases such as vitamin deficiencies or malnutrition that science could have cured?

After ten years of nanotech scare stories I feel that we have a fairly balanced research agenda, with plenty of good science being backed up by excellent toxicology and risk management studies.

Since the UK’s new nanotechnology strategy was launched I have been either having a crash course in regenerative medicine or getting over a cold. In the meantime, my colleagues Andrew Maynard and Dexter Johnson have both taken a long hard look at the ‘strategy’ and found it wanting. No, I’m being kind, the general consensus is that it is total rubbish that makes the UK an international laughing stock. Why?

1. The entire strategy seems to have written by the kind of people who spend the first hour of a meeting explaining what to do in the event of an emergency, such as a leaky pen, and then don fluorescent jackets and hard hats to indemnify themselves the consequences of one of their number being hit by a meteorite. It’s all about public consultation, risk assessment and regulation, in fact anything that involves anything other than having meetings is excluded from the ‘strategy’.
2. The strategy seems to have been written by people too lazy to do any research. The evidence is damning as the report makes no reference to any of the previous UK nanotechnology strategy reports, and quotes entirely different numbers. Could it be that everyone on the comittee that produced this monstrosity was too dim to use Google, or simply too lazy?
3. The numbers just don’t add up. The report claims that “The global market in nano-enabled products is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2007 to $81 billion by 2015″ – a far cry from the also derided $2-3 trillion market numbers. I know that one of the organisations involved in this report spent a large amount of money for us to dig out the real numbers, and then apparently chucked it in a bin and grabbed the first thing they could find on the Internet instead. No wonder the UK has such a huge national debt!

I suspect the emphasis on talking rather than doing is because someone in BIS knows the true scale of the UK national debt and has realised that there won’t be any money available to implement anything anyway.  Let’s face it, in the six years since the RS report the entire UK nanotechnology strategy has involved the setting up of meetings, agencies, committees and public consultation so that we can worry about possible dangers and improve regulation. Meanwhile important areas, or indeed anything that works have been slashed, the UKs involvement in nanotechnology standards for example or the Nano & Me website.

Can we be absolutely clear? Spending six years calling for more discussion and setting up ever more steering groups to engage ever more stakeholders is not a strategy. Figuring out a way to move the excellent basic science in the UK into the economy would be, but this seem beyond the remit of this report.

Calling four government departments a bunch of dimwits probably won’t get us much work in the UK,  but the truth is that we don’t do any UK government consulting work. I was told by a senior civil servant at what was the Department for Trade and Industry back in 2002 that if they gave any work to Cientifica then the Institute of Nanotechnology would ‘go spare’ and as a result they were unable to work with or support either organisation. In the meantime we’ve developed strategies and dug out numbers for governments around the world, and despite being London based we have been roundly ignored by the UK Government who seem far more eager to promote anyone other than UK companies. Every UK nanotech report to date has excluded any data provided by UK companies. Even offers of free copies of our market research to government committees looking into various bits of nanotechnology provoke the same response as if we’d offered them a fresh dog turd wrapped in newspaper.

The real tragedy is that by publishing ridiculous documents like this it devalues the work of the entire science and business community. I know that there are some great people looking at nanotechnologies in BIS, in the TSB and of course Lord Drayson is no fool when it comes to science, but this seems to be a case where the whole is far, far less than the sum of its constituent parts.

My esteemed (and allegedly cute) colleague Dexter Johnson comments on a number of recent nanoparticle toxicity projects and wonders what is the point of them. I’ve often asked the same question (and been asked to leave the room as a result), but there does seem to be a weird academic bias towards reviews and public consultation and I think I know why.

On several occasions when I’ve been in a bar with eminent toxicologists they have admitted that there is absolutely no way that we could ever understand the toxicology of every kind of nanoparticle, and there is no point in trying. What you can do is draw broad conclusions, so that if we have a high aspect ratio structure such as a long carbon nanotube we know that it won’t be cleared by an alveolar macrophage etc, and then we usually get into a discussion about whether anyone is ever likely to inhale enough of the stuff to have a problem, given that we treat most nanomaterials with rather more caution than we did asbestos.

So for most toxicologists the choice is clear. Get paid to do some science or sit about for a bit?

When toxicologists ask for a global well funded long term study to allow the modelling of the interaction of various categories of nanomaterials with the environment, the funding agencies can only manage rustle up a few hundred thousand euros for a two or three year project. That gets you nowhere in understanding a new and rapidly emerging class of materials, so we just end up paying great scientists to sit on their backsides and browse the web for a few years.