"...one of the main reasons we continue to stick to this archaic ethos is to obtain funding."

What scientific idea is ready for retirement?

Each year a forum for the world's most brilliant minds asks one question. This year's drew responses from such names as Richard Dawkins, Ian McEwan and Alan Alda. Here, edge.org founder John Brockman explains how the question came into being and we pick some of the best responses

"Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] has provided the best answer. He was quoted in the press, noting: "[There are] two reasons. First, there's no other model with which to replace that poor mouse. Second, the FDA [the US Food and Drugs Administration] has created inertia because it continues to recognise these models as the gold standard for predicting the utility of drugs."

There is a third reason related more to the frailties of human nature. Too many eminent laboratories and illustrious researchers have devoted entire lives to studying malignant diseases in mouse models and they are the ones reviewing one another's grants and deciding where the NIH money [US government medical research funding] gets spent. They are not prepared to accept that mouse models are basically valueless for most of cancer therapeutics.

In the final analysis then, one of the main reasons we continue to stick to this archaic ethos is to obtain funding."