In October 2026, Hong LIU, Research Fellow at the Fudan Development Institute, published an article taking as a case study the nearly forty-year journey of Francis HALZEN, winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, in turning the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from an obscure idea into reality, analyzing the long-term support mechanisms for frontier, non-consensus research. LIU pointed out that IceCube’s success was not a scientist’s lone gamble but the result of a multi-layered support system working in synergy: scholars already established in their original fields took a gradual transition path, leaving buffer space for high-risk exploration; universities did not place a one-off heavy bet, but progressively matched research resources, engineering capacity and position quotas as the project advanced, turning personal research interest into institutionalized organizational research capability; national funding agencies followed a “small-step validation, gradual scale-up” logic, using pilot experiments to verify core feasibility in stages and reduce the decision risk of frontier exploration; and long-term national planning of public research infrastructure provided indispensable underlying support. In light of China’s current research landscape, LIU proposed that while China has begun exploring dedicated funding mechanisms for non-consensus research, what matters more is effectively connecting external funding institutions with universities’ internal evaluation and resource allocation systems. A research system with genuine originality capability must not only reward already validated major achievements, but also preserve validation opportunities for frontier research whose value has yet to emerge, so that unfashionable research directions do not die prematurely before their value is realized.

Translated by FDDI

Full text in Chinese available at:

https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/1d/7d/c18965a793981/page.htm