&quot;Jim Olson remembers being ridiculed. It was 1989 and he was defending his PhD thesis, and the bank of University of Michigan professors asked what his next goal would be. “If we can bring radioactivity into these tumours for PET scanning, I would love to find a way to bring light into the cancer so that surgeons can see it while they’re operating,” Olson told them. The professors chuckled. “Okay, Buck Rogers,” one of them heckled, “but what are you really going to do?”&quot;<p>So, as little as 25 years ago we still had a myopic view of technology. Anyone else feel like we&#x27;ve probably wasted a lot of valuable years?