During my drive yesterday, I listened to a radio program that considered the effects of the NASA Challenger disaster on the nation's psyche. I remembered seeing the news about that when I was 9; it had that sense of loss felt across the nation that was similar to what people felt as the Twin Towers came crashing down. (Before all the feelings of vengeance became a national obsession.) We run so quickly from the pain of loss. We fill our minds with other things, and many of those things can cause greater destruction. Sometimes, the damage is felt so far into the future that we don't even notice the flow of causality.
The guest on the radio show was pointing out how the Challenger shock led to a shattering of confidence in science. Instead of placing the focus on the factors that caused the NASA crew to be neglectful, the public learned to distrust science as a whole. This got me thinking about the field of science and what has happened to that trust in science.
Not only have we compartmentalized science into "questions it can answer" (technology) and "questions that are off-limits," (morality, spirituality, social systems) but the public has also grown weary from the number of conflicting findings, particularly in medical science. Carbs are bad, then they're good. Herbal supplements will prevent cancer, but they also do nothing significant! Anti-depressants will improve your mood, but maybe they are no better than exercise, or they have the unfortunate consequence of making you diabetic. Doctors are informed by sexy sales reps at lavish dinners, and that's the prescription you get.
I abandoned my graduate studies in part because of the "business of science." In the same way that businesses have usurped power from government lawmakers by making them slaves to the funding sources, scientific research is, likewise, guided by funding sources. If I want to study project X, but it has no pot of gold at the end, the research will not move forward. By contrast, a research project that has a lot of "grant potential" will be pursued. Researchers have to make a living too, and they don't want to just scrape by. In one of my courses, the professor often canceled classes because he had to attend meetings with companies like Merck. This practice became routine, and it was unsettling because how was I going to get the education I needed if the professors were too busy chasing after grants?
Academic journals do not make it any easier. They want to publish stories that are exciting. In other words, they want publicity; they need headlines! Let's say you research the benefit of standing on your head and you find it is helpful to stave off Alzheimer's. I am skeptical, so I want to duplicate your research to confirm your findings. First, I have to overcome the grant problem (who's going to fund this project since it's already been done?) and then I have to find a journal who will publish essentially the same research (that's old news to them, and won't help with readership or subscriptions). So, the public is spending thousands of hours on their heads believing it will help them, but it may not. We don't know because we didn't provide the money to find out. And this is a mild example. There are many more extreme cases, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, where deleterious effects are not fairly represented or understood, and the cost of the medications is extremely high (big profit$ for the pharma companies).
People are justified in their distrust of the business of science because, like all business, the goal is to maximize profit, not further humanity's well being. But, the business of science needs to be differentiated from the true process of science, the scientific method.
I once told my professor that science is the pursuit of truth, and he countered rather smugly, "No, it's about convincing people what the truth is." That was my personal Challenger disaster moment, and it broke my heart. I wanted to be a researcher because I wanted to learn about the world, not as it "should be" to conform to someone's ego or someone's financial interests. I just wanted to learn.
Since the profit motive has infiltrated our culture so pervasively, leading to unremitting distrust, we are all called upon to be "activists" to correct this error. Trust is an edifice upon which we can build a healthy society. Lies lead to degradation, not only of society at large, but of our interpersonal relationships (the problem with so many "pyramid scheme" businesses), and make us less healthy and happy. Let's start with trust and then we can get back to science to help us all create a better world.
The guest on the radio show was pointing out how the Challenger shock led to a shattering of confidence in science. Instead of placing the focus on the factors that caused the NASA crew to be neglectful, the public learned to distrust science as a whole. This got me thinking about the field of science and what has happened to that trust in science.
Not only have we compartmentalized science into "questions it can answer" (technology) and "questions that are off-limits," (morality, spirituality, social systems) but the public has also grown weary from the number of conflicting findings, particularly in medical science. Carbs are bad, then they're good. Herbal supplements will prevent cancer, but they also do nothing significant! Anti-depressants will improve your mood, but maybe they are no better than exercise, or they have the unfortunate consequence of making you diabetic. Doctors are informed by sexy sales reps at lavish dinners, and that's the prescription you get.
I abandoned my graduate studies in part because of the "business of science." In the same way that businesses have usurped power from government lawmakers by making them slaves to the funding sources, scientific research is, likewise, guided by funding sources. If I want to study project X, but it has no pot of gold at the end, the research will not move forward. By contrast, a research project that has a lot of "grant potential" will be pursued. Researchers have to make a living too, and they don't want to just scrape by. In one of my courses, the professor often canceled classes because he had to attend meetings with companies like Merck. This practice became routine, and it was unsettling because how was I going to get the education I needed if the professors were too busy chasing after grants?
Academic journals do not make it any easier. They want to publish stories that are exciting. In other words, they want publicity; they need headlines! Let's say you research the benefit of standing on your head and you find it is helpful to stave off Alzheimer's. I am skeptical, so I want to duplicate your research to confirm your findings. First, I have to overcome the grant problem (who's going to fund this project since it's already been done?) and then I have to find a journal who will publish essentially the same research (that's old news to them, and won't help with readership or subscriptions). So, the public is spending thousands of hours on their heads believing it will help them, but it may not. We don't know because we didn't provide the money to find out. And this is a mild example. There are many more extreme cases, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, where deleterious effects are not fairly represented or understood, and the cost of the medications is extremely high (big profit$ for the pharma companies).
People are justified in their distrust of the business of science because, like all business, the goal is to maximize profit, not further humanity's well being. But, the business of science needs to be differentiated from the true process of science, the scientific method.
I once told my professor that science is the pursuit of truth, and he countered rather smugly, "No, it's about convincing people what the truth is." That was my personal Challenger disaster moment, and it broke my heart. I wanted to be a researcher because I wanted to learn about the world, not as it "should be" to conform to someone's ego or someone's financial interests. I just wanted to learn.
Since the profit motive has infiltrated our culture so pervasively, leading to unremitting distrust, we are all called upon to be "activists" to correct this error. Trust is an edifice upon which we can build a healthy society. Lies lead to degradation, not only of society at large, but of our interpersonal relationships (the problem with so many "pyramid scheme" businesses), and make us less healthy and happy. Let's start with trust and then we can get back to science to help us all create a better world.
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