The trouble with science is the amount of lying and cheating of scientists, especially in reporting their work. Revelations and expressions of ethical concern are becoming frequent. A second hurdle for good science is the conceit scientists can embody with regards the importance of what they believe they know. These words are written with regret because I respect the profession, its general dedication to finding the truth, to its sense of service to humanity. Unfortunately those qualities are not universal to the extent that truth suffers, and people's welfare, even lives, are endangered.
All those general readers who enjoy reading about science, whether the likes of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, or detailed articles in the press on the latest scientific work, are left with a deep sense of gratitude for the efforts of the scientists. But that history of science also laid bare the human weaknesses scientists show in what has always been a very competitive field. Now to the present.
From Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity (Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2013): "The demand for sexy results, combined with indifferent follow-up, means
that billions of dollars in worldwide resources devoted to finding and
developing remedies for the diseases that afflict us all is being thrown
down a rat hole. National Institutes of Health and the rest of the scientific community are just
now waking up to the realization that science has lost its way, and it
may take years to get back on the right path."
From a follow-up column: More on the crisis in research: Feynman on 'cargo cult science' (Los Angeles Times, October 28, 2013): "One suspects that [Caltech theoretical physicist Richard] Feynman, who died in 1988, would be appalled by the current standards of research publication, which critics say favor audacious claims instead of the painstaking, judicious marshaling of evidence he advocated. It's even more striking today to ponder his confidence in science's ability to weed out factitious or mistaken findings.
"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out," he told students. "Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.... And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."
And from the most exhaustive account of what's rotten in the scientific enterprise, Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting - To an alarming degree, it is not (The Economist, October 18, 2013):
"The governments of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, spent $59 billion on biomedical research in 2012, nearly double the figure in 2000. One of the justifications for this is that basic-science results provided by governments form the basis for private drug-development work. If companies cannot rely on academic research, that reasoning breaks down. When an official at America’s National Institutes of Health reckons, despairingly, that researchers would find it hard to reproduce at least three-quarters of all published biomedical findings, the public part of the process seems to have failed."
With headlines like these, the general public will be disappointed given the prestige in which they hold the scientific community. People are also increasingly fearful of scientific manipulations, and so the multiplying calls for detailed labelling of food products. For sure, prestige is based on integrity.
All those general readers who enjoy reading about science, whether the likes of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, or detailed articles in the press on the latest scientific work, are left with a deep sense of gratitude for the efforts of the scientists. But that history of science also laid bare the human weaknesses scientists show in what has always been a very competitive field. Now to the present.
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| The Economist |
From a follow-up column: More on the crisis in research: Feynman on 'cargo cult science' (Los Angeles Times, October 28, 2013): "One suspects that [Caltech theoretical physicist Richard] Feynman, who died in 1988, would be appalled by the current standards of research publication, which critics say favor audacious claims instead of the painstaking, judicious marshaling of evidence he advocated. It's even more striking today to ponder his confidence in science's ability to weed out factitious or mistaken findings.
"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out," he told students. "Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.... And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."
And from the most exhaustive account of what's rotten in the scientific enterprise, Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting - To an alarming degree, it is not (The Economist, October 18, 2013):
"The governments of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, spent $59 billion on biomedical research in 2012, nearly double the figure in 2000. One of the justifications for this is that basic-science results provided by governments form the basis for private drug-development work. If companies cannot rely on academic research, that reasoning breaks down. When an official at America’s National Institutes of Health reckons, despairingly, that researchers would find it hard to reproduce at least three-quarters of all published biomedical findings, the public part of the process seems to have failed."
With headlines like these, the general public will be disappointed given the prestige in which they hold the scientific community. People are also increasingly fearful of scientific manipulations, and so the multiplying calls for detailed labelling of food products. For sure, prestige is based on integrity.
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