We Live in Perilous Times for Science

[cleanhippie]

I feel grateful and privileged that the research I have done on memory in the past three decades has been honored for its contributions to science and human welfare. But of all of these awards, this one, in honor of scientific freedom and responsibility, has a special poignancy for me. I never set out to carry the banner for those glorious words freedom and responsibility; I was merely a scientist interested in the fallibility and malleability of memory—a subject that turned out to be central to the “repressed memory” moral panic that swept this nation in the 1980s and 1990s. If anyone had told me in advance that my scientific commitment to knowledge would make me the target of organized, relentless vitriol and harassment (not to mention expensive litigation), I might have laughed at them—“Memory? Who gets angry over different memories?”

Every now and then I’d find myself wondering: If I’d known this in advance, would I have made the same decisions? Would I have decided to do the same kind of research, to spend countless hours in courtrooms testifying for the falsely accused, to write endless articles in rejoinder to dubious but persistent clinical ideas?

--snip--

We live today in perilous times for science: conflicts of interest that taint research; pressures on scientists to cut corners to get fast results; a public culture that alternates between hostility to science and irrational expectations of what science can provide. If we as scientists want to preserve our freedom (and the welfare of others), now more than ever we have a responsibility.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/we_live_in_perilous_times_for_science/

[tgearfanatic234]

1. Good post

[truedelphi]

2. Thank you for this post and the links

I watch as a mob mentality descends on science.

On the one hand, the Big Corporations need to have a strrangle hold on the research laboratories, so that their products will be seen in the "right" light.

And we have people who examine only an issue's headlines, and then while using those headlines as the Truth on an issue, applaud "science" that is not science when it confirms those headlines.

The fact that the Lame Stream Media applauded a "scientific panel" that simply assembled a group of published articles on an issue, and counted up how many studies they had gathered had approved of the issue, vs. how many articles had disapproved of the issue, and then awarded the accolade of "Proof Positive that Issue X is Now Scientifically validated" made me want to cry and to puke.

By this process of reasoning, we here in California would still have MTBE in our gasoline, with our wells to be tainted, and more people than ever falling victim to ailments ranging from asthma to leukemia.

Luckily for us, Gov Davis cared more about the single study that his panel of experts brought to him, that had examined the issue of MTBE from many angles and concluded that its risks outweighed its benefits. He ignored the hunbdreds of studies, done by industry that showed that MTBE was totally safe.

[gtar100]

3. We must not forget the fate of Alexandria.

A great city and repository of knowledge destroyed by religious fears. We must not take for take for granted the notion that science will prevail. It could all be lost again if we allow ignorance to continue to grow.

[Igel]

4. Somehow it's mostly the same old thing.

Just got done telling my students about Brahe and Copernicus and Galileo. Brahe had a fairly large conflict of interest. Copernicus, Galileo ran into a certain dollop of hostility--nothing compared to what the author in the OP ran into, I'm sure. (Things were so much better then.)

One difference now is that scientists seem (to me, although I suspect I'm probably wrong) to have acquired a more prominent place in the decision-making process.

Science is often like religion: It's a bad thing to mix either into politics. Politics, policy-making, requires both a measure of flexibility and a measure of determinism.

Religion often lacks the necessary flexibility. It deals with absolutes of the sort that humans rarely can live up to.

Science lacks the necessary determinism. You need to have confidence that your findings are going to be long-term stable, you need to be confident that your findings aren't going to be overturned, that your findings don't have conflicts of interest.

When you're cited as saying we need X amount of water, that all cholesterol is bad for you, that this drug is safe or that this is the real cause of something bad *then* it turns out that the amount of water was a guess, not all cholesterol is bad for you, that many "safe" drugs aren't and that scientific findings are often either subject to being revised in the light of new data, it undermines science. Scientists can advocate, and often they'll advocate both sides of an issue; but they can't suppose to set themselves up as the final arbiters because that way lies the dissolution of any bond of trust between the public and scientists.

The problem is that science is fallible. It will always have conflicts of interest, bad results making for bad theory, incomplete knowledge. It gets better, we hope, but there's usually a margin of error. When advocating, pushing for a policy or law, scientists emphasize their rigor and want politicians and the public to simply say, "Yes, master." When they err, as is human, they then say, "Ah, well, that's the way it goes!" Humility at the beginning would go a long way.

When, in a democracy, the claim is that politicians must listen to scientists in imposing decisions on the majority because, well, the scientists are so much smarter, you've screwed the pooch. If that's the case, there should simply be experts to decide everything for us because we the demos are so incompetent; then we can dispense with the frivolity that democracy would have become and have a pure oligarchy.