I do not claim that scientists,
because they are scientists, are more honest or broadly educated than politicians.
But in the realm of science, the honesty system operates much more strongly and
rapidly than in the realm of politics, mainly because this system typically involves
anonymous review of scientific work before that work is made public, and it
does not involve public decision-making or voting by a diverse electorate. If
you are doing experiments on the sex life of some tiny worm and try to publish
your results, then an anonymous but well-educated scientist will scrutinize
your methods, including your experimental design, your statistical analysis,
your rationale for doing the project in the first place, your interpretations
of the results, the extent to which you have taken existing knowledge into
account, and even the quality of your writing. All this review does not
necessarily make you an honest person, but it does tend to pick up flaws in
your thinking and mistakes in your actions. But if you go to a cocktail party
filled with attorneys and elected city officials, the main question you are likely
to be asked about your research is: “Why is this kind of stuff important?” The
question really means: “Why are you spending time and money, maybe even tax
money, on this kind of activity, and why do you seem to be so interested in
sex?”
There may be a thousand good
reasons why you are studying the sex life of obscure worms, but these reasons
probably involve the fundamental nature of science itself. The worms could,
potentially, become a model system for the study of hormone action at the
cellular level, thus serving to help explain developmental anomalies in humans,
livestock, and companion animals. The worms might be extraordinarily beautiful
creatures under the microscope, thus quite attractive to students who in turn
could easily become internationally renowned scholars studying an important global
human affliction but who remember fondly their carefree undergrad days back in
the lab when all they had to talk about was worm sex. The worms’ reproductive
biology could easily shed light on the origin of sex itself, or the evolution
of pheromones, both subjects of enormous interest to the scientific community. Pheromone
action, as you might suspect, also could be of substantial interest to the
cosmetics industry. When a scientist hears that another scientist is studying
the sex life of obscure worms, then all of the possibilities mentioned in this
paragraph usually come to mind because scientists typically understand how
science itself works on a grand scale. But politicians, like their
constituencies, rarely get past the issues of time, money (especially tax
money), and sex, although sometimes, if not often, there is a hidden disdain
for people who would spend their lives studying microscopic creatures with no
immediate economic importance.
In our example of the worms, politicians’
focus on time, money, sex, and utility is not necessarily stupid, evil, or
dangerous, although it has the potential for being all three. In the previous paragraph,
I’ve actually revealed all the reasons why in order to remain economically
competitive in a technologically competitive world, a nation needs to have a
strong, healthy, broad, and active scientific enterprise. Flourishing scientific activity, sustained largely by curiosity about
the natural world, breeds scientists, models, new ways of studying nature, and
new applications of existing technology. Thus it is the human resources that are of prime
importance to a highly developed nation, not the discoveries themselves. Given
enough human resources engaged in research, techniques for studying heretofore
mysterious aspects of nature will be developed and the discoveries will be
made. Furthermore, breadth of research interest tends to produce transferable
technologies, a critical factor in sustaining a technology-based economy.
PIECES OF THE PLAINS, along with other Janovy e-books, is available on all e-readers.
No comments:
Post a Comment