Thanks for this article. I found the following interesting:
....you’re unlikely to meet a researcher that supports shrinking the NIH budget, thinks less biomedical research would make the world a better place, and wants to pare back dead research branches, especially when that dead branch is their field. (Threatening the livelihoods of those in your field is a good way to get kicked out of it.)
What this says to me is that while we can count on scientists to do science, typically in an impressive manner, for very understandable human reasons we can’t count on them to reflect objectively on our relationship with science.
If true, this seems a real problem because of the great cultural authority which scientists have earned from their many technical accomplishments.
To illustrate, it’s natural for the public to look to, say, genetic engineering experts, for commentary on society’s relationship with genetic engineering. We in the public understandably reason, the degreed experts have spent years studying this subject at a high level, so they must be the best source of information on this topic. And so long as the focus is purely technical, this is true.
The problem here is that the most important questions are not purely technical. If we wish to know how to do genetic engineering, the experts are the place to look for leadership. But if we wish to know whether we should do genetic engineering, the technical experts can not be detached and objective because they have an enormous personal investment in the question being answered in the affirmative.
To return to biomedical research, the following has always interested me. This highly rational scientific enterprise spends billions to trillions of dollars trying to keep us alive, based on exactly no proof that life is better than death. I’m not objecting, I just find this relationship between faith and reason eternally fascinating.
The one thing we know for sure is that we’re all going to die. From that fact we then proceed to label death as being very bad, based on nothing other than completely uninformed wild speculation regarding the alternative to life. And then we stamp the entire faith based operation with an “APPROVED BY THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE” label.
Thanks for this article. I found the following interesting:
What this says to me is that while we can count on scientists to do science, typically in an impressive manner, for very understandable human reasons we can’t count on them to reflect objectively on our relationship with science.
If true, this seems a real problem because of the great cultural authority which scientists have earned from their many technical accomplishments.
To illustrate, it’s natural for the public to look to, say, genetic engineering experts, for commentary on society’s relationship with genetic engineering. We in the public understandably reason, the degreed experts have spent years studying this subject at a high level, so they must be the best source of information on this topic. And so long as the focus is purely technical, this is true.
The problem here is that the most important questions are not purely technical. If we wish to know how to do genetic engineering, the experts are the place to look for leadership. But if we wish to know whether we should do genetic engineering, the technical experts can not be detached and objective because they have an enormous personal investment in the question being answered in the affirmative.
To return to biomedical research, the following has always interested me. This highly rational scientific enterprise spends billions to trillions of dollars trying to keep us alive, based on exactly no proof that life is better than death. I’m not objecting, I just find this relationship between faith and reason eternally fascinating.
The one thing we know for sure is that we’re all going to die. From that fact we then proceed to label death as being very bad, based on nothing other than completely uninformed wild speculation regarding the alternative to life. And then we stamp the entire faith based operation with an “APPROVED BY THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE” label.
Not complaining. Just interested, that’s all.