Fair warning: I am prone to ranting, both in person and in silico.
Nothing sets me off more than things that interfere with the progress of science. Religion, personal beliefs, and political views have no place in science, determining science funding or in administering medical treatment. Science and belief are like oil and vinegar. They just don’t mix, nor can one ever benefit from the other.
Creationists and proponents of intelligent design ? What right do they have to dictate which scientific facts (and facts they are) can or cannot be taught in public, secular schools? Don’t even get me started on the whole stem cell debate – there would be no debate if scientific research was truly divorced from the influence of religion.
Likewise, the opposition to the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, boggles my mind. Certain groups argue that administering the HPV vaccine to adolescents will contribute to their promiscuity. I have never heard anything so ridiculous in all my days. I am willing to take the risk of sounding morally superior in saying that parents offloading responsibility for their children’s behavior onto an injection seems absurd. Is the behavior of children not dependent on parents, upbringing and society, as opposed to their medical treatment? Why would any parent make a conscious choice to deny their daughter (or son) protection from a horrible disease?
Belief is the stick in the spokes of the science bicycle wheel. If we could all look at science for science’s sake, analyze the data and abstract ourselves from other undue influence, perhaps progress can be accelerated.
Rant over. Thank you for listening.
P.S. Please do not think that I am speaking as a representative of Nature. I am not. I am perfectly happy incriminating only myself.
“Religion, personal beliefs, and political views While I am not religious, I appreciate that religion is something that gives life meaning. And this has great value. We cannot really expect people to give it up lightly or to take decisions that appear to go against it.
Perhaps we should invest some energy into creating a non-religious, hope-filled support-structure to deal with the pointlessness of merely filling time (even with fun and interesting things) until we die, before expecting people to change? Perhaps someone has already done this, but it has not been made generally available or I am just blind to it? :)
...I clicked without previewing… eep.
The first paragraph should read:
“Religion, personal beliefs, and political views have no place in science”—Unfortunately, these things walk around with us, they don’t rest at home when we go off to work, and while they could be suppressed, wouldn’t this be a very basic (lying to one’s self) dishonesty?
While I am not religious… etc
Your “ranting” reminds me that I have some writing/ranting of my own to do – a bit on this particular subject as well. Thank you for bringing this up; the more discussion, the better. I still have regular conversations with well-informed people that still haven’t heard that a vaccine is available, despite the “tell someone” campaign. Getting the word out, through passionate discussion is the best way to defeat those out there that would suppress the science that is available to help others, no matter one’s beliefs.
Science is as much organized by belief and trust as are religions – in many ways we deceive ourselves as to how much we truly ‘know’.
Further comments illustrate how political, and in some cases ‘less than rational’ scientists must be to communicate their beliefs effectively. All human endeavor is limited to our desire for certainty amid contingency. The ‘purity’ of scientific method is just an alternative selling point to the divinity of the word of preacher.
With rare exceptions, the most powerful scientists are those who marry solid science with good communication/political judgement. The perfect experiment can only get you so far.
I very much agree with what you, Bronwen, and Steve have said. Life would be painfully dull and pointless if the only available fulfillment came in the form of a well-executed experiment. I think the point I was trying to make had more to do with forces external to academia that wind up dictating how science is conducted. I believe that faith and magic are necessary for science to work. However, this is not the same kind of faith that prevents the funding of most forms of stem cell research. That faith, while constructive in innumerable ways, can be destructive to the progress of science.
Melissa – !! That’s all I have to say. !!
Agreed. I will keep ranting about it at every available opportunity. And a few unavailable ones
I haven’t yet heard the argument that fibroblast reprogramming would not been discovered so soon if the use of human ES cell lines had not been discouraged by a ‘faith-led’ government policy?
No, science does not rest on faith There is of course personal input and imagination in science, but the whole point is that it isn’t a dogmatic practice as some religions are and especially nonsensical thingummijigy such as intelligent design..
I’ve read some more-logical objections to the HPV vaccine such as that is only works for up to five years, only protects you from two strains of the virus, the cervical cancer only accounts for small proportion of cancer cases in women and survival rate is quite high anyway, the company is in debth so they’re spending 2 dollars on marketing for each dollar spend on research for this vaccine…(source article)
I don’t know if these objections are true but I guess if one is to object they are more valid (if true) then, in my opinion, silly oppositions claiming it will promote promiscuity. In fact, recent research from Oxford suggests abstinence only sexual education programmes don’t work anyway, and yet the US government is spending loads of money on it and Church in other countries, e.g. Croatia is pushing for such programmes, although evidently wrong, to be introduced as part of the national curriculum… This is science vs religion confilct isn’t it?!
(Any opinions expressed below, whether implicit or explicit, are my own and not those of my employer.)
When the FDA was considering approving “Plan B” (the morning-after emergency contraceptive) for over the counter access, a number of groups made similar claims regarding promiscuity: Namely that making Plan B available OTC would increase the amount of unprotected intercourse that women have and/or increase the number of times they engage in intercourse. (See this NY Times article) A similar claim was made against advance provision of Plan B. Fortunately, there have been a number of clinical trials which counter exactly these claims:
Direct Access to Emergency Contraception Through Pharmacies and Effect on Unintended Pregnancy and STIs (JAMA, 2005)
Impact of Increased Access to Emergency Contraceptive Pills (Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2006)
Advance Provision of Emergency Contraception for Pregnancy Prevention: A Meta-Analysis (Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2007)
I assume we will see similar studies of the effect of HPV vaccination on adolescents’ sexual behavior in the future, if they haven’t already been published. Fortunately, the argument that providing the HPV vaccine will cause adolescent females to be more promiscuous is easily refutable, unlike some other “belief” arguments.