What's the most significant force acting against science?
Heather Buschman
Monday, 01 September 2008 19:06 UTC
Seed Magazine recently ran a science writing contest that asked: What is the most significant force acting against science in society today? How can it be overcome?
The deadline has passed, but I’ve been thinking about these questions for a while now. A few ideas that first popped into my head include some pretty obvious ones…
- Lack of openness and communication to the public
- Poor early education systems
- Politics
- Poor job prospects
- Questionable ethics
What do you think? And how can it be overcome???
Updated 01 September 2008 19:07 UTC
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Replies
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To focus on the first issue Heather touched on, unfortunately, I think it’s not just a matter of lack of communication with the public, but a lack of accessibility of science. In essence, science is its own social barrier because it is inherently so incredibly technical. It alienates most of the general public by the very nature that it is complicated. It is, to even very intelligent people, mostly incomprehensible to anyone outside of the field. Honestly, when I go home and start talking about proteins and gene expression, I know I sound like I’m speaking Martian to most of my family. We scientists have our own jargon, full of acronyms and shorthand—not to mention the weird science humor that creates the names of many proteins (Frizzled? Sonic hedgehog?!).
Now, many other scientific fields (engineering, internet technology, etc) are also chock full of jargon and complex concepts, but I submit that the general public has a better grasp of these concepts than of biology/chemistry/etc because most people use electronic gadgets and technology every day (not to mention the younger generations are becoming even more proficient in electronics and the internet than we are).
Of course we all utilize biological processes in our bodies every day, but for the most part an everyday citizen really only becomes interested in the details of life science when it hits home—when a family member is diagnosed with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, or someone’s child is born with a rare genetic disorder. It seems to me that for the most part, science really only interests those interested in science.
To overcome this, there needs to be an increase in accessibility of science. I think exhibits such as the Body Worlds show, although controversial, were interesting to the general public and likely piqued their interest in biology. But do those people then get interested in science and will they choose science as a career…? Probably not, because they will soon find out that the politics in this country are making the funding situation in science downright dismal, which makes for very poor job prospects…
In sum, public events that bring science into the community might help this accessibility issue. And perhaps if knowledgeable scientists continue to go into the fields of science writing and communication, we’ll be on the right track to showing the public that science isn’t incomprehensible, and it is relevant in everyone’s daily life. And this, in turn, might help the funding situation and job prospects if research becomes a general social priority, up there with education and taxes.
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Michael Nestor, a Nature Network blogger, answered this question in a recent post called The REAL threat to scientific progress. He believes that scientists need to spend more time speaking directly to the public and the media needs to provide a better forum to discuss real science (as opposed to sound bytes). In his own words,
“We need scientists who won’t dismiss and alienate the layman by publishing books with inflammatory titles like The God Delusion, but who will get out and engage the children and the adults alike, in a non-confrontational manner. If you show them respect, they will be more likely to think about your arguments.”
I agree that this is an important approach to promoting science and to helping the public make more informed decisions about evolution vs. creationism, stem cell research, etc.
Along these same lines, Nature Network has set a challenge to get a senior scientist blogging.
As Michael Nestor put it, “We too can be a real threat to scientific progress.”
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What is the most significant force acting against science in society today?
This probably would be attributed to money one way or another like most things are.
Too many people are stifled in their abilities to CONTRIBUTE due to the fact they must have money to survive.
Therefore their work which they believe to have merit is forced into submission unless one is lucky enough to be in a position of authority.“Help the funding situation and job prospects if research becomes a general social priority, up there with education and taxes”
“This time element is essential.
The investigator may be made to dwell in a garret , he may be forced to
live on crusts and wear dilapidated clothes , he may be deprived of social
recognition , but if he has time , he can steadfastly devote himself
to research.
Take away his free time and he is utterly destroyed as a contributor to knowledge.”Most work in the science or biology fields seem to be either government or profit oriented endeavors.
Non-profits as the name connotes also comes down to money.
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