The Rightful Place Project Just another site 2009-02-09T12:24:21Z WordPress <![CDATA[Janet Stemwedel and Sprogs Say…]]> 2009-02-09T12:24:21Z 2009-02-09T12:24:21Z By now, you’re probably aware of the Rightful Place Project, which is collecting text, images, audio, and video from scientists, engineers, and others involved in conversations about science in response to the question, What is science’s rightful place?

I’m still thinking about my own response to this question. To help me think, I consulted with the Free-Ride offspring, and we recorded the audio of our conversation. If you don’t feel like downloading the MP3, the transcript of our conversation is below.

Read more from Adventures in Ethics and Science

<![CDATA[Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous Says…]]> 2009-01-29T12:08:37Z 2009-01-29T12:08:37Z In his post-inauguration speech, President Obama spoke of restoring science to it’s “rightful place”. Seed’s new ‘Rightful Place’ project asks the obvious follow-up: what is the rightful place of science? The fact that Seed’s initiative talks of ‘reviving science in America’ almost takes as a given that scientific thinking, and a respect for scientific results, should be a central plank of enlightened government. To the extent that Obama seems to be a fully-paid up member of what one of his predecessor’s minions once contemptuously referred to as the “reality-based community”, the new President seems to agree, and I can’t deny that I find this encouraging. But in some ways, I’m not convinced that we’re actually asking the right question here. I feel that it’s not so much a matter of us putting science in its rightful place, but letting science put us in ours, by forcing us to acknowledge some unpalatable truths about our world – and ourselves.





Read more from Highly Allochthonous

<![CDATA[Zuska of Thus Spake Zuska Says…]]> 2009-01-29T11:55:50Z 2009-01-29T11:55:50Z Perhaps you have noticed our newly redesigned front page, and on that page, a link to the Rightful Place Project. In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to restore science to its “rightful place”. Seed Media Group is starting a dialog in response, asking the question “What is science’s rightful place?”, through Seed Magazine and ScienceBlogs. Our benevolent overlordz have asked us to offer our thoughts in response to this question.








Read more from Thus Spake Zuska

<![CDATA[Greg Laden Says…]]> 2009-01-29T11:52:17Z 2009-01-29T11:52:17Z The rightful place of science is moving, never staying in one place, ever dancing and watching, on the always shifting sociopolitical landscape.

A team of white coated eggheads can solve any problem with enough science. We need to get rid of the Jews, and we don’t have enough bullets, so let’s get the eggheads to figure out a way to do that. We need to take the Americans out of the Pacific, but we have insufficient resources but a lot of pilots. Let’s get the engineers to come up with a one-way airplane. We need to get rid of the Nazis and Imperialist Japanese, and we hear the Eggheads have a bomb that will do just that. So let’s set them up in a project called Manhattan, which will be so amazing at solving this one problem that forever forward we will refer to similar projects as “Manhattan Projects.”

Later, we get better toasters, improved power stations, and automatic waffle irons, as a side effect of the science and engineering. When the war is over. But we look back and see that the scientists turned out to be a bit of a problem. The Industrial Revolution and its concomitant realizations of how the Universe Works have resulted in the H-bomb. Ooops.

Now the sky has turned black from the billowing smokestacks of Gary and other rusty industrial places. Lake Superior has turned red, and the Hudson River is on fire. Science is now environmentalism and regulation. And it works but it hurts, and the Right Wing begins a battle, to become a war, against the Men in the White Coats. Who are now starting, ever so slowly, to be joined by an increasing number of Women in White Coats.

So now science is political, a tool, too dangerous a thing to let the scientists just do whatever they want. The Left Wing sees science as dangerous because the physicists can destroy the world and the medicos have invaded, and now control, the temple of the body, and so on and so forth, and the Right Wing sees science as annoying and counter productive because rational thought is just not the same thing as, and often stands in the way of, Free Market Forces.

But this also means that we can’t just say “Oh, Egghead guys, what are the problems you see and how do we solve them?” So when climate change comes along it takes more than twenty years … an entire generation … to go from science understanding the basic problem, and the basic solution and no one listens, to a time when finally, science understands the basic problem and the basic solution and people listen. And this twenty years of Dark capped by the High Dark Ages of the last eight make people wake up and realize that the rightful place of science is at the table with a strong and respected voice. No one knows how long that will last.

The rightful place of science is at the bottom of your spine, as the start of that tingling sensation when you realize some “holy crap” fact of nature or for the first time understand some basic process. Everybody is walking around with strange folk concepts of how life works, and every now and then they are grabbed by a scientific theory and shaken by a scientific fact and realize that cold is not a thing or they first hear about endosymbiosis or they suddenly get what a “Black Box” is. The rightful place of science is in the middle of an emotional mental explosion of the “holy shit” moment.

But not everyone can experience these pleasures because many are made to feel guilty with such thoughts. Science is sacrilegious, anti religious, areligious. So what? People can adjust; people can hold more than one viewpoint in their tiny little brains. But the politics of religion are strong and hateful, so the rightful place of science is as a bulwark, a rampart, a big Monty Python style sledge hammer that whacks the Bishop who comes to tell us to pray instead of learn on the head so he becomes a cartoon accordion Bishop and springs away. Boing boing boing.

The rightful place of science is to sit nearby, always ready always being used, on the mahogany library table on the side of the room in every single academic discipline. Being reason.

The rightful place of science is to keep its little clay feet from being stuck in the mud or burned on the fire as it dances back and forth on the ever shifting sociopolitical landscape asking questions like “Is this my rightful place? … How about this place? … Oh, what about this place over here?” keeping the philosophers busy while waiting for the next opportunity to pull someone’s proverbial chestnuts out of the fire. Science knows it can never die, but it knows it can never be universally loved, yet it knows it can never be done without. So it spends a lot of time dancing and watching for burning chestnuts.

Read more from 0 <![CDATA[Orac of Respectful Insolence Says…]]> 2009-01-28T11:13:09Z 2009-01-28T11:13:09Z


If you’ve browsed the redesigned front page of ScienceBlogs, you’ll see that our benevolent ScienceBlogs Overlords at Seed Magazine have started a project that they have so humbly termed The Rightful Place Project: Reviving Science in America, which is described thusly:

In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of “a world connected by our own science and imagination.” He recently stated, “promoting science isn’t just about providing Resources–it’s about protecting free and open inquiry… It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient.” And in his inaugural address on January 20, President Obama cemented his commitment to this ethos and culture by vowing to “restore science to its rightful place.”

At Seed Media Group, we are firmly committed to President Obama’s vision and will work to make it a reality. To this end, we have launched a new initiative we’re calling The Rightful Place Project. We are inviting a national discussion around the President’s idea of a “rightful place” for science.

All this project involves, at least from a blog perspective, is answering a deceptively simple-sounding question: What is science’s rightful place?

Anyone can play, but, because I happen to have been part of the ScienceBlogs Collective for nearly three years now and I am nothing if not a loyal Borg–I mean ScienceBlogger–I thought I’d give it a whirl. I will admit one thing, though. I didn’t answer this right away because I wasn’t sure I wanted to. For one thing, any ideas for responses that I came up with sounded relentlessly pretentious. Yes, I realize that many will ask the question, ” So what? Who would be able to tell the difference?” Suffice it to say that I would. Another reason I may have procrastinated is because I hate going along with the crowd (well, too much). Finally, I wasn’t really sure what I could say that others hadn’t already said better in the few days I dithered.

But, hey, this is Orac we’re talking about. When dozens of bloggers write about a story before me, does that stop me? Hell, no! (Well, actually, sometimes it does.) Blogging is nothing if not a self-indulgent process, and obviously I have become the quintessential blogger. (Just look at the long, self-indulgent prelude to this post.) In any case, it takes an enormous ego to think that anyone gives a rodent’s posterior about what one writes day after day, and fortunately (or unfortunately) you, my loyal readers, have rewarded that ego with awards and nominations for awards; so you’re stuck with my pontifications indefinitely. Just think of the last two or three paragraphs as just one more self-indulgent (but hopefully sufficiently amusing that you haven’t already stopped reading) passage that I’ll edit out if I ever turn my blog into a book.

On to the answer to the great question of Life, the Universe, and Everything! (And this time it’s not forty-two.)

The first of my pontifications involves the question itself, “What is science’s rightful place?” Rightful place where? The answer to the question depends upon where, in what context. Policy-making? At first I assumed that’s what’s meant by the question, but it’s left open-ended. Perhaps it was intentional, but it was annoyingly so. After all, the role of science might vary depend on what area of policy-making, because different areas of policy have different levels of requirement for science. For example, deciding upon a director for the National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t really require much, if any, science. The second bit of confusion was what the heck the second part of the project meant, namely reviving science in America. In that, I’m totally with Isis; it’s an extraneous and rather depressing addition to a straightforward project, namely because I don’t know that science needs to be “revived.” The U.S. still has a healthy scientific endeavor, and the government is not the be-all and end-all of science. Unfortunately, the logo and the concept behind the Rightful Place Project seem to imply that it is, particularly given that President Obama’s statements about science were the inspiration for the project.


Now that I have that minor rant out of the way, I’ll try to answer the question more directly. Among all my fellow ScienceBloggers, several of whom are accomplished scientists in their own right, I do have a perspective that none of them have. Alone among ScienceBloggers, I’m the only clinician-scientist. It’s true that we have some budding clinician scientists, such as Jake and Mark, but thus far I’m the only one who is actually an independent investigator with NIH funding who does translational and clinical research. I have little doubt that Jake and Mark will develop into good clinician-scientists in their own right, but that will be years in the future given that they are both still in medical school.

So what does my perspective tell me? I don’t claim that it gives me any particularly brilliant insight, but it does bring to mind an analogy. Unless you’re a brand new reader who just happened upon this blog on a day when I felt like doing an EneMan post or a post about Holocaust deniers, you know that one of the overarching themes here is science-based medicine. Consider what science-based medicine means, and you will have a fairly good analogy for the role of science in government and society. It’s by no means a perfect analogy, but it’s pretty good.

Medicine is not a “pure” science. It can’t be. In fact, it’s a messy collaboration between doctor and patient constrained by limited resources and technology and clouded by often incomplete information. Sometimes the treatments that end up being chosen are not the best or most efficacious based on science. The reasons for this may be legion, but that does not mean science doesn’t have a huge role to play in medicine. Science, through basic investigations and then later through clinical trials, provides the groundwork for everything we do as physicians. It sets the guidelines. It tells us what works and what doesn’t, what is possible and what is probably not, what works better than something else, and what the relative risks of two courses of action are. What it doesn’t tell us is what we value–what we want.

Consider a case I frequently confront, that of early stage breast cancer. Consider the case of a woman with a small breast cancer, estrogen-receptor positive, with no evidence of spread to the lymph nodes under her arm or any place else. This would be a stage I tumor. Now consider the options after the tumor has been surgically excised. Once the tumor is excised, we offer various adjuvant therapies to try to reduce the risk of recurrence. Radiation therapy is very effective in reducing the rate of local recurrence; i.e., recurrence in the spot where the tumor was excised. The decision making process for that is not so difficult. However, consider the case of chemotherapy and antiestrogen therapy (usually Tamoxifen or, in the case of post-menopausal women, drugs called aromatase inhibitors are becoming more and more commonly used). The absolute benefit of chemotherapy is modest at best, on the order of a few percent increase at most in the chances of survival after five years, at the cost of considerable unpleasantness and the risk of complications. So what should a woman do? That depends upon what she values. Does she value her own life so much that will pay any price and bear any burden to increase her odds of survival by a couple of percent? Many women say yes. Indeed, there are surveys out there that indicate that most women would accept chemotherapy for even a 1% better chance of survival. Is that wrong? Is it irrational? No, it’s neither. Either decision could be correct, depending upon what the woman values.

The same could be said for antiestrogen therapy. In estrogen-responsive tumors, drugs like Tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors are the mainstay of adjuvant therapy and give at least as much bang for the buck as chemotherapy. Now consider a patient I took care of very early in my career. She underwent successful surgery for a stage I breast cancer and the recommended course of treatment was Tamoxifen for five years. However, she had really bad meonopausal symptoms on Tamoxifen: hot flashes, the whole lot of them. Dose adjustment was tried, but she ultimately decided that she did not want to take the Tamoxifen, despite a lot of cajoling from her medical oncologist. Was she wrong? No. She happened to have worse symptoms than most women on Tamoxifen and decided that enduring the symptoms simply weren’t worth the extra few percent chance of survival. Her decision, when you come down to it, was primarily a rational calculation of whether she viewed the potential benefit to be worth the cost. Indeed, we can generalize that to society as well. For example, if chemotherapy only produces a 2-3% absolute increase in survival in women with stage I breast cancer, do we pay for it, given that it is expensive and might prevent us from paying for other forms of care, such as preventative care. That is not a question that science can answer. It can only tell us the potential risks and benefits of each treatment; economics tells us how much each costs; and we have to decide how to allocate our limited health care resources.

Science should function in society and government much as it does when properly used in medicine. It cannot tell society what it values, but it can provide it with estimates of the likely outcomes of various courses between which society must choose. Take the example of second hand smoke. Science tells us that it increases the risk of heart and lung disease by a factor of approximately 1.3 in workers exposed to it eight or more hours a day. What we as a society do with that information depends upon what we value. Do we value the autonomy of the bar and restaurant owner more than the modestly increased risk of disease in nonsmokers who work in that owners’ bar or restaurant? Or do we value protecting workers from this risk more than the freedom of patrons to smoke and bar owners to choose to allow smoking in their bars? That is the political decision based on our values as a society. Libertarians argue that freedom of interference by government in a restaurant owner’s business trumps the risk smoking poses to workers as long as workers know about the risk and choose to accept it. proponents of smoking bans might say that workers should not be forced to make such a choice and that nonsmokers should not have to put up with the annoyance caused by a minority. Both are arguments based on what one believes and values. It’s a similar situation for anthropogenic global warming. Science can tell us it’s happening, how fast it’s happening, and what we might do to slow it down. It can also put error bars around all the estimates. What it cannot tell us is what to do about it. It can only give us options and the likely outcomes of such options based on what we know. We through our elected officials have to decide what, if anything, we will do about it.

Back in the 1990s, I was a huge fan of Babylon 5. I still am. For those of you not familiar with this particular science fiction show, in it the human race and many alien races found themselves caught in the middle of a conflict between two old and powerful races who were originally supposed to cooperate to watch over the younger races and guide their development. However, each had decided that its way was the best. To boil it all down, one race, the Vorlons, preferred order and duty as a strategy for development, while the other race, the Shadows, preferred chaos and struggle, in which the “fittest” would destroy other races and evolve into something better and stronger. One of the recurring incidents in the show is that the Vorlons would always ask humans, “Who are you?” and the Shadows would always ask them, “What do you want?”

Science can’t really answer either of those questions.

It can, however, help us as a society to decide both who we are and what we want. At its best, science is the trusted advisor that tells us the situation as accurately as humanly possible, based on the best humans have to offer in terms of inquisitiveness, intelligence, and creativity and informs us what the options are and what the likely outcome of choosing each option is. The choice after that is up to us.

(Looking back on that post that really was pretentious. Oh, well, it’s too late now; I don’t have time to write something different.)

Read more from Respectful Insolence

<![CDATA[Isis the Scientist Says…]]> 2009-01-28T11:02:46Z 2009-01-28T11:02:46Z If you’ve been browsing the new, redesigned, fancy-pants ScienceBlogs front page lately, you may have noticed the announcement for The Rightful Place Project. In his inaugural address, President Obama vowed to restore “science to its rightful place.” In response, The Seed Media Group, through SeedMagazine and ScienceBlogs, are looking to begin a dialog about how to do this by asking for responses to the following question:

What is science’s rightful place?

Earlier in the week, Dr. Isis and the rest of the Sciencebloggers received an email from the highest of high overlordz telling us inviting us to answer the question.

So last night Dr. Isis drew a bath, poured some wine, put on a little Aretha, and slipped under the bubbles to think about her answer to the question. She left the lid of her laptop open so that she could look at The Rightful Place Project’s site while she carefully crafted what would surely be a witty and thoughtful response. Sixty minutes later I realized that I had nothing but pruny fingers and “Ain’t No Way” stuck in my head to show for my efforts.

Pruny Finger.jpg

Figure 1: The only result of Dr. Isis’s thinking bath. Sorry it didn’t turn out better, President Obama. I really am.

So, I hopped out of the bath, dried myself off, made some tea, and kept staring at the site, hoping for a little inspiration. I realized after a bit that the reason I was having a hard time was that I was so distracted by the site’s graphic. Here it is below:


Figure 2: The Rightful Place Project

I realized that what I was so hung up on was the statement “Reviving Science in America.” I kept asking again and again, “What does this even mean? Reviving science?” I ran downstairs to my office, tripping over the dog in the process, and pulled my Random House dictionary off the shelf to look up “revive” and see exactly what we were needing to do to science. Here are the first entries in the definition of “revive,” when used with an object:

1. To activate, set in motion, or take up again; renew: to revive old feuds.
2. To restore to life or consciousness: We revived him with artificial respiration.
3. To put on or show (an old play or motion picture).
4. To bring back into notice, use, or currency: to revive a subject of discussion.
5. To make operative or valid again.
6. To reanimate (the spirit, heart, or a person)

These definitions bothered me, as they each seem to refer to something one does to something that is dead, outdated, or obsolete — as though I had been toiling away in some forgotten field that needs a makeover to “restore [it] to life” and make it functional again. That, pre-Obama, I had been working on science so arcane that it had become dust-covered and stagnant and desperately needed a renewal. I would argue that there is nothing wrong with science itself as an entity. Especially my science. My science is so hot and so fresh that it would blow your mind.

I am not sure that science is not adequately being shown or is not noticed. I think about the non-scientist readers of my blog that are interested in the life of this totally hot laboratory diva (the readers who are interested in the people that are spending their tax dollars on research) and the folks who regularly read Ed Yong and Rebecca Skloot for more frequent science content, and I know that the public is interested in scientific advances. Science is quite visible — more than it has ever been and the public has more access to investigators than at any point in the past. I think about the frequent discussion of green energy and therapeutic interventions, and I know that the public wants these things to become a reality — science is currently tremendously valid and I think many are confident in the ability of science to solve our current crises.

I continued to read down the page and found that the last definition intrigued me:

10. To recover from financial depression.

And if this is what was meant by the folks at Seed Media when they created the image, then they’ve already answered their question and I can get back to browsing pictures of shoes online. The problem with science is not the enthusiasm of the scientists or the public, or the innovativeness of the questions being asked, it the resources that are available to those that are asking the questions.

I believe that many young scientists are afraid of a career in academia — not because they don’t believe themselves capable of managing the research, but because they are afraid of running in the funding race. And they should be afraid. Many students are watching previously-funded PIs scramble for funding or lose it completely. Some students are worried about where their next paycheck will come from. Major research universities are postponing faculty searches. Of those I attended grad school with, only two of us are pursuing an academic career. Students are leaving academia because they are afraid of funding, and they should be. I have no doubt that the drop in the NIH payline has cause some talented people to drop out of academic science.

Some of the faculty that are affiliated with major research universities are leaving. A scientist that I have been acquainted with for years, a brilliant scientist with multiple papers in high impact journals, recently moved his lab to Singapore. And he’s not the only one. People that choose to remain in academia are changing the way they do business — I think, in general, people are more cautious about asking ambitious questions. Unfortunately, it’s often the riskiest experiments that yield the most provocative data.

So, how do we return science to its “rightful place?” Break us off a little scratch, Mr. President. Science has been been here for these last 8 years, living off rice and beans, selling plasma to try to pay the rent, ready to take off when the money starts flowing again. Science is ready when you are.

Now, you show me $250,000/year for five years and I will show you something amazing.

Read more from On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

<![CDATA[Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science Says…]]> 2009-01-27T10:42:51Z 2009-01-27T10:42:51Z Last week, President Obama stated in his inaugural address that he would “restore science to its rightful place.” ScienceBlogs has been quick to capitalise on his words by launching a new initiative called The Rightful Place Project. As an opening salvo, the Project is asking writers, bloggers and scientists from all over the world to answer this innocuous question:

What is science’s rightful place?











1) It’s BEHIND YOU!!!


Read more from Not Exactly Rocket Science

<![CDATA[Mike the Mad Biologist Says…]]> 2009-01-27T10:40:05Z 2009-01-27T10:40:05Z Our Benevolent Seed Overlords ask “What is science’s rightful place?” which refers to a line from Obama’s inaugural address where he vowed to “restore science to its rightful place.”
Since ScienceBlogling Jake discussed the importance of basing policy on evidence–as well as correctly recognizing that the method we use to solve problems does not shed much light on whether we should address those problems in the first place–I want to bring up one problem that science faces: it is, to a great extent, elitist.

Before all of the TEH SCIENTISMZ R EVUL!!! crowd gets all hot and bothered, what I mean is that scientific expertise is not easily accessible–there is a lot of training, experience, and study that go into making a competent scientist. Good intentions and will are not enough:

…many issues require detailed knowledge and specific skills. You can’t just get some ‘good folks’ together and build a light water reactor.

James Galbraith, in his recent book The Predator State described the problem as a erroneous conflation of consumerism and freedom (italics mine):

The concept of a freedom to shop has been extended, insidiously, from its origins in the realm of goods. It has reached, for instance, the realm of careers, where it plays even greater havoc with the normal use of words. In a “free” capitalist society, with private schools and universities able to admit whom they please and charge what the market will bear, the freedom to choose one’s profession becomes in part the freedom to become what one can afford to become. It is not the calling that does the choosing, in other words, but the person who chooses the calling he or she can pay for. The choice is free–because it’s mainly a matter of money. It depends only partly on talent, training, discipline or accomplishment of any kind; it does not depend on membership in any cultural elite. Money is, in this respect and from this perspective, a leveler–not a source of class distinctions but a way of breaking them down. The college dropout can become the country’s richest person and any charlatan a banker, business leader, or President of the United States. These are therefore the democratic professions, while those in mathematics or physical science that continue to govern themselves, or impose reasonably strict professional standards, are elitist. Money cannot buy an appointment in a physics department, and for this reason, physicists constitute a group whose public values are not entirely to be trusted.

For me, this explains a lot of disdain towards science from certain quarters (although rampant stupidity combined with religious fanaticism helps too). Scientific research is elitist*. So is the NBA. Most people can’t be like Mike (or Kobe, LeBron, or Tim Duncan), yet the NBA doesn’t receive accusations of ‘elitism’. Since most people don’t really understand how scientists reach the findings they do, scientific observations appear to be nothing more than pronouncements from upon high. Of course, most scientists don’t understand findings from other disciplines either, but, having used the scientific method and “strict professional standards” (hopefully) themselves, we trust the process.

The manifestations of this ersatz ‘populist’ definition of elitism appear in many different forms, from creationism to the “woo” that ScienceBlogling Orac and many others routinely decry. And let’s not forget global warming denialism. Suddenly, everyone is a self-proclaimed expert, even if he or she is astonishingly ignorant. As importantly, this idiot conception of elitism also transfers blame from the true elites–those who have disproportionate political and economic power–to ‘elites’ who have very little power (except over, perhaps, campus speech codes).

So, as a society, we must recognize that scientific expertise matters, and that when figuring out how to do something and indentifying basic phenomena (e.g., man-made global warming), it does trump the ‘politics of the gut.’ At the same, we, as scientists, must communicate our findings clearly so that all, not just a few, can use that information to fully participate in our democracy.

*So too, the practice of medicine, which probably explains why so many self-proclaimed experts (e.g., the anti-vaccinationists) abound.

Read more from Mike the Mad Biologist

<![CDATA[John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts Says…]]> 2009-01-26T13:48:02Z 2009-01-26T13:48:02Z It came as an email. Then it was on the Seed Bloggers Forum. Now it’s on my frigging Facebook – they really want me to answer this:

In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of “a world connected by our own science and imagination.” And on Tuesday, in his inaugural address, President Obama cemented his commitment to a new ethos and culture by vowing to “restore science to its rightful place.”

At Seed, we are firmly committed to President Obama’s vision and want to help make it a reality. We begin today by asking you, our friends and colleagues in science, and outside science, to respond to the President’s idea of a “rightful place” for science. What is science’s rightful place?

Asseverations below the fold…

To ask a HPS (History and Philosophy of Science) graduate this question is fraught. With confusions, difficulties, fine discriminations and general nitpicking. So I will try to stay as ordinary language as it is possible for me to do, and let my colleagues figure out what I mean in technical terms.

“The” role of science in society is something of a myth. To assert there is one, and only one, rightful place for any institution, from marriage to jurisprudence, is to overlook the dynamic nature of society as it evolves, and anyway, there’s a problem calling something “rightful”. According to God, or the US Constitution, or what? So in what follows I will talk instead about what roles science has previously had in which it was of most benefit to the overall social fabric. This is the best we can do – there’s no magic crystal ball that will tell us what will work in the future, as the number of imponderables is too high. Always in evolutionary processes like social evolution, or indeed the evolution of science itself, we can only say what worked in the past. David Hull has a nice slogan – evolution is like the Prussian military academies of the nineteenth century, which turn out officers admirably equipped to win the last war.

So what has been the better roles that science has played in society, and which, all things being equal and roughly the same as before, it should play a benign role again? I can think of two periods and domains in which science has been a relative benefit overall: medicine and communications, in the period of the post-Enlightenment (mostly the nineteenth century) and in the post-War era of the twentieth. Both of these are, of course, technologies, but they rely heavily on science. But from this we cannot conclude that the “rightful” place of science is in the preparation of new technologies. Governments in particular like to think this is the rightful place of science, but that is a bit like saying that the rightful place of agriculture is the contribution it makes to the nice taste one gets from candy.

Science is, above all other institutions, the way of knowing about the natural world, which increasingly is being seen to include the human, social, world as well. Aristotle started out his book Metaphysics with the optimistic statement “all by nature desire to know”, which isn’t true, but many people do, just because we are curious apes. The best that science is and does is when we investigate things without expectation that there will be an immediate, quantifiable, economic or social benefit; so-called “basic research”. Spinoffs are inevitable, because knowledge of the way things really behave is going to increase our abilities to do things rightly, and avoid doing things wrongly with all the attendant costs associated with mistakes (like thinking that unprotected levees will hold back a Category 5 hurricane surge), but that cannot be the reason to do science, as that way we allow our pre-judgements to bias our results. In other words, we get what we expect to get, and not what we should get.

Scientific advice to policy makers should be fair, unbiased and comprehensive, but that is an ideal outcome almost never realised, so instead what we need is for our political masters to know what real scientists are saying. When 99% of climatologists say anthropogenic global warming is real, that means 1% say it is open to doubt. The president must be advised honestly of that. Scientific advice is more than just “X is true” but rather “Many think X, but some think Y and Z is a possibility too”. And the politicians are going to have to do some intellectual work of their own. The rightful “place” of science is to get people thinking critically based on evidence for themselves.

I said that science has had periods and places of benign influence. It pays also to see where it has bad influences, where it is malign. Obviously, there are cases of Nazi science and the like, but these are as aberrant as the social conditions in which they occur, and do not generalise as well as denialists like Steve Fuller seem to think. Instead there is another malignancy – treating scientists and science like priests and doctrines. This is sometimes referred to as “scientism“, and it is the basis for most arguments that this or that scientific theory is a “religion“. Sure, scientific theories get appropriated for political and social agendas all the time – Lenin’s pamphlet “Scientific Socialism” is an example of that. But it doesn’t therefore reflect back on the nature of the theories themselves, an error that non-scientists often make.

So we should conclude that science will be best for all, based on our past experience, when we allow it to be un-pragmatic and not treat it like a dogma, either in policy making or in general life. That’s my view, anyway.

Read more from 0 <![CDATA[Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock Says…]]> 2009-01-26T13:45:39Z 2009-01-26T13:45:39Z

What is science’s rightful place?

In our heads, of course. All of our heads.

But Seed is asking, so let me elaborate briefly.

As I said before, science is not just active participation in research. Science is a mindset.

We are all born scientists, exploring the world around us and experimenting with it. When we grow up, we continue being scientists in our day-to-day lives.

If you walk into a room and flip a switch and the light does not come on, what do you do? I doubt that you throw yourself on the floor in fear, speaking in tongues, praying, blaming the Aliens or asking the Government to help you. You calmly go about dissecting the problem into pieces: is there electricity in the house? If not, did you pay the bill? If yes, should the fuse be flipped or replaced? If not, perhaps the light bulb burned out: replace and see what happens. If that does not work, perhaps replacing the socket will work. If not, checking the wiring may help. You go through the problem systematically, testing each element, until you find the problem and fix it. You do the same if water is dripping in your kitchen sink, or your car is running funny.

But when it comes to bigger problems that affect the broader society, some adults forget their inherent scientific mindset and let indoctrination and ideology take over. As the problems become more complex, and the science behind it more difficult to understand, other social influences tend to take precedence. See: global warming denialists, HIV/AIDS denialists, anti-vaccination crowd, Creationists of all stripes, New Age proponents, medical quackery believers, animal rightists, and so on. Faced with complexity that goes against the dogma received by parents, teachers, priests and media, people shut off their natural scientific mindset and go with what “feels” right to them, instead of with reality.

“I’m not a fan of facts. You see, the facts can change, but my opinion will never change, no matter what the facts are.” – Stephen Colbert

[Thanks to Tamara Lackey for the quote]

This, of course, translates into politics and policy. I may disagree with Obama on some things. I may not like some of the people he hired to work for him. But what I like, and what he said many times including in his inaugural address, is that he will use the scientific method in all policy decisions.

Identify the problem.

Gather all available empricial information about the way the world really works in respect to that problem.

Fund the additional research to come up with missing data if needed.

Come up with a rational plan to solve the problem.

Implement it, test it and monitor if it works as planned.

Modify if needed, until the problem is solved.

I hope that this approach spreads into the broader national psyche – making decisions from the head, not the gut. Basing policy on data, not emotions. I feel that Obama won primarily because of his pragmatism and rationality as he is so non-ideological (heck, I wish he was more ideological!). People are tired of policy based on wishful thinking and fairy tales.

If this happens, it will be much easier to defeat the anti-rationality movements and to teach the kids how to apply their natural scientific mindset to all aspects of their lives as they grow into adults.

It’s not just research. It’s not just specific science education. It is about making rational thinking the respectable norm, and emotion/ideology-based thinking a laughing-stock.

That’s the science’s rightful place.

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