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Truth, Ownership, and the Scientific Tradition
number6x writes "The Physics Today website has an article by Robert Laughlin titled "Truth, Ownership, and the Scientific tradition". The article deals with some recent blunders in the scientific community like the falsification of data at lucent covered here on slashdot. The article is mainly about the conflict between the free exchange of ideas that the scientific community needs to survive, and the demand for property ownership that commercial sponsors demand."
One interesting element about these three chaps is that when they had their great ideas there was no way to make money from it so no-one is interested. What we are talking about here are experimental scientists where there is a direct effect of their work. "Blue sky" scientists were less prone to these problems in the past because companies tended not to fund them. With the rise of "corporate universities" and corporate science the drive has been to be more accountable.
Einstein didn't get funding for his research 100 years ago, what would happen if the next Einstein comes along and demonstrates that cold fusion is possible, clean and safe... but is sponsored by Exxon ?
The corporatisation of science means the ethics of corporations now apply. Science will have an "Enron" scenario within the next few years.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I appreciate this man's writing, he is thorough and insightful. His statements about the science world give you an idea about the "empirical" knowledge going around in the scientific community today, some slightly false and some completely fabricated.
I agree with his opinion on scientists under stress, for a paid scientist is just like any other working individual; mindful of their family and bills. He has done an excellent job of humanizing the average Joe scientist.
At that, I literally clapped when I got to the part about physics. He said what I've been saying all along, Physics is the Open Source of the science community.
Keep posting articles from this man, whoever is reading, I would like to see more of his work.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
From the article: "For a research investment to be justified, it must produce value equal to or greater than that of the investment."
I find this extremely questionable. History is full of scientific discoveries and ideas which were not able to produce equal or greater value for long time. Can anyone enlighten me about the value produced by Einstein's research?
There you have it ``innovation'' == ``dishonesty''
Over to you, Microsoft ... :-)
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In the seventies, I was a graduate student in zoology. I thought I saw a distinct change in culture occurring.
On the one hand you had people typified by older zoologists, who were gentlemanly academic putterers, studying animals and publishing papers. Their ambitions seemed to be a full professorship, continuously funded grants, support for their graduate students, and a bit more lab space.
On the other hand you had people typified by younger molecular biologists, who were hard-driving, competitive, and occasionally arrogant. Some of them gave me the impression that commercial success was in the back of their minds--maybe not even far in the back.
I don't mean to suggest this was a zoology-versus-molecular-biology thing. It was more a change in the zeitgeist. During the years I was a grad student I was certain that I was seeing science becoming more and more competitive.
You could see the "methods" sections in papers becoming shorter and more perfunctory, for example. I was aware of at least some cases in which scientists guarded some of their techniques because they WANTED to be able to get results that others could not get.
As anyone who's read "The Double Helix" knows, competition in science was not new. It was, of course, hard to be sure, then and now, how much of this perception was accurate and how much was just my growing awareness of what had always been there.
Naturally, this was a frequent topic of spirited conversation.
I remember saying, "Well, IF my perceptions are correct, one of the things we should expect to see over the next decade or so is an increasing number of scandals involving faked data."
And I really think this is what we've seen.
(Of course I don't have numbers to back this up--faked data is not new, either).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Speaking as a physicist (well, astronomer) the past decade or so has seen the rise of biology in the public's eyes, and the flow of money to the life sciences. If your science is purely defined by public popularity, though, you'd better hope that the public stays interested in biology.
We haven't had the equivalent of a public relations disaster for biology yet, which would cause public opinion to turn against it. All you need is a biological Chernobyl and you'll be tarred with the same brush that physicists have had applied to them. Not that I'd want anything like that, God forbid.
Also, is the authour of the article a bit bitter? Yes, but he does not speak for all physicists.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like a larger grant for some of my research, but we can't always get what we want, and if I *needed* the money, then I should bloody well write a better grant the next time around. Shame on me, not shame on the biologists. My personal moan aside, I think that money in science is well spent, whatever field it is in. If the research is exciting and interesting, by and large it does get funded.
I think there's the relatively modern issue of corporate interests and how they affect the flow of ideas in a given subject, and it just so happens that biology is the science that is facing this at the moment.
Hurm. Time for coffee!
Dr Fish