Science can be political and self serving.
See, people have this warped view that science is this huge end-all-be-all.
And don’t get me wrong, science is great.
The formalized trial and error that it codifies (along with economic freedom) have led us to amazing advancements and prosperity.
But when governments only want to fund research that shows a certain thing…
When scientists bend data so get the answer they want…
When science is politicized to get votes…
Good-grief.
When people start saying things like “the science is settled” – I think: “Uh, I don’t think you know how science works.”
I have written about the ethics of this issue before.
This is nothing particular to science, of course – it’s just humans.
Maybe don’t hold it in such a hallowed place?
After I’d been there for a year, V and I sat down for one of our weekly meetings. I had grown to love these chats. V was not like other scientists I knew. He was soft-spoken and cared deeply about people and the clinical mission, and he often confessed to me that he wished he’d been a surgeon himself. Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths.
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)
