There are many people outside of the scientific community who will point at the possible motivations of scientists to explain their findings. Take an issue like global warming: environmentalists will often mention that there are only a few hold outs that say that global warming isn’t happening and they happen to be sponsored by oil companies. OTOH someone like Rush Limbaugh,for example, who feel that the scientist that fret about global warming are actually people actually advancing their own hidden “liberal” agendas.
In general, I think it is important to note that it takes money to research, even if it just means a stipend to live on. Whether the research is funded by government grants or corporations, it’s not hard to imagine that funding might be given to more politically or economically viable research.
Scientists often defend the resiliency of the scientific process, but I think it is fair to note that they have a condsiderable personal interest in doing so.
To boil it down: does the personal/political bias of scientists, or the bias of their sponsors, significantly impede the scientific process? Are there some fields more at risk than others?
“Significant” may be a troublesome word, but I hope that people will offer their own definition if they feel it’s important.
First up let me say I’m a scientist working on the Greehouse issue, though the accounting side rather than whether it’s happening, so I may be biased.
I will also happily admit that my funding, and indeed my entire job, is dependant on the strength of the trends in my observations. If my figures don’t bear out the hypothesis my work suddenly becomes irelevant to most of my funding bodies and it’s bye-bye job. That I aasume is the type of thing you’re worried about.
However I can assure you this does not affect the quality of my science simply because of the way that scientific method operates and the way that theories gain legitimacy.
My supervisor and several others had to fight long and hard to give any credibility at all to the theory that a lack of human intervention over huge areas of the world is resulting in significant amounts of carbon sequestration. As the theory gained acceptance it was acknowledged that further study in that was required to give reasonble figures on the global greenhouse budget. Had these people not been able to present a credible argument in the first place based on independantly verifiable research the theory would have died out like so many others. No funding from any source is likely to be forthcoming for a theory that has no basis and little chance of being legitimised, no matter what the theory may say. That is the first check that prevents funding bodies biasing scientific research.
Secondly for results to have any credence in the scientific community they must be published in peer-reviewed journals. To be published the work must meet at least the basic level of scientific method, meaning it must be independantly verifiable and/or replicable. Those who oppose any theory based on those results then have acces to all the information necessary to go out and check those findings and do further observational/experimental work. If they discover any obvious wholes in the tehory being expounded you can rest assured that they will find a publisher somewhere, and often in the same journal. If this occurs the original theory loses credibility. If sufficient detractors appear the theory will be rapidly relegated to the scrap heap.
Maybe someone will omit or even fabricate results to ensure continued funding, but this has less to do with bias than with greed. I find it doubtful that any funding body would accept this simply because it is too easy for reuslts to be checked, and if a fraud is discovered they stand to lose far more than if they had never attempted to legitimise their position through science.
So in practice, at least in my experience, it doesn’t matter where your funding is coming from. The results have to stand up to scruitiny by independant observers, often funded by my funders opposition, to meet any level of credibility. The amount of funding potentially available to someone who wants to further study the positive effects of smoking or the evidence against currnt theories on the impact of the greenhouse effect may be disproportionate, but that does not effect the quality of the science required for the results obtained to be accepted.
The other issue of course is the suppresion of results, as in the case of the tobacco companies’ suppression of results demonstrating that nicotine is addictive. I know from experience that results are suppressed on a regular basis due of number of factors, including sponsorship. This is certainly unscrupulous, but given that if the sponsor hadn’t provided the funding the research wouldn’t have been done at all then it really doesn’t upset the scientific process. Note that this is very different from doing the research and declaring that the results were inconclusive. One is an outright lie and can be easily disproved by further research, the other is the ommision of data that would never have been collected had funding not been provided.
Well, I did read about a study that showed a very strong correlation between the bias of the experimenters and the results. But considering that the scientists that did the study were convinced that they would find these results, I’m not sure how valid it was.
…
But seriously, this is a significant problem. Given that a lot of science is not the discovery of one conclusive result, but the accumulation of several inconclusive results into an aggregate that becomes conclusive, searching for evidence that supports your theory can lead to incorrect results. Say there are 100 different expirements you can do to test your theory, 20 of them would support your theory, 50 would oppose it, and 30 would not support or oppose it. If the scientific community were to magically know all this, they would be reluctant to accept your theory. But if all they know is that you tried 15 experiments, and all of them support your theory, then they might reach a diiferent conclusion. Also note that now companies will write non-disclosure agreements into their funding contracts, which means that if they like the results, they publish, and if they don’t they just bury it. To say “well, if it weren’t for their funding, the studies wouldn’t be done” misses the point. It’s as if there were a company that volunteers to fund a voting booth, but does so on the condition that they get to decide whether or not to reveal the results. Even assuming that without them the votes wouldn’t be counted, that doesn’t make it right.
Good point Ryan.
I’ve got to say though that while I support your voting booth analogy to a degree, the obvious difference between that and scientific results is that everyone, including the courts, accepts that the people have a right to have their voice heard on who governs them and all steps must be taken to ensure this occurs. I’m not sure the scientific community has a right, either moral or legal, to any results that they don’t collect themselves.
I can also see that if some results are selectively suppressed this could make things difficult, but the whole point of the scientific method is to never accept that the evidence uncovered is all the evidence. If we want to look at this from a legal viewpoint neither the prosecution nor the defence is required to present all facts so long as they don’t knowingly distort the facts known. It is up to each side to make a case. This doesn’t invalidate the verdict IMHO. If the jury (in the case of science presumably the public and scientific commnity) are unconvinced by the quantity or quality of either side’s argument they should err on the side of caution and return a ‘not-guilty’ verdict, ie things should not change, until the results are conclusive.
If we don’t trust scientists to this thats a saparate ussie, but if we do then I don’t see how funding upsets the science itself.
I don’t think that the suppression of results is the only way that a corporation can affect scientific study.
Consider the type of research being done.
The tobacco companies sponsored research, that probably would not have been funded by any other organization, that tried to prove that lung cancer was caused entirely by factors other than smoking. Because this research was funded, it was possible for them to create the illusion that there was some kind of “scientific controversy” when actually the majority of the scientific and medical community had long ago made up its mind.
We may think that the battle with tobacco is long over and that good science has won out. But the tobacco industry is still fighting second-hand smoke.
While I do believe that minority opinions should be respected in science, when they exist largely due to the funding by interested parties, I have to question their usefulness. I wonder how much time and energy was wasted proving over and over again that smoking can lead to lung cancer?
But back to suppression. Suppose that a pharmaceutical company discovers that some plant from the South American rainforest can cure cancer. Since plants can’t be patented(unless they were genetically engineered of course), the company decides to suppress that discovery and manufactures their own synthetic version of it. Since it’s a life saving drug, and they have the patent, they charge patients $100 a pill and some can afford it, some cannot.
Do we have a right to that suppressed research? I think so.
This seems like a completely unrelated issue. Who was fooled by this illusion?
If the scientific community then it failed before-hand failed becasue it had made its mind up without all the relevant data and we have a major problem. If we are going to do this then it matters little about bias in results because decisions are obviously made on something other than those results. The worth of anything coming from ‘the scientific community’ will be nil regardless of where the funding comes from.
If the public made its mind up without all the data then we have the same problem. They would do that no matter where the funding for scientific research comes from.
If the public was erroneously led to believe that their was a controversy then that is a completely separate issue. Who led them to believe this, why and should we censor people who try such things in the future? If someone is going to mislead the public then they can do that without funding real science. If the public is going to believe everyhthing they’re told without listening to the advice of experts (and yes we all kow they do) then how is the scientific process to blame for that, and how can a change in funding prevent it?
Are you implying that they don’t have a right to defend themselves?
Which is why the scientific method works. The opinions don’t matter and aren’t regarded as useful or otherwise. The data should be judged on its merits.
None. While pro-smoking proponents were able to cast doubt on results with logical arguments the anti-smoking proponents had to counter those arguments. If they hadn’t done this then their really was no reason to believe smoking was harmful. It wasn’t like the same research was performed agian and again to no benefit. Consider the other side. Starch was declared to be a high risk food for heart disease in the 1950s/60s… Do you consider the money spent on proving over and over again that it is in fact staurated that was the culprit wasted money? Thalidomide and DDT were both declared completely innocuous by scientific research. Was proving that they were dangerous wssted money? Science works because every time a theory is logically countered it must be reformulated or re-tested. If we don’t do this all we have is witchcraft.
If you want access to that information you need to spend around 100, 000 dollars a day sending scientists to Brazil, analysing the samples sent back and running clinical trials. If you said that such results had to be published then how would companies recoup such fantastic losses. The answer is they wouldn’t and the research would never be done, so no one would benefit. By what standard do you argue you have a right to all the intellectual property of everybody in the world. Or is the intellectual property of scientists different? Now if you’re arguing the morality of allowing patents on life-saving medication that’s another issue entirely. But to suggest that everyone doing anything creative should have tehir intellectual proerty rights stripped in ludicrous.
Of course I fail to see how witholding the information entirely in any way detracts from the value of the science in publication.
I hope this is not a double post, but I recieved an error message the last time I tried.
Gaspode,
What I’m proposing is that if a board of people in knowledgable in the field of medicine were deciding which projects would get funding, they would not fund the research that the tobacco companies were, because they would judge that, while the ideas were technically feasible, they were without scientific merit. Thus, a proposition that would have had died long ago if left to up to people who were genuinely interested in discovering the truth, was given an “artificial life” if you will.
I don’t think it is possible to apply the same kind of rigor of, say Mathematics, to medicine or biology. There are so many factors that everything cannot be logically proven to the last detail. If one found over and over again that smokers had higher rates of lung cancer and emphysema, you have some strong correlational evidence, but it doesn’t actually prove that the smoking caused the cancer or emphysema. It seems that the logical course of action would be to understand why there was a correlation rather than trying to find some other explanation. The tobacco companies were funding an irrational course of research that had little merit.
If you really have faith in the scientific process, then you don’t need an interested party battling the most likely explanation every step of the way. If the ideas had merit, they would stand up on their own.
Are you proposing that if the tobacco companies weren’t funding their research that the scientific community would have gone ahead with the wrong understanding?
You implied that the tobacco companies are defending themselves. It seems that you are attaching some signifigance to the lawyer=scientist analogy. If their proposals had scientific merit, I don’t see why they wouldn’t or could’t get funding elsewhere. Science should not be a “hired gun”.
I don’t think that the tobacco companies were "logically counter"ing the existing theories, they were illogically providing mere possibilities.
I find your notion of “intellectual property” to be a little bit broad. I believe that the knowlege that a plant cures cancer is not intellectual property even if money was spent to learn it. Understanding of the intrinsic properties of the world around us, is not intellectual property. However, the knowledge of how to manufacture the synthetic medicine is. And if you intend to profit from that knowledge you still have to release your research and share your knowledge.
Perhaps another tack will remove some of the moral implications of life saving medicine from my previous example. Consider that there are only so many resources of time and energy in the world. Only so many people get to be scientists and do research. Other people have to build houses, raise food,etc…
When a scientist has been paid to do research, a corporation is using a valuable resource. If the results of the scientists work are interesting and are not released, then the public and the scientific community have all lost something.
Imagine a corporation hiring the world’s greatest scientist to count grains of sand all day. If these scientists are not producing meaningful results, then the progress of science is being slowed.
ephedra
The problem with the idea of using a panel decide on all fundings (and such panels do exist, particularly for govt funding) is that they would, as you suggest “not fund the research” where “they would judge that, while the ideas were technically feasible, they were without scientific merit.”
Had this idea been in place over the past 100 years their would have been no funding given to the concepts of plate techtonics, heavier than air flight and a host of other very important breakthroughs that were deemed at the time to be technically feasible, they were without scientific merit.
Its dangerous IMHO to allow those in power to dictate what can and can not be researched. Those in power 120 years ago would undoubtedly have decided taht reasearching evolution was without scientific merit. That’s why the scientific process works. A theory’s merit is not based on what someone believes, but on the facts provided and the conclusions drawn. As I said in my OP the theory that forests and woodlands are a carbon sink was virtual heresy 20 years ago, certainly without merit. Now it’s almost universally accepted.
Relating it back to the OP of course the scientific process is not impeded by such extended life given to theories. It simply stengthens the case for the truth every time such a theory is tested and fails. Without testing scientific beleifs we can have no idea of their strength, and thus no way of judging how much we should use them to dictate peoples lives, as we have done with tobacco.
And that may be the case. Of course the rational reason why temperatures are rising today is beacause of a long-term global climate cycle. that’s been the reason the hundreds of other time it’s happened. You have some strong correlational evidence there. So should we really be funding peole to investigate some otehr explanation (the greenhouse effect)?
I’m just playing devils advocate their. I see your point, but the OP concerns whether such research reduces the effectivenes of the scientific process. I can’t see how it does. The results have to stand alone. If they support the case fro smoking then they achieved a major breakthrough. If they don’t they strengthen the case against.
Of course you don’t need them. But that doesn’t mean they’re doing any harm and theey’e certainly doing some good, no matter how small.
Not at all. Just that if they made the right decision they did so based on the facts they had at the time and no harm could be possibly done by having more facts. If they made the wrong decision then only good could come from having more facts. The ultimate funding source for those facts isn’t of any concern so long as any decision is based on fact, as it should be. Now if it’s based on personality and opinion the we have a serious problem that is unrelated to funding. Either you trust ‘the scientific community’ or you don’t. The funding bodies to make the process any less robust.
And that satement alone tells me that you have never worked in any scientific field. Worldwide there is a huge funding shortfall in all fields. You get funding based on the strength of your case true, but just because I don’t have strong case now doesn’t mean I can’t make one if I can get three years funding. How strong was Darwins’ case when he boarded “The beagle”? Non-existent. But becasue he was given the opportunity to research one of the most important scientific theories of our time was formulated. Simple opportunity is all that is required.
Be that as it may there is no evidence that being a hired gun damages the scientific process.
And if they were incapable of logically countering the existing theories then their case would fail. No harm done to the scientific process so long as ‘the scientific commuity’ bases it’s conclusions on the facts. If we don’t trust them to do that then it doesn’t matter where hte funding comes from, the conclusions will be flawed.
Regarding intellectual property. Knowledge is all that intellectuel property is. That’s about the only definition. Once something is written down or on tape or constructed in ho scale then I can copyright or patent it to prevent other people using it without compensating me. It is knowledge that constitutes intellectual property.
“Understanding of the intrinsic properties of the world around us” is the sum totality of science. It is neither more nor less than this. If you say that such is not intellectual property then you deny all scientists the right to such. How is the knowledge that the baba tree cures cancer any less intellectual property than the knowledge that it can be synthesised using the following recipe. How is it different from the knowledge that the secret ingredient in Coke is cough syrup? Effort was put into obtaining that knowledge and such effort must be compensated. I fail to see how knowledge of how to manufacture a medicine is intellectual property. Any time the recipe is followed the medicine will result, this is just an understanding of the world around us. Any time we go to a baba tree it will contain said chemical. What’s the difference?
That might have some validity if tehre weren’t an oversupply of scientists and an undersupply of funding. The world has so many pHD’s doing basic resaerch, so many degrees doing routine lab work and so many ADs working in reception that it isn’t funny.
The second question is why you believe this should only apply to scientists.
Try this on for size:There are only so many resources of time and energy in the world. Only so many people get to be carpenters and do research. Other people have to clean gutters, do research, raise food,etc…
When a carpenter has been paid to build a patio, a corporation is using a valuable resource. If the results of the carpenters work are interesting and are not made useable by the world at large, then the public and the carpentry community have all lost something. That’s true enough isn’t it
How about artists. Not evryone can be a painter so every single painting must be relaeased. they are not to be withheld. Do we apply it to cooks? All meals must be served even if disgusting. Or what about computer programmers? All code must be released.
I can’t understand why you choose to inflict this only on scientists. Dow e owe society more than a carpenter or a pastry chef?
What do you do for a living BTW?
This doesn’t slow scientific process at all.
If the work is science then it must involve more than counting sand grains. They may be measuring them to get figures for the average size shape and density (this has been done BTW). This then adds to our knowledge base. Science is advanced as a result. The problem is that you are assuming science is out to prove something. It’s not, it’s out to find out the facts. Any scientific results are meaningful. If the results are not meaningful then what was done was not science, it was art (or an excercise in futility, it’s hard to distinguish sometimes).
If they are only counting sand grains then it isn’t science. It’s just manual labour. It has no more relevance to a debate about privately funded science than it would do if the worlds greatest carpenters were counting the sand grains. Just becasue a scientist is doing it doesn’t make it science. I get paid to kill bugs from time to time. Does that make it science? Does it mean that it slows the progress of science because I don’t do science every waking moment?
Or are you implying that the world’s greatest scientists owes more to society than the worlds graetest unemployed bums, who may choose to do the same job for the same pay? And that because of this they are morally bound to accept only that work which advances science? Even if this were the case the source of funding is irrelevant. It is the fact that the work being enegaged in is not science that is the problem.
Gaspode It seems you are saying that it is OK, even more than that, responsible, for a scientist to withhold research and data that the Baba tree of Brazil will cure cancer. At least until the company that funded the research makes a reasonable return on its investment. Is this a correct distillation of your argument?
You also argue that “the source of the funding is irrelevant”, because science has been advanced. But Science has not been advanced, the scientist and his employer have been advanced. If a drug company funded the research, they would likely agree with you, and not disclose the research about the Baba tree. At least until it got a patent on the process to convert Baba juice or bark into a drug. And unless just rubbing the stuff on your skin isn’t the cure, THAN is the difference between publishing that “the bark of the Baba tree has properties that can cure cancer” and “by combining these chemicals in these proportions …”
However, if a university funded the research (assuming IT wasn’t drug company funded) it would seem more likely to publish extensive papers about this wonderful find. This would increase their prestige, and attract more research funding.
Plan Man
I won’t coment on responsible, but I can’t see how witholding results impededes the scientific process.
Facts observed? check
Theory put forward based on facts? check
Theory tested by rigorous sue of scientific method? check
Yeah, sure it’s OK to withold the data. The same way that it’s OK not to force people to donate all their income to charity. Either one will lead to the death of terminally ill people, but without any incentive the funds wouldn’t be available anyhow. Why does a scientific corporation have to abide by standards of morality we don’t hold ourselves too?
You appear to be confusing my argument that “the cause of science has been advanced even if research returns results counter to those desired”, which is a basic maxim of science, and my agrument that “It in no way upsets the scientific process if results are suppressed”. The two aren’t related. Suppressing results may not advance science, but doesn’t upset the scientific process.
Huh?
The OP isn’t concerned with whether publishing results is counter-productive or not for various institutions, only with whether funding from those institutions harms the scientific process.
Okay, so by your book, a researcher does 10 studies. 5 show the results he likes, 5 don’t. It’s okay for him to report only the first 5.
How is this different from him tossing the results he doesn’t like within a single study - say doing a drug test on 100 people, supressing the data on the 50 non-responders, and reporting only the 50 responders?
Especially since - given the way we interperet data - 1 out of 20 perfectly peformed studies will misinterperet noise as a real signal? If I get to supress the 19 studies that fail to reproduce an effect, I can publish a bullet proof, rock solid study showing that anything I want is true.
It’s interesting to me that you feel those in power 120 years ago might impede the scientific process (“dangerous” even), but somehow the people in power today are completely impotent. Isn’t money, especially research money, equivalent to power in the scientific world?
Maybe Darwin’s contemporaries wouldn’t have supported funding for his work, but it would have been out of skepticism not because considerable evidence had already been amassed against his theories.
My understanding of intellectual property is that it is a legal concept. I would mightily surpised if e=mc^2 was considered intellectual property in the legal sense.Coke’s “secret formula” is intellectual property, it would not have existed unless a human created it. AFAIK understanding that cola nuts contain caffeine is not intellectual property this is an intrinsic property of the cola nut.
I’m a programmer, glad you asked. Not disclosing someone’s research can be a lot more meaningful than building a deck. If all carpenters were working on the same house with their goal being to bring the house to highest level of completion possible (as opposed to simply making a living) then I think I would find it to be a suitable analogy to science. If one of the general contractors destroyed a perfectly good deck then I think the rest of the carpenters would be a little dismayed to see it lost.
I’m also an artist, although I don’t make a living at it. And I do think it is a loss if someone doesn’t show their paintings or play their music. It’s not just a loss for me, it’s a loss for them.
As a programmer I have done very little help advance the field of programming. Sure, I’ve helped some beginners learn a little quicker, but all in all, if I decided not to work it wouldn’t make a difference to the field.
I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on someone just because they are intellectually capable and have the training to be a scientist. I’m assuming that they are in that position at least partially because they are excited by discovery and learning and the chance to do something meaningful. If their main concern was to pay the bills, I imagine they would have chosen to be business majors in college (or programmers ;)).
Your point is taken on the shortage of scientific funding. But to me it seems as though this makes scientists less able to search for the truth and more likely to do what work they can even if it is not really science.
If everyone’s on the corporate payroll, who’s supposed to figure out what the facts are?
You seem to be making the case that if someone tries to present false information, withholds information, or deliberately tries to mislead the scientific process then it could only make theories stronger in defending these attempts. Yes in ideal conditions this might be true. But that assumes that someone has the time and energy to pay for research to disprove or counter these deliberate attempts.And why would we, as taxpayers or philanthopists, want to match the tobacco industry dollar for dollar?
I would compare the situation to weight training. If you provide resistance for you muscles they will adapt and become better at what you ask them to do. However, if you overtrain and provide too much resistance, you actually will make your body weaker and sick. The scientific process is practiced by imperfect people in imperfect societies and to propose that it is magically impervious to deliberate attempts to mislead it by the people we expect to practice it seems unlikely to me.
Yes if science is practiced as it should, it will eventually lay bare the what we can discover to be true. But that does not mean that roadblocks cannot be erected or the progress slowed. That is all that I’m proposing.
The difference is that as things stand the people in power have no authority to stop reasearch. Coco-Cola-Amatil can’t stop a hospital doing tumour research if they can find money. What you suggest is a board that handled all money that was going to be used for funding. If the board doesn’t like your research it won’t get done. You can’t go elsewhere for funding because there is no elsewhere. It’s like a situation where CCA holds all the reasearch funds, and hospitals can only get money from CCA. That would be exceedingly dangeorous.
No, as things stand today it would be because he had no case. There wasn’t even enough of a case to be sceptical of. He hadn’t really thought about it before he set sail. That is not to say his idea didn’t have merit, but he only developed the idea because of largely unrelated research. I’m using this to illustrate the potential losses caused by only funding research with a strong base.
My own work is based on a series of transects originally put in place to aid the grazing industry. It’s now being used for greenhouse research. The strength of the case for funding for the grazing industry may have been very low, but they provided the initail funds and got the project running for their own reasons. The research produced unexpected results and is now being used for somehting completely different. Had the grazing industry body been forced to pool its money with all the other money in the world, to be doled out by a panel of strangers, I think that research on how much trees stifle grass growth in Northern Australia would have been pretty low down the list. The research would not have been done and valuable science lost or delayed.
In a nutshell the current apparent worth of a project is a pretty poor guage of its future potential worth.
“intellectual property n. A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes.”
It’s quasi legal. All funding bodies and research institutions have intellectual property clauses these days that make it very clear that somehting like e=mc^2 is intellectual property. Any product made or data collected remains the product of the employer and cannot be made public without consent. It’s pretty standard to sign these things in reasearch work. That includes the peice of data/ideational property “Baba tree bark: Spectrographic analysis fraction 137: dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether” and the peice of data/ideational property “Mean reduction in tumour size all rats treated with dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether -98%” The courts have concluded that since that was only discovered because of time spent working for the company it is as much the company’s property as the formula of Coca-Cola. It can’t be patented perhaps, but coca-cola can’t actually patent the knowledge of the formula of Coke (though I assume it can patent the formula). It can and will sue the ass off any employee who makes it public without consent. You can’t stop someone else doing research on a Baba tree, you can’t stop them making the same chemical, and you may not be able to stop them finiding out that the research is worth doing, but you can sure as hell stop an employee from blabbing.
Which is a common misconception about scienctists. We are not all working on the same project unless that project is the advancement of human knowledge. But then in the same fuzzy way all carpenters are working on the advancement of human buildings and all programmers on the advancement of computer utilisation. Similarlt both carpenters and programmers are trying to bring their goals to the highest level of completeion possible aren’t they. And of course I’m not in it solely for a highre goal. If this weren’t the case no scientists would be working outside science. I know so many who are farmers, board memebers and managers that its not funny. Most scientists I know aim to be in management by the time they’re 50. I know I don’t want to be a strictly research scientist my entire life. We don’t have some noble goal at heart, though we all hopefully accept the legitimacy of the framework under hwich we work.
I’m sure programmers accept the legitimacy of binary too. Doesn’t mean they’re in it for some higher cause any more than any other group.
Whereat the anlogy fails. They may be upset, but if the sole reason the deck was constructed was because that carpenter was working on it, nobody else wanted it or deemed it necessary enough to build it themselves, then they wouldn’t really be that upset.
The second flaw in the analogy is that the deck isn’t being destroyed in front of their eyes. It’s being built far up in a secluded vally in the Canadian Rockies purchased solely for the construction of that deck. No one wanted it built, no one knew it was built and the builder, having decided he didn’t like it, walked away and left it to the dry rot. He never told anyone it was impossible to build a deck in the Rockies so they wouldn’t try it. He just left. What’s wrong with that.
That may be so, but many artists do decide never to show works. Some deliberately burn or slash canvasses of works they aren’t proud of. Are you saying they should be forced to exhibit these. How about all the out-takes at a recording session or film shoot? Is the studio morally obliged to make all those tapes avaialble to anyone who wants them? What about all the code you work on that isn’t used by your employer? Do you make copies of it all so that if anyone asks you can give it to them, even if this means that they can obtain the source code for existing applications?
Most scientists, including my mentor when I left Uni, would say the same thing. (It’s not true in his case, I would have been completely swamped without him, but he believes it. I suspect you may be the same.)
Nah. In my case it was because I wanted to work outdoors, I was naturally good at it, and the course was offered somehwhere where I could get free accomodation and so could afford to eat. The joy of discovery and meaning bit are important, but I could get as much of that in almost any other job. You’re probably making as many discoveries and as valuable to society as I am.
The problem here is if they are doing somehting that isn’t science, be it washing dishes or faulty research they are no longer scientists. The definition of a scientist is one who does science. The search for the truth is an inherent part of science. whether we search in the areas we’d like to is another issue. Hell I’m trained primarily as a Zoologist, but employed as a botabist/ecologist. That doesn’t mean I’m any less earchimng for the truth.
Like I said above, if we’re worried about scientists lieing that’s another issue altogether. Frauds do occur of course, but there are plenty of motivations aside from money. Because science has to be replicable frauds are hard to perpetuate. But if we don’t trust scientists or the scientific community not to take bribes (which is what it is when you compromise your duties for reward) then I don’t see that we could trust them with or without private funding. If I were going to accept a bribe to falsify results on lung tumours while working for CCA, then why wouldn’t I be just as likely to accept funding from the Australian Cancer Council to do the work, then take the bribe to falsify those results? The reward is surely higher and the risk the same? I suspect you’re confusing the issue of funding from private corporations with the separate issue of bribes from private corporations. Taking bribes and perpetrating fraud are already crimes and as such not allowed.
You’re confusing corruption/bribery/fraud with funding here. See above.
There also appears to be a double standard here.
What does a (privately funded) scientist do: Collects facts.
How are those facts used: To support arguments for or aginst held positions.
What is the penalty for fraudulently stating that facts are incorrect? Get your ass sued off.
What does a (privately funded)programmer do: Writes code facts.
How is those code used: To support or produce software applications.
What is the penalty for fraudulently stating that software is correct when it isn’t? Get your ass sued off.
So why are private programmers OK, but private scientists not?
Nope. If they do that they aren’t scientists, they’re frauds, and the funding wasn’t for science, it was for fraud. The OP was discussing funding of science affecting bias andd hence the scientific process, not the issuing of bribes affecting misrepresentaion of the facts and hence fraud. Your above statement couldn’t be true in any way I can think of even in ideal circumstances. We shouldn’t want to match the tobacco industry’s spending power, and so we don’t. We make fraud and misrepresenation a crime, launch class actions and sue their asses off when they use scientists to (ahem) misrepresent the truth. Same as we do when they use advertising executives or computer programmers to misrepresnt the truth.
Now if they’re telling the truth we don’t need to match them dollar for dollar if our case is unshakeable. And if it isn’t unshakeable we should either make the same commitment they do, not tell them what to do, or else not pretend our prohibitions are based on logic or science and admit they’re based on speculation, fear, religion or whatever. (Not that such reasons for legislation aren’t necessarily valid, but lets be honest about it and allow the tobacco companies a fair chance to defend themselves).
Attempting to scientifically support a theory can only bolster the datbase of known facts. that statement pre-supposes bribery on the part of all scientists accepting private funding.
Since you misinterpreted what I said this is no longer worth arguing. Nice analogy with weight training though. Of course the scientific process can’t deal with deliberate fraud. That’s not at issue. Neither can my computer, but no-one suggests the local programmer shouldn’t be privately funded because a private funding body might ask him to right code so they can make money by hacking into my machine via a trojan. Or they could ask him to right incomplete code with bugs to save time and money. We don’t oppose private funding, we just sue and/or prosecute him and his employer if they misrepresent themselves by saying the software contains nothing harmful, or that it worked every time they tested it and is based on sound logic.
Why make special rules for scientists?
You’re presupposing here that funding will inevitably lead to corruption. There’s no evidence that that is so. If you wanted to argue this line you should have posed the question “does the personal/political bias of scientists, or the bias of their sponsors, ultimately lead to significantly levels of corruption and bribery.” If we have corruption we no longer have a scientific process.
An analogy might be saying that allowing a capitalist economy reduces significantly the justness of the right to a fair trial. Clearly capitalism gives room for powerful corporatations and the possibilty of bribery. However that doesn’t mean that the right to trial isn’t still just, it simply may not always exist when we assume it does. Similarly independant funding doesn’t mean that the scientific process isn’t still being advanced, just that it may not always be the scientific process when we assume it is.
Perhaps another question is “does corruption and fraud lessen the value of the scientific process to society?” Now that’s an argument I could probably support. But private funding impeding the scientific process? Nah, only fraud can do that, and as I pointed out fraud isn’t logically more likely with independant researchers.
Gaspode,
There appears to be a slight misunderstanding. My reference to a panel of scientific peers was not a proposed solution to all the pecieved problems of science but a reference to different style of funding which I think would have been more appropriate in that particular case. I’m not saying that private corporations don’t have the right to hire scientists or that scientists don’t have the right to work with them.
This is a “strong” case that you are proposing in thinking that is my intention. Probably arising from the above misunderstanding. By saying that the corruption of science is not actually science you have made a careful definition that supports your argument, but to me is meaningless. Especially when this corruption can appear to the uninitiated a perfectly normal science, released by people with a Phd after their name.
I am pointing to some particular cases where problems have arisen from private funding, and postulating that it might aggregate into a larger problem in certain feilds of science today. In other words it may be significantly impacting the scientific process as per my OP.
Yes, exactly. IF they can find money. You have stated yourself that there is a shortage of this. If only private corporations with similar interests are funding scientists in a particular feild, who has the authority to contradict them? In the field of medical science, a multi-billion dollar industry, private funding probably far outstrips public funding. None of these corporations would be interested in telling us about the Baba tree. What else would they want to hide from us?
I will add, although I cannot support the argument personally, that some people feel that the FDA is actually a puppet of large pharmacuetical corporations and other interested parties. This body does have the authority to stop funding or even raid laboratories and seize results. While I haven’t investigated this enough to make an argument, given the influence that corporations can have on other bodies of the government, I won’t rule it out.
I wonder how things would play out if a scientist did release similar findings to the Baba tree. If the scientist was actually taken to court, I think we would see an outpouring of sympathy for that scientist. The media would love it, politicians would posture, and I think we would see some laws changed.
BTW, I’m interested on you take on the example in the OP. Do you feel that oil companies are using the results from their studies to skew public policy in their favor? I realize this is slightly off topic but due to your background I’m interested in your take.
Well we seem to be largely in agreement. Our biggest sticking point seems to be our definition of science. The reason why I’m applying such a tight usage of the term is that inherent in the definition of science is a requirement that all decision are based on fact and logic. If, as a result of bribery someone deliberately presents false data, and no-one bothers to verify such data then I’m happy to concede this will impede the scientific process. However as it relates ot the OP this all hinges on the asssumption that a scientist is more likely to accept a bribe from CCA while working for CCA than she is while working for the Australina Cancer Council. This is unfounded and to me illogical. If I were given to taking bribes I could make twice as much money by accepting a 50k salary from the ACC and a 50k bribe from CCA as I could by simply taking a 50k salary from CCA.
The reason why I used my strict definition of science in my previous posts was in response to your assertion that taking scientists away from ‘meaningful’ work or their area of expertise slows the scientific process. This isn’t so. So long as they are doing science the process isn’t slowed, and given an oversupply of scientists doing no science at all doesn’t slow the process significantly.
If we do assume significant corruption, and an inability to spot such, then I see no reason why we should have any special regard for science at all. Sciene then just becomes another profession much like medicine or computer programming. Scientists perform a service, get paid by their clients and from time to time get called upon to give evidence in court, as do MDs and programmers. If they misrepresent themselves in eitehr advertising or in court they are charged, fined or jailed. No problem. This however is an argument for whether “Significant corruption shold cause us to re-evaluate the societal value of science” and hinges on demonstrating significant corruption. It would also hinge on all corruption, not just funding, since as I stated above assuming funding causes corruption seems far-fetched to me.
I fully realise that and I wasn’t attempting to suggest that was the case. I’m simply attempting to demonstrate the unworkability, and indeed counterproductivity, of your sugestion for “a board of people knowledgable in the field of medicine… deciding which projects would get funding”. I’m not familiar enough with medical research to relate any anectdotes about serendipitous discoveries or establishment bias in medicine so I give you examples I am familiar with in ecology. But you can be certain that, humans being human, the same situations have arisen in medicine and having a funding panel would work against the cause of science just as much.
Belay that, I can think of an example though the name eludes me. The gentleman who discovered that washing one’s hands and changing one’s gown between cutting into festering corpses and performing surgery was a good thing. He was a laughingstock for many years. Had ‘a board of people knowledgable in the field of medicine (been) deciding which projects would get funding’ in his day we would have delayed this important discovery and lost countless lives. Also the discovery of penicillin, one of the most important discoveries in modern medicine, was the result of research in another fireld entirely. This demonstartes that the concept of a funding panel deciding all funding is counterproductive, dangerous and inappropriate in all cases IMHO.
The only cases you’ve demonstrated seem to be cases where scientific debate has raged over good science. This isn’t a problem and is in fact to be encouraged.
Debate over facts and valid research does indeed impact the scientific process, but only in a positive way.
No one has the authority to contradict them. That’s the whole point. We live in democracies with legal systems designed ostensibly to establish the truth. If we can’t establish the truth our legal system cannot work. As I stated above our legislatures can validly pass laws that impact on the livelihood of the tobacco industry or the computer industry based on speculation, fear, religion or whatever else they damn well like. But but lets be honest about it and not suggest that such decisions are based on logic when we don’t have sufficient authority to contradict the industries views. By being honest about this we allow the tobaco industry or the computer industry the right to defend themselves in court and in the eyes of the public by countering our actual reason case, not ones the case we don’t have. If our cause is just we will prevail and if their cause is just they will prevail. If we don’t accept this then the whole system’s up to shit and any amount of private funding of scientists isn’t going to change the situation.
Having said that you must remember that if only private corporations are prepared to invest money in establishing the truth then if they hadn’t invested that money, as they surely wouldn’t if their weren’t potential profit in it, then the reasearch would never have been done and we would have even fewer facts than we do now.
If ‘society’ is not prepared to spend as much money then either
a) it feel its case is very strong already, as in the case of the link between smoking and cancer,
b) It feels that the case is irrelevant and not worth arguing (as in the case for whether the Loch Ness Monster exists), in which case it won’t pass judgements that impact peoples lives based on the subject.
c)It feels it has a right to pass judgement based on something other than a strong factual/logical case. In this case no harm is done by private research because all science from both sides is ignored
Absolutely anything that would likely cost them money. This doesn’t impede the scientific process however because without private funding the reasearch by definition wouldn’t have been done and the results still wouldn’t be known to the public. So we have a balance sheet that reads:
With independant funding:
Knowledge of Baba tree chemistry publicly known:-Zip
Knowledge of anti cancer properties of dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether known to public :100%
Knowledge of side effects of dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether known to public :100%
Without independant funding:
Knowledge of Baba tree chemistry publicly known:-Zip
Knowledge of anti cancer properties of dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether known to public :Zip.
Knowledge of side effects of dihydropropylhexamine-7-ether known to public :Zilch
I can’t for the life of me see how we can argue that private funding has done anything other than advance scientific progress.
Well I can almost garauntee it doesn’t have the right to sop funding unless such funds are being used for already illegal purposes (human cloning, animal torture). Your constitution garauntees the right to freedom of information and freedom of association so any scientist can write and speak to whomever he damn well pleases about what he discovers. Unless a criminal act is being carried out your bill of rights also garauntees he can’t be stopped from doing the actual research. Sounds far fetched to me.
Having said that let me say that this is a completely separate issue. If private corporations are unduly influencing the fedaral government then there’s a term for that. Since it’s a fair bit they aren’t exerting this influence through funding Dub-ya’s PhD research then I don’t quite see what relevance this has. Unlesss your attempting to argue that since one government body has the right to stop some funding under due process of law then that justifies stopping all funding?
Well it’s happened before both here and in the US. Not over such a sensitive issue as an anti-cancer agent perhaps but in relation to industrial espionage cases. Little publicty and massive fines follwoed by civil suits were the result.
Of course all this is irrelevant to the argument. Even if you’re correct how does the fact that the public believe something affect the morality or justness of it. If you were a freelance programmer running your own small business would you consider it fair that you would have to release all uncopyrighted source codes to all applications? How could you make money and maintain control of your investment and product if that were the case? Yet you seem to be implying that a pharmaceutical company should be obliged to release the unpatented source of its applications.
And even more fundamental than that what effect would such an act have on scientific progress. Well the corporation obviously wouldn’t allocate any money to research. The money wouldn’t go into a big altruistic research grant pool, it would be spent on advertising and capitalisation. As a result the Baba tree would never be researched since public funds have obviously deemed it not worth researching and we would have neither the knowledge that the tree contained an anti-cancer agent, nor the agent in production nor the scientific results of the clinical trials undertaken prior to release. How then does such an act advance the cause of science?
Without a doubt. However as I said if our politicians are going to be given to making policy based on prejudice, fear, caution, morality or blinkered philistine pig ignorance, then the source of scientific funding is going to be irrelevant. If they’re going to try to justify such decsions based on science then the funding source is equally irrelevent. If they’re going to pretend to be justifying decisions based on science when in fact they are selectively using they science they like and disregarding the rest then the funding source is irrelevant. I can’t see any reason to believe they wouldn’t be equally able and likely to do all these things if there were no private funding.
Now if you’re asking if the companies are trying to sway public opinion the answer is still yes. My sense of justice says they, or the computer industry or even the tobacco industry has every right to use any means at their disposal to present their case to both the public and the courts. I would imagine that if you ran a business you would expect your company to have the same rights. So long as we insist on making policy that affects pople’s lives then we must insist equally strongly that the have the right to defend themselves with whatever means possible. If we insist on claiming such policy is based on fact and logic then these corporations must have the right to gather and present whatever facts and logic they can to support their case. I can’t see how that can do any harm to either our society, the people in it or the sum total opf human knowledge.
What I don’t support of course is the fraudulent presentation of incorrect information. But that is an unrelated issue.
Oh and I can tell you from personal experience that the greenhouse issue is being used by people, including the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace, with their own ‘liberal’ agenda, just as it is being used by people such as the Cattlemen’s Union, with their own conservative agenda. That’s not specualtion it’s fact and going to any appropriate website will demonstrate that it’s true. I can’t think of too many issues with the potential to cause so many cahnges that isn’t going to be used by various groups with various agenda. That’s not intended as a criticism of such groups of course. Their agenda are very clearly stated in their charters etc. Everyone goes to conferences etc. with name badges declaring their organisation and organisations are printed in all journals so it’s not as though this is a secret conspiracy. People are simply pushing their own interests and using science to defend those interests. I don’t see that as being a bad thing.
I guess I would like to also point out that the personal/political bias of the scientists or their sponsors was brought up in the OP. I don’t think that public (especially government) funded operations are immune to bias as well. Large corporations in the medical industry are just an easy target that came up quickly.
If, for instance, the board of scientific peers was appointed by politicians, I would expect problems to arise from that as well. I was simply trying to give the idea of a neutral, knowledgable body and what they would think of that research.
I would not expect serendipitous results to come from a company that hid results that it’s own product caused cancer. This is technically feasible, but so is winning the lottery.I don’t think even the tobacco companies believed in their research they were just buying time and getting a significant return on that investment.
I don’t think the tobbaco case was in essence a healthy debate. It was a protracted costly struggle that was largely unneccessary in terms of the knowledge gained.
There are a few somewhat famous cases where medical studies were stopped by the FDA. This was done under the pretense that the doctors were doing human studies without the FDA’s approval. At least one of the doctors said he had permission and the FDA must have had other motivations. He apparently had some documentation to back his story up. The FDA apparently never followed up by pressing charges on the “evidence” that they gathered (as you think they would if their case was strong) but they refused to give him back the documentation and supplies that they took. I can’t really argue the case, since I don’t know enough. Maybe someone else knows the story.
I’m not making any constructive suggestions about solving the percieved problem, I’m still simply trying to make the case that it exists.So I’m not trying to make the case for “stopping all funding.” If there are interested parties who don’t want to see research done that would contradict their research, and they have the power to stop that research, then I think that would constitute a problem to the scientific process.
This assumes that society is aware that there might be something to contradict. With smoking, it didn’t take a cancer specialist, to tell you that “Gee, inhaling smoke all day for years might cause health problems.” So the case won public support and was fought and won.
There is currently a lot of money to be made in producing chemicals and products that might cause cancer or environmental damage. There’s no money to be made in finding out that the products actually do. Yes, there are currently safeguards in place, and moral issues I don’t want to get bogged down with. My point is that it takes public money, either philanthropic or government to research these effects. Hence this requires public awareness. And if, as I had proposed, the only scientists in a particular field were employed by private corporations, who would make the public aware there was an issue to begin with?
Take DDT for example. Scientist voiced concerns about it in the 40’s soon after it’s use as a pesticide was discovered. But it wasn’t until public support was garnered for it in the 60’s that all kinds of research on the possible environmental effects were performed. Without this public support, I doubt the research money would have been forthcoming. Still for twenty years comparitively little work had been done to investigate the problem. And if the pesticide companies had adopted similar tactics to the tobacco companies I think they could have easily cast doubt on the evidence that had been gathered earlier.
What other chemicals are worthy of having a public movement against them but we are completely unaware of?
With the Baba tree I think the idea that finding a plant that cures cancer in it’s whole form is as much an acceptable risk as finding one that has none at all. The most likely case is that the plant does nothing, the second most is that is does a little, but that purified form of an active agent will be more effective (and consequently profitable), the least likely is that simply making a tea with the leaves will cure cancer. I don’t think that releasing results would stop these companies from doing research. I think they don’t release their results, in part, because nobody else will. Sharing knowlege inevitably increases the likelihood of actually acheiving a result. And if the result is positive, I think that the companies would likely still reap some profit from it. The drug companies are gambling big because they have the money to do so, or rather, patients in need of life saving medicine are willing to finance it.
To bring up a possible subject that takes the focus off of corporations, how about funding for the super-conducting super collider? This is an old issue now, but a clear indication of science needing political swing to do their research.
The money needed for research in many fields has been steadily growing. This increases the dependency of scientists on their funding sources, and the type of funding sources that are sustainable are becoming fewer. Maybe it could be argued that it is the cost of science that is affecting the scientific process and not the sources, but I haven’t seen that yet. I think that there are scientific practices that will lead to more discoveries down the road and have a broader impact on the realm of human knowledge than others. Maybe there is no cut and dried indication of how to determine what these are, but I think that a determined effort to do so will reap more rewards than simply representing a financial or political interest.
Your argument that the research would not be done without these sponsors holds weight under ideal conditions. But I think that a flood of low quality science, science that may not lie but only presents a partial truth, could adversely affect a field and make the jobs of those interested in really making the best possible explanation much harder.
This thread is really getting long-winded. I skipped most of the posts, but I am really just answering the OP.
I’ve worked as a scientist and engineer in a lot of different places, and there’s always been someone who will try to bend the facts to fit the theory in order to serve some political end.
I think this stems from the fact that while a scientist’s primary job is to uncover facts and create theories to explain those facts, there is also the need to make nonscientific judgments about what is worth pursuing, where research money should be spent, etc. People seem to have a hard time separating those activities from the science itself. It’s a short road from judging that money should be spent investigating Theory X and not Theory Y, to deciding that certain research results should be kept quiet because they might lead to negative repercussions.
I always find it challenging to try to separate the science from the auxiliary decision-making - it’s the central ethical dilemma for scientists and engineers. It may be why I find engineering more fun than pure science. Because nobody pays for engineering research unless it has a decent chance of generating income, engineers are confronted with ethical problems practically every day. We all have to work hard to keep the profession pure
When non-scientists make the decision on what will be studied, and what will not be studied, the direction of research is not scientific. That means that it will ignore evidence that does not serve the interest and intent of the directors. When scientists choose what will be studied those who have previously been successful in scientific study choose the direction. That means that the general paradigm will be explored, and the direction of scientific study will be limited to what is “reasonable” to those who believe that paradigm to be accurate.
But the world of humans is not necessarily served by either of those choices. Legalities, ethics, and morals do matter. They may not change the nature of the principles that science must explore, but they do affect the nature of the choices we make with regard to our own activities. Ignoring a possible discovery because it is too fundamentally easy, and effectively unpatentable (as if a diet heavy in cucumbers would cure AIDS) may not seem to violate any principle of science, but it would be a heinous thing to do. However much some biologists would like to think otherwise there are ethics, and legalities that override the importance in some things, such as fetal tissue research or human cloning. While it may not be the case that opinion changes the facts, the opinions of people do change the acceptability of scientists’ acts.
I don’t pretend that those non-science issues are always the most important to consider. But ignoring them is not going to provide useful support to the society that ultimately pays for the entire body of activity which comprises science. Studying human genetics is not necessary to society. It may benefit society, or it might provide the tools of its destruction, or it might alter the fundamental nature of the species itself. That means that the choice of what is researched effects everyone. Everyone should have a voice.
We won’t study everything, no matter what we do. We can choose not to study some things, or at least not to pay for them to be studied. Ultimately we all are paying for the work done, and in most cases we are paying directly in taxes for a large portion of it. If it is unscientific to direct it in such a way that it must follow the ethics of our people, so be it. We are not a science experiment, we are not constrained to follow the principles of science.
Tris
“People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.” ~ Lao Tzu ~
I definitely think that non-scientists explicitely guiding scientific research is the wrong way to go. In the book, “The Mathematical Experience” the authors delve into this subject and give it a very thogough treatment (a thorough treatment from mathematicians? Go figure! :p).
What concerns me here is that in the fields where scientific research is heading, it takes a wealth of scientific knowledge to even understand many of the issues. There will always, I think, be realms of investigation which can be explained to laymen and get them interested, and possibly even see why such research is necessary. But there is much research whose end goal and the practical reasons for doing so are a bit more diaphanous.
However, give human’s proclivity toward self-gratification, there should be some non-scientists guiding the research, restricting funds, etc etc. I am totally not sure how to impliment this scheme to my satisfaction.
