Science Should Agitate

I have been thinking about the state of science recently. More accurately, I have, for some time, found myself returning to thinking about the state of science, and in the state of science, I have found little more than disappointment.

I’m not disappointed in scientists. In fact, quite accurately, the opposite is true. I consistently find myself, especially in the era of bully politics and violent rhetoric, in awe of scientists.

Scientists (and judges! Major props to judges on this site. We rock heavy with our judges.) are some of the only people fighting back. Not institutions. Not higher education as a whole. Not our specific University system. They’ve all largely remained silent and/or capitulated willfully. Rather, it’s individual scientists. Individual scientists fight. I love scientists.

What I am disappointed in is the system that we’ve allowed to come to dominate the field of academics. A system of financing science at the behest of industry, or through the government, at behest of industry. A system of dissemination of scientific findings, aka communicating science to the people, embedded into a profit driven model, prioritizing volume over quality and citation metrics over everything. A system of insulation: scientists talking back to scientists. A system where scientific exploration is maintained carefully within the bounds necessary to prevent any upheaval of the status quo. A system where prestigious job titles, high salaries, job security, comfort, and work life balance are dolled out as offerings to dull us and lull us into acceptance of the system as is. After all, academia is a pretty safe and comfortable life.

The easy anecdotal example is health care research. Do I have the numbers on me? No. Should I? Maybe. But regardless, it doesn’t take precise calculations to observe the overwhelming discrepancy in funding pharmaceuticals as compared to preventative medicine. Wouldn’t it be better if no one ever got a disease than it would be to allow them to get a disease and then sell them a medication to treat it? Yes. Undoubtably, yes. So why do we not? The answer is simple and, despite capitalists inclination towards extreme responses, is not really even conspiratorial. There is more money to be made in selling treatments to chronic disease conditions than there is in preventing them. So, subtly, corporate interests (and corporate interests masquerading as political interests) monopolize, legitimize, and manipulate scientific funding to ensure access to markets.

I think science has allowed itself to become complacent, even acquiescent. It’s bowed to the power of the hand that seeks to mold it toward its own interests.

But science, like journalism, by its nature isn’t complacent. Science refuses to acquiesce. Science refuses to serve the interests of dogma or of any force or power other than the scientific method itself: the roadmap to truth.

When science was birthed, it stood as a force against dogma and of tyrannical rule imposed for the enrichment and aggrandizement of a few.

Galileo Galilei. That should be our model. The Earth is not at the center of the universe. It simply is not. Even if that is the belief that a powerful institution projects to maintain its power over a population, even if questioning that belief challenges authority and brings risk of persecution, science stands tall, fearless.

We don’t do that anymore.

We’re told we need to be objective. That we need to leave the politics to the politicians. That we should recuse ourselves of the expression of philosophy or ideology, that we should stop at finding evidence, allowing others to interpret and determine how it will be applied to our social, economic, and political landscape.

We don’t agitate. We need to agitate.

First, we need to agitate against the system that we operate under and refuse to be subject to its bureaucratic dismantling of science. We need to find other ways to fund our work. We need to find other ways to communicate with the people. We need to embed ourselves within them again. We need to help people understand science. We need to make our discoveries understandable and learn how to communicate with people who aren’t experts in our field. We need to do all of this outside of the system as it stands. We need to remove ourselves from it. We need to build a system that serves science.

And we need to agitate.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about. Leave a comment. Let’s have a conversation.