Science! Oh it’s a wonderful thing is it not? Turning the imaginings of the past into present reality. Who would have thought videophones would actually exist one day, but not just that, they would fit in the palm of your hand, and you could use them without the aid of wires and things…It really is a marvel isn’t it!?
Well, yes but, let us not forget that we still have incurable diseases, poverty, famine, and war. And indeed, technological advancement has been of huge benefit to war. So let us not go giving blowjobs to scientists just yet, eh?
Here is the problem with science. Rather than grant monies being doled out to people performing the most worthwhile research, every single bit of funding comes with an agenda. That agenda is always to the detriment of actual scientific advancement and that is why we, as a human race, are being held back. You see, instead of having every able mind slaving away trying to cure cancer; a lot of able minds will be away in their top-of-the-range labs doing work funded by a women’s magazine on why men get Man-Flu. Think I’m joking about that - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8793301/Women-found-to-be-the-tougher-sex.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter - I am not joking about everything but it being funded by a women’s magazine.
Let’s fucking face it. I’ll make an admission now. I am a science student. Well, all being well. I can give you one bit of advice for free; as a scientist. There is NO FUCKING POINT studying the common cold virus. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH. Why? Because it mutates too quickly. If, perchance, we ever do invent a ‘cure’ for the common cold (which we probably won’t…but if) then it would be one of the most dangerous things mankind could do, because rhinovirus will not go away, and its next mutation may well kill ALL OF MANKIND! There is a precedent. A lot of the ‘superbugs’ you can catch in hospitals are so dangerous because they are mutated strains that have developed a resistance to antibiotics. So, leave the cold alone, let us have the scientist spent wasting time on this putting their time and energy into researching actually important stuff like, I don’t know, say the massive epidemic of HIV and AIDs in third world countries.
But, sadly, the funding for those sorts of projects comes from charities, and even then, the charities budgets are split between paying wages of staff, paying for existing projects and treatments, etc. etc. Actual research gets very little in the way of funding. And herein lies the issue.
Funding always comes from somewhere and that somewhere will always have an agenda. Sadly, science and agenda do not go hand in hand. The basic dogma of science is that everything is theory - Everything has the potential to be proven wrong. There is no bias in that system and any bias in scientific literature comes from one thing and one thing alone; Who funded it?
For example, the commonly held belief is that smoking is very bad for you. This is just a theory but, it is one that has a mass of evidence in its favour. However, research funded by tobacco companies, for instance, may have a different view. It may underplay links, it may even claim benefits. This is just a hypothetical example but I am sure if you check back in the literature you can find tobacco company funded research and check whether or not my hypothetical is true.
This is something that has to stop. Scientific advancement should have no agenda but the betterment of mankind. One obvious, controversial field for example would be genetically modified crops. Research funded by companies with an Anti-GM agenda will be biased in their favour; research funded by companies with a Pro-GM agenda will be biased in their favour and somewhere in the middle the truth is being obscured as a result. Science should always be unbiased, and have NO agenda whatsoever. As a scientist-in-training I have always held the belief that I know nothing. That I know absolutely nothing about what I am researching and thus, the results are the results. There is no point to prove. There is no agenda. There is just experimentation, and data at the end of it to be analysed.
If every scientific study were to be carried out with this level of objectivity; and if the market driven economy were to support it, advancement would flourish. Unfortunately, as it is, all we are going to get is bullshit stories telling us one week how tomatoes help skin and the following week how make your skin worse. Instead of a cure for cancer you’re going to get another pointless piece of research about why women are better than men or men better than women. Rather than have any REAL discovery, all we are going to have is endless newspaper dross making scientists look like nothing but boffin pranksters in labcoats.
When you next read a story about a nonsense piece of research. Don’t giggle and think it’s funny. Ask quite why your relatives are still dying of cancer while the finest researching minds the world has to offer are being made to devote their time to such bullshit. Write a letter to the newspaper, website, or agency that promoted that story and tell them you are ashamed that they are publishing such nonsense and not helping fund research into real issues. And ask your politicians quite why private corporations are being allowed to fund such useless research when there are still REAL ills in this world waiting for a eureka moment.
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