posted
I was curious if anyone had any opinions about the influence of politics on science and scientific research and whether or not you thought it was a good thing or a bad thing? (such as funding, biased/unbiased research)
I haven't really formed an opinion about it yet so I am curious as to what other people are thinking.
Posts: 306 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
The quest for government funding has drastically increased the amount of Junk Science out there. Instead of working on making a better future, junk-scientists adjust their conclusions to whatever will get them the most funding.
Further, turn a skeptical eye towards any science that's associated with an agenda. Especially environmental science and nutrition.
posted
By all means include weapons research - the instant you add agendas and biases to what should be a relatively unbiased and neutral evaluation process, it goes completely to hell.
The Crusader mobile artillery platform is a perfect example.
Which, granted, is not science per se, but it follows the same lines. And you can imagine how the parallels extend to funding of weapons research - pouring money into a propped up system versus a legitimate and viable one.
quote: I was curious if anyone had any opinions about the influence of politics on science and scientific research and whether or not you thought it was a good thing or a bad thing? (such as funding, biased/unbiased research)
I don't have an opinion, but I just wanted to say that I'm taking a class on this next semester and I'm really excited.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
(sigh). Politics and science. Science and politics. Welcome to my world of pain.
For information on this *fascinating* interplay, see the Bush Administration versus the Union of Concerned Scientists, AAAS, and any other science policy group worth its salt. There's alot out there these days.
Junk science is what you make it. In very rough terms, "real" or "pure" science is characterized by rigorous review by peers in your field of study. This means that when I have an idea and I want to test it by means of experiments, I publish the results of my experiments so that other people can replicate my experiments in thier own labs. This way, others can independently confirm, qualify or disprove my idea. The more my experiments are repeated with the same result, the more my idea is "fact."
Junk science is not just science with a wacky or controversial result, it's science that hasn't been tested properly. It's popular now to accuse a particular work of being junk science if it's sensational. As funding for basic science has been decreasing steadily for the last several years, I can see why scientists might want to emphasize more accessible parts of their work for public consumption.
Many, many academics receive federal grants. Having a grant from the government is not a necessary indicator of junk science. For the good stuff, review the better journals. I subscribe to Nature, and I also read Science and occasionally the Journal of the American Medical Association--they're basic, broad in subject matter, and reliable.
From my perspective, the most remarkable effect of science and politics recently is an upshoot in the amount of federal support for defense projects and defense-related projects, and a corresponding decrease in basic research (like environmental projects.http://www.ucsusa.org/news/positions.cfm?newsID=467) Universities are scrambling to find alternative sources of funding.
It might be helpful to refine your question somewhat to a particular arena, like science and politics in environmental policy.
I might have some perspective on your question, but I agree with the previous post that your question is a little too vague. Does politics influence scientific research? absolutely. The scientific community is a service community to the needs of the population at large.
Posts: 551 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I beg to differ. If so, why are we funding high-energy physics to the tune of several billion each year?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Political involvement in science almost always comes about with an agenda, it is the making of some practical thing that brings the big money grant. So while this may be bad or god, depending on the function of the thing and the intentions of the political machine involved, it is certain that more funding gets into the project this way, with tremendous collateral benifit.
In fact I would like to see the government more involved in overcoming barriers to entry into ultimately very profitable applications of science that could become industries that would pay the start-up money back many times over. This is a legitimate application of political power to overcome one of the shortcomings in capitalism. Of course the Japanese have been doing this for decades.
posted
For the self-amusement of physicists, KoM. Cuz keeping physicists self-amused is incredibly profitable when their amusement reaches the level of practical physicists and engineers. And cuz not providing the facilities for such amusement is very dangerous to the societies which produce folks with the aptitude to become physicists when there are other places where they will be welcomed.
Rather than derail the thread, post your own thread and I'll explain further.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:In fact I would like to see the government more involved in overcoming barriers to entry into ultimately very profitable applications of science that could become industries that would pay the start-up money back many times over. This is a legitimate application of political power to overcome one of the shortcomings in capitalism. Of course the Japanese have been doing this for decades.
The US has actually been pretty good at making grant-funded inventions available for commercialization. See the Bayh-Dole Act and related laws, passed in 1980-1986 or there abouts. Prior to the Bayh-Dole Act, intellectual property funded by government grants belonged to the federal government, and commercialization was very difficult. The Bayh-Dole Act allowed intellectual property developed at universities and non profit institutions during government funded research to be commercialized by the grantee institutions. This means if I work at Harvard, and I have a grant to study XYZ and I develop XYZ invention, Harvard can seek out companies to license and develop the XYZ invention and receive royalties on the sale of XYZ products that result. The umbrella term for the commercialization of university technology is "technology transfer."
Licensing university inventions and getting those royalties is not always so easy, though, for a number of reasons. First, universities generally do different types of research than companies. Universities seek to know, and companies seek to make a profit. Even when a university comes up with something that's useful to companies, there's alot of work that has to be done to the invention to make it marketable; most university inventions are what's called "early stage technology." Start up companies based on these types of inventions are not uncommon, but they don't usually succeed, for the same types of reasons.
Because government funding has become more concentrated on defense related applications, and on NIH funding, there's been a (apparently) corresponding fall in basic research. As a result, universities have been really pushing to use thier inventions to generate revenue by licensing them to companies.
The trend among NIH grants in particular, as I hear it, is to try to develop commercializable applications, and away from basic research.
While Japanese companies have definitely been traditionally stronger in terms of R & D, Japanese universities have not been in the technology transfer game. The Japanese department of education recently started a big push and distributed a lot of funding to allow a number of thier more prestigious universities to open technology transfer offices.
In my opinion, it doesn't do to push universities or institutions of higher learning, into the role of the company. Companies have no incentive to do basic research if universities leave thier traditional role behind.
Science and politics are always going to be intertwined. More funding, less funding, it doesn't matter. Scientists necessarily change the way we live and see ourselves.
posted
Pretty much all successful scientists have received government funding at some point, so all science is quite closely connected with government. Not all science is political. Pure research in physics/math and so on is so remote from real-life concerns that it really doesn't engage with politics.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Especially environmental science and nutrition.
Yeah, Uncle Sam went from preaching the four food groups in schools to the food pyramid to whatever it is now. Looks like dairy farmers and beef producers at one time had a lot to say about what was taught in schools.
quote:all science is quite closely connected with government.
And every year, government employees sit in judgment on every grant proposal, or continuation proposal. So long as scientists depend on federal grants, academic science will be intertwined with politics. Maybe not on the same order as stem cell research, but politics will always affect science nonetheless, because whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
I think you can also make an argument to support the idea that without federal funding, US science wouldn't be what it is.
Posts: 516 | Registered: Aug 2004
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