A few weeks ago, one of my students stayed after we were done with the day's activities to ask me some questions. She had caught hold rightly of the impression that I don't think much of most scientists. I spend time during the first or second lab period of every section instilling a healthy dose of skepticism into them about science, scientists, and the scientific method, and she wanted some advice per se.
That particular week, I had handed them back the workbooks and pointed out a particularly poignant way in which a student, novice that he is in science, worded his conclusion. At the end, he noted, "We accept it for now", a concession that given the small sample size and limited means of measure it could hardly be extrapolated to be the rule in every case on every scale under every condition, and I wanted them to see it done correctly.
Much of science is ego. Everyone wants to publish this or that and win fame and fortune and accolades. In the process however this very attitude makes of us all enemies and discourages cooperation and collaboration since we basically descend to the state at which we pursue cutthroat competition in a hasty effort to beat others to the punch. Such is the sentiment expressed by James Watson, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Structure of DNA, in this statement from his own account of the aforementioned endeavor:
This man recently lost his Nobel Prize for a "racially insensitive remark". What he actually said was this about the African race:
We have built a societal norm on sameness because that's what we want it to be. We don't want pain or differences or struggle. We want to be the same, regardless of the truth. In her novel "The Giver", Lois Lowry addresses that this choice to ablate the obvious fact of the matter is to do the greatest injustice intelligent beings can do to one another- lie. All the claims are lies, and scientists, who themselves excel thereat, complicit in that campaign ignore the truth in order to avoid pain.
Fact of the matter is that the truth is sometimes painful. Just because a man has a PhD or an MD doesn't make him smarter than you. Just because he's published papers doesn't mean he's right. After all, Francis and Pauling thought genes were made of proteins and not DNA.
Scientists have an agenda- they want to be right, even if they're dead wrong. Do you want that kind of a physician caring for you- one who'd rather think he's right because we awarded him high marks or one who really is right because he paid the price for greatness? Dr. Watson is a brave man. In this way at least, he is to us a Giver.
That particular week, I had handed them back the workbooks and pointed out a particularly poignant way in which a student, novice that he is in science, worded his conclusion. At the end, he noted, "We accept it for now", a concession that given the small sample size and limited means of measure it could hardly be extrapolated to be the rule in every case on every scale under every condition, and I wanted them to see it done correctly.
Much of science is ego. Everyone wants to publish this or that and win fame and fortune and accolades. In the process however this very attitude makes of us all enemies and discourages cooperation and collaboration since we basically descend to the state at which we pursue cutthroat competition in a hasty effort to beat others to the punch. Such is the sentiment expressed by James Watson, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Structure of DNA, in this statement from his own account of the aforementioned endeavor:
A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull but also just stupid.
This man recently lost his Nobel Prize for a "racially insensitive remark". What he actually said was this about the African race:
"All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"
We have built a societal norm on sameness because that's what we want it to be. We don't want pain or differences or struggle. We want to be the same, regardless of the truth. In her novel "The Giver", Lois Lowry addresses that this choice to ablate the obvious fact of the matter is to do the greatest injustice intelligent beings can do to one another- lie. All the claims are lies, and scientists, who themselves excel thereat, complicit in that campaign ignore the truth in order to avoid pain.
Fact of the matter is that the truth is sometimes painful. Just because a man has a PhD or an MD doesn't make him smarter than you. Just because he's published papers doesn't mean he's right. After all, Francis and Pauling thought genes were made of proteins and not DNA.
Scientists have an agenda- they want to be right, even if they're dead wrong. Do you want that kind of a physician caring for you- one who'd rather think he's right because we awarded him high marks or one who really is right because he paid the price for greatness? Dr. Watson is a brave man. In this way at least, he is to us a Giver.
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