Science for Hire

An article in The Economist discussing the myriad problems which modern research science is facing: incompetence, broken methodology, even outright fraud. But at the heart of it all is the same old culprit: money.

People who pay for science, though, do not seem seized by a desire for improvement in this area. Helga Nowotny, president of the European Research Council, says proposals for replication studies “in all likelihood would be turned down” because of the agency’s focus on pioneering work. James Ulvestad, who heads the division of astronomical sciences at America’s National Science Foundation, says the independent “merit panels” that make grant decisions “tend not to put research that seeks to reproduce previous results at or near the top of their priority lists”.

The new and shiny idea gets the money, in other words. Replicating experiments -- the very core of the scientific method -- gets short shrift. The result is a yo-yo of contradictory research. How many times in the last fifty years has eating eggs gone from bad to good and back again? Five? Ten? More?

Scientists prefer steak over hamburger just like everybody else. But while a businessman has avenues to acquire funding for his filet which do not necessarily violate ethical principles, scientists typically have very few such options. They are dependent upon grants and benefactors. Just as Renaissance artists were tied to the whims of their patrons, modern research science is all too often a tool of politicians, bureaucrats within the academic system, or economic interests who are long on profit margins and short on ethics, (I'm looking at you, Big Pharma).

I find it interesting that the article did not even touch on the most error-ridden, over-funded, and fraud-prone of modern scientific endeavors: climate change. Even in non-journal publications, it seems, money speaks louder than truth.