Thursday, April 10, 2014
Scientific Ethics
In my Environmental Politics & Policy class today the topic was brought up of scientific ethics in relation to the giving of grants. I know we talked about this a bit in one class, but I think it is a really important topic. Almost the whole class was in agreement that politics should stay out of science, but what happens when scientist are granted federal funds for their research? Is this better than private industry conducting research? I think that this is a huge problem we are facing in the current day with the huge privatization of research. Science is one pure medium, where things are mostly black and white - your hypothesis was correct or it wasn't. That is why I am so drawn to science, as I like things in black and white as opposed to the gray world we live in, but is the science industry going gray? These are just some thoughts I had, that I am definitely going to research further into. Especially with the ever looming threat of global climate disruption, we need all the research we can going into the fields of energy and modeling - but is this research all up to par? Or is it representing what big industry wants to portray?
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I agree to a certain extent that politics should not have a heavy influence on Science. However, I think policy makers ought to have some say, like with funding for example. If we trust them to give money to the researchers that will make a positive change in the world, then I do not see much harm in policy makers having some influence on research in the sciences.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with your statement that science and politics should be separate. But I've learned over the years that politics is seldom separate from anything. However, with science receiving federal grants, I feel the intentions of scientists could be swayed. If certain experiments or projects received more money than others, then wouldn't it be a possibility that scientists would maybe start aiming their projects to encompass certain features similar to the projects with grants in order to achieve a grant themselves? If that's the case, then maybe we could use that to our advantage. Such as if the federal government gave grants to projects working on ways to help our global warming issues. Maybe more scientists would pay more attention to global warming solutions if they knew they would receive money to back them. I don't know if would work beyond theory, but it could be worth a try.
ReplyDeleteMuch as you might like things to be black and white, they are not, and science does a disservice to the world it studies when it tries to pretend that it is above complexity. Science is a human enterprise, and as such is subject to all the frailties and difficulties of human relations, human emotions, and human concerns. There is an upside to this -- we have a right to demand that science work for us, and be transparent and honest with us about its aims and limitations.
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