Restoring Science

Many who work in research implicitly agree that the truth will set you free. And in one way or another this has driven a lot of us to science. But it's counterintuitive - the truth being thought to be objective and all - that the truth is so different depending on who's asking for it.

What then are we to make of Obama’s repeated desire to “restore science to its rightful place”? Josh Witten (over at Scientific Blogging) wrote a stimulating piece in which he contrasted a recent finding from efforts in federal Chinese science with Obama’s treatment of science. The former employed data on social disturbances, which was generously – almost surprisingly – released by the Chinese government. Looking at 51,000 social disturbances in 2007, sociologists were able to find patterns in the disturbances, which allowed them to successfully predict future ones.

Witten brings up the poignant question, to what end?. Would they use it for good in order to prevent civil unrest? Or would they use it to suppress their billion-plus citizens?

This concern, although hypothetical, is certainly valid for a government with such a corrupt history as China’s. In contrast, our government’s corruption - although not as oppressive as China’s and much smaller in degree - is more implicit and hidden. It's decentralized, just like the structure of the government - hidden away in an infinite amount of special interests, which collectively serve to chip away at the general interest. Indeed, to what end? is the question that we must ask about our own government’s science as well.

Conflicts of Interest

If economics has taught us anything, it’s that people respond to incentives. Almost anyone these days would be quick to point that out when discussing privately funded research. And over the past decade, scientists and academics have become sensitive about their own sources of funding. Scientific conflicts of interest these days are thought to arise mostly from private funding, in the form of corporations hiding negative findings so that they can profit at the public's expense.

But what about publicly funded research? Certainly it still abides by these same incentives, only they’re coming from the government. Hidden agendas in public research are not as explicit – there’s no CEO or central board pulling the strings – but this can make them all the more dangerous.

For instance, you can be certain that environmental scientists who have thought hard about global warming, and don't believe that it's man made, aren't going to receive much in the way of public funding, particularly under Obama’s new administration.

Or what about medical researchers who disagree with the CDC? Many claim that studies on the links between vaccines and autism are marred by confirmation bias - namely their conclusions are simply attributed to the objectives of the authors rather than to good science. Furthermore, vaccines are widely supported by public health officials who are associated with the government. Why would they fund any researchers who genuinely wanted to assess the negative effects of vaccines, when they not only disagree with them, but have everything to lose should their hypotheses be supported?

Every scientist has a unique perspective on the world, but how can we be assured that committees of them who disseminate funding aren't forcing their views onto others? If a researcher concludes in a study that government intervention in his field is ineffective, how is he going to be funded in the future?

A concrete example I recall is from a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) researcher I once heard. To give a brief background, the CDC & NIH combined have espoused the view that CFS is no different from depression, although this has produced little in the way of useful research. The researcher was of the opinion that CFS wasn't very related to depression, and he wanted to run a well-devised study comparing different patients' etiologies. The study was eventually funded by the NIH - and his hypotheses were supported - but only he said, because after his grant application was rejected a few times, he re-focused it as if the study was meant to show that CFS was the same as depression, which was more in line with the opinions of the lead researchers at the NIH. It was a funny little anecdote when he told it, but then in all seriousness he said he would probably never receive NIH funding again.

The Doublespeak of Special Interests

Many people in the scientific community are joyful about Obama’s promises to science. And with good reason, because this gives them renewed vigor, along with added job security. But Obama’s vows to the scientific community are at best your average appeal to another special interest and at worst a hint at a more centrally planned scientific future. The web of the conflicts of interest portrayed above are not unique to science. They arise whenever the government overreaches into any special interest area.

Take the phrase “restore science to its rightful place”, and replace the word science with any other political buzzword: religion, agriculture, education, national highways, mail delivery, broadcast television. In this context, the statement’s meaning slowly becomes hollow to ears jaded from meaningless political promises. It does imply that money will be taken from other areas for the sake of science, but that’s about it.

But society thrives on science, where would we be without it? is the retort coming from a few people at Scientific Blogging, and I think it's the feeling generally shared by the scientific community. Once again, however, this argument rings hollow when you consider how many people have said that exact same thing – but for everything in addition to and on top of science, usually covering fields that they work in. Just the other day I heard a reporter say that federal mail service is integral in a democracy, as if to imply that we’d fall apart without it. This is essentially the same argument being espoused by the scientific community for more public science.

Any rigorous argument in favor of more public funds for science has to go beyond its import to society, and cover why it's more important than other specific areas that the government funds. Lobbyists and politicians, of course, act as if you can spend money on everything at once. When that power is abused society as a whole feels the ramifications, either directly through taxes or indirectly through poor monetary policy. Imagine for one moment that the government, just like a person or corporation, really did have a limited budged. Sure it would be necessary to spend money on some things, but why science and not some other thing?

The answer very well might be to spend on science, but it needs to be answered ahead of time and in this format (eg, in terms of opportunity costs). It can't just be assumed that the benefits outweigh the costs because science is good - or even because it's really super good. In the event that science is not the best thing to spend money on, then society as a whole loses (and at the expense of well-paid scientists). Even if all of those funds lead to very fruitful discoveries later, it doesn't automatically prove that they were still worth it, or that they were better than other investments. You would think that such fans of objectivity as scientists would embrace objective assessments like cost-benefit analysis. And they often do, but not always when it comes to their own work.

Well they're already cutting us the check, so why complain?

Academics and scientists feel they have an enlightened view of the world, and in a sense I agree. That's why it bothers me all the more that somehow many of them fail to see that the dirty politics and doublespeak of special interests applies to their discipline as well.

Free-market economist Milton Friedman argued that special interests tear apart the moral fabric of society. They're particularly dangerous because of the covert nature of their corruption: They don't lead to an outright abuse of power, but they create the incentives for many smaller ones. Take from the individual examples above - the scientist who is skeptical about man-made global warming, the doctor who wants to thoroughly assess vaccines, or the CFS researcher who disagreed with the NIH - none of these examples alone attests to the extent to which government funds can harm science. You have to look at the combined effect of such individual missteps, across every field affected, and multiplied over time. The overall picture is not unlike communism in its waste, inefficiencies, moral decay, and potential for corruption, the only difference being that the process is slower and more subtle - but nonetheless real - in regards to special interests.

Even with its extra funding, what is science’s rightful place anyway? Is it just to be well-funded? What does this place look like? Will we shuffle our focus in science - alternative energy for a while, then say obesity - just like 5-year plans in Soviet Russia? Obama strikes me as confident and intelligent, but there's a subtle Orwellian tinge to his promise, if only because science is so important and can be used for so many different ends. Unfortunately this is the last question people seem to ask of Obama’s promise - to "restore science to its rightful place", alright, but to what end?

-KJ

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Media (in order of appearance)

Photo: (1) Essay: Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy(New York Times), 01/26/2009, MashGet; (2) "We need a president who believes in science.", 03/21/2008, Snil Garg; (3) Crowd Policing, 08/12/2006, by Dom Dada; (4) Poster from the 2006 documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth; (5) USPS Logo; (6) Rockefeller Research Building: Example of a building constructed over a highway, 01/01/2008, by Zachary Korb; (7) Berlin Wall, 03/20/2006, by David Hunter; (8) 柏林墙 - The Berlin Wall - Berliner Mauer, 11/12/2007, by siyu. Sphere: Related Content