Has Science Lost Its Way?

Has science lost its way?

Do politics now control research?

Science used to be the prerogative of the very wealthy and educated people. They had money and time, and while never being under the control of anyone, they were often those with inherited wealth, enough so they never needed to work and never needed support from any vested interest. This has all changed and now science is business, a career path, and a hugely technological industry.

Ignoring the class warfare and social implications of the past, we have to now question the way scientific research is structured and funded. No science research project is truly independent and done simply to satisfy the curiosity of the researcher. Now everything is “managed,” and there is a bureaucracy to control spending and to obtain the allocation of funds to pay for the research. Funding that comes through this pathway is funding with an objective. The organisation actually parting with the money, wants to know certain things, they have time sensitive agendas and they want accounts kept. They also want to ensure they control the publication of the results.

Political research is one of the biggest areas which shows this; even things such as the effect of the world wide web or climate change, are researched with political agendas. The politicians commissioning the research only want to publish results which justify their own political dogma. Socialists ordering research into poverty want to find poverty that they can blame on capitalism, not on chosen life styles. Capitalists commissioning research into poverty only want to find it in socialist controlled places. The researchers and the funding committee only have to set a definition of poverty to ensure the results are as the particular paymaster wants.

The dangers of this present system can be seen in both medical research and in the global climate change farce. There is money to be made by getting governments to take certain policy decisions and influencing those policy decisions has become the main aim of those funding scientific research. Science and research have become tools of big business, at best a part of the marketing division or, at worst, a more sinister arm of the finance director.

Results are directed towards the objectives of those proving the funds, and this means the adjustment, the extrapolation, and the correcting of data is carried out before publication. This is false science and this is bad science, it is not scientific searching for truth.

These days, almost all research is carried out within an ambience of control, results are needed by a certain date, funds are only available for specific avenues of research, secrecy must be preserved until publication, and even after that the methodology and working papers are not to be published. Publication of results is done by the marketing divisions of the funding organisation. I wonder how many science researchers even recognise their own work when it is published. If they want funding for the next three years, they know they can say nothing.

What can we do to get back to honest investigation, a simple search for truth with no preset ideas? This will not be easy; the wealthy these days are pop stars and media tycoons, very few are known for scientific integrity and being inquisitive for truth. It is tempting to say the state should fund all research and so take away commercial prerequisites of any results, but, government (that is taxpayers') money is allocated by bureaucrats, and they always have an agenda of control. They must see accounts and ensure nothing is done that could be blamed on themselves and so handing funds to a maverick or even independently minded, researcher is never going to happen. There is also the political need of any government as outlined earlier.

Published research is theoretically subjected to peer review, but who selects the peers and what vested interests do these people have? We have all seen media reports of the latest research showing something we are doubtful about. Examine closely who the publisher is and which organisation is funding the researcher, check the review body and their funding. Sometimes it emerges that the majority are funded by a particular industrial group. The petrochemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry can do this, and these days any climate change report, either for or against human activity being the cause, has to be closely examined to find the probable bias.

A large number of media reports about research turn out to be a published report of someone trawling through lots of previously reported research. This is not science, it is publicity seeking or lazy journalism.

Research to just find what is happening, is not politically useful, politicians need to be able to blame their opponents and so finding out exactly how the climate is changing is no good to any funding body. They have to have someone to blame for any change. Finding no change or finding it is inevitable, as it is nature at work, is not allowed; no profit or political gain in this.

Maybe one possible solution is, in a strange way, to go back to research by wealthy amateurs. If the super rich in the world got together and set up a totally and honestly, independent research funding body that funded universities to do research. The conditions of funding to include all papers to be published, including methodology and working papers; no other funding to be involved and no person at all connected to the research, should be getting money from any other body. No pre-existing ideas of outcome. Just find out what the truth is.