Product. Data. Science.
11 May 2011
This is a draft post from a few months ago that I forgot about, so the links a slightly dated, but the topics are still relevant.
As I’ve been going through graduate school, I’ve been struggling with how I represent and justify the work that I do. Part of this is trying to explain to my family why I would sign up for what they perceive as simply “more school” (which I think I’ve gotten down). Part of this is ensuring that I am finding fulfillment in the projects I pursue for the next few years… making sure that I enjoy what I am doing daily and find inspiration in the larger context of the work. And part of this is justifying the work for grants and colleagues in terms of the science (will this work shed new light on a problem?) and society (how will this benefit other people?). I spent a lot of time during college trying to make sure that I was putting my skills to use for the benefit of others. And my initial inspiration for a career in neuroscience was music therapy, a field which needs a better understanding of music’s effects on the brain.
But it is tough to draw a line connecting the daily work in the lab to the benefit to society. Any “basic” scientist working on understanding some obscure sliver of how the world works has no idea if or when her work will benefit society. When I explain my research to family, after clarifying that I will not be qualified to perform brain surgeries on humans, I typically say, “In 20 years, the work I’m doing might be useful to doctors working with patients.” That’s OK for family, but it is not such a good sell for the public whose tax money is supporting me and my research and the entire institution that allows it all to happen. The ROI isn’t clear.
But that doesn’t keep scientists from making outrageous claims about how their work will benefit society. It isn’t a new theme, though it has been a recent topic of discussion in Nature, Newsweek, and the New York Times. Many scientists I’ve tried to talk to about this get edgy and defensive and worry about such criticisms being fuel for “anti-science”. But ultimately, scientists make absurd promises in order to keep the grants coming (see “Science built on empty promises“). And they can get away with it because there is no way to measure whether or not those promises have been fulfilled. When, 20 years later, the breakthrough doesn’t happen, scientists simply say, “Oops, guess that didn’t work. It’s science, not engineering… you know how it goes. Give us more money and we’ll cure cancer. Someday. Maybe.”
I think that the problem here is largely one of misrepresentation. The uncertainty in the ROI (which every scientist I’ve talked to acknowledges) is not made clear to the public. Many scientists don’t think that there needs to be an ROI… they believe that the public should support them to simply discover new things regardless of the potential for impact. And that is all well and good if you are receiving funding from a source which expects you to simply discover new things about the world. But those sources are few and far between. Most public funding sources for science want solutions eventually… for curing diseases (NIH), for preventing economic catastrophe due to climate change (DOE & NASA), for maintaining US military dominance (DARPA).
It just doesn’t seem to me that the uncertainty of the implications of a researcher’s work justifies inventing potential impacts, then insisting that one can’t be held accountable to those impacts.
“Eruption” photo CC-BY spettacolopuro