If I'm following this discussion accurately, Christine has said
What is harder to accept is the pretense of those scientists... who... refuse to dig any deeper because they don't want to stir anything up.
and you are disagreeing with her on this, taking the position that you
have yet to see a single case of that sort of thing in biochemistry, genetics or evolutionary science... I have seen grant money doled out for political reasons.
And I did weigh in on this discussion
(https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=9116408)
but can't resist commenting again.
The last para in my post was this:
...i've never seen a real life situation involving the allocation of money and power in which personal agendas did not play a major role. I feel sure this is true in science as well as in other fields. There is in fact a homily among scientists that new science never changes any minds; it must wait to prevail until the invested generation of scientists is replaced by a new, disinterested one.
Chuzz, I bolded your comment about funding being doled out for political reasons, and mine that new science waits to prevail until the invested generation is replaced by a disinterested one. They're related.
I want to emphasize the point that when funding is doled out for 'political reasons,' the money is going to an entrenched power-camp (of research directions or ideas) and being denied to a competing camp. The homocysteine guy was mugged and left for dead by the cholesterol guys, though he was right and they were wrong, and it was about money and power.
The well-funded cholesterol doctors had to retire or die before the science counted.
The resistance to the news on duodenal and gastric ulcers being caused by the Helicobacter pylori infection was similarly unscientific. I have a personal friend who suffered agonies for years with gastric ulcers. I read about the H.pylori study in an 'alternative' publication, she took it to her ulcer specialist, he said it couldn't be a bacterium. She suffered for another couple of years (to my annoyance refusing to consult another doctor) before her doctor agreed to give antibiotics a try, and cured her.
I think it's naive to think that scientists are any more delighted now than they ever were to see things stirred up, if the stirring stirs them to the end of the line awaiting funding and publication. I agree with Christine that it is far from the case that the only agendas in effect in the world of science are scientific ones. |
