h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A large number of scientists in the UK are berating the Government about failure to make the case for GM crops. Here's a link, for anyone interested :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3229685.stm

Now - I count myself a scientist, and I understand what these guys are getting at. I would even agree with the assertion that many of the detractors of GM technology are contemptible. I do find myself persuaded, though, that there are underlying questions here that need addressing.

Can Science really be trusted when it's funded by big business? Is Science losing its discovery- and knowledge-seeking ideals? Are today's scientists merely risk assessors, paid to weigh the degradation of humanity's future against the imperative of shareholder return?

Unfortunately the accountants and middle-managers rule the world (and absorb most of the money) and it hurts everyone, the manufacturer, the scientist, the artisan...

Accountants, eh?
I take your point, but it's scientists behaving like accountants that I have the problem with.

Isn't Science supposed to champion objectivity, and so stand outside any framework of vested interest - commercial or otherwise? Or is that just naive?

If science doesn't bend slightly to those who pay the bills, those who pay the bills stop paying the bills...


I hate it

Maybe hating it is a bit of a luxury?
Maybe the real point is that the practice is dangerous?

Thinking about this some more, is it really fair to blame middle-managers and accountants? Aren't they just another paid-to-justify grouping, same as the scientists? Isn't this a fundamental flaw of Capitalism itself?

He who pays the piper calls the tune. But he might also wake up to find all his children gone.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world but the idea is to make sure your child does better than all the others!

Science lost most of its credibility when the world's best built the atom bomb and handed it over to the US military.

I'm a biologist who has worked in a corporation and now work in academia, so here we go:

Science has had a long history of being in the pockets of business, the only difference nowadays is that biology has joined chemistry and physics in being exploited for profit. People seem to feel that biology is somehow more precious than the other sciences, probably due to life being involved somewhere along the line.

Advances in chemistry are and have been driven by the huge chemical industry (and have been for well over a century) and advances in physics (we can include a bunch of technology in that one from telephony to computers) are and have been driven by many different companies such as Bell, Intel, etc.

These for-profit associations with academia have been a tremendously successful way of applying science to benefit society. The question really should be: Why has biology taken so long to join in all the fun? Well, there really wasn't all that much money in zoology and botany. Recent paradigm shifts have created genetic engineering, leaps of understanding of evolutionary theory, genomics, and new insights into ecology, to name a few. All of which can be exploited for harm and for good, the same as with physics and chemistry, and all human knowledge.

So, to answer the questions:

'Can Science really be trusted when it's funded by big business?'
Yes. it has been for a long time and it will be for longer I'm sure. I sincerely believe that human disease and suffering will be lessened with the increasing cooperation between academia and biotech/pharma.

'Is Science losing its discovery- and knowledge-seeking ideals?'
In biology at least it might be. People are less willing to share, this needs more work I believe, but this kind of selfishness is present even without profit invloved. There's a lot of egos and bullsh*t politics in science, so the ideals are ignored a lot of the time. The ideals are still there however.

'Are today's scientists merely risk assessors, paid to weigh the degradation of humanity's future against the imperative of shareholder return?'
No bloody way. The ones in companies are more profit- and business-savvy but the system is essentially the same. The scientific process is the same. If fact, in my experience scientists in companies are keenly aware of their situation and try to give back as much as they can within the limits imposed upon them by the corporation (the release of the Rice genome by Syngenta, for example).

Excellent - it's also nice to see someone who's stuck it out with the science (most of the folk I studied physics with have waltzed into computing jobs - do you know how difficult it is to get a computing job with a computing based degree? Darned near impossible! )

There's good and bad in everything we do in life...and I'll shut up now before I start sounding like Obi-Wan Kenobi