Originally published 30 December 1991
I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. The few times I’ve determined to change bad habits my resolve has dissolved sometime around the middle of the first week of January. Oh, well, never mind, there’s always next year.
So how about some New Year’s resolutions for science instead? Here are a few things scientists can do to make science a leaner, healthier, more constructive affair. Like most New Year’s Resolutions, they are easier to resolve than accomplish.
- Don’t become addicted to government pork. Science requires and deserves generous national support, and the nation’s economic well-being depends upon a vital scientific establishment. The risk is that science becomes a politicized branch of the government bureaucracy.
- Be cautious about commitments to “state-of-the-art” instruments that take years to become operational. Consider the ill-fated Hubble Space Telescope. We would probably have been better off to have packed a Shuttle with dollar bills and dumped them into space. During the time it took to get the Hubble up and operating, ground based astronomers developed new technologies that render the big space telescope at least partly obsolete; in particular, astronomers have learned how to use computers and deformable mirrors to compensate for distorting effects of the earth’s atmosphere, at far less cost than going into space. Advances in technology come so quickly these days that anything that takes ten years to do is likely to be out-of-date by the time it gets done.
- Cast a skeptical eye on any experiment or project that costs more than a new university or a dozen hospitals. The superconducting supercollider, an ultra-high-energy particle accelerating machine to be built in Texas at a cost of billions, should only go forward if financed by an international consortium. Big science has glamour, but it’s not necessarily in the best public interest. Putting all our research eggs in a few big baskets isn’t in the best interest of science, either. It’s unfortunate that cold fusion turned out to be a bust; the production of fusion energy with kitchen-shelf equipment would have given advocates of small science a much needed boost.
- Don’t get caught up on the funding treadmill. Sometimes it seems that scientists spend more time soliciting grants than doing science. A lot of first-rate science has been done using string and scotch tape, or scribbled on the backs of envelopes. A lot of poor science has been done with brand-new multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art computerized MacroWidgets. Naturally, everybody wants to own the biggest and shiniest new instrument in town, but the brain is still the best tool for figuring out how the world works — and it’s free.
- Curb the publications glut. The amount of words being published in scientific journals threatens to bring the shelves of libraries crashing down. We have established a system in which the number of words a scientist publishes is equated with success. Much of what is published is trivial, negligible, or redundant. According to one study, the majority of published scientific work is never referenced by subsequent researchers, and therefore presumably makes a negligible contribution on the progress of knowledge.
- Quit competing. A modest competitive element can put a constructive edge on any activity, but in science competition has gotten out of hand. Cutthroat rivalries prevail especially in the biomedical sciences. Intense pressure to “get there furstest with the mostest” (as Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest used to say) has led again and again to misconduct and outright fraud. There’s no surer way for science to lose public confidence than to come on like a gang of crooks.
- Laugh. Scientists would seem to be the most humorless folks on earth. Even politicians have more wit. A few years ago I attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted to “Humor in Science”—and promptly fell asleep. Ho-ho-hum. The Journal of Irreproducible Results has been struggling gamely for years to inject a bit of wit into science, with negligible success. It would seem that the gene for scientific talent also selects for an atrophied funny bone.
- Become gender blind. Ninety-eight percent of nurses are women, but only 8 percent of surgeons and 2 percent of medical school department chairpersons. Female doctors earn only 62.8 percent of what male doctors earn. The physical sciences are even more exclusively male clubs. Gender bias in science is an unassailable fact and science is poorer for it.
- Reach out to school children and teachers. Bring them into the labs. Initiate cooperative programs. Share the excitement. We are becoming a nation of science illiterates, with even a president consulting astrologers on matters of state. Science is not so much a collection of truths as an attitude toward evidence. America’s future as a prosperous and democratic nation requires that the next generation of Americans be skeptical, curious, inventive, and open to change — in a word, scientific.
- Don’t be afraid to occasionally turn off the Macrowidget and go for a walk. Take time to smell the roses and look at the stars. Science is only worth doing if it enhances the quality of life.
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