Advancing according to its own logic, much of science has lost sight of the better world it is supposed to help create.This article to be simple talks about the wrong direction in which the so called scientific research has taken. Author starts with the post world war 2 facts.
When the world war 2 ended, Mr. Bush wanted the country to continue research so that they would deliver solutions for health, employment, and national security. And so did the federal government. But the public funds which were pumped into research mostly yielded defense solutions rather than solving the common mans problems. Of course these solutions were adopted for usage in our day to day lives but there wasn't a decent amount of outcome of problem solving in the field of medical research.
One such example was breast cancer. When NBCC attracted a lot of people including the government, funds were allocated to DOD to oversee the project. But after so many decades of research and after pumping lots of billions of dollars, it only the enhanced the careers of the scientists but hasn't given any solution to the problem. Also this project created many more hurdles. On one hand author blames the system in which we are living. On the other hand the author also mocks at the scientists who want to publish a lot of research papers rather than to find a solution for the main problem.
The author then applauds the technology which helped in measuring the progress of our research till date. He/She tell us that this is a tool to outside science to check whether our knowledge is advancing or not.
The author also points out the credibility of the papers published till date. He/She gives some statistical data the many papers that have been published, have been found to have a lot of errors a few decades later. Then the question arises - Are we believing something which is false? The answer to this question might be "Yes". In turn because of the citations in reference section adds to a bit more error to the published paper. This is becoming a rippling effect and according to the author, "Today's science is killing itself."
Then comes the research in which mice are used. Out of several dozens of drugs developed for Alzheimer's disease only one have been approved by the FDA for use on humans, and the drug itself is not working well.The reason why this might happen is because - We restrain ourselves to a few parameters during the research and in reality there are lot more complex parameters which nature offers. For example in the case of Alzheimer's disease, scientists create this disease in mice and then start their research. This artificiality has a conflict with the reality and thus the drug doesn't work.
Restraining to a few parameters is what is called as Trans-Science in the passage. Author also gives an example on the same.
The comes the point of "Big Data". In today's world we see a lot of people and companies running behind Big Data. But does this big data give you correct and accurate results. It might lead to Trans-Science. Because of considering a few parameters with a large volumes of data, this might give an ad hoc solution but on the long run, what you have proved might be wrong. The author also criticizes, the direction which technology has chosen - the same way science chose a few decades ago. Author also gives an example of Ocean observatories initiative. Again the big data mistake.
Then the author applauds Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar never took a side track to publish his paper or any other stuff but, he found a solution for the problem he wanted to find.
Today after pumping billions of dollars of money and moreover a lot of time, there has not been an appreciable solution for breast cancer and the problem is because of creating a lot of new problems rather than to find a solution to the given problem. The same is the case with lot of other bio medical research and the people who have been projected in the passage at the start have analyzed themselves and rectified their research process and we along with author will hope that there will be solutions in the field of health care.
My opinion: This passage is a very long passage with lots and lots of examples and to gain a true knowledge one should read the full article patiently. One question, I have for the author is -
Dear Author,
You have questioned in the passage about the credibility of the research papers. You have also given a statistic related to that. As this data is a Trans-Science again can I believe in that data? :D
You can read the full article from here: Saving Science
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