The Current State of Science
Much of science has lost its curiosity. As a result, the scientific community has created an exclusive club where your entry into it is publication and to stay in it, you must continue to do so at the expense of integrity, new and exciting knowledge, and trust from the public. This exclusivity has created a rift. By being overly technical, esoteric, and pedantic, the scientific community has made it virtually impossible for the layperson to understand the information being presented to them resulting in animosity and divisiveness that has lead us to this current anti-science movement. We look down on and condescend those who don’t understand the process and then act surprised when people reject the knowledge gained from hard, credible science. For example, the current environment of climate change denial is one of the larger issues of our time.
A change needs to be made. It’s not enough to throw complicated jargon at the public. There needs to be better and more meaningful communication. We’ve come to the apex of an “us vs. them” dichotomy where it doesn’t matter what is said. “We” are right and “they” are wrong and that’s final. Communication needs to be more open and transparent. Both for the sake of those conducting research and those it’s being communicated to, i.e. the public. I believe this image encapsulates this lack of communication fairly well:
I found this image on a poster in the biology lab of a community college. What is even going on in this picture? I like to think that I have a pretty firm grasp of the scientific method, but this seems to intentionally complicate it. What student in an intro biology course is going to understand this? Probably very few. The website that this came from is has many more images that are just as confusing. And it’s advertised to grade school teachers to educate their students with!
The gold standard of the scientific method has been warped by the current paradigm of “publish or perish”, meaning to be successful, you must consistently publish. This is the difference between becoming tenured or not. Or receiving that grant from the NSF. Or actually obtaining that faculty position at a university. The list goes on. This paradigm creates unsound research, creates research that aims at formulating hypotheses that we already know the answer to so that positive results are guaranteed.
The majority of scientific journals do not publish papers that show no “significant” results. This encourages people to manipulate their results, overstate significance of results (statistical significance is very different from practical significance), or not ask novel questions. It’s mostly about self-preservation at this point. This isn’t to say novel research isn’t being done at all. It’s just the “publish or perish” paradigm has made it less likely to occur and has subdued curiosity. Additionally, the paradigm has created a “reproducibility crisis”. Many experiments cannot be replicated, meaning that results from previous studies are difficult to verify. It’s only further complicated by the fact that researchers are not encouraged to test hypotheses that have already been tested. This isn’t to say that the research is wrong. It just shows a need for researchers to be more precise and transparent in their research.
Overall, I believe that a large-scale, institutional change needs to be made. Communication is lacking and the incentives for publishing do not advocate for sound science. The unfortunate result is a suppression of curiosity and creativity. I want to make this large-scale change, but will not be able to do it on my own. People can no longer be indifferent and complacent in this current system. I hope to find those who want to see this change and will help to make it. Who will help?
