Following on from Michael Jennings’ item about how science research is actually conducted, I was reminded of a post I did several years ago about a fine Gregory Benford book that drew very much on the issue of political game-playing and science research. Timescape is a fine novel, and will resonate with those bemused by the antics of AGW alarmists and their media cheerleaders.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
A fictional account of how science worksNovember 26th, 2009 |
 3 comments to A fictional account of how science works |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Oddly enough, I’ve just finished reading that very book. I was particularly struck by the scene where the bureaucrat, while wining and dining the girl from the bookstore, preparatory to bedding her, apparently has a brief moment of clarity.
This leads him to explain, in effect (my words not Benford’s) “You shouldn’t let people like me be in charge of science. We’re too short sighted and we’ll only fuck it up.”
Incidentally, Happy Turkey Day, to all those that celebrate it.
I remember an episode of Yes, minister, where a scientist was going to give report on metadioxin, a compound that had the misfortune to sound like the chemical dioxin. Jim Hacker gently persuades the scientist to massage the data, so he can give in to popular, though misinformed, opinion, and ban a useful chemical. I suspected at the time that this wasn’t just comedy we were being shown, but actual insights into governments.
David Langford’s The Leaky Establishment, though played for laughs*, also captures something of the feel of government science.
*I hope. It’s about a nuclear scientist who accidentally takes home a nuclear weapon while nicking a filing cabinet.