I’m not saying that I think the present science establishment is good. It has been utterly poisoned by the interference of government, and the biggest mistake we make is thinking that something like the FDA or the CDC are science establishments, when they are in fact government institutions. It might be populated by people with science degrees, but they are still civil servants before being scientists. (especially the higher up the greasy pole they climb.) And unfortunately the universities have also been largely sucked into the poisonous stream of government funding.
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Samizdata quote of the daySamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Education & Academia · Health & medical · Science & Technology · Slogans & Quotations April 6th, 2022 |
 8 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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I have a friend who has made it quite high up in one branch of the scientific establishment.
He tells me, over drinks, that he is at best a fair-to-middling scientist, but a damned great grant-app writer. This, along with knowing to whom a grant application ought to be submitted, he says, is key to achievement these days. It depresses him.
I know a skilled researcher of immunology who was only too delighted to resign his academic post and become instead a partner in his wife’s hobby-started business when it grew big enough to both need and support his (also hobby-acquired) other skills. He loved and valued his immunology research, but had grown to hate the grant system and the university departmental politics that surrounded it.
Eisenhower’s relevant warning has been quoted in this blog’s comments every now and then for over a decade (at least since climategate, AFAICS). The latest fairly-full quote of it is here – and, as a bonus, you also get a relevant Churchill saying.
A commenter here, whose name I regretfully forget, said something to the effect of: if you want to understand the university grant system consider this: which is more likely to get funding “A study on the migration of the Red Squirrel in the Southern United States” or an identical study called “A study on the effect of climate change on the migration of the Red Squirrel in the Southern United States”. The answer is obvious, and it crisply encapsulates all that is wrong with the science funding system. Kudos to whoever said it.
One often hears a study on, for example, fracking dismissed because it is funded by “Big Oil”, or a drug dismissed because it is funded by “Big Pharma” and these are legitimate concerns. However, one never seems to hear studies funded by “Big Government” treated with the same skepticism, or concern over the funders influence on the results.
That point is particularly relevant to the subject of climate change. A colossal edifice of bizarre fiction has been constructed out of endless lavish government grants. Yet the claim is that sceptics such as Paul Homewood are being funded by the oil industry to spread disinformation.
Fraser Orr (April 7, 2022 at 2:57 am), the original commenter may have been NickM, who states the idea here. However it may have been mentioned by others before him, as the original version was said by Nigel Calder in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” documentary, first shown in 2007.
We could talk about how appalling it is that the documentary was shown 15 years ago and people don’t remember – but should maybe do so in moderate terms, given that you and I had the same conversation a while back, as I only recalled after writing the first version of this comment.
Meanwhile, researching PC vileness about squirrels (sadly, without a grant to finance me) led me to this.
Good post – and, sadly, it is not just official government bodies.
The intrusion of political agendas into medicine has been getting worse and worse for a long time now – perhaps it was always implicit in the “Public Health” concept (I am not sure) – breaking down the relationship between the physician and their individual patient.
As for the political agendas themselves – Agenda 2030 and all that, well I am not a supporter but THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
Medicine should not be about a political agenda at all – whether or not one thinks the political agenda is good or bad.
Organisations such as the FDA and CDC are obsessively political now, and so are many of the supposedly “private” bodies (which are so dependent on government, and corporate, funding) – they are doing harm.
Medicine should be about the individual patient – not “public policy goals”.
“Medicine should not be about a political agenda at all.”
As long as we have socialised healthcare I think that it’s inevitable.
It’s inherent in socialized medicine, but given the amount of money to be made or lost it’s going to be like that in any world where the government has anything more than the most minuscule of power.