Science

The last eight years, most scientists would agree, have been devastating for scientific research in the United States. As a Clinical Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, I see the ill effects of the policies of the last eight years. America’s leadership in scientific research is in jeopardy, and this can be tragic for our country. It will be the discoveries within pure science that help us better understand chemical and biological process and help us fight aging and cancer. It is pure science, separate from any potential commercial application, that will lead to the breakthroughs in physics, biochemistry and mathematical theory which will allow us to develop new understandings of nature and new ways to maintain the environment, translate available energy into usable energy, and better help us predict and control complex phenomenon.

There are two trends which have hurt scientific research which can and must be changed. One trend is the increasing commercialization of scientific research through our Universities. This has served to reduce and limit the focus on scientific research to those areas of research that are more likely to be immediately commercially useful. Universities and students depend on research grants to do science and learn science. Government was the primary source of research support since WWII and through the fantastic years of America's supremacy in science. With the current administration’s cuts in funding for pure science and research support, commerce and the corporate world is filling the gap by funding research that might help profits, but not necessarily knowledge or others. This has limited the free flow of information among the scientific community and caused a change to a more competitive, rather than more collaborative, research spirit. While the goals of commercial enterprise are valid and should continue, they must not continue in a way which monopolizes scientific minds and the scientific process.

The second trend which has hurt scientific research has been what some have referred to as “faith based science,” rather than science which is based upon findings and results of studies or objective observations. Increasingly scientists are not afforded grants should they have positions which might conflict with religious views. Stem cell research is one clear example of this, an area in which scientific research could have kept America at the vanguard of health research. Instead, such research has been inhibited due to religious dictates influencing the political and funding process, rather than for scientific reasons. When one starts off with a conclusion and then seeks data to support it, this is not science. When research and inquiry is not supported, as it recently has often not been, in areas for which a specific finding or belief system demands a certain result, the nature of the scientific spirit is harmed and inquiry extinguished.

It is imperative that the government acknowledges the vital need and important role for science, separate from political, commercial and religious goals and motivations, and supplements the funding of private enterprise for our university research programs. It is important, as well, that our government ensures access to higher education and graduate education through meaningful grant and loan programs to allow the brightest of our youth to contribute to the collective good by their inquiries and endeavors.