Reality: The public mostly reads about large scientific breakthroughs which helps lead to misconceptions like the one stated above. I understand that most of the small results in science are really only interesting to the people working in the field in which those results took place. But at the end of the majority of science news stories, there is a paragraph at the end explaining the applications that may come about as a result of the scientific findings, often including the phrase "such technology is expected to be available in five to ten years." Of course, this rarely happens as predicted. Since news sources mostly print science success stories and tend to emphasize potential applications, we end up with the idea that scientists do science knowing what the applications will be and that scientists are know exactly what they are doing when it comes to research. Really, scientists rarely start research knowing exactly what will result. They may have some idea as to what to expect and they have defined rules that dictate which possible results will support their hypothesis and what sort of results will refute it. Scientists typically spend a long, long time working to get these conclusive results, if they ever manage to get results at all.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the average person sees science as progressing like this:
- A scientist wants to solve a problem of an engineering or medical sort
- The scientist thinks really hard and/or messes around with different chemical/apparatuses and/or gets hit on the head by an apple
- The scientist comes up with the solution and the problem is fixed
- Science continues, yay!
But really, science looks kind of like this:
- There are many different areas and large groups working together
- There is a ton of crossover among disciplines
- And there are many, many dead ends
Additionally, a single scientist will probably get about this far down one of the above paths during her entire career: __.
This tiny step may be down a dead end, but the ending is so far away that nobody can see it. So yes, as a scientist, there is a possibility that you will spend your entire life working on something that is wrong. But take solace in the fact that a) you have helped science by discovering a dead end, thereby making sure nobody else will spend time there and b) even if the overall theory you were working on is false that one little bit of science you did might be useful somewhere else. Your results may have refuted your hypothesis, but you managed to develop some new lab technique. That's great! Or perhaps it was a piece of code. You can try packaging it and giving or selling it to other scientists that might need it.
So scientists make mistakes during research. It happens. For example, consider the widely publicized story of the so-called faster-than-light neutrinos (extraordinarily light, non-charged particles) that CERN, a nuclear and particle physics research group, detected. Their results suggested that they had detected neutrinos that moved faster than the speed of light.
Now that is an extraordinary claim! Einstein's theory of special relativity, which has been proven over and over again, tells us that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. If neutrinos were moving faster than the speed of light, then much of our understanding of physics would have to be entirely rewritten.
After repeating the experiment multiple times, asking the scientific community for independent confirmation, and launching an investigation of their equipment, CERN finally found that some of their wires and some of their timing equipment was faulty.
All scientists can make mistakes, but what distinguishes good scientists from bad scientists and psuedoscientists is how they react to those mistakes. Specifically, good scientists do not jump to conclusions. They are skeptical of their own results when the results appear to be in disagreement with strongly experimentally verified theories. This is because they know that scientific consensus comes from examining a large body of research comprised of innumerable studies, and not from an individual experiment. Scientists are fallible and experiments don't go perfectly, but the science has built-in rules that minimize the damage caused by any single mistake. And slowly, after so many researchers and mistakes and corrections, we make scientific progress.
But no matter what reading science articles makes you believe, not all of this progress comes in the form of direct application. And this is ok! Basic scientific research is still necessary, even if an application is not immediately obvious. Mandating that all research result in applications is unfeasible, but that doesn't mean basic research doesn't have value. Remember when I said that scientists often don't know what the ultimate result of their research will be? All this means is that applications can appear from unexpected places. For example, Einstein's theory of general relativity describes the fundamental structure of spacetime and revolutionizes the way we think about gravity. Yet, it is used to develop GPS, a technology that people like my mom and I depend on to get anywhere farther than three blocks away from our house. Just because scientists can't see the end of a certain scientific path doesn't mean it won't be a fruitful path. And with so many paths in the first place, they don't know which ones will result in applications, so they need many many people working on going down all these different paths.
Some research starts off with a final product, application, or improvement in mind, but for other projects, the end results are a mystery (if we don't factor in prior plausibility). So when people, either jokingly or indignantly, proclaim that scientists are wasting their time on some sort of basic research, or that they are purposely neglecting things like cancer research, it becomes obvious that those people do not know how science works. Basic research should be promoted, not denounced. Science is so intricate and interdisciplinary that nobody knows where the most valued and sought after results will come from. Which is why schemes like Eric Cantor's YouCut, which allows, although the set-up may have changed by now, the public to vote on which National Science Foundation projects are frivolous and should have their funding cut, may actually cut the basic research that leads to a cancer treatment or some new amazingly strong and light material. That's not to say that all experiments are equal. Prior plausibility is a factor here. There is not very much reason to repeat Millikan's oil drop experiment over and over again, expect new results, and call it novel research . However, developing life-changing technology takes time and, as with all final products, the processes that lead to them must start at the beginning. For scientific, engineering, and technological breakthroughs, the beginning is located in the basic research stage and the process starts when a scientist utters "I wonder..."
Now that is an extraordinary claim! Einstein's theory of special relativity, which has been proven over and over again, tells us that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. If neutrinos were moving faster than the speed of light, then much of our understanding of physics would have to be entirely rewritten.
After repeating the experiment multiple times, asking the scientific community for independent confirmation, and launching an investigation of their equipment, CERN finally found that some of their wires and some of their timing equipment was faulty.
All scientists can make mistakes, but what distinguishes good scientists from bad scientists and psuedoscientists is how they react to those mistakes. Specifically, good scientists do not jump to conclusions. They are skeptical of their own results when the results appear to be in disagreement with strongly experimentally verified theories. This is because they know that scientific consensus comes from examining a large body of research comprised of innumerable studies, and not from an individual experiment. Scientists are fallible and experiments don't go perfectly, but the science has built-in rules that minimize the damage caused by any single mistake. And slowly, after so many researchers and mistakes and corrections, we make scientific progress.
But no matter what reading science articles makes you believe, not all of this progress comes in the form of direct application. And this is ok! Basic scientific research is still necessary, even if an application is not immediately obvious. Mandating that all research result in applications is unfeasible, but that doesn't mean basic research doesn't have value. Remember when I said that scientists often don't know what the ultimate result of their research will be? All this means is that applications can appear from unexpected places. For example, Einstein's theory of general relativity describes the fundamental structure of spacetime and revolutionizes the way we think about gravity. Yet, it is used to develop GPS, a technology that people like my mom and I depend on to get anywhere farther than three blocks away from our house. Just because scientists can't see the end of a certain scientific path doesn't mean it won't be a fruitful path. And with so many paths in the first place, they don't know which ones will result in applications, so they need many many people working on going down all these different paths.
Some research starts off with a final product, application, or improvement in mind, but for other projects, the end results are a mystery (if we don't factor in prior plausibility). So when people, either jokingly or indignantly, proclaim that scientists are wasting their time on some sort of basic research, or that they are purposely neglecting things like cancer research, it becomes obvious that those people do not know how science works. Basic research should be promoted, not denounced. Science is so intricate and interdisciplinary that nobody knows where the most valued and sought after results will come from. Which is why schemes like Eric Cantor's YouCut, which allows, although the set-up may have changed by now, the public to vote on which National Science Foundation projects are frivolous and should have their funding cut, may actually cut the basic research that leads to a cancer treatment or some new amazingly strong and light material. That's not to say that all experiments are equal. Prior plausibility is a factor here. There is not very much reason to repeat Millikan's oil drop experiment over and over again, expect new results, and call it novel research . However, developing life-changing technology takes time and, as with all final products, the processes that lead to them must start at the beginning. For scientific, engineering, and technological breakthroughs, the beginning is located in the basic research stage and the process starts when a scientist utters "I wonder..."
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