The End of Science

Rebecca West writes, in The New Meaning of Treason, that a lot of our scientists during World War 2 were communists. There are several reasons this is important, but the first is that they immediately leaked our research on atomic bombs to Stalin.

They honestly believed in a "global scientific community" — that science knows no political boundaries, and that the world would be better if scientists shared all their information with each other. Somehow this would usher in an age of peace and plenty, and scientific know-how would mean food for the poor and an end to oppression.

So they gave the bomb to the Soviets. To the people who used technology to keep millions in chains and torture them and starve them to death.

These days, American scientists are doing the same thing, helping abusive husbands track their wives in Saudi Arabia and helping the Chinese develop social surveillance systems and biological weapons. The scientists tell you how to do something and fail to understand or care why we shouldn't do it. Or maybe it's the money.

If this proves anything, it's that people who are taught to analyze physics can be really bad at reading people. They can theorize about matter and totally miss the substance of a movement. People say we need a more "scientific" outlook on the world, and they're right. We need to teach our kids to be skeptical, and systematic, and logical. What we don't need for this world to be a better place is for more kids to become professional chemists. We need more chemists to pick up The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Scientists are people who need to feed themselves and their families. Science does not import morality into a person. If a scientist is being paid by others they tend to do What their employer tells them olto do. Another rule in life... Anybody who gets paid to do something has an automatic conflict of interest in being unbiased about that subject....in other words all the world’s experts are not really capable of expressing independent thought on the very subjects they are expert in

I don’t see any way that money gets taken out of the equation, and so I don’t see any way that scientists suddenly become moral paragons. As you indicate, self-interest will always come into play.

The only “solution” I can see is to stop with the ridiculous “follow the science” junk. And the idea that something is “settled science”. This is a bad use of language if we’re talking about COVID, or Climate Change, or, frankly, Evolution.

There’s a guy in a lab coat. And he has an opinion. Fine. He can have an opinion. Well, I’m a schlub sitting at home, and I have an opinion too. And I should not be shouted down just because he has a lab coat and I do not.

We need to stop treating scientists and doctors as if they were “special” and infallible. They clearly are not.

It's not just the money. Many scientific types, (and in there I include the developers of AI) seriously believe that science falls into the "truth shsll make you free" category. I lived immersed in academia (in Cambridge MA - MIT, Hahvud, Tufts) until I fled at age 32. They're like starry-eyed children playing with mew and complicated toys. Socially and morally immature. Heck, I was one of them, until I woke up.

I had to leave N.I.C.U. nursing when I got too old to continue in high acuity units, because N.I.C.U. nurses move on to feeders and growers getting ready to go home. That means circumcisions and pushing the vaccines. The few that ever left directly from a Level III/IV unit had to be vaccinated first. I couldn’t sit with parents, explain the vaccines, tell them they were ALL good, (still had “grandfathered” mercury in them) and then go inject their child. I could not provide parents with “informed” consent when too much is known, but hidden for expediency/money. Yellow Fever was a good vaccine. Hep. C for every baby at birth...crazy.

They don’t tell parents about the experimental circle on the PKU usually, either. Practically cheered when I saw the ending of the X-Files movie and the records warehouse. Some of us realized with HIV/Aids when an actual NAME of a disease was mentioned and that the sampling was going on, so to fill the last circle correctly. It can get messy doing them on term babies, instead of just taking blood from an artrerial line. The parents weren’t being told the results...or their doctors so follow-up could be done. I thought it was heinous not to tell the parents if their child was positive, while we were watching our doctors and nurses have to go on months of horrible treatment after accidental exposures on the job. Awful years.... The work in N.I.C.U. was so guerling, most of our nurses were out of the unit by 30. I moved “across the street” after being begged by my head nurse to help her upgrade another unit covered by our attendings, and I eased into retirement. Added years to my life, and I could see my children a little more. A lot of stuff in medicine at that level is on a “need to know” basis. Got a few too many nannies there, and people who can kill careers.

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