Science is “Stupid”? It is not what you think.

The editorial below has been making the rounds on the grand, ol’ internet. It was published in the Journal of Cell Science, and since everyone seems to be reposting it, I am imagine it must be open acess. The editorial is below:

Dr. Schwartz makes several good points.

AND here are my thoughts (combined with the editorial):

1. The best research is done when looking for things that we (i.e., all of humanity) are very stupid about. By “stupid”, I mean things that we still have minimal to no understanding about. Such unknowns things can be found both in the sciences and liberal arts.
2. Schwartz makes the point that we need to make students “productively stupid.” In other words, we need to make students know that they (and we as their teachers or professors) have many blind spots in reality. It is modern U.S. higher education practice for PhDs to be required to a research project which turns into a dissertation and possibly publication. Are we moving these students into and through programs for which there is generally no public interest or funding capability? Are we just pushing them through just for them to get the degree so they get “done.” Such a process floods the job market with a bunch of other folks who had to get “something out there” for their research? Is their research, in the end, frivolous? This assembly line is a most tragic turn which can lead to mental health issues. Even in my little world of academic pediatric gastroenterology, the ABP requirement for a research requirement to finish training combined with long-term lower salary compared to peers in other specialists has lead to dire consequences. This research requirement leads to often poorly done research that is minimally understood by the training fellow. Additionally, despite promises of training institutions to help trainees have a successful post-training career, the ability of these trainees to obtain NIH, NSF, or NEA funding after their training basically…well…sucks.
3. We need to teach statistics. We need to teach HOW to read a journal article. These skills among scientists, physicians, and in many aspects of the liberal arts are just absolutely horrible. I added this aspect. This is my soap box in many faculty meetings.
4. In the end, we need to search for “truth” (objective and subjective) in the realm of our collective stupidity about what our species knows while having existed for only a short time on a tiny, insignficant planet in an immense galaxy surrounded by billions of other galaxies in a perhaps infinite universe. Scientists (including academic physicians) should be trained to discover new truth and not regurgitant. The system is not working.

I recently obtained my DThM degree. It was quite a bit of hard work but worth it as it made me consider my science training. Honestly, I think finding new truth in our world of stupidity (i.e., the unknown) is more difficult in the liberal arts as data sets in science can be looked at many ways to publish many articles that don’t necessarily promote knowledge while simultaneously helping obtain new grants and tenure. It is very sad.

Wolfgang Pannenberg (one of my favorite writers as well as theologians) has written that “Theologians may envisage such a general concept of science in a different way from other philosophers of science, but these very differences must rest on an assumption of the unity of truth…” He wrote this passage as well as other wonderful words in Theology and the Philosophy of Science which I highly recommend.

So, my point is that our knowledge will increase if we collectively must work on the hard projects — whether in science, medicine, statistics, history, literature, or theology. Otherwise, we are wasting paper that will end up in city dump and quickly forgotton.

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