Elitism and Science | Observing Science (Copy)

Science is carried out by experts. More than a century ago, the rise of German universities as forerunners of the modern research university created a model whereby certification—usually in the form of a doctorate—creates a class of working scientists. This approach suggests that the work of science is being carried out by the meritorious few, a class that anyone, through hard work, can join and contribute to.  

But, as is often the case, merit is not exactly what it seems at first glance. In the past 50 years, the proportion of U.S. PhD students who have a parent with a post-graduate degree has tripled. For most fields, more than half of PhD students have parents with post-graduate degrees, and fewer than a fifth have parents without a four-year degree. When one recognizes that fewer than 40% of Americans have a four-year college degree, it becomes clear that the work of science continues to be carried out by a very select slice of the population.

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Three directions to push forward The Healthiest Goldfish conversation

Reflections on a transition.

In my last essay, I shared some reflections on the themes of these essays over the past year or so, looking back while also looking ahead to the next evolution of the conversation about health. Since then, I have had several readers reach out to me to ask if I was sunsetting The Healthiest Goldfish as a result of that note. Far from it. What I was doing in the last note was looking back on a cycle of essays, to pave the way for a new cycle of ideas. So, I thought today I would do something a bit more self-reflective, thinking though some ideas that have been percolating in my head for some time, and outlining the key areas I am hoping to focus on in my writing in this space in the coming year. As the health conversation has evolved, I have continually asked myself how these essays should also evolve, to do the most good in the moment, not simply reacting to events and ideas that emerge but playing a role in shaping them, nudging them in a more positive direction, ever closer to our goal of health. This means asking now: what role should The Healthiest Goldfish play in the months and years to come? What kinds of conversations should we engage in to create a better world in this moment? 

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Protecting Government Scientists | Observing Science

RGovernment scientists shape, implement, adjudicate, and enforce public policies of every stripe. Any data-based issue that might require government to act—from gun control to tobacco use to the opioid crisis to the safety of vaccinations to climate change—is a point at which, to some, government could infringe upon business or personal liberty. Disputants turn to rejecting factual evidence on these problems as a way to undermine government action.

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Thinking about health tomorrow | The Healthiest Goldfish

Concluding a cycle of essays, reflecting on the ideas they surfaced about building the future of health.

Over the past year or so, these essays have tried to articulate a new practical philosophy of health for this moment, engaging with topics of consequence for how we conceptualize health, towards better understanding what we think about when we think about health. In this sense, they represent a cycle, just as past writings in The Healthiest Goldfish have been a cycle, most recently with the essays which informed my last book, Within Reason. These reflections on shaping a new practical philosophy of health were meant to be useful, to help inform conversations towards building stronger foundations for our pursuit of health going forward. Having engaged with this theme for a while now, it seems a good time to review some of the ideas that have emerged over the course of this writing. I do so today with an eye towards concluding this cycle of essays, as I think about evolving my Goldfish writing and thinking, in a period of personal reflection and reassessment.

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Can Science Be Scaled? | Observing Science

Randomized trials originated in agricultural research in the 1920s where the field conditions of experiments with seeds were nearly perfectly controllable. Trials soon moved to humans, and studies to lower high blood pressure and other conditions using medication have been successfully completed and interpreted thousands of times; randomization of individual patients to individual pills is also reasonably controllable. But there are scientific experiments that are less manageable, more subject to forces that are largely unpredictable. For example, researchers recently set out to study ways to reduce opioid overdoses deaths in towns across America and used a randomized trial design—the scientific method that has historically brought us our most reliable evidence—but applied here to a knottier problem. These researchers entered the messiness of the complex system non-scientists call “the real world.” Such a study raises the question: is it possible to impose city- or community-wide interventions that change health behaviors and outcomes?

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Evaluating Scientists | Observing Science

The work of science is generally carried out in institutions that create the conditions for research and scholarship to flourish. Those institutions, principally universities—but also including research institutes, private corporations, and some other entities—have created structures and mechanisms to evaluate the work of scientists. At universities—where in the U.S. most of the work of science is done—scientists are typically professors who advance through the ranks as assistant, associate, and full professors. Institutional review committees evaluate the contribution of the scientist to move them along the path to promotion.

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The healthiest time in human history

Taking stock of the present, to shape a healthier future.

I will start this essay by saying something controversial, something which many readers may disagree with, perhaps strongly: there has never been a better, healthier time to be alive than right now. I say this is controversial because we are in the business of improving health. This starts with recognizing the many ways health needs improvement. If we do not spend significant parts of our days deepening our understanding of how health is undermined by forces like racism, inequality, climate change, and hate, we are, in a sense, not doing our job. Doing our job also means communicating to the wider world how these forces harm health. This work of communication means emphasizing where we are falling short on health and, perhaps at times, strategically deemphasizing where we are actually doing well.

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Trust and Verify | Observing Science

International weapons treaties work from a motto based on an old Russian proverb: trust but verify. Science works from a related point of view: trust and verify. The “and” is important. As scientists, we tend to concentrate on the verification aspect: we like to double- and triple-check our own findings before making them public. But as a scientific community, we move forward based on trust. We accept that knowledge is communal and cumulative, and we depend on the work of our predecessors and contemporaries.

To a great degree we are obliged to trust others. When we perform peer review—the sine qua non of the scientific enterprise—we trust that the data presented is legitimate and that the study proceeded in the way that the scientists who performed it said it did. Scientific methods are a central part of any published paper—the protocol, the population, the analysis—allowing replication by others. Yet we must admit that when we peer review studies, we concentrate on study design and the authors’ data interpretations and have no easy way to judge the authenticity of findings. Groundbreaking work always requires replication, verification.

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