You may think that the history of science doesn’t really relate to you. Well, I’m telling you that it does. It has the power to affect every aspect of our lives. Throughout history, not only has technology and our understanding of the world become clearer through science, but so have our ideas of how science should be conducted and what it should aim to do.
As an example, when we buy things, we expect in the very least that they will do what they claim to do. We absolutely believe that our products should not cause us harm. These products are sold under the guarantee that they were created through the practice of good science. In the early days of science, when the discipline was called natural philosophy, scientists realized that a certain structure and procedure had to be followed to make sure the results were accurate. Science aims to search for truths, knowledge of how and why things in our universe work, which could only be found in the purest form of experimentation. How could it be known if the procedure was followed? Every result had to be recorded and eventually shared with the scientific community. Every result also had to be replicated through conducting the experiment over and over again by multiple colleagues. Today, this is still the basic procedure that scientists follow. When all of this is done, the science can be deemed as good. On the other hand, if scientists base discoveries on a single result, hide “unsatisfying” or “wrong” results that reject their theories, or in any way perform biased science, it is bad.
History provides many examples of bad science. I plan to study Naz science, or “Aryan science,” as well as “Jewish science,” because of the extreme social bias in Germany during that time period. The Nazis weren’t looking for truth, but for results that supported their agenda. I want to see if I can identify examples of good science, such as Einstein’s laws of Relativity and the trouble he had publishing it, and also look at the bad science that was occurring at the time.
Bad science still happens today. I said that science history affects us today. By recognizing bad science and the many forms it has taken in our past, we can identify it today. As consumers, it’s our duty to call for accurate documentation and replication of experiments. In the years 2000-2010, 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted for mistakes in documentation and replication. Publication of papers that document negative results, results that disprove a hypothesis, are being published less and less often. Everyone has a desire to be right because this is what we hold as a success in science. In reality, we learn just as much from what doesn’t work out as what does. Yes we, as a society, prefer results that prove things to be true, and this causes an unintentional loss of information. Over time, scientists who have made the most original discoveries have been the most widely recognized. Typically case studies with definitive proof of the “desirable” result have been recorded in history. The Nazis are just one example of many groups in the scientific community who have used science not to find truth, but proof that the Aryan ways were the truth.
In some ways, we have lost sight of what science should try to accomplish and how it should be conducted. Our first step is to look back in order to better inform our practices for the future.
~Nell
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