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Science’s reputation has taken a pretty strong hit in recent years – and it’s not undeserved. 

All throughout Covid, a class of people who should have known better revealed themselves as Quislings to their field as they publicly embraced politically and socially fashionable positions on supposed mitigation measures incongruent with long–held scientific consensuses despite often finding such measures risible at the pandemic’s start. Then, not having embarrassed themselves enough with Vonnegutesque absurdity, many went on to position once rudimentary components of mammalian reproductive biology as questions more complex than the development of multicellular life or the rise of human consciousness and best outsourced to the wisdom of gender theorists, confused teenagers, and the aptly named clownfish.

Consequently, many normal people stopped trusting “The Science” and became more skeptical of science as a whole. They started questioning what they had been told about psychotropic drugs. Worrying about the safety of vaccines went mainstream. Concerns about our diet partly gave rise to a movement and a Presidential commission.

Furthermore, many aspects of the scientific enterprise came under increased scrutiny, the most prominent perhaps being the US government’s role in funding scientific research, large portions of which seemed ideologically motivated.

A 2024 report from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) highlighted $2.05billion from the National Science Foundation that appeared to go to STEM-based DEI projects. Later, NSF grants for such projects, along with those examining the effects of alleged misinformation, were targeted by efforts aimed at reducing government waste, as were payments for indirect costs to the institutions of those receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The function, utility, and integrity of the peer-review process and peer-reviewed journals likewise came under scrutiny. At the start of the year, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and biostatistician best known now as one of the primary co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, wrote of how publication in a peer-reviewed journal became a stamp of approval that even shoddy research can enjoy if dragged across the right finish line, how publication in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal became a surrogate for article quality, and how the desire to get published in the right journal can motivate all sorts of questionable behaviors on the part of researchers. In October, Anna Krylov, a University of Southern California chemistry professor and prominent critic of DEI’s infiltration of STEM, lambasted the prestigious Nature Publishing Group for using its publications to further DEI-related goals through its publication policies and the threat of censorship. 

Similarly, the competence and basic integrity of researchers, perhaps especially those in academia, came into question with some critics, such as the authors of a recent report from the National Association of Scholars, blaming the replication crisis plaguing modern science on ineptitude, irresponsibility, and statistical tomfoolery.

Subsequently, it seems that some have come to question whether we should have academic science at all.

Basic Research: The Good, The Bad, and the Silly

Having spent a quantity of time I have come to refer to as “way too much of my adult life” in research-based graduate programs in psychology and biology, I can attest many of these concerns about the current state of science (at least in academia) are unfortunately quite fair.

Covid craziness and DEI ideology both ran amok in the department in which I completed my PhD in biology, as those phenomena did at universities across the country. (I have written about this rather extensively for both Brownstone Journal and Heterodox STEM). Furthermore, over the course of two master’s degrees and a doctorate, I have encountered more than one or two professors who either weren’t quite as knowledgeable about their own field (or even narrow sub-field) as one would expect or the exemplars of professional integrity for which one would hope.

For many academic scientists science stopped being a passion long ago, assuming it ever was. For many it may have never been more than simply a career in which to advance, initially entailing getting one’s name on as many papers as possible as a graduate student with little understanding of the content of those papers, then later, as a professor, churning out considerable quantities of low quality papers with the greatest rapidity – or simply mastering the art of departmental politics in order to get ahead.    

To summarize the state of science in the academy in the politest terms possible, as with anything yoked to academia, academic science is quite the Augean stable and cleaning it is quite the herculean feat.

Yet, despite acknowledging the multitudinous flaws of scientific research at universities and the systems in which it operates, I still would caution against impulses to do away with scientific research performed in academic settings entirely or financially starve such research and watch as it withers.

The reasons I say this are twofold. To start, it would be unfair to condemn all academic scientists for the attitudes and practices of the worst among them. Then, perhaps more importantly, there is the not insignificant question of what system, institution, or entity would compensate for the loss of quality research performed by scientists at universities if scientific research at universities was to go away. 

Regarding this latter point, the obvious answer, of course, is that science is best left to industry – largely meaning Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Energy. And, admittedly, there is a superficial libertarian appeal here. 

Even among scientists who are largely dedicated, competent, and conduct themselves in an ethical manner, there are plenty of projects easily, and sometimes speciously, labeled as silly or wasteful, like studies of squid neurons and the gill-withdrawal reflexes of sea snails, not to mention work on the muscle physiology of near-microscopic nematodes or that infamous shrimp on a treadmill that supposedly cost the government $1 bazillion-bajillion (or whatever the number was).

Personally, prior to eventually serving as the lead graduate student on a project examining the impact of social isolation on the metabolomic profiles of social mammals and how associated changes may be indicative of metabolic or gastrointestinal disease (a project I will adamantly defend as having some practical value to people), I will admit that I engaged in a number of seemingly silly or bizarre science projects myself.

For example, I once spent half a semester in a darkened room watching crickets ejaculate under a dim red light to elucidate whether dehydrated lady crickets are, well, thirstier for a mate than well-hydrated peers. I spent the other half of that semester bathing and weighing baby burying beetles in an effort to determine whether those whose parents used a quality mouse carcass for their nursery were healthier than those whose parents used less choice building materials. During another semester, I spent a handful of days here and there chemically messing with the visual and motor capabilities of a single celled alga that most non-phycologists would not think of as even having visual or motor capabilities.

That said, scientific researchers in the academy also do a lot of worthwhile research on things like cancer and Alzheimer’s for which all but the most ardent libertarians probably can muster some nominal support – even if the work is carried out by a professor at a university, likely receiving funds from the government.

Furthermore, the line between silly and potentially life-saving is not always well-defined. Broadly, one can talk about applied research (e.g., the development of a new muscular dystrophy treatment) and basic research (e.g., the study of nematode burrowing behavior), but a lot of applied research is built upon the findings of basic research.

Much of our current understanding of neurophysiology is built upon foundational work involving the neurons of squids and the reflexes of sea snails. C. elegans, a near-microscopic nematode, is considered an excellent model organism for muscular dystrophy, as well as the normal deterioration of muscle tissue with age, making an understanding of its muscle physiology and the development of behavioral assays that facilitate the assessment of its muscle functioning highly valuable. Our understanding of the eye spots of certain species of algae is currently being used to develop possible treatments for certain types of blindness. Even that much maligned shrimp on a treadmill served a practical purpose: according to the principal investigator on that study, his work actually can be quite informative about how changes in marine environments can alter the amount of pathogenic bacteria in seafood many of us consume.

xPersonally, I also would add that even some of the sillier or more bizarre things I did over the years in graduate school (like voyeuristically watching ejaculating crickets) wasn’t bad preparation for a young biologist-in-training trying to get some experience with the scientific method, working with live animals, and observing animal behavior.

There is something inherently valuable in developing a better understanding of the natural world regardless of whether the effort has an immediate or practical benefit to humans – sort of like the argument that there is an inherent benefit to fostering the creation of good art.

Conversely, as with fostering the creation of good art, there is also a valid criticism that the government (i.e., taxpayers) should not be footing the bill. If funds are limited, it’s not unfair (or even anti-science) to argue that the government shouldn’t have to pay for every tenured science nerd’s passion project – even if there are plenty of tenured science nerds who don’t seem to get this.

Maybe there are more efficient means to foster worthwhile basic research without giving every academic scientist a massive budget and free rein to study whatever they want based on some vague hope that another scientist will come along in the distant future, connect some dots, and inevitably find the cure for all human disease in a seemingly frivolous paper on the mating rituals of Costa Rican jumping spiders. (This is something else plenty of tenured science nerds don’t seem to get and, to some extent, have been trained to counter with a passion). 

Industry Will Not Invest in Research Showing Their Products to Be Unnecessary or Harmful

At present, though, there is little reason to believe that, if academic science were phased out, industry could or would sufficiently develop a more efficient means of separating sort of interesting passion projects from the basic building blocks to a better world. There is also little reason to believe that industry would invest too heavily in some of those basic building blocks even if they could be identified. 

Simply put, although industry may build upon basic research, industry isn’t really in the basic research business. Industry is in the making money business – something that should raise questions of whether industry is the best steward of scientific truth.

As previously noted, since Covid, there has been increased concern over whether Big Pharma and Big Food are completely honest with the rest of us about their products. Once more, we have a MAHA movement because of this.

Additionally, even if it could be established that Big Pharma, Big Food, and their assorted peers do not engage in the kind of malfeasance of which they have been accused, and they demonstrated a commitment to carrying out the basic research that will lay the groundwork for future applied research, it still would be difficult to believe that they would fund, carry out, write up, and publish work unlikely to yield a profit no matter how valuable the resultant knowledge might be to society.

For example (and admittedly I might be a little biased here), it is difficult to imagine a pharmaceutical company investing much in a project examining the detrimental health effects of social isolation in social mammals unless the company was looking to market one of their drugs as a treatment for loneliness. It is even harder to imagine a pharmaceutical company investing in a project looking at non-pharmaceutical interventions like exercise to allay the health effects of social isolation. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine food companies investing too heavily in research that could reveal their products to play a role in the development or progression of metabolic or inflammatory disease.

These are the kinds of projects probably best left to scientists in academia. Of course, some academic researchers might have questionable ties to the pharmaceutical or food industries. Many more, though, either lack such ties or are completely comfortable researching and publishing on topics like how exercise may help reduce some of the detrimental physiological consequences of social isolation, the addictiveness of ultra-processed foods, and the basic mechanisms through which some sugars and emulsifiers may lead to a deterioration of the gut lining or the development of liver disease.  

Thus, assuming one does not do away with scientific research in academia, the question of how to shovel out that Augean stable and salvage such research from its many flaws remains. Unfortunately, though, waiting for Hercules to come along may not be the most viable option. However, there have been some proposals that offer good starting points for realistic reforms.

President Donald Trump, for example, has called for a restoration of “Gold Standard Science,” meaning science that is, among other things, reproducible, transparent, falsifiable, free from conflicts of interest, and subject to unbiased peer review. Kulldorff, in his article concerning the state of peer review, advocated for more open-access publication, greater transparency in the peer-review process, better rewarding reviewing peers for their efforts, and doing away with certain gatekeeping practices. 

NIH director Jay Bhattacharya has emphasized the need to address the replication crisis and has discussed directing the NIH to do more to ensure replication studies are funded and published. Similarly focused on the replication crisis, David Randall of the National Association of Scholars, has called for greater efforts to address questionable scientific practices and encourage good ones like replication and the utilization of statistical procedures that reduce the risk of false positive results.  

Granted, these kinds of reforms do not address every problem in science or even academic science. There are also some fine details regarding implementation about which people may disagree. Additionally, these kinds of reforms are unlikely to satisfy those who would argue that the government should not be involved in funding science at all. 

However, at minimum, such proposed reforms do seem like legitimate, good-faith recommendations that would allow for the progression of science and the continuation of worthwhile work beyond industry’s interests while also serving as important first steps in cleaning the Augean stable that science in academia has become.

Daniel Nuccio holds master's degrees in both psychology and biology. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in biology at Northern Illinois University studying host-microbe relationships. He is also a regular contributor to The College Fix where he writes about COVID, mental health, and other topics.

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