#corporate science

[hennethgalad]

Science could enable a fascist future. Especially if we don’t learn from the past

We need to reckon honestly with science’s past and present to avoid a grim future

"“most people are forced to live inside someone else’s imagination.”"

[tannenrad]

[mentagenesis]

Science For $ale.

by Daniel Wolfert Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com If your goal was to retard the progress of a planet and keep it from flourishing and progressing, all you would have to do is corrupt scientific inquiry. This has long been the state on planet Earth. It began long ago at the end of what is known as the Younger-Dryas period. The planetary eco-system was recovering from an immense catastrophe that…

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[cecilia37]

In the process that carries knowledge from the laboratory to the market there is not enough fear. And in the history of the process there has not been adequate accounting.

-- Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition., p. 143.

[eurello]

Here are the most interesting articles I read this week: 

The NIH, the world’s biggest public funder of basic biomedical research, wields immense power over the nation’s health-research community. It allocates about $26 billion a year in federal grants; roughly $6 billion of that goes to cancer research. At a June 5 hearing, NIH officials told the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance that the agency has contacted 61 research institutions about suspected diversion of proprietary information by grant recipients and referred 16 cases, mainly involving undisclosed ties to foreign governments, for possible legal action. Ways of working that have long been encouraged by the NIH and many research institutions, particularly MD Anderson, are now quasi-criminalized, with FBI agents reading private emails, stopping Chinese scientists at airports, and visiting people’s homes to ask about their loyalty.

“The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers from Top Institutions,” Bloomberg Businessweek

Most people, especially Americans, have come to expect corporations to put profit above all else. Still, we mostly don’t expect there to be mercenary scientists. Science is supposed to be constant, apolitical, and above the fray. This commonsense view misses the rise of science-for-sale specialists over the last several decades and a “product defense industry” that sustains them—a cabal of apparent experts, PR flaks, and political lobbyists who use bad science to produce whatever results their sponsors want.

“Science for Sale,” Boston Review

De Rham has pioneered a radical theory that could hold the key to why the universe is expanding faster and faster and explain the nature of dark energy. The theory, known as massive gravity, modifies Einstein’s general relativity, positing that the hypothetical particles (gravitons) that mediate the gravitational force themselves have a mass. In Einstein’s version, gravitons are assumed to be massless.

If gravitons have a mass, then gravity is expected to have a weaker influence on very large distance scales, which could explain why the expansion of the universe has not been reined in.

“Has physicist’s gravity theory solved ‘impossible’ dark energy riddle?” The Guardian

[scienceinpopculture]

While we did cover the commercialization of science in class, I believe it would be interesting to look at the current state of and perception of the commercialization of science, as well as its early years during the world fairs of the 1930’s. As it states in the Kuznick article, “Hence, the process of corporate appropriation set in motion during the interwar period and epitomized by the conflict over the presentation of science at the fair foreshadowed the domination of science by the military-industrial complex, which would use science for purposes once disdained by the scientists who fought unsuccessfully to have a voice in the 1939 NYWF.” Today, these still seems to have some credibility in its scope, but there also seems to be a realization with popular culture that these corporations exist. Even so, there doesn’t seem to be much action against them. The above image is the logo of the Umbrella Corporation, the evil biological company that creates the T virus that creates the zombies in the Resident Evil series. Another example that goes along with these idea of modern day super corporations using science nefariously is the Weyland Industries, the company featured in the Alien franchise which brings about the death of their crews in pursuit of “progress.” While these examples use artistic license in portraying these companies as specifically evil, there is no denying corporations today hold great power and sway over a variety of departments, including science and its application. While giving scientific progress the resources of a large corporation may be beneficial, there also needs to be an awareness that this combination of corporate interest and science may not always bring optimal results.

Mike Morrissey