Science's True Nature by Anna

Science's True Nature by Anna - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

TED Talks are used by many to present their current work, new discoveries, and unique insights. A remarkable percent of them cover scientific discoveries, studies, and inquiries. Though science itself has a limited amount of areas of research, the topics within them are limitless, as each new discovery has the power to disprove, correct, or perfect a previous one. This is the nature of scientific inquiry. However, our perception of science is often that its conclusions are concrete, and that is not solely the fault of the uneducated masses. Scientists themselves often perpetuate this myth with overconfidence in their research. There is even a division within the areas of study between “hard” and “soft” sciences, even though both categories come from equally biased places and are both prone to failure. If I were to give an educational TED Talk, it would be about the science’s true, intended nature versus the general public’s perception and belief about its nature, and the problems that come with the division.
Science is constantly updating itself. Old theories are continually being revamped, reviewed, and disproved, and even something you learned in school a few years ago may now be recognized in the scientific community to be completely false. Despite this, both people in and out of scientific fields of study rely on outdated research to support their work and worldview, or continue to use them in their daily life. Though one issue is that scientific education outside of schools and academia is limited, another glaring issue is the inability to accept new new evidence and change one’s outlooks. That, and the broken political climate surrounding how we do science.
As previously stated, science’s nature is that of correction and improvement, not one of finite truths and definite answers. Everything within the fields of scientific study is subject to change and evolve. This nature is highlighted in all of sciences aspects, right down to its language. Take the very things that science has “proven”, for example; these things are called theories, from their conception to their end. In this way, scientific discoveries never present themselves as anything more than what they are. Even a discovery that has been “proven” without much doubt invites and encourages questioning and further experimentation. However, individuals do present theories to be more than what they are. Individual people view theories as facts and truths, often picking and choosing the ones that support the views they already have. Doing so makes science easier to understand and digest, but it causes real problems when faced with actual scientific innovation. This view of things allows for people’s preconceived ideas to obstruct the pursuit of knowledge.
Though those within the scientific community naturally take science’s true nature and applications more seriously, they are not exempt from the biases that hold back scientific discovery. These biases are often acknowledged within the “soft” sciences, such as sociology, but are often not even thought of within more“hard” sciences, like biology and chemistry, because these sciences are believed to be more reliant on “facts” and “truth”, rather than what both “soft” and “hard” sciences alike are based on, study, research, experimentation, and evidence. Despite this, scientists from all fields operate on their own biases and self interest. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that when a so called “research superstar” dies, the publication rate of their collaborators decreases significantly, while that of non-collaborators increases. From this, it can be concluded that the work of the non-collaborator scientists went under-published due to the “research superstar’s” influence on the field (Fitzgerald, NBER website). Scientists who are older or well recognized control grants, dissertation approval, and public knowledge. When an individual has power within their field, and want that power to stay, it’s within their best interest to support the studies that uphold their work and suffocate those that don’t. Even those within scientific fields hold back the progress of science.
In the world of science, human knowledge of our world is constantly being perfected. It is only our biases and personal interests that stand in the way of both the scientist’s and the individual’s opportunity to have a greater understanding of the universe. If I were to present one, the end message of my TED Talk would be this: we need to acknowledge science’s true nature and keep ourselves informed. This is vital to the progression of the sciences and to that of our species.