Our resident scientist looks at our love/hate relationship with science
As I’ve mentioned in the past, America has a paradoxical relationship with Science. On the one hand, we all benefit from the results of science, but, as a country, we seem to be less and less convinced of the value of science.
For example, NASA has, over the years, given us some of our proudest achievements. Not just as Americans, but as a species. (Setting foot on the Moon? We did that.) But, with only rare exceptions, NASA’s budget gets cut year after year and, as a country, we seem to be fine with that.
Of course, the argument often heard is, “We need to take care of the folks here on Earth first.” Fine, but then we have people that refuse to accept the proven safety of GMOs (which allow us to feed more people from less land and water), or even the efficacy of vaccines, which have saved (probably) billions of lives over the last 100 years.
The end result is that science is becoming untrusted by the populace, and that’s leading to a willful cutback in what we call “basic research.”
But, what is basic research and why is it important? Well, basic research is simply asking questions and seeing where they lead without any real goal in mind. Sometimes, you have no idea what this type of research will lead to, because you don’t really care. This bothers a lot of people, because they expect scientists to always be working towards something. Otherwise, why should we spend money on it?
Well, the reason we should invest in basic research is precisely because we have no idea where it will lead! Consider the following examples of basic research that led to discoveries that changed our world:
Lasers
In the 19th century, physicist Max Planck was fiddling around with electricity and magnets and managed to work out that energy was delivered in discrete chunks, which he called “quanta.” Years later, Einstein discovered that light was also broken into these chunks and that electrons might be tricked into emitting light at particular wavelengths (i.e. Red, Blue, X-Rays, etc.)
Fast forward about 50 years and scientists all over America were trying to work out a way to stimulate electrons to emit light of various kinds. One graduate student, Gordon Gould, invents the “LASER” (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) acronym at about this time.
Skip to today and lasers are everywhere. Communications, data-storage, cat toys, medicine….without lasers, our civilization would be very, very different today.
Climate Change
For years, scientists have looked at the past history of the Earth by going to frozen places and extracting core samples. (Basically, big long tubes of dirt, ice and rocks.)
This very basic research tells us what the atmosphere of the planet was like hundreds or even thousands of years ago. The relatively low levels of carbon dioxide in the older cores was one of the first clues that something was wonky with our atmosphere today.
Genetics and Medicine
When Darwin wrote down his Theory of Evolution, he predicted that there was some method by which traits were passed from one generation to the next. But, he didn’t know what that method was. Only later was it discovered that DNA was the means by which genetic information was passed down from generation to generation.
That in turn opened up the door to genetic manipulation, gene therapy and a host of other medical treatments that we are just beginning to explore fully.
Artificial Intelligence
For about 40 years now, scientists have been working to create a sentient computer program. While they haven’t yet succeeded (as far as we know…maybe these A.I.s are playing dumb), the spin-offs of those efforts are numerous: Expert systems that diagnose disease, digital assistants that give you turn-by-turn directions and even video game opponents that seem to be just a little too smart.
And these things are just the tip of the iceberg. So, the next time you hear about money being wasted on something “stupid,” like, say, trying to build better telescopes…just remember that the dinosaurs weren’t big on basic research either.
Steven W. Disbrow is a programmer who specializes in e-commerce and mobile systems development, an entrepreneur, comic-book nerd, writer, improviser, actor, sometime television personality and parent of two human children.