What is science to me? By Eli Horrowitz
06.6.10 by David Vitrant
“Science”?
After taking twelve-plus years of science classes and spending a good chunk of time investigating the philosophy of science, the one thing I can confidently say about the subject as a whole is that I’m bad at it. As much as the word is used to indicate a body of knowledge or a governing organization of sorts, science is at its heart a performance – and one that makes use of a wide variety of skills. Pertaining as it does to the physical world, scientific investigation requires a certain level of dexterity and patience. But since science is knowledge-oriented, it also calls for a measure of ingenuity and more than a little detachment. An excellent scientist will, therefore, be a hard thing to find.
But science progresses despite this – could science not be so difficult after all? I doubt it – as in every other field, the history of science is littered with mistakes, overconfidence, and even outright dishonesty. Scientists, after all, are only as human as the rest of us. In fact, there are many cases in which scientists – that is, paid practitioners of science – are more human (in the pejorative sense) than the general population. Experiments require money and money, even money provided with the best of intentions, comes with strings. Take this into account and the above list of characteristics grows to include “brave”: it’s never an easy thing to work at a job that could well inspire your benefactor to stop sending you checks.
Antibiotics that Don’t Kill Bacteria.
02.13.09 by David Vitrant
Antibiotics and drug resistant bacteria are a little talked about yet growing problem. I recently saw a well written and lay person oriented article about creating antibiotics that don’t kill bacteria. The article is here.
Ok. Now to the question everyone is probably asking by now: Why is that a good thing? Isn’t more bacteria around a bad thing ?
In order to answer that question I have to say a few general things about bacteria in general:
- Bacteria grow and reproduce very very quickly.
- It usually only takes one or a few bacteria to re-grow a complete colony.
- Most if not all therapies deal with inhibiting the bacteria and killing it off (usually while killing other types of bacteria as well)…
How some research is never published.
10.31.08 by David Vitrant
One issue that you will hear us gripe about here (and try to find a solution for) is the lack of mediums to discuss or publish “non-data”. What i mean by non-data is anything that can’t be published but might be useful. In that list I include hypotheses that were not correct, or data that is unpublishable or unreproducible.
You ask why non-data would ever be published eh ? Well while positive results are great and lead to new avenues, all the negative results help others not waste time doing useless time consuming experiments. Another reason why non-data is important is that your non-data may actually support somebody else’s research (some examples I will get to in another post). The problem is how to organize it, and how to constitute exactly what a piece of non-data entails.
Anyway. on to the meat of this “depressing” story. Let’s talk about Antidepressants 
This NYT article describes how some makers of antidepressants didn’t disclose about 1/3 of their drug related studies. This is nothing new for most of us in the scientific field. Many times when we receive funds from biotech firms or pharmaceutical firms to do research there are strings attached. That’s not to say the strings are all bad. The funding is necessary to bring some research into industry but one of the most prevalent string is that the corporation funding a research project usually has the final say on what data can be published, and when. They pay the research, they own the rights, and are accountable to shareholders.
Our Innaugural Post
09.13.08 by David Vitrant
Hello,
I’m David Vitrant the Executive Director of FundScience Inc. Here at FundScience we are looking to get the public to fund individual pilot research projects. This will drive innovation in many scientific fields, and open up complex scientific discussions to the public. In the end research is meant to help understand nature and for the benefit of society in general. With our blogs, wiki’s, forums, and soon project proposals we hope to bring a community of scientists and laypeople together to discuss the future of science and help fund our future generation of scientists.
The aspect of introducing the public to the life of a scientist, how scientists think, how we tackle problems, what our problems are, is critical to this step and I hope that by providing these blogs you will be able to peer into the life of a scientist, and go past political pandering, and marketing, to arrive at the issues and possibly the solutions.
In order for us to be Successful we need your help though in the following aspects:
1) We need content and bloggers to talk about the issues. If you know somebody please spread the word help us find scientists willing to blog (or laypeople willing to blog about science)
2) Are you interested in a specific topic, want to understand some research as a layperson? Email us or make a post on our forum. We will see what we can do.
3) Digg our posts please. This will help get our word out and get attention to our site.
4) Are you willing to fund a research project or have thoughts on how to do so? Email us again.
Lastly, we are all here to learn about science, talk about science, and collaborate. So please be courteous and don’t be shy to ask questions.
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