There are a ton of problems with how science is done and most of it comes down to the same root cause: greed. You have corporations buying off scientists (if not to rig experiments/falsify results, then to bury unfavorable findings), journals willing to publish any garbage with little (if any) meaningful review, then media companies willing to turn that junk science into a click-bait friendly press release for a company or industry.
The corruption of science into advertising and science by press conference is a huge problem, but it's not the fault of science itself. It's the institutions we've built around science that are responsible. The way we choose to handle funding, the universities, and the journals, these are all systems that were created and they are all systems that can be replaced or reformed. The underlying framework for scientific observation and testing are still solid and remains the best way to further our understanding the world we live in, but we need accountability and regulations in place to keep the output high quality.
It's the same issue we have with medicine. Not enough accountability and oversight has allowed for things like doctors taking kick backs from pharmaceutical companies (the opioid crisis was a good example, but it's been going on for ages) and people like Stella Immanuel who can tell her patients their illness is caused by demon sperm and alien DNA but she still gets to keep her license to practice medicine.
Without regulation and oversight every system is vulnerable to corruption and failure. It doesn't mean you should throw away the system, it means we aren't doing our job to keep it functioning.
> You have corporations buying off scientists (if not to rig experiments/falsify results, then to bury unfavorable findings), journals willing to publish any garbage with little (if any) meaningful review, then media companies willing to turn that junk science into a click-bait friendly press release for a company or industry.
What reason does a corporation have to pay for science that they know will not work? That's self-defeating. At best it's only advantageous in the very short term before you try to actually sell a product that doesn't actually work. (One more reasons these absurd pre-revenue SPACs are horrendous.)
Hypothetically: Let’s say you manufacture Volkswagens, and your small engine diesels include a defeat device that allows your cars to pass emissions tests by enabling pollution controls only during emission tests.
When the world learns of your treachery, you sponsor scientific research in which monkeys are exposed to your modern VW diesel tail pipe emissions and also model year 1990s Ford diesel fumes, to show that you’re really pretty harmless compared to old pickup trucks. Your research is trash, the conclusions meaningless, and scientists cash your checks.
Hypothetically: you manufacture cigarettes..
Hypothetically: your fracking is injecting heavy metals into my groundwater..
> What reason does a corporation have to pay for science that they know will not work?
Profit. The only reason a company does anything. You see it when companies pay for research so that they can get "X product may reduce risk of cancer" in the headlines, or when they want to put "Scientifically proven to Y" on their product labels. Even if it takes funding 100 studies to get the results they're looking for they can just bury the results of the first 99 that contradict their soundbite or ad copy.
The tobacco industry paid off scientists to lie about the cancer risks of their products so that they could continue profit from killing their customers. DuPont did the same thing. The company knew about the dangers of PFAS for decades, but they went around funding research on it and pulling that funding the minute research showed results that their product was harmful. They also paid off a scientist whose job was peer review to protect their interests while hiding his ties to the company.
There are a ton of ways lies disguised as actual science can make money for those with no morals and corporations don't have morals, just shareholders.
With current Covid pandemic. I could be wrong but it seems most studies are looking at effectiveness of vaccines and little to nothing on effectiveness of natural immunity. I say this as someone who was one of the first to get vaccinated. Not that I am saying the pharmaceutical companies sponsored the studies. So to answer your question sometimes it is what is not funded that is probably more telling.
It seems even more like there are groups of people who are dead-set on certain catchphrases (like "natural immunity" or it used to be "herd immunity") no matter what facts they are presented with.
A lot of the antivax folks cling to the idea of natural immunity being better somehow, but who in their right mind would choose immunity from getting infected with a virus that can make you very very sick (or dead) and cause you to infect many others around you if they could otherwise get immunity from a free vaccine with none of those problems?
I am in South Africa. We initially struggled to get the vaccine and first phase was literally a clinical trial for health workers. We eventually did get stock but it seems by then a significant number of the population got Covid. Omicron variant doesn't seem to have affected us as much and surveys have shown that up to 80% South Africans have natural immunity from having had Covid. Yes there are some papers on the topic but government policy does not feature anything related to natural immunity. It wasn't a case of get intentionally infected rather it was a case of getting vaccines later than other nations.
It's certainly not good that so many people were forced to roll the dice initially because of lack of access to a vaccine that already exists. As new waves of variants get spread around data has been being collected so we can learn more about the immunity given by both vaccines and prior infection. Your comment mentioned a lack of research being done, but said nothing about government policy. How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?
From what I've seen a prior infection may give stronger protection than vaccines which is great for people who caught the virus and survived without long term health issues, but that's no comfort for the people who didn't. I hope that access to vaccines has improved in South Africa since whatever degree of protection we get from either an infection or a vaccine doesn't last very long. I'll be trying to get my 4th shot in a couple months.
> How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?
This is my own opinion based on my observations in South Africa. Yes it is unfortunate we could not get access to the vaccine at the quantities and time we would have liked to but the lesson is we need to improve our ability to manufacture vaccines. There are some promising initiatives in this regard. I digress though. South Africa keeps an eye on weekly deaths[1] and can then work out excess deaths. The excess deaths during the recent Omicron wave which peaked at the end of December were significantly lower than the deaths during previous waves. Government continues to encourage vaccination but the restrictions to reduce spread Covid are at the lowest we have had. Even during the peak of the Omicron variant over New Years restrictions were being lifted [2]. So without coming out and saying it, it looks to me that SA government acknowledges that natural immunity seems to be helping keep hospitalisations and deaths low. This is because most of the research in SA anyway tends to place less emphasis on natural immunity but focuses on the vaccine. So all communication from government continues to stress need to vaccinate yet restrictions continue to fall. It could be that I have not read enough but government's attitude has been welcomed.
It's not only greed, but corporatism. People on institutions are entrenched and will defend their own interests even when it's immoral and stupid. And at the end of the day most will have zero doubts about their integrity and rightness because the human mind is amazing and allow for a large degree of cognitive dissonance.
The sad thing is that there was always money to be made by having a greater understanding of our world and developing new technologies. Investing in research pays off very well, but it requires long term thinking. If you only care about next quarter's profits and growth you aren't going to make that kind of investment. Not when you can manipulate science today and get a lot of money right now. 3M and DuPont poisoned the world and even their own children with PFAS for decades after they knew it was harmful because they couldn't resist the money they'd make doing it. For a lot of people, no amount of wealth is ever enough.
The corruption of science into advertising and science by press conference is a huge problem, but it's not the fault of science itself. It's the institutions we've built around science that are responsible. The way we choose to handle funding, the universities, and the journals, these are all systems that were created and they are all systems that can be replaced or reformed. The underlying framework for scientific observation and testing are still solid and remains the best way to further our understanding the world we live in, but we need accountability and regulations in place to keep the output high quality.
It's the same issue we have with medicine. Not enough accountability and oversight has allowed for things like doctors taking kick backs from pharmaceutical companies (the opioid crisis was a good example, but it's been going on for ages) and people like Stella Immanuel who can tell her patients their illness is caused by demon sperm and alien DNA but she still gets to keep her license to practice medicine.
Without regulation and oversight every system is vulnerable to corruption and failure. It doesn't mean you should throw away the system, it means we aren't doing our job to keep it functioning.