Reboots and Bans

Educational Reboots and Research Bans

By John Taylor; 2007 Feb 27

Paris Talks is a minefield of mind-blowing bon mots, and among my favorites is this,

"It (science and the search for truth) means, also, that we must be willing to clear away all that we have previously learned, all that would clog our steps on the way to truth; we must not shrink if necessary from beginning our education all over again." (Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, 136)

To the absent minded, to a forgetful person like me, one blown away at random times by migraine attacks, this is a supremely comforting thing to learn. It is true that I have to begin again from the start whenever I seem to be getting something done, but going back to square one is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the mark of search for truth that one is willing to do that. Many others, unwilling or proud, take wrong turns, refuse to ask for directions, and waste their entire lives. Consider the following, one of my favorite passages in economist Paul Klugman's book, The Accidental Theorist.

"I might as well raise another point. One thing that usually happens when I try to talk about the difference between serious economics and the kind of glib rhetoric that passes for sophistication is that people accuse me of being arrogant, of thinking that I know everything. I can't imagine why. No, seriously -- think about it. What someone like Felix Rohatyn is in effect saying is "I don't need to make an effort to understand where the conventional views of economists come from; I don't need to understand the stuff that's in every undergraduate textbook; I'm such a smart guy that I can make up my own version of macroeconomics off the top of my head, and it will be much better than anything they have come up with." Then along comes this irritating economist who points out a few gaping holes in his argument, basic errors that anyone who had bothered to understand the stuff in the undergraduate textbook would not have made. And people's response is "That Krugman -- he's so arrogant."
"Well, what can we do about this kind of thing? Let me be the first to admit that economists have not made it easy for smart people who don't want to get too deep into the technicalities to understand the basics. Mathematics is a wonderful tool, but there are far too few attempts to explain the fundamental models of economics with a minimum of math; we need to make a real effort to write in English, and skip the differential topology. I'm trying, but the profession has a long way to go.
"But it's also important for non-economists -- people who want to be sophisticated about economic policy without getting Ph.D.s -- to make an effort. As I said earlier, it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of attitude. The biggest problem with many businesspeople, political leaders, and others is that while they are willing to talk and read about economics ad nauseam, they are not willing to do anything that feels like going back to school. They would rather read five books by David Halberstam than one chapter in an undergraduate textbook; and they absolutely hate the idea that they need to work their way through whimsical stories about cloth and wine and baby-sitting rather than get right into pontificating about globalization and the new economy.
"But there is no way around it. If you want to be truly well-informed about economics (or anything else), you must go back to school -- and keep going back, again and again. You must be prepared to work through little models before you can use the big words -- in fact, it is usually a good idea to try to avoid the big words altogether. If you balk at this task -- if you think that you are too grown-up for this sort of thing -- then you may sound impressive and sophisticated, but you will have no idea what you are talking about ..." (Accidental Theorist, 114-115)

Next I want to talk about Michael Creighton’s latest science potboiler, "Next." In this novel he paints a world of corrupted biotech, of scientists gone wild with a passion for not knowledge but money and power. In the following, from the afterword to the book, he explains the root reason why Big Science has been become so greed obsessed, and prescribes the first step to making it better.

"Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act. In 1980, Congress decided that the discoveries made within universities were not being made widely available, to benefit the public. To move things along, it passed a law permitting university researchers to sell their discoveries for their own profit, even when that research had been funded by taxpayer money.
"As a result of this legislation, most science professors now have corporate ties -- either to companies they have started or to other biotech companies. Thirty years ago, there was a distinct difference in approach between university research and that of private industry. Today the distinction is blurred, or absent. Thirty years ago, disinterested scientists were available to discuss any subject affecting the public. Now, scientists have personal interests that influence their judgment.
"Academic institutions have changed in unexpected ways: The original Bayh-Dole legislation recognized that universities were not commercial entities, and encouraged them to make their research available to organizations that were. But today, universities attempt to maximize profits by conducting more and more commercial work themselves, thus making their products more valuable to them when they are finally licensed..." (Next, by Michael Creighton, Harper Collins, New York, 2006, p. 422-423)

This is all laudable and undeniable stuff, and I applaud Creighton for this aspect of the book. But in the following, while most of it makes eminent sense, Creighton goes out on the same thin logical limb that I railed against after the last Philosopher's Cafe meeting: the stupid consensus of opinion that prohibition failed and should be forgotten, or worse, invoked as a sort of "Remember the Alamo" for all who would forbid social engineering. "Remember the Prohibition Era," they cry. Anyway, here is what Creighton says in prescribing a cure for the corruption of science:

"Avoid bans on research. Various groups of different political persuasions want to ban some aspect of genetic research. I agree that certain research ought not to be pursued, at least not now. But as a practical matter, I oppose bans on research and technology.
"Bans can't be enforced. I don't know why we have not learned this lesson. From Prohibition to the war on drugs, we repeatedly indulge the fantasy that behavior can be banned. Invariably we fail. And in a global economy, bans take on other meanings: even if you stop research in one country, it still goes on in Shanghai. So what have you accomplished?
"Of course, hope springs eternal, and fantasies never die: various groups imagine they can negotiate a global ban on certain research. But to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a successful global ban on anything. Genetic research is unlikely to be the first." (Next, 422)

Hmm. Bans cannot be enforced. Does that mean that we should forget about banning, say, murder or robbery just because we will never find and punish every murderer or robber? There has to be something wrong with that somewhere. I would say what it is but I'm just so angry that I cannot think straight. Once again, I smell the foul odor of Adolph Nobody.