An article at SAGE Crossroads examines the relationships between public interest in science and how science is practiced, arriving at some strange conclusions. It seems fashionable in some circles to argue that competition and encouragement in science are bad things; I get the impression this author would like to see scientists locked in a box of moral purity and isolation, there to slowly work without profit or acknowledgement. This is nonsense of course – science is at its best when competing teams race for discoveries and capitalization. Just look at the human genome project: we'd still be waiting on that if government scientists had been left, unchallenged, to their own schedule.
Source: http://www.sagecrossroads.com/public/news/stories/index.cfm?story=048
Author: The Longevity Meme
