Science Versus Politics
Science progresses in spite of politics-
"The correctness of a scientific theory can never by adjudged by its readiness to give the answers desired by political leadership."--Charles A. Leone, "Lysenko versus Mendel," Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 1952
Science flourishes in open societies. Under authoritarian rule, science that is determined to be in opposition to the ambitions of controlling political authorities may be silenced through laws or by use of force. This does not stop science, although it may make progress more costly for humanity. Some historic examples:
1) Galileo Galilei, a brilliant Italian astronomer and physicist was tried by the Inquisition in 1615. Found "vehemently suspect of heresy" because his writings contradicted the ruling Catholic doctrine. An earlier mathematician, Giordano Bruno had been burned alive for the same heretical views. Threatened with torture and forced to recant his calculations proving the earth rotated around the sun, Galileo lived the remainder of his life under house arrest.
2) Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis championed the use of antiseptic procedures in hospitals before humankind understood germ theory. His concepts of contamination were met with derision from others, despite his experiments showing significantly reduced mortality with hand-washing. He was ridiculed and considered "nuts". In 1865 he was straitjacketed and confined against his will in an asylum. There he was beaten and the open sores festered. He died in just two weeks, ironically of sepsis. 3) During WW2 the antibacterial medication sulphonamide was discovered by a German researcher, Gerhard Domagk. He received the Swedish-based Nobel award which was considered illegal in Hitler's Germany. Domagk was incarcerated/interrogated; his award-winning discovery was hidden by the ruling Nazi's. The antibiotic was not permitted for use in Germany until after the war ended in 1945. However, the medication was accepted and used by the Allies and is thought to have saved tens of thousands of Allied soldiers' lives (sulfa powder was used on open wounds as first-aid, as well as in field hospitals). Importantly sulphonamide also cured Winston Churchill of pneumonia in 1943.
4) In Joseph Stalin's repressive Soviet Union, Trofim Lysenko, a geneticist who believed he could force inherited change quickly, was elevated by Stalin to help the Soviet government engineer improved crops. In 1948 Lysenko denounced Gregor Mendel and the concepts of Mendelian inheritance to be 'foreign, impractical, idealistic and a product of "bourgeois capitalism."' He declared proponents of Mendelian inheritance "enemies of the state". Scientists who disagreed were purged from universities and laboratories. Some were sent to forced prisons or labor camps and others disappeared. Soviet biology slowed nearly to a halt with severe crop failures, food shortages and starvation. The state's politically motivated promotion of Lysenko's pseudoscience rather than the actual science of grain genetics contributed to famines that cost millions of lives in the communist states of the USSR and China.
Authoritarian attempts at controlling science do not work well. The consequences of positioning politics to override science; of hiding important scientific breakthroughs never works for long.
Purging of scientists and researchers has- throughout history (and now) led to reduction of a nation's capacity to respond to universal threats like diseases and disasters.
SLee
Science flourishes in open societies. Under authoritarian rule, science that is determined to be in opposition to the ambitions of controlling political authorities may be silenced through laws or by use of force. This does not stop science, although it may make progress more costly for humanity. Some historic examples:
1) Galileo Galilei, a brilliant Italian astronomer and physicist was tried by the Inquisition in 1615. Found "vehemently suspect of heresy" because his writings contradicted the ruling Catholic doctrine. An earlier mathematician, Giordano Bruno had been burned alive for the same heretical views. Threatened with torture and forced to recant his calculations proving the earth rotated around the sun, Galileo lived the remainder of his life under house arrest.
2) Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis championed the use of antiseptic procedures in hospitals before humankind understood germ theory. His concepts of contamination were met with derision from others, despite his experiments showing significantly reduced mortality with hand-washing. He was ridiculed and considered "nuts". In 1865 he was straitjacketed and confined against his will in an asylum. There he was beaten and the open sores festered. He died in just two weeks, ironically of sepsis. 3) During WW2 the antibacterial medication sulphonamide was discovered by a German researcher, Gerhard Domagk. He received the Swedish-based Nobel award which was considered illegal in Hitler's Germany. Domagk was incarcerated/interrogated; his award-winning discovery was hidden by the ruling Nazi's. The antibiotic was not permitted for use in Germany until after the war ended in 1945. However, the medication was accepted and used by the Allies and is thought to have saved tens of thousands of Allied soldiers' lives (sulfa powder was used on open wounds as first-aid, as well as in field hospitals). Importantly sulphonamide also cured Winston Churchill of pneumonia in 1943.
4) In Joseph Stalin's repressive Soviet Union, Trofim Lysenko, a geneticist who believed he could force inherited change quickly, was elevated by Stalin to help the Soviet government engineer improved crops. In 1948 Lysenko denounced Gregor Mendel and the concepts of Mendelian inheritance to be 'foreign, impractical, idealistic and a product of "bourgeois capitalism."' He declared proponents of Mendelian inheritance "enemies of the state". Scientists who disagreed were purged from universities and laboratories. Some were sent to forced prisons or labor camps and others disappeared. Soviet biology slowed nearly to a halt with severe crop failures, food shortages and starvation. The state's politically motivated promotion of Lysenko's pseudoscience rather than the actual science of grain genetics contributed to famines that cost millions of lives in the communist states of the USSR and China.
Authoritarian attempts at controlling science do not work well. The consequences of positioning politics to override science; of hiding important scientific breakthroughs never works for long.
Purging of scientists and researchers has- throughout history (and now) led to reduction of a nation's capacity to respond to universal threats like diseases and disasters.
SLee