Are you one of those people who bristles when congresspeople and political talking heads tell you about “silly” scientific studies your tax dollars are being used for?
Like one study on truck-drivers’ homosexual encounters at truck stops? The people who did the study actually had to appear before Congress after some politicos started in on them. The Congress’s findings? That the study was furthering our understanding of how AIDS is spread–one of the things it was designed to do. The study continued.
Now, including winners of the Ignoble awards (those who actually do stupid research), most scientific inquiry looks odd to outsiders, although those outsiders should remember that many scientific discoveries were not even planned. Viagra and microwaves are just two things discovered while scientists were doing their thing–running studies.
An article in a recent Mental Floss (May/June 2009) hits the point home with “10 Technologies We Stole From the Animal Kingdom.” Why study shark skin, bat radar, or resurrection plants, to name the first three? I’m not sure why they were originally studied (other than–cause we want to know!) or how the studies were funded (private or public), but now there’s a new coating to avoid germs in hospitals, canes for the blind that really let you know what’s out there, and how to keep vaccines viable for longer–the better for the vaccines to help children in inhospitable regions.
Science inquiry is cool and it’s time we reclaim it as an American value.
