What's Wrong With Modern Science And How To Fix It

Thanks so much for this, Fraser. Sutter does a great job explaining the systemic problems in today's "pure" research. It's so systemic that "publish or perish" has become a trope. And peer reviews of your research by persons whose results you yourself may review? Funding of researchers by politicized bureaucracies like NIH, DOE, even NASA? Researchers' patrons must be pleased with their work, else...? ;-) To be clear, the scientists within those agencies may not be politicized but they are not the funding decision-makers. I so respect the majority of scientists who just want to further the pursuit of knowledge without bias. Sadly, the systems in place can easily pervert their work. Scientists are human too. Sutter's point that scientists should not besmirch their reputations opining on "political solutions" is critical. Alas, this is a difficult path to tread. I much appreciate your suggestion that the "scientific method" be applied to this problem. It would be difficult, certainly, but what good scientist doesn't like a seemingly intractable problem? Kudos to both you and Sutter.

A thought-provoking interview. When and why has science failed the public's trust? Perhaps one has to go back to the origin of "science" in the Renaissance when great artists gradually tried to describe the natural world by measurement and experimentation, Leonardo Da 'Vinci for example. Later gifted amateurs, often from wealthy families, gradually developed the concept of science as distinct from arts and theology. At the time colleges did not offer science courses. Even Einstein, whose name was dropped several times, was an amateur who thought about relativity while holding down a boring day job in a post office. Darwin was paid, as a naturalist to go on a 3-year trip but took nearly 30 years to publish "Origin of species", the threat of a rival eventually convincing him. At some point, possibly in the 20th century, science began to be seen as a profession and public funded education and careers were offered. Politicians promised great things of science and the public began to expect results for their taxes, increasingly failure was unacceptable. The gradual change of science from the domain of the amateur to professional with the consequential expectation to deliver results for the public has perhaps led to the first six of Dr. Sutter's sins. He should write a prequel to his two books!

I am a Republican and a big Paul Sutter and Sean Carrol fan. Both outstanding science communicators. I am one of “those” people who distrust a lot of the science that is pushed to us by the mainstream media. I feel like they only tell us what they want us to know, and the fact that most of the drug and vaccine funding comes from big Pharma is a conflict . The fact that any doctor or scientist that had a different opinion or questioned the efficacy of the vaccine got fired, kicked off social media and wasn’t allowed to voice their educated opinion made me very skeptical . Everything Dr. Sutter had to say made a lot of sense to me, but I feel like there are other problems too that he didn’t have time to touch on. Many people also we’re very confused about the “Science“ of the mask mandates during Covid. Many hypocritical things were being said on constantly . The news was preaching and screeching the science was settled , Really ??? Settled??? You must walk in to a restaurant with a mask and then when you sit you can take it off … and thousands of other examples that have made people distrust what we hear about science from the “news” media. It is also troublesome that all the colleges are run by liberal Democrats and 99% of the faculty are also liberal Democrats. Where is the diversity of thought there? Where is the open discussion of ideas? Now watch… I’ll get a ton of hateful comments for this Post.

I'm a scientist and I work for a multinational pharma/molecular diagnostic company. Your interview with Paul highlighted exactly what needed to be said and what is too often left out of the public discourse. Thank you both for having the chutzpah to say what we needed to be hear.

What a brilliant interview again Fraser. Paul Sutter has been one of my favourite people you interview, however just in my circle of friends and acquaintances there would not be one who would sit down and listen to this interview and they certainly would not bother to read his book. Therein lies the problem as I see it in trying to communicate with people in general. Kris Kristofferson once said in a song, "If you waste your time a talking to the people who want listen to things that you are saying who do you thinks going to hear." I only hope Paul proves me wrong because I know that I want to hear, but I think I'm in the minority.

Wow, thank you Mr Sutter, you really laid it all out for us with that interview I was most surprised to hear about the number of people who weren’t able to work in their chosen fields. I’m English ,and it reminds me of the brain drain we endured here ! I guess that a great many scientists will be looking for a career abroad, so I suppose it all works out in the end?

Looking forward watching this, but I also have a feeling that it will not be what I would like to hear. Sutter is exactly the guy who first made me question a lot of "established" astrophysics, because he was so dismissive and assured in his knowledge. Too much of a good thing. Writing this here, only so that after listening, I can come back and report that I was wrong :)

Thanks to you both for speaking on this topic. As a non-scientist who loves Science, this was disturbing but explains a lot. Why do so many distrust science? I feel I know now. What I took from this is that universities must change their requirements, and policymakers must leave the requirements to the universities to decide. And this postdoc insanity has to stop, because it's creating too much pressure to publish publish publish, causing this vexing, cornering of people who want to live their lives, as well enjoying a career. The remaining questions are how to change this, and who has the authority and/or guts to get it done??