pumpkinstrokemarrow

One aspect of this was that in the seventies of the last century, the way to get funding for your way out research project was to tie it into defence in general and whacking the Russkies in particular. That way the munificent DoD would cough up. Some otherwise respectable lefties got into trouble when it turned out that their funding had been contaminated in this way. Then in the nineties, it was the turn of AIDS. The only way to get funding was to tie your project into AIDS and any scientist in AIDS-denial was cast into the outer darkness. Today it is the turn of the global warming people.

Perhaps what the funding people have to do is to have a three way classification of research projects. Category A projects fit in with current fads and fashions. Category B are not too bad and Category C are in the outer darkness. The first thing that is done with an in-bound grant application is to classify it. This is the business of some entirely independent outfit, committed to classification for classifications sake. No axes to grind. Head count capped at 1,000 plus contractors. Rather in the way that the Central Statistics Office used to be able to move the world by moving some item of balance of payments expenditure from one classification to another. Or that its successor can move the world by juggling with PFI items in the national accounts. Then once an application had been classified, the funding people could look at the merits of the thing. The catch being that more or less anything goes for Category A but you had to be brilliant, stellar even, to get your dosh if you were in Category C.

All this brought on by the maverick doctor who thought he would save the world by doing research into side effects of the three-in-one jab for children. Leaving aside the detail that he bent, if not broke, the rules in detail, how should we deal with such a thing?

With hindsight, it seems that he did a lot of damage. Lots of children did not get immunised and a lot more children than usual caught measles. Some, presumably very small number of, children did not have a catastrophic reaction to the immunisation because they had not had it.

He did this, by tapping into my basic fears about the wisdom of injecting a whole lot of bugs into my precious child. It is well known that you can feel pretty rough after one of those all-in-one immunisations for the tropics. Some people - like me - are apt to pass out at the sight of a needle. So there is a lot of fear here waiting to be stirred up. So we now suppose that the conventional wisdom, the scientific and medical fashion, is for three-in-one jabs. Then along comes this chap who disputes that conventional wisdom. Threatens you with autism or worse. Do we want to allow this dispute to take place in public, when we know that if he turns out to be wrong, a lot of damage will have been done to the immunisation program? Do we want to fund him at all? Do we want to ban debate of this topic which has already been settled? The is precedent for such bans in other contexts where, for example, one does not allow an issue to be debated more than once every so many years. The losers have to lose gracefully and accept that they cannot hog the airwaves. There are other issues which need to be dealt with.

But in the scientific world we are supposed to free and open. A scientist should be free to pursue whatever his fancy suggests without let or hindrance from the powers that be. Which was all well and good when most scientists were country parsons with good livings, who had subbed out their day job to some curate and who had plenty of time to indulge their scientific interests without being bothered by the bishop or anybody else. But these days are gone. Most science requires team work and lots of equipment. Few people have private incomes. So most science has to be funded, either by governments or by corporations. Who are going to have their agendas.

Luckily there are still some fields of endeavour which can be ploughed on the cheap. Little more needed than an Internet and MS Office capable computer together with a supply of paper for the printer. Maybe the odd biro.

On the waves of horticulture front, pleased to report that the hawthorn has been really good this year, although brought on a bit fast by the recent heat. Quite spectacular with waves of its peculiar pong wafting over you as you cycle along. Presumably the bugs like it. The small hawthorn tree in our front garden has been really good too, having had a bad year last year. Happened to look down on it in the dusk the other day and it really looked something. Great waves of sculptured white; domed a bit like the top of a palm tree. BH almost reconciled to it. She does not like its size.