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Does Commercial Pressure Make for Bad Science?
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16571 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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11 / 1989 |
5,836 Words |
| Author
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David Lindley
David Lindley is associate editor of Nature magazine in
Washington, D.C. He was previously a technical editor and
writer with the Superconducting and Supercollider Central
Design Group in Berkeley, California, and a research scientist
in astrophysics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. |
When the seventeenth-century astronomer Edmund Halley was trying to puzzle out the properties of cometary orbits, he asked his revered but reclusive colleague Isaac Newton what would be the general shape of the orbit of a body orbiting the Sun if, as many scientists of the day were beginning to suspect, there were an attractive force between the Sun and the body, diminishing in strength with the inverse of the distance squared. "An ellipse," was Newton's instant reply. Halley, who had exhausted many hours trying to solve the problem, asked him how he could say this so casually. "Why, I have calculated it," said Newton.
It turned out that Newton, some years before, had formulated the law of gravity for which he is now celebrated and had used it to calculate the orbits of planets and comets. But he had neglected to publish either his theory or any of the practical results derived from it. With the problem of the planetary orbits solved to his satisfaction, he apparently felt no urge to let anyone else know that they could put away their pens and paper. But at Halley's urging he rooted out his old calculations and put together the Principia Mathematica, a three-volume compendium of mathematical deduction and the cornerstone of modern theoretical physics.
Newton's reticence is most certainly a thing of the past. Modern science, with money, fame, and professorial chairs at stake, has as competitive a career structure as Wall Street or Washington. Reputations, and the material rewards that go with them, depend on proven output (in the form of scientific papers published in prestigious journals) and on getting ideas into print a week ahead of one's rivals. Whether the publications are memorable or the ideas correct is of less
... (1995 of 34617 Characters)
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