Is Science Really Moving Faster Than Ever?

The formulation fails on almost every level (except its success as a political tactic). First of all, governments and firms have been successfully steering science toward desired goals for the past 150 years (pretty much for as long as science has been at all relevant to technological advance). Of course some rather small percentage of science is devoted to letting scientists do their own thing, unencumbered by any expectation of useful outcomes, but this has never been a significant part of the public or private investment in research. Not only that, but the idea that scientists pursuing their own curiosity is the best way either to advance fundamental science, or to produce knowledge that will end up being useful, is pretty tough to support, too. Of course there are a standard set of anecdotes about the canonical heroes of pure science, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, and the like, and there will always be (we may hope) the very few true, untethered geniuses who can see things anew, but mostly, to use your analogy, K, scientists are just soldiers in the army, with relatively little freedom to do much beyond put the next brick in the wall that their predecessors, colleagues, funders, and institutions are laboring to construct. Daniel Engber?s Slate piece on mouse models in academic biomedical research compellingly documents this uncomfortable reality, and prompts the question: What if it?s the wrong wall?

rachel maddow dodgers magic johnson jetblue pilot solicitor general neighborhood watch face transplant