Figure 1.18
Salmon has recently been touted as super-brain food, but do you know why it is so good for you? Educating yourself on how science affects your life is important. It will help you analyzing the validity of such claims, help you take better care of your health, be a wiser healthcare consumer, and make you more science literate in general.
You may also become a stronger advocate for your community. For example, if a tree planting initiative has begun in your neighborhood, you can investigate the plan for your area and find out what you can do. You could then explain what the program is about to your friends and family.
Or, perhaps a city park has fallen into disrepair, and city officials are looking for feedback from the public about what to do with it. You could use scientific thinking to analyze the issue and options, and develop some solutions.
What Is a Scientist?
What exactly makes a person a “scientist” and what is their role in society? First, we should start with what scientists are not. They are not crazed geniuses with bad hair and a fondness for hysterical laughter, as Figure a below might suggest. Although they may not be on the cutting edge of fashion, they are regular people. They went to school like you, they studied math, reading, and science like you, and they probably exhibited at science fairs, just like the students in Figure b below.
Figure 1.19
Spot the Scientist. (a) An example of what scientists are not. (b) Real-life young scientists at an exhibition where they are presenting their research.
Being a scientist does not require you to learn everything in this book or any other science book by heart, but understanding the important concepts really helps. Instead, being a scientist begins by thinking like a scientist. Scientists are curious about how the world works; they have many questions and go about answering those questions using the scientific methods, which we discussed in the Nature of Science lesson.
If you are fascinated by how things work and why they work a certain way, you too could become a scientist! Research scientists are the people that do the investigations and make the discoveries that you read or hear about. To work as a research scientist, a person usually needs an advanced degree in science. An advanced degree is obtained by attending graduate school after getting a Bachelor of Science, Engineering, or Arts degree. A Bachelor degree normally takes four years to complete; graduate degrees usually take two years for a Masters degree and four or more years to complete a Doctorate degree.
Scientific research offers much more to a person than just discovering new things. Researchers have the opportunity to meet with other people (scientists and non-scientists) who care about the same subjects that the scientists research such as cancer research, marine ecology, or human nutrition. Many researchers also teach students who will become the next generation of scientists. Scientists have many opportunities to work with different people, explore new fields, and broaden their expertise.
Scientists are part of a community that is based on ideals of trust and freedom, and their work can have a direct effect on society. As a result, the public usually has an interest in the results of research that will directly affect them. Therefore it is important that you can understand the meaning of a science story when you read it, see it, or hear about it and become an engaged and active member of the public when making decisions involving science.
Science As a Human Endeavor
Conducting science requires part human creativity and part scientific skepticism. Researchers make new observations and develop new ideas with the aim of describing the world more accurately or completely. These observations and ideas are often based on existing theories and observations that were made by earlier scientists.
For example, the history of molecular biology, the study of molecules that make up living things, is a good example of how scientific knowledge builds on earlier knowledge.
Researchers from chemistry and physics were involved in the early investigations to discover what was responsible for heredity. Scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century knew that organisms inherited certain characteristics such as hair color from their parents. What we now call "genes" were then called “units of heredity.” Scientists did not know exactly how these heredity units were inherited or what they were made of, however. Following the development of the Mendelian theory of heredity in the 1910s and the development of atomic theory and quantum mechanics in the 1920s, such explanations seemed within reach. Researchers from chemistry and physics turned their attention to this biological question. Still, in the 1930s and 1940s it was not clear which, if any, area of research would be most successful.
In 1940, geneticists George Beadle and Edward Tatum demonstrated a relationship between genes and proteins. In 1944, physician and researcher Oswald Avery further elaborated on that finding by demonstrating that genes are made up of DNA. In 1952, geneticist Alfred Hershey and lab assistant Martha Chase confirmed that the genetic material of a virus that infects bacteria is made up of DNA. And in 1953, biologist James Watson and biophysicist Francis Crick, with the help of X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, worked out the three dimensional structure of DNA and built a model of the double helix structure of the molecule.
There have been many additional discoveries about DNA and heredity since then, which you will learn more about in the Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology chapters.
Influences on Scientific Research
To nonscientists, the competition, frustration, cooperation, and disagreement between research scientists can seem disorganized. Scientific knowledge develops from humans trying to figure things out. Scientific research and discoveries are carried out by people—people who have virtues, values, shortcomings, and limitations—just like everyone else. As a result, science and research can be influenced by the values of the society in which the research is carried out. How do such values influence research?
This question is of interest to more than just the scientific community. Science is becoming a larger part of everyone’s life, from developing more effective medicines to designing innovative sustainable air conditioning systems that are modeled after the self-cooling nests of termites. The public has become more interested in learning more about the areas of science that affect everyday life. As a result, scientists have become more accountable to a society that expects to benefit from their work.
It costs money to carry out scientific studies. Things such as the cost of equipment, transportation, rent, and salaries for the people carrying out the research all need to be considered before a study can start. The systems of financial support for scientists and their work have been important influences of the type of research and the pace of how that research is conducted. Today, funding for research comes from many different sources, some of which include:
Government, for example, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Military funding (such as through the Department of Defense)
Corporate sponsorship
Non-profit organizations, such as the American Cancer Society, Stroke Awareness For Everyone, Inc. (SAFE)
Private donors
When the economy of a country slows down, the amount of money available for funding research is usually reduced, because both governments and businesses try to save money by cutting out on non-essential expenses.
Many pharmaceutical companies are heavily invested in research and development, on which they spend many millions of dollars every year. The companies aim to research and develop drugs that can be marketed and sold to treat certain illnesses, such as diabetes, cancer, or high blood pressure. Areas of research in which the companies do not see any hope of a return on their huge investments are not likely to be studied.
For example, two researchers, Evangelos Michelakis and Steven Archer of the University of Alberta, Canada, recently reported that a drug that has been used for in the treatment of rare metabolic disorde
rs could be an effective drug for the treatment of several forms of cancer. Dichloroacetic acid, (DCA), is a chemical compound that appears to change the way cancer cells get energy, without affecting the function of normal cells. The researchers found that DCA killed cancer cells that were grown in the lab and reduced the size of tumors in rats.
However, DCA is non-patentable as a compound. A patent is a set of rights granted to a person or company (the patentee) for a certain period of time which allows the patentee the exclusive right to make, use, sell, or offer to sell the patented item. Because DCA cannot currently be patented, concerns are raised that without the financial security a patent would ensure, the financial incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to get involved in DCA-cancer research would be reduced, and therefore clinical trials of DCA may not be funded.
But, other sources of funding exist; previous studies of DCA have been funded by government organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and by private charities such as the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Recognizing the possible challenges to funding, Dr. Michelakis's lab took the unusual step of directly asking for online donations to fund the research. After six months, his lab had raised over $800,000, which was enough to fund a small clinical study. Dr. Michelakis and Dr. Archer have nonetheless applied for a patent on the use of DCA in the treatment of cancer.
Funding for research can also be influenced by the public and by social issues. An intense amount of public interest was raised by the DCA study. The story received much media attention in early 2007. As a result, the American Cancer Society and other medical organizations received a large volume of public interest and questions regarding DCA. A few months later, the Department of Medicine of Alberta University reported that after the trial funding was secured, both the Alberta local ethics committee and Health Canada approved the first DCA Clinical Trial in Cancer.
Government funding of research can be indirectly influenced by the public. Funding priorities for specific research can be influenced by the ethical beliefs or reservations of elected public officials, or influenced by the public during constitutional amendment elections. Celebrities, often campaign to bring public attention to issues that are important to them. For example, Lance Armstrong, in Figure below, talks publicly about his experiences as a former cancer patient to help raise awareness about cancer research and the importance of funding for clinical trials.
Figure 1.20
Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, visited the NIH as part of the Tour of Hope, a week-long bicycle relay across the United States to raise awareness about cancer research and the importance of clinical trials.
Science and Ethics
Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. Personal ethics is the moral code that a person adheres to, while social ethics includes the moral theory that is applied to groups. Bioethics is the social ethics of biology and medicine; it deals with the ethical implications of biological research and applications, especially in medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among biology, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy.
While scientific research has produced social benefits, it has also posed some troubling ethical questions. For example, when is it okay to test an experimental cancer drug on people? Developing a new drug takes a long time, maybe as much as 10 years, or more. There are many rules and regulations that drug researchers need to stick to while developing drugs to treat specific illnesses.
Generally, drugs cannot be tested on people until researchers have evidence that the drug does the job that they claim it does (in this case kills cancer cells), but also that the drug will not make patients more ill or cause death. However, if the drug has tested successfully in earlier experiments, and scientists are quite confident that the drug does help kill off cancer cells, is it ethical to allow patients with terminal cancer, who have no other treatment options, to try the experimental drug?
With new challenges in public health and health policy, and with advances in biotechnology, bioethics is a fast-growing academic and professional area of inquiry. Some recent bioethical debates also include:
Refusal of medical treatment The choice of a patient to refuse certain life-saving medical procedures such as a blood transfusion, or refusal by a parent or guardian for medical treatment for the patient.
Euthanasia The choice by a terminally ill person to have medical assistance in dying.
Stem cell research Research involving stem cells, which can be harvested from human embryos.
Animal cloning The ability and usefulness of scientists cloning animals for various needs, such as vaccine development, tissues for transplant into humans such as heart valve, and increased food production. Dolly the sheep, probably the most famous animal clone to date, is shown in Figure below.
Figure 1.21
Dolly the sheep is seen here with one of her lambs. In 1997, Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned, and quickly became world-famous. She was euthanized in 2003 after she developed a common, but serious lung disease. To grow her, researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, collected DNA from a mammary cell of another sheep (technically her (older) twin sister), and then injected the DNA into a stem cell which had its own DNA removed. That stem cell then developed into an embryo.
Because research may have a great effect on the wellbeing of individual people and society in general, scientists are required to behave ethically. Scientists who conduct themselves ethically treat people (called subjects) who are involved in their research respectfully. Subjects are not allowed to be exploited deliberately, exposed to harm, or forced to do something they do not agree to.
Science in the Media
A lot of popular science articles come from sources whose aim is to provide a certain amount of entertainment to the reader or viewer. Many popular science articles will examine how a phenomenon relates to people and to their environment. Nevertheless, there is a tendency in the popular media to dilute scientific debates into two sides, rather than cover the complexities and nuances of an issue.
Even well-intentioned scientists can sometimes unintentionally create truth-distorting media firestorms because of journalists' difficulty in remaining critical and balanced, the media's interest in controversy, and the general tendency of science reporting to focus on apparent "groundbreaking findings" rather than on the larger context of a research field. Sometimes scientists will seek to exploit the power of the media. When scientific results are released with great fanfare and limited peer review, the media often requires skepticism and further investigation by skilled journalists and the general public.
The dichloroacetic acid (DCA) story, discussed earlier in this lesson, is an example of what can go wrong when a scientific discovery grasps the public’s attention.
An intense amount of public interest was raised by the study and the story received much media attention. As a result, the American Cancer Society and other medical organizations received a large volume of public interest and questions about the “miracle cure,” DCA.
One of the first stories about the findings contained the headline:
“Cheap, 'safe' drug kills most cancers”
The article did explain that the studies were only carried out on cancer cells grown in the lab and in rats. However, the headline may have given some readers the impression that human testing of DCA was complete. People were wildly interested in this new “cure” to cancer. This prompted the American Cancer Society and other organizations to issue reports that reminded people that although the study results were promising, no formal clinical trials in humans with cancer had yet been carried out. They stressed the need for caution in interpreting the early results. Doctors warned of possible problems if people
attempted to try DCA outside a controlled clinical trial. The media received some criticism for the sensation that arose due to their coverage of the discovery.
Therefore, it is important to remember as a member of the public that some popular science news articles can be misleading. A reader can misinterpret the information, especially if the information has a emotional affect on the reader. Also, some articles are written by people who have limited understanding of the subject they are interpreting and can be produced by people who want to promote a particular point of view. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for the non-expert to identify misleading popular science. Sometimes, results are presented in the media without a context, or are exaggerated. Popular science may blur the boundaries between formal science and sensationalism. It is best to analyze such information with skepticism as you would if you were to make an observation in an investigation, and look at the whole context of an issue, rather than just the focus of a particular news item.
For example, in early 1999 West Nile virus, a virus most commonly found in Egypt, was accidentally introduced to New York. Although infection by the virus causes mostly mild or no symptoms in people, in rare instances, West Nile virus can cause inflammation of the brain. The illness, called West Nile Fever, spread across the continent from east to west, carried by infected birds. Mosquitoes spread the disease to mammals. Mosquito larvae (young) are shown in Figure below.
There was intense media coverage about the spread of this disease across the United States, and much talk about what this meant for everyone. News coverage of West Nile Fever tended to focus on the serious form of the disease, West Nile Encephalitis, which can cause harmful illness and death. The fact that there is no vaccine for the disease was also emphasized.
CK-12 Biology I - Honors Page 5