"Me Too" Research: When Science Gets Greedy

When ever there is a specific financial or political reason to have a certain result in research, it skews that research so that it is not done with a quest for fundamental understanding in science, and it is not done with considerations of use (will this benefit society?) in mind. This article explores some types of research that violate these basic principles, and encourages you to do so as well. You may find that your life is actually full of scientific advancements that were not necessarily made with your best interests in mind.

For example, in the pharmaceutical industry there is a lot of research done for blood pressure medication, cholesterol pills, weight loss pills and medications to treat conditions that could actually be handled by a healthier lifestyle or simple diet change, like portion control or less meat, salt or dairy. Of course, there will always be people who genuinely benefit from such medications due to legitimate medical issues. However, particularly in the US, you see a lot of over prescription of such drugs to essentially subsidize an unhealthy lifestyle. There is a lot of money to be made in giving people drugs that enable them to live a convenient, yet unhealthy lifestyle, and for them to be ultimately hooked on medications which are expensive and ongoing. This unfortunate situation is clearly lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. Also in question are the scientists who engineer high dose antibiotics for the dairy and meat industry to keep unhealthy cows in an unnatural state of overproduction.

Are these advancements actually healthy for the humans consuming them? Is it actually necessary that people consume so much meat and dairy to begin with, or are we over producing in the name of profit? The above examples are done to suit economies of scale and to ultimately sell people more than they need, often at the expense of their health and the health of the environment.

The WW11 Manhattan project also fits into this category, although it does have grey areas. The Manhattan project was a response by the US to build an atomic bomb, because the Nazis were already dangerously close to having one. This could be labeled as 'me too' research at its worse.

When your goal is to design science which is undoubtedly dangerous and lethal for society, and you are only designing it to beat someone else to it, then it is difficult to imagine that you are doing this research because you have a real passion for new truths in science (this does not discount that you may enjoy the research and find it intriguing, but your immediate goal is to create a bomb in the interests of political power) Also, knowing the kind of destruction that a bomb like this could bring, it is difficult to imagine that these scientists had the best interests of humanity in mind.

Surely some of the scientists working on the Manhattan project were convinced that if they did not do it more people would die and suffer at the hands of the Nazis than if they did. You could argue that they did have the interests of society in mind and rationalized that they were saving more lives than they would destroy. However, their work ultimately led to great tragedy, and it is difficult to imagine how it would not have.

Interestingly enough, the original research which led to The Manhattan project was actually done in the name of real scientific progress and passion. Einstein and his colleges (who had escaped Nazi Germany and were critical of the scientific discoveries which led to the bomb) were generally interested in cracking mathematical formulas to understand the workings of the universe. Although Einstein, a famous pacifist, was in a sense responsible for solving the equations which eventually led to the bomb, he was horrified at the implications of these findings and the possibility that the wrong parties were also dangerously close to discovering the same things. This is why he was involved in writing a letter to the president of the US to warn him of the dangers of such information in the hands of the Nazis. In the aftermath of events, it was the greatest regret of his life and created great sadness and remorse for him, because it inspired the US president to begin The Manhattan Project and to build the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan.

There are many other examples of this kind of research in our world. You can always ask yourself why certain research might have been done and if it was done in the spirit of helping society and discovering scientific truth, or it if was done in the spirit of greed and competition.

All scientific research is funded by money. However, many people are then weary of the entire institution under the belief that it must be completely corrupt. This deeply ingrained mistrust of science is also ignorance. There are many ethical guidelines in place about funded research and scientists are not allowed to skew results lest they risk completely destroying their careers and the institutions that fund them. Research is not at all about cheating in the name of financial greed. However, there are always corrupt individuals in every system, and sometimes, even if you are playing by the rules, you may not be doing so with good intentions.