Why does the scientific community shy away from scrutiny?
James Heathers, writing at Medium.com, explains why he is leaving the world of academic science in “I Quit” (June 20, 2020).
Dr. Heathers, an immigrant from Australia, works in two very specialized areas of scientific research, the first in translating the body’s physiological messages, and the second in exposing junk science.
The second is his preferred interest, but he finds no support for his work within the scientific community: “Science as a culture will allow you to ameliorate problems through formal mechanisms, sort of. The median state of these mechanisms is impossibly slow, opaque, frustrating, and archaic, but they do exist. However, science will not support you in using those mechanisms, it will not call it ‘scientific work’ when you do it, and it will not let you build that work out systemically into a program of research. It is not a task we value in that way.”
His passion is to head an institute that does nothing but work in this area. No such institute exists, and there is no support for such an effort within the scientific community.
Is it that science doesn’t like to be told when it’s wrong? Or that it ever can be wrong at all?
In my mind I hear the “Wizard of Oz” telling us not to pay any attention to that man behind the curtain. But Dr. Heather’s not defeated. He has a plan and encourages all his readers to engage their imaginations for success in this time of plague. He advises all those whose lives have been thrown into upheaval to “Get a new dream. That’s the nice part about imagination — it’s yours. Don’t rent it out to someone else’s stories.”