I'm studying to become a cosmologist. That means that I study the observable universe at extremely large distances to learn about where it came from. Such a career path probably doesn't immediately appear to directly benefit humanity in any way. A close friend of mine is studying international development and wants to spend a good part of her life as a health worker. She already runs a nonprofit organization out of Washington, D.C. Her work benefits humanity pretty directly.
Usually things are dandy between us, but this financial crisis has brought forth some new tension. Every day our government throws more money at the shattered remains of Wall Street in a desperate attempt to breathe some new life into the markets. That's bad news for non-financial types: the easiest money to redirect is the grant money that my friend and I depend on to continue our work. Now that there's less to go around, though, the government has to decide who deserves the money most.
My friend makes a pretty straightforward and compelling case for humanitarian aid: let's put the money where it helps people, namely organizations like her nonprofit. With times so tough, more people need the help that our humanitarian workers can offer, and so our grant money should follow suit. Scientific advancement is nice, but it should also be a luxury reserved for times of prosperity, when we can afford to divert our country's manpower. Just look at other developing nations; are their scientists as advanced as ours? That's because they've put basic human needs ahead of scientific research. And rightly so -- science is nice, but becoming a developed nation is nicer.
Student groups at Dartmouth and most colleges seem to reflect this humanitarian-first system. I can't be the only one getting all of these messages to support Alternative Spring Break trips to rural Kentucky. But when was the last time you saw a fundraiser or benefit concert for the next generation of spacecraft NASA is planning, or for the new James Webb Space Telescope that is going to replace the aging Hubble Space Telescope? Advanced engineering just doesn't tug at the heartstrings as much as an underfunded health clinic does.
How can I argue against the necessity of helping people without making a total ass of myself? I can't really. What I can argue, though, is that science is just as necessary. Science opens doors to the technological developments that humanitarian workers need to support a better standard of living, and cutting funding now is only going to stifle such efforts in the coming decades.
In 1928, for example, the great scientist Paul Dirac theorized the existence of the positron -- the "antiparticle" of the electron. Antimatter is fairly exotic in this universe; whenever it comes in contact with matter, the matter and antimatter annihilate each other and turn into high-energy radiation. I doubt Dirac had medicine in mind while theorizing about such particles, yet in the 1950s, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital discovered that the effects of positrons emitted from radioactive substances make for a great medical imaging device. Today, we call this device the PET scan. It revolutionized the way we peer inside the body.
Even more recently, work done on the Hubble Telescope has helped in the fight against breast cancer. When the telescope's mirror was found to be flawed, creating blurry images, the team of scientists behind its operation became experts at digitally cleaning up and processing images. Today, the same techniques are used by oncologists to clean up mammogram images in order to find breast cancer earlier.
Was the invention of either of these medical technologies intended? Unless Dirac was trying to snap photos of the human brain, or the Hubble telescope was secretly designed to look at boobs, I'm inclined to say no. That's just not the way science is done. Scientists research their subject areas for the sake of knowledge, and most tangible benefits or subsequent engineering innovations flowing from their discoveries happen because of the work of other people.
During this financial disaster, it's often hard to justify the relative "luxury" of scientific research. However, if we want our society to remain at the forefront of medical and technological advancements, we have to continue to maintain our investment in our nation's scientists. It may seem spurious now, but it's impossible to predict what advancements will help improve the world's standard of living in the future.
