Final blog post (Andrew Krump)

My primary takeaway from this course was gaining an ability to critically examine science. Going into the course, I had a clear view of science as existing outside of human motivations and representing an objective understanding of reality. The course actively required that I consider the impacts of economics, politics, and individual biases in the study of science and the popularization and implementation of its findings.

The best example I can think of is our analysis of pharmaceutical sales and how pharmaceuticals are marketed. The development of a new medicine seems purely scientific, but in the context of our capitalist system, there are underlying economic motivations that help shape which medicines get developed in the first place.

Especially in the context of over the counter (OTC) drugs, a critical observer has to come to terms with the intersections of the science and economics of drug development/marketing. I found that Zzzquil is priced much higher than generic Benadryl even though they are the same molecule. There is no doubt that marketing has overtaken science and pure medical efficacy in many cases of drug marketing.

This led me to have to accept that science can never be "pure" because science requires actors, who have underlying motivations and biases. This is not to say that science doesn't strive for objectivity, but rather that objectivity is an ideal, not the actual state of things. Science and technology are used to solve problems and these problems are heavily influenced and defined by economics, consumer preferences, politics, and the ideology of the scientists in question. To say that science exists outside of the influence of these forces in practice now seems a lot more naive than when the course first began.

So in summary, my main takeaway is a deteriorated belief in the story that we are told about science: that it is purely objective and does not have an agenda. So long as science is carried out by humans, there will always be an agenda. Aspects of this are scary, but it also reiterates a hopeful message: we are using science to solve problems that we define. We all have a responsibility to help define the most positive problems for science to solve then. Through better education and acting out well-informed purchasing decisions, I think this is possible.