The Death of the Scientist

The Death of the Scientist;

or,

A Brief History of Science and its Failure in the Modern Age.

The Scientist is an interesting creature, all things considered. To most, the word calls to mind the likes of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Curie, Franklin, a long list of distinguished individuals, who have all spent lifetimes in the singular pursuit of knowledge, with the ultimate aim of improving the daily lives of man and advancing humanity. As natural and rooted in our consciousness, as this image may be, one does not need to look far back to realise this was not always the case. To the ancient hunter-gatherer, the simple peasant farmer, or the tribal village chief, the notion of sacrificing manpower, time, and resources in the uncertain hope of discovering new knowledge would likely be a very foreign one to fathom.

Indeed, one can trace the rise of the Scientist to the 1500s, when humans realised that they could push the frontiers of knowledge, instead of merely maintaining what was already known. This is often termed the Scientific Revolution, which completely changed how humanity approached the world. Most notably, this “new” science pushed forward three revolutionary fundamentals:

   (a) An acceptance of general ignorance of the world;

   (b) A resolution of ignorance through mathematics and empirical observations; and

   (c) An application of science to acquiring new power.

Thus, as Harari notes in Sapiens, the Scientific Revolution is more aptly a “revolution of ignorance”, notably distinguishing it from traditional centres of knowledge like religion, which had mostly asserted that all useful knowledge was held by God. It would take some time to see the effects of the Scientist, but by the 1800s, the methodical scientific method would come to dominate and fuel the Age of Enlightenment, in which empiricism and objectivity bled into socio-political discourse.

Suddenly, science was a key concern of the State and wealthy benefactors eager to use it to further their interests. With the increased success of the Scientist in pushing forward relevant and useful innovations, more investments were made to continue the efforts of the Scientist, which resulted in more benefits being reaped. This positive feedback loop led to many groundbreaking discoveries in various fields, forming a bedrock for our understanding of the world. Indeed, one does not need to look hard to find many meaningful theories about the world we inhabit, like the Theory of Natural Selection, Germ Theory of Disease, Brownian Motion, and many more, which were developed during this period.

Yet, it is important to note that the knowledge discovered by the Scientist was often only as useful as it could be applied, which thus began the marriage between science and technology. And, with the rich and powerful being the benefactors of the Scientist, his works often became applied the most in areas aiding conquest, war and economy.

Of course, these are large generalisations about the role of the Scientist, but they capture the spirit of the times in which the Scientist existed and continues to exist. Today's research is still largely funded by governments or wealthy private organisations, and regulations on application are often dictated by governments instead of scientists.

Two curiosities of relevance to us emerged from this period: the lowering of science and the link between the Scientist and Romanticism. Hitherto, science had been studied primarily in Latin, the language of class and wisdom, in high circles, and education focused on the languages and arts. But with the rise of science, mathematics and the natural sciences became of increasing focus and the science discourse became heavily dominated by English. It is also impossible to discuss the Scientific Revolution without considering Romanticism. 

As a movement, Romanticism is often noted for its scepticism of scientific objectivity in favour of subjectivity and sublime beauty. But the image of the Scientist today, of the overworked and obsessed individual who pursues experiments at ungodly hours, is inherently a Romantic one — be it in the emphasis on an inhuman passion for work or a love for the process of discovery beyond its fruits.

The Scientist continued to play a massive role in uplifting human lives and society, but things began to change in the 1900s. After the mass destruction inflicted in the World Wars, the centrality of science in causing suffering became spotlighted, such as in the use of chlorine gas in the trenches of WW1, the development of tanks and planes and other weaponry capable of mass destruction, and of course, the invention of the atomic bomb in WW2. Science had also been applied erroneously to justify atrocities caused by ideologies like anti-semitism in fascist Germany, which had implications that were only uncovered after the war. This unprecedented level of damage, and the subsequent weaponization of science during the Cold War, led to a justified scepticism and pessimism of the role of science in society. Suddenly, public consciousness became aware of the dangers and drawbacks of the Scientist. This increased scrutiny, coupled with an increasing reliance of society on the Scientist in daily life, also led to more outrage and distrust in him when he was proven wrong, be it in scandals caused by profiteering companies, intolerable uses of science by the State, or scientists themselves pushing the border of what was socially acceptable.

All this said, the Scientist and his methods continued to influence large swathes of public life, notably in psychology and linguistics, and produced an ever-increasing amount of discoveries about the world, but also witnessed a rise in distrust and scepticism.

Indeed, the fundamentals upon which science has been founded, the aforementioned acceptance of ignorance and the reliance on empirical observations, appear to be threatened like never before. Recent public discourse has begun to revolve around truisms previously thought unchallengeable, like the value of fluoride in tap water, the safety of vaccines, or the severity of climate change.

So, what then is the problem? Why has science seemingly failed in the modern era? I would argue that the answer lies bare after considering the above historicisation of the Scientist.

For one, science has had its fair share of actors deemed to have gone too far by the standards of their times, which in turn tarnished the name of the Scientist in general. Galileo himself was forced to renounce his scientific claims when it was deemed contrary to the aims of the Church. In Frankenstein, perhaps the most famous cautionary tale of the Scientist, the eponymous scientist watches as his Creature destroys everything dear to him before they both perish in the arctic wasteland.

In addition, misleading or improperly conducted research, be it in non-peer-reviewed publications or retracted work, still results in increased traction for the claims they set forth. The link between vaccines and autism, or lack of correlation between the accessibility of guns and violence, for instance, arose out of skewed findings not backed by the scientific community. There have also been headline-grabbing moments, such as in 2018, when He Jiankui announced the world’s first genetically edited babies, which shaped the way the Scientist is perceived by society.

This may also help explain the prevalence of a large amount of misinformation in the media the public consumes today. It lends false credibility to actors who wish to promote certain agendas (think RFK Jr). This is often compounded by how (science-backed) algorithms feed attention-grabbing information to online media users, reinforcing such false beliefs and breeding distrust in the Scientist.

Furthermore, how the Scientist conducts his work has not made it easy to counter such claims. The nature of scientific discourse has become highly convoluted and overly reliant on jargon and acronyms, to the point that it is difficult to read or incomprehensible to even field experts. This problem has only grown in recent times, with a 2020 statistical study reporting that the use of acronyms in scientific papers increased from 1950 to 2019, resulting in a decrease in the readability of scientific works. This does not bode well for anyone attempting to convince a layperson of scientific results.

Lastly, perhaps most insidiously, the Scientist himself shares the blame for the suspicion thrust upon him. His reputation and image, burnished in our consciousness from the Scientific Revolution and the Romantic Era, have had an outsized effect on feeding the underlying narratives of doubt in the Scientist. All other causes can then be read as mere tokens to support the narrative that the Scientist has become associated with: one of elitism, disregard for others for the sake of progress, and inability to communicate with others.

Thus, to save both science and the society it serves, the Scientist must die. As we have seen, the Scientist of today is not a natural part of our society, and can be replaced as needed. Just as Latin was replaced by English to bring science down from high circles, we need to kill the Scientist’s overly verbacious discourse to make it more comprehensible. We need to deal with bad actors who distort the truth with more than factual refutations or ridicule, by finding more engaging ways to spread information from verified sources. To this end, the Scientist and his reductionist, factual explanations of the world must die.

And, from the ashes of his death, the Narrator must rise. I do not mean to discredit the work of scientists in the past and present; indeed, the scientific method has been and continues to be how we discover more about ourselves and the world around us. But the Narrator — the omnipotent figure, the storyteller, the wise shaman speaking to the tribe around the fire — must emerge and be accepted by the scientific community to spread the light of science. The empirical scientism, cautious statements, and overuse of reductivist logic associated with the Scientist are doing more harm than good and should be replaced with the Narrator capable of captivating minds, even if they may not be deemed 100% true.

More important than bare facts, are the stories we crave and need to understand the world. Without them, without the death of the Scientist, the place of science in society as we know it may quickly fall apart.

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