So
why should we care about [blank],
anyway?
If
any of you are anything like me, that’s a question you asked yourself
throughout school more times than you can count while filling in the blank with
whatever subject you were supposed to be studying. For me, the blank was filled
with subjects like physical chemistry. For my wife, it was subjects like art
history.
I
mean, we all have reasons for caring on some level or another. If nothing else,
we at least needed to get a decent grade on whatever we were studying so we
wouldn’t have to take it again. But for most of us, once we turned in the final
exams and got grades good enough to go onto the next thing, we forgot about
them.
But
for those people who end up working in those subjects we hate and block out of
our memories, that question matters, especially when they’re mostly funded by
taxpayer money. When people lose a significant chunk of their paycheck to
taxes, they wonder—rightly—if that money is going to things that are worthwhile
or if it’s just being wasted. If it’s worthwhile, we’re usually okay with it.
If it isn’t, we get angry.
So
how do we decide what’s worthwhile?
The
answer to that question can be easy to answer a lot of the time. Things like
building roads and curing diseases are important and are easy for most people
to understand. The problem comes when these important things get obscured by
jargon that isn’t easy for most
people to understand.
I remember first becoming aware of this problem during the campaign for
the 2008 United States presidential election. I was visiting my parents, and we
were keeping track of the election coverage (because we’re nerds) when Sarah
Palin, then running mate for John McCain, was launching a tirade against
wasteful government spending. On that particular day, she was criticizing a
$200,000 earmark for basic research studying fruit flies (link at the end of the post).
During her speech, Palin said, “[…] some of these pet projects, they
really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to
projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like
fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”
The problem, aside from the fact that it only took her a few seconds to
align the entire research community against her, was that the study she was
talking about mattered to the American public for several reasons.
First, the scientists studying that particular fruit fly were trying to
prevent the spread of an invasive species that was destroying millions of
dollars worth of crops in California; the farmers and businesses relying on the
olive trees being attacked by that fruit fly were taking serious financial damage.
Second, this funded research project was taking place in the United States, not
France (to this day, I have no clue where she got the idea this project was in
Paris). Third, fruit flies help form the foundation of modern genetics.
Believe it or not, fruit flies (e.g. Drosophila
melanogaster) carry variants of the same genes that humans have with the
added benefit of being less complex so we have a better chance of understanding
what they do. The human genome is complicated, and studying fruit flies provides
an incredible amount of insight into how humans work, especially with respect to
diseases like autism (which Palin’s nephew has).
Obviously, Palin was hoping to generate anger to score political points
in an election she and her running mate were horribly losing. Also, Palin
neither knows nor in all likelihood cares about how important fruit flies are
to our understanding of humans. What I saw as the primary problem with her
political stunt was the fact that people were listening. Some in the audience
laughed at the audacity of studying fruit flies for any reason. Others were
probably thinking that research like this had to be stopped because they
couldn’t see why studying genetics in fruit flies was worth anyone’s time.
The thing was, though, I felt that I couldn’t really blame Palin for
what she was doing. After all, she wouldn’t even be able to do it if scientists
could actually explain why fruit flies were important in the first place. If
scientists could better communicate with the public, maybe we wouldn’t be
facing draconian budget cuts every few years.
The point I’m trying to make is that, as scientists, we get frustrated
at the public for not understanding what we’re doing when we only have
ourselves to blame for many incidents like the one with Palin. It’s true that
most people don’t study science after leaving high school, but we shouldn’t
equate that with an unwillingness to learn. Other people just earn their
livings through something other than science. Some people fix cars, draw blood
from patients, or teach kids in school. I can’t do any of those things. That
doesn’t mean I don’t think these things are important or don’t want to know
about them.
Speaking from my own personal experience, most people are willing to
show an interest in what we study so long as we explain it to them in a simple,
friendly, and uncondescending way. Most people are open-minded if you give them
a chance to be.
So, with that in mind, that’s the goal for this blog. I want to be able
to explain things that are happening in genetics research so the average person
can understand them. As much as scientists might like to think themselves
immune from public opinion and pop culture, we’re very much dependent on
continued interest in the topics we study.
To do that, I have two kinds of posts I’d like to start doing. The first
would involve me translating jargon from the latest hot research in my field so
people can stay current with what’s going on without having to study genetics
for ten years. I would also like to take questions that people might have about
basic biology or what they hear about in the news so I can clarify anything
that seems archaic.
I’d like this to be as interactive as possible, so if anyone has any
questions about biology, genetics, medicine, etc., just let me know!
References
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