Science Friction
Michael D’Antonio’s article on America’s flight from reason was long overdue (“Science Fights Back,” Feb. 11. It’s disturbing that so many people have so much hostility toward critical thought, as though somehow such thinking is an alien endeavor. The fact is that “doing science” is as natural for humankind as language or bipedalism.
Is science affected by errors, politics and personal ambition? Of course. Does it exuberantly promise too much, too soon? Absolutely. As in all human efforts, scientists make mistakes--over and over again, but they attempt to isolate them, quantify them, learn from them. Unlike any other “way of knowing,” science recognizes its biases and tries to figure out ways to limit them.
Daniel Truly
Beverly Hills
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It is not difficult for me to accept the premise that science and medicine have conspired against blacks and gays. It was about 20 years ago that there came to light the infamous Tuskegee experiments, in which, under federal direction, black men with syphilis were deliberately denied treatment in order to allow observation of the disease’s effect.
Also, barely 25 years ago, the American Psychiatric Assn. held that all homosexuals were mentally ill.
The lesson? There is no scientific cabal. But science is a government (and now corporate) enterprise, and, as always, he or she who pays the piper calls the tune.
Mark Allen Klieman
Santa Monica
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That Americans now spend $12 billion a year on “unproven” cures means that the status quo is unsatisfactory. People are tired of being treated like children by a medical community that doesn’t really listen to what ails them, treats symptoms instead of causes and automatically prescribes--at ridiculous costs--pills and procedures for everything.
Jill Watkins
Corona del Mar
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The real problem is a dualism--science vs. the humanities--that has evolved in most of our contemporary institutions, including education, business and medicine. We have pitted one against the other as though they were vicious enemies.
As a physician who has specialized in both family medicine and neurosurgery--one high-touch and the other high-tech--I’ve learned that healing requires attention to patients’ humanistic--as well as biological--needs. We have an explosion of alternative medicine in this country because there is a deficiency in complementary medicine--holistic and integrated health care that addresses all of patients’ needs, and that includes their search for meaning in medical illness.
Science alone can never by itself win its wars. It must concede to the power of the human spirit, which is far more complex than nucleic acids and mathematical equations
Dr. Todd A. Maugans
Division of Neurosurgery
Children’s Hospital
Los Angeles
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That feminist critiques of “truth” will lead to a debunking of the “historical fact” of the Holocaust is ludicrous. Feminist theorists seek to stem centuries of intellectual and actual oppression, not validate every manner of murderous behavior. Encouraging respect for human life--all life--should be the motivation for all research.
Diana York Blaine
Department of English
University of Redlands
LaVerne
