Improving Science for a Better Future by Mohammed M. Khalil

Mohammed,

Your solutions require openness and equal media access. I believe you correctly identify the shortcomings of the current system. Certainly science is the guide to the future and improvements are in order. My fear is that monolithic corporations with control over energy, investment, government and the media -- and increasingly what is researched in the academic world, has an agenda which does not include long-term solutions regarding climate change, alternative energy sources, and research on the foregoing problems. Technology and science discoveries have an emphasis on weaponry, fossil fuel discovery and pharmaceuticals in the US. It is hard to break the monopoly on resource use based on profit.

You do present aspects of science that need improvement, especially in open applications of technology, and we do need a common good solution. This I also discuss.

Jim

Hi Mohammed,

You wrote a fact-packed and easy to read essay. The F1000Research Journal sounds like a worthwhile idea. I will check it out.

Your comment on negative results made my day but from a different perspective than yours. For the past years, I have been working to identify how to naturally extract water vapor indigenously from the air we breathe anywhere in the world. I believe this is the only long-term way to solve safe water supply issues everywhere without resorting to transporting, cleaning etc efforts. After all, nature's water cycle is a water purification and delivery machine that holds safe water as vapor in the air we breathe. If you want, you can visit my blog here

To solve this I have been talking, for example, to the pharmaceutical industry about sharing with me the circumstances when unwanted moisture ruins a batch of medicines. They don't seem to keep good records on this and part of my difficulty is in their hesitation to tell me how they failed.

My only quibble and a minor one with your essay is that it did not address more on expanding use of science but, maybe, because you are personally more focused on adding more science.

The very best of luck in this essay competition

-Ajay

Hi Vladimir and Mohammed,

My dictionary says: "If someone revamps a system, group, or organization, they make changesto it in order to try and improve it and hide its faults; often used showing disapproval". I guess Vladimir didn't intend hiding faults.

Mohammed wrote: "we need as many people as possible". Hm.Aren't there already many unemployed people in particular in Muslim countries with rapidly growing population? I know, you meant it differently.

Nonetheless, not just the prophet Mohammed could not yet envision that the growing number of people who are producing mounting dangerous waste and goods of questionable use while believing in the wonder that the resources will be sufficient for maybe 100 billion people too.

I think science needs honest work and consequent responsibility rather than unlimited funding. Public peer review after publication might really be a good idea as to stop too prolific paper fabricators.

How do you imagine peace between Arabs and Jews as long as both sides are or at least pretend to be overly patriotic in their beliefs?

I hope, at least you Mohammed are young and flexible enough as to learn from those who faced disasters like WWII, holocaust, and loss home. My essay is an attempt to make you aware of our common responsibility.

Eckard

Hi Ajay,

Waiting so far in vain for a reply by Mohammed, I read your idea. Yes, we say the devil is in the detail. In Europe we are familiar with acid rain. Recently I heard that multi-resistance is a growing problem in Calcutta. Too many people would cause huge unseen difficulties. What do you mean, how many people does the earth need?

Curious,

Eckard

Hi Mohammed,

Very nice essay, I enjoyed reading it. You are right about the publishing process, in particular regarding publishing negative reviews, confirming the results of research, peer review done more seriously (often reviewers don't give full consideration when accepting, but also when rejecting a paper, for being an alternative approach). You are also right with involving more the scientists, and especially with your views on access to education and empowering people to participate to global decisions. We can do better science, and we can raise awareness of the global problems by education.

Good luck with the contest, and with your research!

Cristi

Mohammed,

Can you please reveal to me how "that for an improvement to happen, people must first believe in the necessity of doing so, especially scientists, engineers, and policy makers" explains your claim "we need as many people as possible"?

Is it an improvement when Muslim women believe in the necessity to get pregnant? Obviously, the amount of unemployed people as well as other problems including destruction of environment are worse in Muslim countries than in countries without rapidly growing population. Neither Philip Gibbs nor Sabine Hossenfelder will save the world. They and you are perhaps not even aware of the consequences a quite simple fact: Discoveries, inventions, and the like are a mounting treasure of the whole world, not of rivaling nations, religions or other groups. If something will steer humanity to the better then certainly this fact.

Fix science? We seem to differ. In my essay I tried to critically analyze what might be wrong on a very basic level instead of focusing on symptoms.

Eckard

You list some changes you would like to see in academic practices, but you don't integrate that into a theory of why the existing practices are a social equilibrium. So you don't have a plausible story about how things could be changed to make the practices you like also be a social equilibrium. These things aren't accidents, they are all the result of people pursuing their incentives in the context of particular institutions. You need to tell us how you plan to change things so that these new outcomes would result from people pursing their incentives in the context of particular changes.

Dear Mohammed,

What a great essay! I wish I would have been able to write so intelligently when I was an undergrad. Anyone who quotes Hawkings, Von Neumann, and Drexler at the beginning of a paper is on the right track. Then again, Alexandria has been a center of learning for millenia, so you have a great tradition to uphold. :-)

Now for the critical comments: :-(

Science (the discovery of how the universe works using the scientific method) is not the only steering mechanism; by covering only one aspect you have limited yourself unnecessarily. Engineering, economics, politics, media, emotion, philosophy, and religion are also powerful influences on our future. Discoveries in science are exciting, but they must be applied to real-world needs--specific technologies for which money will pay for so that more scientific discoveries can be made. I love science and technology, but then found presentations by Ralph E. Grabowski and Stanley N. Lapidus which dismayed me very much because it showed that if your research and development budget is not matched by an equivalent or higher amount of money on understanding how your market might need your product, you will fail. To make matters worse, it correlated with my own experience with a number of technically superior products that failed (e.g. Lisp machines). See http://www.marketingvp.com/guests/bridge/index.htm

Your comments about improving the publishing process by having authors rate each other has one serious drawback -- really new ideas are often controversial. This why Socrates was made to drink poison, Aristotle fled Athens, why Thomas Aquinas was banned by a few bishops (for "Christianizing" Aristotle), and why the U.S. multi-billion-dollar National Nanotechnology Initiative has essentially zero dollars allocated for molecular manufacturing. If there was an objective way to score papers, perhaps by non-emotional computers who could really understand them well enough to compare and contrast them with reality, that might help. In my own my essay Three Crucial Technologies ), I discuss how the RDF/OWL representations of knowledge might help (I also talk about nanotechnology and a space-faring civilization).

Your idea about publishing negative results being a duty is very good, but as a young techno-enthusiast, you're forgetting at least two issues:

1. Original papers about stuff that works are much more fun to read than experiments that have failed.

2. In a "publish or perish" environment, it is difficult to boycott a journal.

Perhaps there might be a easy and effective way to implement this? Perhaps all electronic versions of journal papers should be followed by a comments section, as done for this contest? Negative results could also be entered in such a format; the advantage would be that readers would immediately learn about these failed results.

You wrote that "environmental and sustainability problems are among the bigest problems faced by humanity". I beg disagree strongly. War, injustice, poverty, and ignorance are much more threatening. Fix injustice and ignorance, and that will take care of poverty. Take care of poverty, and you don't need to worry about the environment. Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University aggregated data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for more than 200 countries to find that every country with a per capita GDP greater than $4,600 is gaining forests (seehttp://www.rff.org/rff/News/Features/upload/26441_1.pdf). Solar power is almost at parity (depending on how you measure); continued progress in lowering costs and increasing efficiency will do wonders for solving many environmental and sustainability problems.

Your idea of requiring govenment to follow scientists made me laugh (sorry). Can you imagine those in power accepting limits on their power?

You touched on the importance of fixing ignorance through the use of a number of computer-enabled solutions (OLPC), so we're on the same page there.

You pointed out that 26% of Americans did not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun; I am totally embarassed, but also shocked that the EU did worse. As far as increasing numbers of Americans believing in astrology, again I am very embarassed, but given that Christianity is an antidote to superstition, and that it is under attack in the U.S., I'm not too surprised. I suspect that monotheism would make that also true for devout Muslims--Have you heard one way or the other?

The turmoil in Egypt has been on news quite a bit, so I worry that you personally may suffer from the same persecution that Averroës (Ibn Rushd) suffered. I would ask Allah to bless and protect you, but he is utterly transcendant and perhaps not beneficient (according to the 2nd most important preacher in Islam, al-Ghazali, in "Moderation in Belief"), plus I'm not Muslim so he probably wouldn't listen to me anyway. I'd ask God to bless and protect you except than you might be offended (I don't know your religious beliefs).

So just remember thqat you have people around the world thinking about you and wishing you the best (and likely willing to provide aid if you ever travel to their countries).

Very nice essay and a future where science and technology have solutions for humanity is a very desirable one. But science and technology also may have possible futures that bring new problems for humanity as well, and you do not talk about those possible futures very much.

You mention science literacy as important for the public, but for most of humanity, science is simply a vague notion that somehow brings technology like cell phones and dvd players and computers. Unless it somehow affects a person's survival, whether or not one believes that the earth moves or that ancient aliens built the pyramids or that meditation in a cave brings enlightenment does not really matter.

Without denying that science and technology are important, is equally important to acknowledge that humanity needs more than just science for its future. There are more fundamental drivers for humanity than science and belief in a purpose in my mind is actually much more important for humanity's future than science per se. Hhumanity needs purpose to find its way to destiny and you are well on your way...

Mohammed,

Thanks for your earlier comments on my essay, "Back to the Future". I finally found time to start reading some of the other contributions to the contest. I enjoyed your essay and agree with most of your suggestions. I couldn't help feeling, though, that it was a little difficult to keep them all in mind at the same time. I wonder if you perceive a common thread or theme running through all of the concrete proposals you make? Many of them pertain in some way to education or collaboration or cooperation, but I wondered how you would boil the list down to its "essence"...

Best,

Travis