Well 2012 has come and gone. 2013 is old news. It has been a long time since I have had anything to say. Wait, that is not totally true. I rant at least once a day; sometimes more. I have alot to say. I think what has stopped me from posting is that I don’t feel like I have anything new to say. Nor are there any new problems. Biomedical science keeps promising more than it can deliver. Funders keep funding biomedical science because we humans have a cognitive module that wants to believe in mythologies. We love the myth of the lone genuis scientist working in the garage, blackballed by peers, until rescued by a $35000 grant due to the boldness, riskiness, thinking outside the boxness of charity X. We are afraid to question the “diseases are complex, yadda, yadda” so now let me tell you about my molecule likely to cure everthing from cancer to insomnia to male-pattern baldness. What mere mortal can question the wisdom of the biomedical scientist-genuis with 500 publications? There has to be the holy grail, the sword in the stone, the genie’s lamp — what if the magic bullet is right there, inches away, and we change course? Do funders dare to question the failures? No, because then the strategy is to repeat and repear until saying it enough times makes it true: failures are always the fault of too little funding.
No agendas, only honest talk at the intersection of science and society.