SCIENCE LOSING IT'S PAST?
(Posted 2006-07-13 22:03:11 by Ray Lopez)
A recently published study by researchers at Johns Hopkins described the
psychoactive effects of psilocybin, as well as the "mystical" experiences
it can cause. The thing that was most striking about this study was that it
was not new news. In fact, this is stuff that was studied intensively a
generation ago.
The sad part of this is that this is not an isolated incident. Over the
last five years or so, there have been more and more research papers
published that purport to describe some "new" effect or discovery, mostly
in the areas of medicine and particularly neuroscience. For example,
functional MRI imaging allow researchers to look into the intact human
brain in almost real time. Most of the recent MRI studies are nothing more
than re-hashed work that was done by experimental psychologists and
neuropsychologists a generation or more ago. While MRI imaging and other
forms of non-invasive brain visualization techniques are the new thing, one
would think that these expensive new toys would be used to produce studies
that build upon the older ones, rather than simply confirming existing
knowledge. It's important, of course, to confirm existing knowledge. But it
may make more sense to do this type of confirmation work as a part of more
original work, and to report the confirmatory work along with the new work.
The question remains as to why this is happening. It is likely that modern
researchers (particularly those in neuroscience) are simply not referencing
older studies. There is a huge body of literature from physiological
psychology, neuropsychology, and animal learning that most modern
researchers are ignoring. Some of this may be due to the fact that most
neuroscientists today may regard the work of the previous generation as
crude. However, a more likely explanation may be that most
easily-accessible, web-based literature reference tools simply do not
contain content prior to 1995 or so. If they do, it would seem that most
researchers nowadays are unwilling to go back that far.
Another reason that scientists may be recreating existing knowledge is that
many of the members of the generation that performed the original studies
are retiring from their postions at universities and research institutes.
This exodus of intellectual capital would obviously result in university
departments and thesis commitees paying less and less attention to older
research.
The arrogance of most biomedical researchers precludes them from paying
more than lip service to this problem. It may be incumbent upon funding
agencies to better police the researchers they fund, by forcing them to
explore and cite research findings that were produced 20,30, even 50 years
ago. This would not be a waste of time. In fact, it would probably help to
make researchers more careful about how they spend the tax dollars some of
them use to fund their work.
A young scientist nowadays could probably make a good career for
him/herself by taking time to study the work of the past one or two
generations. By doing so, s/he would jump far ahead of his/her peers,
playing with their expensive toys and discovering things that were
discovered long ago.
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