Science in 2006, Revisited

From grid computing to genomics, the science fiction of 1986 is fast becoming science fact. There remains equal reward in the signal and in the noise

Lewis Branscomb

Science and Society

My forecast went only as far as thinking about the potential integration of the social and physical sciences. The main prediction was the growing recognition that research tools for dealing more effectively with the major problems facing societies must be improved. Again putting on the glasses of a scientist in 2006 to acquire her hindsight, I wrote, "Creative intuition is a valuable—even essential—tool for both scientific and artistic progress. In the social sciences, however, intuition had long proved a dangerous trap. It was easier to be objective when man studied nature. Man's study of man is the ultimate challenge. But the challenge had to be faced."

What I did not address in our 2006 retrospective were some truly important issues that are transforming science in many dimensions. Perhaps the most serious oversight was my failure to foresee the highly welcome growth of participation of women in science, not only as students but among business leaders and senior faculty. In those senior posts women are still seriously underrepresented, but the trends are strong and favorable.

My optimism about the growing political support for better environmental stewardship in the U.S. now seems extravagant in view of the current administration's reversal of much of the progress of preceding years. Nor did I anticipate the extent to which science no longer enjoys the degree of insulation from politics it once enjoyed. Science, many would say, has become too important to be left to the scientists. We have many indicators of a new and more complex relationship between science and society: the rise of scientific fraud and new quasi-judicial processes to find and punish it; the insistence by Congress that agencies supporting science document not only the resulting scientific outputs but the outcomes in the form of benefits to society; the rise in earmarks by Congress, diverting billions of dollars from the safeguard of merit review. None of this should come as a surprise, given the enormous growth of biomedical research budgets, but it calls for a new maturity and new sense of accountability on the part of scientists.

Finally, I can hardly be faulted for failing to foresee the rise of catastrophic terrorism, bringing with it a felt need to constrain the flow of basic scientific knowledge to terrorists while still enjoying the fruits of science for medicine, environment and the economy.

But the bottom line to this effort at seeing the future of science is that the attraction of science as a life's vocation is unchanged. "In 2006," I wrote, "God still loves the noise as much as the signal. Man is still aware that with every step forward in science, two delicious new questions—crying out for study—were born."