Category: Uncategorized
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How war shapes a country: a review of Nora Krug’s "Belonging"
Pondering difficult questions of her own cultural background, German author Nora Krug asks the questions of what belonging is and what that means to her. To belong to a culture of Germans responsible for the unspeakable atrocities of World War II meant Krug was challenging the very idea that she should belong to that culture. Though she was born several dozen years after the fall of the Nazis, the actions would cast a shadow on her life. Searching for answers, Krug’s graphic memoir wrestles with home and her self.
For a German civilian to recognize and understand the actions of Nazi Germany would shake anyone to the bone. Like a scientist studying her own brain through fMRI or a philosopher accounting for his personal story with depression, Krug both detaches herself from who she is while becoming intimately close to it. It’s a delicate balance between self-criticism and appreciation for the value it is that makes Krug’s story tricky and challenging. Krug fortunately approaches these issues and limitations by capturing the images of Nazi Germany memories and stories with an empathetic brushstroke. By invoking symbolic images and a subdued art style, Krug invites the reader to join her in asking intense questions that represented history. “Are Jews evil?” “What is my home?” “Where do I belong?” “Who am I?” These questions accompany stylized pictures of people that appear both fundamentally flawed in their thinking and terrifyingly real. I find myself shocked, yet soothed that my reactions and perceptions are okay to experience.
To manage and interpret these feelings of guilt and shame mixed with a pride that any ordinary individual would hope to have for themselves, Krug’s interviews and anecdotes account for the abhorrently evil actions that shaped the past. To be a German is to understand the notion of Heimat, or the German word for the place that forms us. As humans, this responsibility to society and humanity in general means they must account for their decisions. For Germans, this means a humble, gentle remembrance of what mankind is capable of and determining what that means for the future. Other aspects of the memoir, such as the tender pacing between panels and scenes allow the reader to become truly close to Krug’s thoughts. The shock and sorrow the reader experiences parallel the shared responsibility Germans have for recollecting and understanding the meaning of their past. Contrasting the realistic photographs with comical, nearly bizarre, human faces, Krug almost invokes a dark sense of humor. This would be humor that one may realize their own dark history to fully move on and recover as a nation.
Does war ever leave a country? Or does it plague mankind forever? A German may worry that sort of patriotism might be a reminiscent eulogy of the days of Nazi Germany. Despite the end of the war and the dismantling of Nazi Germany, the humans of today continue to struggle to understand their purpose and meaning in life. One might even argue that the journey of looking for meaning is much more important the destination itself. Similar to the Myth of Sisyphus, we imagine ourselves content in grappling with questions of existence despite never having completely satisfying answers. Nora sets out to really find the truth about what her family did in what seems like a way to absolve her of her guilt. There’s no deux ex machina or dramatic catharsis of guilt and tragedy. Krug only wants answers. She wants to know what happened even if it does’nt make her feel better. For her to put this paramount truth above all else gives her a much more objective and sublime look at her own past. I hope the reader can pick up the book and wonder what their past means for them.
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The story of how I won
This is the story of how I won. This is the story of how I spoke out against wrongdoing that sought to hurt me fundamentally as a human being. I overcame these struggles with the fearlessness that has been given to me. The world is full of moral ambiguities and existential horrors. Yet I made the right decisions at the right time in such a way that I found success and happiness.
I’m an Indian American Muslim male. During my junior year of college at Indiana University-Bloomington, I was also a physics-philosophy double-major with a pre-med track. I became interested in the purpose of a college education and doing research on the history/philosophy of education to find answers to questions I pondered such as: What is the purpose of volunteering/grades/extracurriculars/etc? Why do we learn the way we do? How do we use these classes to help us realize those things? I spoke w/philosophers, scientists, professors, and other professionals to gather information about these issues from them, too. I’ve written these topics on complacency, academic freedom, advice for incoming freshmen, and rhetoric in our models of learning.
I tried starting a conversation among a premed club I was part of, but they retaliated against me. They isolated me, manipulated me, made lies about me, and reported me to the Dean that I was harassing them. They mostly did this out of their insecurities for those questions I was suggesting, but it was also because I was presenting well-researched, justified beliefs that contradicted theirs. Through months of them ignoring the issues I wanted to raise and the discussions I wanted to have, I felt even more disillusioned. The Dean proceeded to criticize, interrupt, mock, and interrogate me with force. She said I was acting “bizarre” and called my story “twisted.” She didn’t give me a chance to defend myself. She’d laugh at me when I tried explaining how my friends were making up lies about me to silence me. She interrupted me in ways that I couldn’t even finish what I was saying. She continued this behavior for months through email and in-person. I was traumatized. The university charged me with harassment and stalking. They left me off with a warning, but they required that I’d start therapy with a social worker who had no graduate training so I could better myself. I had no choice but to blame myself for everything and agree with whatever the Dean told me. Throughout all of this, I had no chance to defend myself on any claim others made against me.
That’s when things got worse. I felt the pain, fear, anxiety, and distrust spreading into other parts of my life. Even when I tried doing positive things (like exercising and meditating) I felt the mocking voice of the Dean resonating in my head. I began sleeping 10-12 hours a day, stopped praying and exercising, eating less healthy, going to class less, and lost sight in the purpose of my classes. It got to the point where I wasn’t doing any studying and felt my blood boiling in my lectures. I had no idea what I was suffering from.
I couldn’t do anything to defend myself because I feared repercussions and abuse from the Dean of Students. My friends didn’t know how to help me so they isolated themselves from me. My professors watched as my grades dropped and I could barely will myself out of bed for the last two years of college. Not having answers to my questions of the purpose of a college education started taking its toll on me. And the toxicity of the environment around me towards me just made me scared of myself. In hindsight, my therapist didn’t help much. He mostly talked about superficial things like social skills, didn’t take notes, gave me a blank stare most of the time, and only tried to keep me out of trouble instead of understanding me. He’d say things like “Oh, people are idiots,” and he even believed in astrology.
It’s now been over a year since I graduated. I’ve been working at the National Institutes of Health while taking weekly therapy sessions with a therapist with a PhD and decades of experience out of my own will. This therapist is amazing like a modern day Sigmund Freud in how he gives detailed answers, speaks truthfully and with justification, and has amazing skills in rhetoric.
After I graduated, I struggled with coming to terms with difficult events in my past, figuring out what my purpose is, and trying my best to prepare for a successful career as a scientist. My doubts lingered. What am I looking for? I was tired of asking that question. I was tired of all the crazy things it lead to in my life. How could I trust anyone truly wanted to support me? During this time, I opened up. I began speaking to officials from Indiana University-Bloomington about my experience. I told them about how I had tried to answer questions related to the purpose of college education and my pre-medical friends retaliated against me. I told them how the questions I wanted to talk about weren’t some kind of side hobby or interest of mine but actual fundamental pieces of any student’s essential education. It was so much so that I needed that opportunity or right to ask them so that I could further my education, seeing as how negatively they were affecting my life. Every time I wrote out my story or spoke to someone about it, I felt like I needed a glass of water or needed to take a walk. I also told them I wasn’t trying to do anything in particular. My sole intention was to share the story because it was the right thing to do.
In August I got off the phone with a senior investigator from the university. I had explained to her everything that happened. She said what I went through was egregiously wrong and should have never happened to anyone. She said they’re going to require racial and religious bias training from the Dean and other staff members that were involved. She said this because the Dean and the pre-medical student who bullied me were both white women. They said they were going to keep close check on all of the Dean’s communication of all forms. I told the investigator I didn’t want anymore input.
It took 3 years. But I finally got my voice heard and taken seriously from the university. That’s all I needed to know that I won. I began to realize the university would probably handle issues related to the purpose of a college education much differently from now and onward. They would recognize the struggle of students who don’t see a purpose in anything anymore and recognize that as a valid, vulnerable position that needs to be defended and protected such that students could make the world a better place and achieve their goals. That was the proof the university could act in the way I wanted it to, and that my goals could be achieved. The university took my side in making the future a brighter place not just for me but for anyone who wishes to learn. I never knew whether I was truly a victim of racism or Islamophobia, either, but the university’s action in taking the issue of a racial or religious bias seriously at least satisfied me.
I want to take a sigh of relief and say I’m fine now, but it’s still going to take me a while to figure myself out. It’s gonna take some visits to coffee shops and long walks. It took me a while to get back on my feet, though. I began eating well, exercising, studying and performing research spanning science to philosophy, I won. Let this be a victory for everything a university should stand for. Let the future be brighter for students who wish to learn and grow. The past is heavy, but the future is greater. And I will no longer be shackled by fear. I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who supported me along the way. I want to thank my current therapist most of all. And thank you for reading this. It really means a lot to me.
Winged Victory of Samothrace
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Guest Post: "3 Tips on Creating More Agile Teams" by Wendy Dessler
If you intend to make your team more agile, it is possible to pull this off if you have the best information guiding your way. Today, we’d like to make it easy to discover the easiest ways to make your team a lot more responsive.Companies have to break out of their shell and forget about focusing on linear teams. It’s time to change the way that teams function in the business landscape. Many organizations are beginning to adopt the agile approach because collaboration between managers, developers, customers, and other teams make it easier to achieve a company’s overall goals.
So, if you truly want to create an agile team, please use the tips that we are about to share with you below.Flexibility between Departments Is the Name of the GameWhen you have a large organization filled with many different teams, they have to be able to collaborate effectively amongst one another in order to achieve their organizational goals. Being agile is all about collaboration. It’s about collaboration between different teams working together. Your marketing team needs to be able to work with your PR team, and your developers and testers need to be able to work together. You can even work with your customers to foster an agile environment.The easiest way to create flexibility is to institute a common communication platform. By giving everyone the ability to effectively communicate with one another in one place, team members can transfer knowledge to one another and help each other stay on the same page to achieve similar objectives.And when objectives for a project change – which they always do in a living, breathing situation like this – it will be easy to let the entire team know of the new parameters in regards to the overall project.Management Should Have a Hands-On Approach in an Agile TeamIn the past, the project manager’s main duty was to delegate different tasks to various team members. Those days are far behind us now. Today’s manager has to get down and dirty and in the trenches with the members of their team. They need to develop a hands-on, direct approach.Why is this important? Well, if you really want to nurture an agile team, management has to be willing to show that they are going to be just as flexible as they expect the members of their team to be.By leading by example, management will prove to the team beyond the shadow of a doubt that this new agile work environment is here to stay. Once team members begin seeing their managers change, they will naturally fall in line. It’s a trickle-down effect that will have an amazing impact throughout the entire staff.Using Consultants IntelligentlyWhen a company is attempting to implement a new methodology, from time to time it’s important to bring in outside consultants to help facilitate the changeover so that it goes smoothly. Using consultants intelligently is definitely the smart way to make certain interoffice team related changes.Third-party consultants are important to your team. So remember to treat them that way. Do your best to nurture them so that they feel like they are part of the family.Time ManagementTime management is always an important aspect of an agile team. And properly tracking time on a project using an online time clock will ensure that team members are meeting their obligations. We recommend tracking time at the assignment level. This will make it easier to properly bill for your services and help the entire staff see their strengths and weaknesses.ConclusionDeveloping an agile team may seem difficult at first. But if you follow the guidance shared today, the transition will go quite smoothly.Wendy DesslerTitle: Super-Connector at OutreachMamaWendy is a super-connector with OutreachMama and Youth Noise NJ who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition. You can contact her on Twitter.
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"We are What We Do": The American Dream and Education
Who are we? At the beginning of many of my classes and activities (from kindergarten to college), my teachers sometimes coerce us to introducing ourselves to others. It usually involves telling others your name and a something you do. You can share that you play a sport, an instrument, or a video game; you can tell others about a hobby or a skill; or you can introduce yourself with your job. We see each other as trumpeters, origami enthusiasts, or accountants. We define ourselves by what we do. Why?Identity is, of course, not limited to the things that we do. We know who we are by what we look like, personal qualities and traits, memories, and stories. If someone shows you a picture of yourself, you can easily identify it as yourself. If someone asks you about what you did last summer, you can easily recall memories in order to identify the ones that you had done. But could you use impulses of motor control to identify the way you sign your name or throw a dart? We’ve always assumed that the things we do are implicitly contained within our knowledge, and, therefore, constitute who we are. The common link between perception and action has recently been explored very well through cognitive studies. Doing things might just be another part of identity this same way. Though the cognitive studies may serve a foundation for how this phenomena arises, we can explore norms and trends in history to fully understand how we are shaped by what we do.
The criteria and standards for collegiate admission might have influenced us into the norm of action as identity. As the mother prepares her three-year-old daughter for swimming lessons while picking up her middle-school son from science camp, people who dream of success know they need to do things. Academia’s use of extracurriculars as criteria have caused us to identify with those activities more. And our tremendous amount of effort we put into these sports, instruments, or any other activity makes us hold onto those extracurriculars. Regardless of our purpose, the self-identification with the activity may serve as some sort of reward (i.e., I want to call myself a “scientist” in some sense as a result of my scientific research). As a result, we wear our extracurriculars like badges. We introduce ourselves as “Hi I’m so-and-so and I play the violin!” We can achieve this “identification” when we do the things that we do. And we are pressured into activity with the fear that we don’t want to show up to work on Monday to share that you spent your weekend pondering life introspectively instead of doing something.
Land of Opportunity To Do What you Want
Taking pride in what we do might appeal to standards of free will and determinism created by American self-determination. Placing the identity in terms of what we do lends our identity to our own free will while yielding to the determinism of the activity itself. What I mean is that we choose what we do but the activity that we choose still has some predetermined value and meaning. When I tell people I’m a physics major, it appeals to the hard work I’ve put into my undergraduate career while simultaneously appealing to what we collectively, commonly associate with someone who studies physics (i.e., I’m an introverted lunatic who loves mathematics/science etc). Making action part of the identity gives us this power over who we are while conceding some of that influence to what is already established by the activity itself.
Who can deny that, as part of the American Dream, we want everyone to earn the rewards of what they do. We are promised that, as long as we work hard, there’s a chance. We all understand that it’s not possible for everyone to be rich, but it doesn’t stop us from the meritocratic understanding that we are here for the possibility. And, even as big cars and fancy houses are not always achievable, we still hold onto the credo that the hard work and determination will lead to success. These ideals lay the foundation for the beliefs that what makes us who we are is what we do.
College students are certainly no exception to the American Dream’s effects of identity with action. We spend our entire lives building ourselves up with experience as though we instantly become better people because we can simultaneously play a sport, learn a language, volunteer at a local shelter, and do well on tests. As such, we celebrate our value and identity as students as though they were determined by the things we do. We might see the things we do as value in and of themselves rather than as means to obtain the greater value within them. While it is true that one may benefit from taking part in those opportunities, it’s questionable whether or not they should be end goals in and of themselves and whether or not the value is intrinsic or extrinsic. Is this the American dream? Or have we lost sight of the purpose of the college education?
Why did I make this blog? Though my friends love creating profiles for themselves on LinkedIn, Twitter, or any similar social networking site, I preferred to abstain from succumbing my identity to the standards and stringent formats of established profiles. I wanted something that offered more freedom for me to create my own ideas, thoughts, and identity. By creating my own identity from my actions (as opposed to the discussed “action is part of identity”), I like to think it gives me more power in communicating to others. And maybe I can call myself a writer, too.
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How to Gain Professional Skills: "Don’t put Descartes before the Horse"
As you grow as a professional, you find yourself more and more conscious about your image and the way others perceive you. Not as superficial as the suit you wear or the lines on your resume, but, in a world in which we only interact with one another for short amounts of time, the way you are able to convey pertinent information to others in an ethical and sound manner becomes who you are. I like to think of this as “professionalism,” or some sort of skill that one obtains through years of experience and study. In examples that are easiest to observe, we could talk about “public speaking skills,” “writing skills,” “networking skills,” or other things that will allow you to succeed.I’ve always loved the “lax” attitude of professionalism in science. Scientists adhere to incredibly high standards of writing, justification, and courtesy, but, at the Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference last spring, faculty and students filtered into the hallways in shorts, sandals, and t-shirts. I was surprised to present my research to such a casual atmosphere of communicating science among different people. These scientists were not, in any way, un-professional, but they knew that their audience and atmosphere were appropriate so that they could dress and behave in such a friendly, easygoing manner. Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed presenting my research on the Tomato Genome to the awesome crowd.
People have commended me for my public speaking skills. I’ve given lengthy speeches without aides (such as index cards or visual diagrams) after a few minutes of memorization. I absolutely love giving speeches and presentations whether I’m sharing a story of a historical event or outlining steps in a scientific method. But I have never learned a useful thing about public speaking from any textbook, teacher, course, or any other activity that is specifically tailored towards the goal of “becoming a better public speaker.” Rather, my proficiency in delivering speeches is the result of a critical inquiry into rhetoric, behavior, attitude, and emotion that allows me to understand how to communicate well with others. Over time, I’ve learned that, when speaking to other people, we rely on several subtle cues, subliminally or consciously. These cues are almost essential for a meaningful dialogue between multiple people, but, when one is giving an oral presentation, he/she must avoid reliance on these cues, and focus on heavier, more intrinsic evidence and sources for his/her statements and behavior. What I mean is that, when you give a public speech, you need to forget about the norms of a two-way conversation. One must speak with reason from him/herself and choose to present an image of him/herself solely from his/her own will. Don’t rely on cues, feedback, or any other device you might have trusted before. You need a strong reason behind every statement you make, and you need to be able to understand the true meaning of whatever it is you are going to say. One might be inclined to proclaim “cogito ergo sum” and proceed to meditate on the nature of knowledge (as Descartes liked to do) before giving a speech on any topic. And these insights into the intricacies of reason on the topic of speaking I have accumulated have been more valuable than any workshop, class, textbook, or any other standardized line on a resume could ever tell. And perhaps what we deem as “professional” is often construed and structured a meaning that misses the mark.
As I’ve said before, these “skills” are often created by ourselves as the result of several different skills (ie., behaving ethically, developing thoughts logically, analyzing critically, etc.) that one can obtain through any number of fields (as we have been luxuriously gifted by our liberal arts education). But we often take these skills for granted as “end goals” in and of themselves. We look for answers and solutions before we have the questions and evidence. Though I have explained this issue in the context of public speaking skills, I believe it can apply to other types of “skills” that we take for granted. As for my writing abilities, I decided to write blog posts spanning a variety of topics out of deep, deliberate rumination on those topics with a necessity for an outlet. Though I think my writing is a manifestation of those abilities and experiences, it was not the result of any desire to actually approach the skill of “writing” directly. And, similarly, we must look at the method before we understand the product.
But what exactly is professionalism? Beats me. I write this blog post as I sit on my bed with no pants on while running genetic analysis software on human brain data. Being a scientist is fun.
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"What’s in a rose? That which we call a name": Semiotics in Science
“What’s the use of their having names,” the Gnat said, “if they won’t answer to them?”“No use to them,” said Alice; “but it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do they have names at all?”“I can’t say,” the Gnat replied.-Lewis CarrollThrough the Looking-GlassDid you know that quarks and gluons have an assigned “color” (red, green, blue), even though those particles don’t actually appear as those colors to our eyes? Physicists chose red, green, and blue as colors to describe them despite the fact that their emitted wavelength of light does not lie in the visible spectrum. Rather, the names were, more or less, arbitrary and for the sake of pleasure. But assigning a name to something in science has a very different meaning depending on which discipline we choose to speak of. The naming conventions and rationale behind choosing specific names for things in biology is quite different from the way physicists assign names to things. When the mathematicians and alchemists of the Islamic Golden Age and Roman Empire wanted to construct a expression with a single degree of freedom that could be solved for, we chose the mathematical variable “x” because it was the closest sound we had to the Arabic word (شيء) “shay,” which means “thing.” It was also chosen by European mathematicians like Descartes due to the significance of “x” in signifying things that are “unknown” or “hidden” (ie., X-rays, the Latin prefix xeno-). What a beautiful way to express, quite literally, any “thing.” But, more fundamental to our understanding of the universe than the actual names we give to things, we can explore how we give meaning to certain things. Rather than the study of meaning itself (semantics), an inquiry of naming in science may align more with how meaning is created (semiotics).
If our duty as scientists is to make discoveries into the unknown, it is implicitly our duty to assign names to things. Theories, proofs, equations, species, molecules, software, and anything that has a name in science has a bit of history and human in it. I feel as though, as a researcher in the biological sciences, we spend much more time talking about names than a researcher in which, a field in which names are, more or less, chosen arbitrarily. After all, Eco chose the title for his novel “The Name of the Rose” partly because “the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left.” This is not to suggest that physicists may not show creativity and subjectivity in their roles, as Murray Gell-Mann’s discovery of the “quark” arrived from a verse from Finnigan’s Wake. Maybe the arbitrariness of naming in physics stems from a physicists desire for simplicity and reductionism and a modern “form from function” ideology that pays no attention to semantics. Ironically, it also means that the search for aesthetic beauty and elegance of mathematics and physics causes us to overlook the allure and blessings of meaning in names. This silliness of naming in physics may be reflected in how the common names of phenomena and theory are often misleading. The “God Particle” was originally meant to be the “Goddamn particle”, but the latter’s lack of appropriateness and the former’s similarities of its discovery to the searching for the origins of the universe caused the change in its name. Following this, we found the general public thoroughly confused about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs Boson. And the name”Big Bang” was merely chosen “To create a picture in the mind of the listener,” (Mitton. Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science. Cambridge University Press), not that the Big Bang model occurred long ago and ceased to have an affect on what the universe of today.
Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he has not got much of a bark And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark. While Aristotle was the first to classify all living things, our modern system of biological taxonomy is mostly derived from Carl Linnaeus’ work on classifying organisms. Unlike in physics, naming in biology is a big deal. Quite recently, we’ve even witnessed the birth of “bioinformatics” given to the intersection of computer science, statistics, and biology, while the computational fields of physics and chemistry were never, and never will be called “physinformatics” or “chemoinformatics.” When Darwin spoke “On the Origin of Species,” certainly he was speaking about distinct species of animals and plants he witnessed on the H.M.S. Beagle, but did we ever really have a good definition of what a “species” is? The Nomenclature codes on assigning names to organisms has undergone numerous revisions since the days of Aristotle. “In practical terms, the problem comes down to the need to impose a discrete classification (taxonomy) upon an essentially continuous phenomenon; i.e. biodiversity” (Chambers). This is incredibly important for biologists to communicate the new, unknown species and phenomena of the living world to one another. Given the daunting nature of this problem, one might be inclined to follow the position of Robert J. O’Hara, and write the problem of what reason to choose one thing as a “species” over another reason as irrelevant and unimportant. As Anna Graybeal summarizes O’Hara’s position, that “we cannot know which organisms are best grouped as species because we do not know what will happen in the future.” O’Hara describes the naming systems of modern biology folllowing from “cartographic generalizations”, as in, we give names to the geographical importance of biological phenomena. We use advanced and ambitious technology to map the evolutionary trees of all living things the same way we might construct a map of the physical world. We could easily overlook the problems of classification by recognizing that the names given to “species” and individuals on a small level depend upon future predictions of those evolutionary “states”, and, therefore, the meaning of “species” is irrelevant. Graybeal, on the other hand, herself favors an approach to what a “species” is that would accommodate the small-scale processes of biological reproduction that give rise to relationships and lineages of phylogenetics. But, instead of trying to define “species”, Graybeal hopes to recognize the types of descent and interbreeding that give rise to the diversity of life. In addition, through our newfangled “bioinformatics”, we could explore how to add taxa or branches to the difficult problems of biology when appropriate and an examination of the most optimal ways tell us how to do so.
Will science give us the answers to the best ways to name things? And, if we let the fate of the universe decide how we assign names to scientific phenomena, then that might give science the “objective” truth that it needs to prosper. Through our discoveries in physics, biology, and any field in-between, we can look at what our names of the universe say about us.
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Myths in Medicine: The Epistemology behind so-called "Conflicts-of-Interest"
As tempting as it may be for one to believe that the medical products industry is free of corruption and that there are no people acting for heinous purposes, it’s difficult for anyone to take a position on issues in the health care industry without extensive knowledge. With the negativity of the discourse and multitude of issues surrounding making sure that we can provide for the health of everyone, it would be very refreshing and relieving for one to believe that all of those are simply results of misinformation and bad statistics.In “Pharmaphobia” Dr. Thomas Stossel delineates his decades of research and work on studying the so-called “conflict-of-interest” issues in the medical industry. Stossel begins with general statements about how the health care that we receive today is, for better or for worse, much better than it has ever been in the history of forever. The modern medicine Dr. Stossel packs his book full of scientific studies, anecdotes, and policy analysis in his journey through the history of medicine up to the problems we face today. He makes the contrarian claim that there has been a “conflict-of-interest” movement founded on unjustified claims about responsibility of results, exploitation of research, flawed policies, and a number of other lofty subjects. As a result, we end up with unnecessary taxes on products, price controls, misconstrued research data and other causes that thwart medical innovation and progress.
Before we continue to explore these giants problems facing the medical industry, I’d like to take an aside and discuss certain epistemological approaches We tell ourselves to believe what is right and avoid what is wrong. What exactly does this mean though? As the moral value of knowledge lies on the foundation of what is true and what is false, it would be reasonable for us to ask ourselves what right we have to believe things that are true. Taking this a step further, we may posit that, by believing the truth, we are attempting to avoid believing things that are false and to have the most comprehensive set of beliefs as possible.
“The ‘flat earth’ vs. ’round earth’ is not a difference in opinion. It’s a matter of right & wrong.” Consider two different approaches to solving a murder case. In the first approach, we choose to only use information given to us by evidence. In the second approach, we regard information by evidence as well as that information which we theorize. Which approach should we use? The former gives us a lesser chance of being wrong, as we take fewer risks with what could be true or false. The latter gives a greater chance of knowing more information. One might argue that you should believe something it true to a certain degree of probability. Maybe there is a certain risk that we can take with the possibility of believing something that is false. But before we can confront knowledge as a microeconomics problem, things get more confusing when we confront paradoxes such as the preface and the lottery. Hopefully it should be more apparent why our right to have knowledge brings about issues upon close inspection. The epistemology in our approach must align with the appropriate rights to knowledge in research, industry, practice, or any other part.
These challenges to our knowledge seem devastating (and they’re only the tip of the iceberg of epistemology), but there are ways for us to try to make sense of things. One may suggest that beliefs about which we confidently believe to be true are different from those beliefs that we believe true during inquiry. This way, there is a certain context to the truth of beliefs that we determine to be true. In other words, when we take for granted that a certain thing is true, then it doesn’t matter whether or not we regard it as true in the context of inquiry. Does it truly make sense to regard a certain belief as true in one context yet false in another? Well, throughout the history of science and medicine we see theories that change time and time again through the self-amending scientific method. Our current models always match existing data and information, and our theories make sense to us at the moment of what is available of scientific research. But, since most theories and models eventually are replaced by bigger, better ones, then it is reasonable to assert that our beliefs are false in the context of inquiry (since there is a very high chance that, someday, they will be disproved), but, as we are confident with the knowledge of those beliefs, we can believe they are true for now.
“principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same. (Hume “A Treatise of Human Nature” I.III.VI) Evidence-based approaches to medicine have been criticism by scientists and philosophers, or both, such as Mario Bunge. Bunge would remark that evidence-based medicine “has only strengthened the empiricist tendency to accumulate undigested data and mistrust all theory.” Why should we throw away theory and hypothesis to only limit ourselves to the what may appear more “truthful” as empirical science? It may be appropriate to use the word “skepticism” here not in the sense that we are trying to believe as little information as possible to avoid the risk of believing something that is false, but applying skepticism to our theories of research and regulation in medicine to get a better understanding of the underlying assumptions that govern our lives. Any attempt to circumvent possible motives and purposes by mankind by putting our entire faith into the numbers and graphs given by scientific experiments does not allow the theoretical lead that should guide medical research. And, the more faith we put into developing models that we can use for developing medical products, the greater room we have for skepticism. We need to ask ourselves what are the true causes of the issues we face in medicine. If we don’t correctly identify the proper causes and effects of the issues, then, as Stossel explains, the conflict-of-interest myth will continue like a foggy, intimidating machine that envelopes various sectors of the American public.
Whether or not we call them “conflicts of interest” it is true that there have been dreadful instances in which the truth of science has been shrouded for other motives. When internist Barry Marshall and pathologist Robin Warren were working on a treatment for stomach ulcers, the cure, antibiotics, were cheap and easy to find. But the gastroenterologists had other ideas of the 1980’s had other ideas.
During that year Robin and I wrote the full paper. But everything was rejected. Whenever we presented our stuff to gastroenterologists, we got the same campaign of negativism. I had this discovery that could undermine a $3 billion industry, not just the drugs but the entire field of endoscopy. Every gastroenterologist was doing 20 or 30 patients a week who might have ulcers, and 25 percent of them would. Because it was a recurring disease that you could never cure, the patients kept coming back. And here I was handing it on a platter to the infectious-disease guys. (source)
Ultimately, the two ended up experimenting on themselves to prove to the world that H. pylori, not stress, spicy foods, or anything else, caused stomach ulcers. More importantly, we see that, even as recent as the 1980’s, there were still causes for disease that we are unable to completely “rule out.” There are also issues between medical journals and doctors themselves in asserting what is actually true and false about diseases and treatments.
What are the best ways for us to dispel the Conflict-of-Interest myth? Maybe it is more appropriate for us to search for evidence of collusion or similar ethical issues in the actions among researchers and practitioners before taking for granted what we may imagine to be the case. But, before we can do that, we must ask ourselves, do we really know anything?
Heuristic 