Understanding mistrust in science and science itself

“The Universal Ethical Code for Scientists and the ‘Crisis of Trust in Science’” (PDF), by S. John and T. Lewens, is a somewhat long text, but it may be interesting to take a look on it or on the resumè at the beginning. It is part of a broader study of the Department for Business Innovation & Skills of UK government. It discusses the complexities of the origins of mistrust in science and scientists. I found it also useful to disassemble common oversimplifications and idealizations about the nature of scientific research, that sometimes makes people react with mistrust when exposed to reality.

Zeferino Vaz (may/27/1908 - feb/19/1981)

At exactly 92 year ago the physician Zeferino Vaz, one of the main founders of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), was born in São Paulo. He spend 12 years as its leader in its first times (1966-1978), when 10 of the institutes and faculties of the university were built. He was really a kind of “faculty-maker”: he was directly responsible for the creation of six other faculties in the state of São Paulo, four of them of Medicine. And he managed to avoid military interventions at Unicamp, that happened in several other universities in the dictatorship of 1964-85. It was not an easy task.

Venter's natural artificial life

Let’s call an apple an apple. I don’t think what Craig Venter did may be called “artificial life” or even “artificial cell”. He sinthetized the DNA of a bacteria, put it in a cell and the cell started to reproduce normally. That is a truly important and amazing advancement, but the pre-existing living cell was a natural living bacteria. So we cannot call the result an “artificial cell” (see also this Science Now text). However, many newspapers and scientists around the world used that expression. Venter’s Institute itself talked about “sinthetic cell” in its press release. It does not seem so.

Physics at Unicamp: being different

These days I have been writing about the History of the Institute of Physics (IFGW) at Unicamp, one of the main Brazilian centers of research on this area. It had an odd beginning: while in Third World countries theoretical investigation predominates, IFGW turned its emphasis to experimental applied studies three years after it was created. That lead to important results soon, like the Brazilian auto-sufficiency in optical fibers production – although the Institute is relatively new (1967). It is very interesting to decipher why and how that shift happened. This is what I am working on now!

Numbers about bombs, Iran and so on

I have seen journalists saying that Iran will have a nuclear bomb soon because he is enriching uranium at 20%. Well, we have to take care with numbers. A nuclear weapon needs enrichment of 90%. Nuclear power plants use 5%. Reactors for research, 20%. In Nature, it appears at 0,71%. These numbers are the proportion of uranium-235 in the mixture of U-235 and U-238, the two main kinds ("isotopes") of U. According to Global Security, a set of 850 to 1000 ultracentrifuges spends 1 year to produce U enriched at 90% enough to produce a bomb (20-25 kg). Just numbers, but useful to assess scenarios.

The unknown great scientists

So what makes a good scientist? The preferred parameters in academy are the number of publications and of patents registered. General public maybe tends to emphasize revolutionary discoveries. But Helton Escobar at his blog (in Portuguese) notes that the advancement of science depends on many others qualities: the ability to admnistrate large projects, to teach and educate, to write about science to non-specialists, to be good curators of science museums, expositions and collections. Virtuosity may be found in all of these skills. His answer: We need all of kinds of scientists. Bingo.

Following atoms with x-ray

At this moment, writing about the researches about x-ray crystalography done at Unicamp, Brazil. Yes, x-ray is useful not only to medical imagery, but also to study structure of matter at atomic level. One interesting subject is ultrafast pulsed x-ray (about 10^-14 seconds each pulse!), with which one may follow the movements of individual atoms in real time and see directly what they do when, as an example, hard steel is forged (“martensitic transitions”). How atoms "orchestrate" themselves to behave collectivelly in such transformations - something that is not yet fully understood. Cool.

Presentation

Well, I have no time to fill a "macroblog" (as you can see in my old dead blogs) and I have no IQ enough to transmit ideas through mere 140 characteres microblogs. So I decided to build a "miniblog" - not so micro, but still small so I can handle it. The maximum size is 600 characteres - the same of Linkedin pannel (what I used as standart). I am a science writer, so this will be the main theme! Additionally, I discovered that I can practice my English doing this! (I am Brazilian, I speak Portuguese, man!) Let's see how it works.