Today, I went to a seminar that I was required to go to. It was a seminar taht approximated genetics enough, that I might as well just say for the layperson that it was genetics research. Now, I am a chemist and so I tend to get the generalities of genetics-type research, but often miss in the details not having taking classes where they teach you about every miniscule protein nor having done research on genetics specific projects. I usually understand enough to get by and understand their main points, even if not the details. Anyways, this seminar speaker is apparently a pretty top-of-the field guy from an Ivy League school, and what he was talking about was mostly gibberish to me. Why? Well, he never explained anything at all, including hsi main points.

Of course, I have been to many a seminar where the speaker was just speaking gibberish, but he also said some other things that I felt were worth commenting on. The first thing he said that made me take notice was that "it is unethical for the government to limit funding for human embryonic stem cell research." Now, I understand a scientist being upset with the government's current official position, but where the hell does he get off saying that it is "unethical" to limit funding by taxpayers of a particular research subject when many of said taxpayers find any research on it to be highly unethical. Hell, I could even make a better argument that it is unethical for the government to use taxpayer money for most scientific research, since the Constitution does not indicate that the government is supposed to provide for scientific research. And what is a scientist doing throwing around charges about ethics? Why do scientists and journalists always feel they are superior ethically than other groups? Just because their jobs are to "find truth"? Well, let me tell you, a lot of scientists aren't particularly ethical (although, a lot are) and so there are checks made to keep them from doing unethical things. One of the major concerns about human embryonic stem cell research is that it could lead to cloning or some other severely unethical research. For some reason, many scientists don't see this as a possibility because they would never do such a thing, but here's the thing: scientists try to push the envelope of thinking and in the process often struggle for grant money and prestige...this can lead to unethical science. If just one scientist that is working on human embryonic stem cells is unethical, they could theoretically try to push forward to human cloning using federal money! That's why I, for one, am actually glad that there is a limit on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. At the very least, it will slow things down enough that we can figure out if they are actually useful, before throwing a bunch of money into ethically questionable research.

The next thing he said that was bothersome was about 30 minutes later. He was talking about how he uses mouse embryonic stem cells, but that the National Institute of Health (one of the premier scientific grant organizations along with the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and a few others) only provides money for human studies (ie, things that directly affect humans). Then he talked about how his mouse research was so important and I figured out what his problem was: he wants everyone to give all their money to the research he deems important. This shows stunning ignorance of how scientific policy works for a man that is supposed to be one of the top guys in his field.

The final thing he said after about another five minutes, and was along the lines of "it is completely unethical for the government to spend so much money on a war in Iraq when they could be funding this important research with it" and then he babbled on a bit how the government is keeping the rich rich. Again, this shows that this guy is strikingly naive about how the world works. Does he actually think that if that money hadn't gone in to the war that it would go to scientific research, much less his own research? And why is it always unethical to spend taxpayer money on things that don't go directly to him? Of course, the comment about the war and keeping the rich rich, showed his true colors. He is probably a researcher who had a grant proposal turned away because of not enough funding and became bitter and decided to blame Bush for everything that went wrong in his life. Of course, that is not to say that he didn't blame Bush for everything before he didn't get funded.

The thing is, I am used to the anti-Bush rhetoric occasionally used to get a laugh out of the audience here, but actually calling it "unethical" to spend on something other than your research. It is pretty irresponsible as a scientist to be throwing a word like that around when it pertains to funding your research. Since this is Madison, the professors, of course, ate it all up. I didn't speak up at all (what's the point of arguing that point, he would never listen to reason, anyways), but I did have a comments sheet to write on, and I did rip into the guy there.