C. Brandon Ogbunu in Undark Magazine:
Last month, I was fortunate to participate in an event hosted by Open to Debate, a one-hour weekly program broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the country, and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The participants considered the question: “Is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse?”
The preparation I did for the event was nerve-wracking, mostly because it was my first time ever participating in a debate. But I enjoyed the experience. The debate functioned like an extended conversation between me and three others from varied backgrounds who had thought about the issues. We each had our area of focus, which led to a wide-ranging discussion. But the resonant aspect of the event was in how it forced me to carefully consider big questions about the health of science, which now operates in what I and others describe as wartime. In light of that, I reflected on why science feels so culturally intransigent, and why this frustrates me to the extent that it does. The exercise prompted me to think about whether scientific risk aversion is a problem at all, why that is so, and how we can address it.
More here.
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