Modern science ignores what matters most

The main problem with scientists is that they have a poor sense of priorities. The best minds ought to be solving the biggest problems. That should have been the first duty of scientists, socially and morally. Instead they seem to be doing whatever tickles their fancies.

Naturally the most logical and helpful point of departure would be: what are the biggest problems plaguing our species and how do we solve them?

There's enough to choose from: why don’t we have a global government of wise, responsible and incorruptible leaders? Why do we refuse to improve our species? Why are we so divisive? Why do we put up with evil people? Why can't we wean the masses of their harmful superstitions? Why are we so irrational about death? Why can't we understand that high standards of morality benefit all but the wrongdoers? Why are we so self-destructive? Why haven’t we found a better way to mate than leaving it to chance and infatuation? Why does science have such trouble to convey the truth of its findings? Why don’t we follow the successful examples of nature instead of our own failures? Why are buffoons valued more highly than teachers? Why do we disdain psychology, the very science that could produce answers to many of these questions (if taken more seriously and integrated with the study of the biological origins of human behavior)?

A telling example of the total lack of priority of science can be found in the data of Federal funding of the sciences in the USA in the following graph.

This shows a staggering disproportion. For reasons beyond human understanding biomedical research skyrocketed. The pursuit of medical research may have some merit, but it is anything but an urgent, existential necessity. Mankind came through the greater part of its existence without any medicine at all, while there have been no signs of a sudden shortage of people or a worldwide resurgence of the Bubonic Plague. The environment, on the other hand, has become an extremely urgent and growing existential problem. Nevertheless it did not receive any extra funding. Neither did disciplines such as psychology and social sciences, which offer our only hope of understanding and somehow correcting our insanely self-destructive behaviour.

Apart from its reluctance to deal with these fundamental problems science has also been compromised more and more by outside influences, such as big business, bribing the best minds into devoting their careers to the selfish interests of the few rather than those of mankind and our world, while political correctness has also taken its toll, especially in the softer sciences, where findings can easily be spun to satisfy the PC crowd.