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I soon had to listen a lecture on the diplomacy in science. In physics to be precise. I came out of it extremely worried.
To answer simply on the debate- No.
To answer in lengthier way- Dream on.
Science, as close to full devotion it seems, is full of riffs and human ground-sea-swells. Even if we accept observation can be clean and free of prejudices (which of course can not happen, because one always sees what he/she expect to see-the one that broke free of the chain,made the real discoveries), we get on the publishing end. Where people are like sharks. Where you need to bite your way to the cover. Think I'm kidding? Think again.
I have this true story. A man I know, lead 5 years long fight with the editors of a scientific magazine, because he was in bad relations with some big in his field. In the end he showed he's right. But he never published that particular. Why? Because when we're not slaves to political ideologies, we're slave to our ego. And to defeat the Ego, that's hard. It requires patience, lots of paper and famous friends. And in the end, we all lose.
Science should be free of all this, it should make us show only the best of us. But when you need to fight for funding, for your post in the University, for respect from the editors, it's difficult to act the way you should.
To separate science from ideology, you'll have to create a new human. A free human. One that have the courage to stand for what he/she believes in, and the security to risk fighting it. Until we're dependent, we can never be completely free. We always have to think twice before acting. We always have to reconsider the implications of what we said. And be nice and charming with the"big names". To be well educated and really important "whores". Sorry for the word. But it's not far from the reality. We are too dependent on public opinion and that's bad for the progress.
Long live internet and the free servers, because they are the path to the freedom.

Learn more about this author, Denitsa Staicova.
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