Boundaries or Boundless

In our primary education, regardless of our eventual career path, we learned the basic construct of science. How to develop a hypothesis? How to test that hypothesis? Review what has happened before us—this involves all subjects taught at all levels. Finally, how to analyze the data obtained and share it! These “methods” get written up in a report and perhaps find their way into the scientific literature. This approach follows rules and guidelines and produces boundless results and possibilities. If we put boundaries on the data or limit access to it, then we are no longer boundless or advancing science.

For millennia, perhaps at the beginning of human existence, we have yearned to understand life’s processes. How and why does something happen? If we limit ourselves to untested opinions or obfuscate truth, we are destined to failure and perhaps collapse. A world without scientific curiosity is one filled with danger, darkness, starvation, collapse, and even envy. In a speech at Harvard Medical School in 2017, George Karandinos commented on the power of science to improve life. ¹ He reflected on his father’s life in an authoritarian nation and how science helped raise him from the doldrums of his childhood to the boundless endeavors of discovery.

Jonas Salk changed the world through science and discovery. His polio vaccine has been a game changer. ² Even the rapid advancement of the mRNA vaccines and the worldwide response to the COVID pandemic have elicited a challenging diatribe. In their recent publication, Casadevall and Fang discuss how science is continuously attacked and politicized. ³ Science is fragile, yet where would we be without it?

I was quite amazed at the number of published articles when the following term was searched “an attack on science” in PubMed. As of this writing, there were 39,524 dating to the late 19th century (1887). The article was titled “Peter’s Attack on Pastuer,” which was published in the journal Science, February of 1887. ⁴ Professor Peter believed patients died from the inoculation and not hydrophobia. Peter did not believe the data and falsely accused Pasteur. This led to monthly reporting of statistics in the Annales de l’institute Pasteur. Kind of like the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which has been suspended for the first time in its 60-year history by the Trump Administration! ⁵ The number of publications on the attack on science increased dramatically in 2019 with over 22,000 new published manuscripts. This is an existential threat to human survival.

If we put shackles on highly trained and competent scientists worldwide and denigrate their data, their work, and their discoveries, then we lose the wind in our sail and stop moving forward. Of course, science needs boundaries, but it does not need blinders or cherry-picking results to complete a narrative. Facts are facts. They need to be interpreted with openness and not agenda-driven.

While telemedicine and telehealth have been around for a number of decades now, there are and there should be validation studies, if simply to prove its efficacy and reliability. The day is coming when artificial intelligence will be fully embedded in decision-making in health care. We need science to continue to march forward. We have now observed rhetoric around the world questioning global warming, vaccines, disease manifestation, and basically everything related to public health and our very existence.

In my work with NASA over the past 3 decades, we always relided on data, its accuracy, the measurements that were and continue to be made, and science done in the laboratory and in space. It is through these discoveries that humanity is boundless.

Leaders come and go. Be they administrators, deans, presidents, pundits, or the average citizen, we must keep our ears and eyes open on the destination. There is no doubt there will be challenges at every turn, but we must remain boundless!