MembersNEWNew in the Members’ Room: Zinovy Zinik reflects on vodka and life; John Ozimek takes up the new Vetting Database; Viv Regan presents a film on youth volunteering; JJ Charlesworth has a piece in Art Monthly on the trouble with art education; James Panton discusses ethical consumerism and child protection on BBC Radio. New on the Vetting Blog: Photography in pre-school; Serving police officer CRBed; Checking once, checking twice; Manifesto Club wins government u-turn; Model flying events cancelled. Read on… |
Campaign: Fund Science as a Public Good
This campaign calls for scientific research to be funded as a ‘public good’, an end in itself, held at arms length from political institutions. It is when scientists are free to follow their noses that they make the breakthroughs that advance both human understanding and industrial practice. Read the documents below, from Manifesto Club members involved in scientific research; and see the comments page, discussing the effects of political interference in scientific research. FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD, SET SCIENCE FREE, by Tom Addiscott Key developments in agricultural science came not from government policy, but from scientists who were playing with ideas, pursuing pure academic research, or having informal conversations with their peers. Free scientific investigation yielded major industrial and agricultural benefits. IN DEFENCE OF SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE, by Michael Baum It is the randomised controlled trial that helps doctors to help patients. The two dangers for medicine are political interference, and the return of superstition. Download Thinkpiece (pdf) |
The Manifesto Club supports:All those who oppose the new Mayor's ban on drinking on the London Tube... 'Enlightenment is humanity's emergence from self-imposed immaturity. Dare to know! Have courage to use your own understanding!' Immanuel Kant 'What characterises man is his extreme abundance of imagination; therefore, that man is a fantastic animal and that universal history is the gigantic, continuous and insistent effort to go, little by little, putting some order into the crazy fantasy.' José Ortega y Gasset |
Science has become increasingly an instrument of government policy, with cuts, redundancies and financial controls. These were ostensibly to improve efficiency and results but the short-term aspirations and narrow goals of this policy tend to limit scientific research. It becomes not the ‘search after truth’ but the ‘search after funding’.