Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
In the West, academic doctors are also under intense pressure to publish, but the consequences for fakery are so severe, and the benefits are so small, that it isn't widespread. In China the situation is reversed: the benefits are greater and the penalties are less so..
|
Rather than cloud up the previous post I'll add a post-script here. In reading the Nature article, publishing was cited as a way to advance one's career, not as a way of alleviating human suffering through science, and study, and careful experimentation. No, medicine is a 'career' in which one 'advances' to one's self-benefit.
But many do work at science, and publish in journals, because they're curious. They want to help others and do good, and so they like to solve puzzles. How to discover causes, and mitigate the effects? It's hard work, but the motivation not to advance oneself but to do good, to help others. Puzzle-solving can be fun, but the real payout is when others get helped. Jonas Salk genuinely wanted to help others, to end suffering.
Many Christian speakers and leaders got into it because they had an opportunity to serve God and to help others. I don't doubt that Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, Ravi Zacharias, actually had conversion experiences and wanted to do good. But at some point conflicting desires got in the way - the desire to "advance one's career", for lack of better term. RZ got the VP of the USA to talk at his funeral. WL and WN got read into the Congressional Record. WL got a reflecting pool and his family got residuals. The temptation is there.
(And the fact that Christian 'author' Watchman Nee's only written book, Spiritual Man, was a blatant rip-off of someone else, should give us serious pause. All his other published books came from notes that people took. He'd talk and talk, and people would write notes, and tidy it all up.)