You might have seen the New York Times article yesterday so delightfully called “”https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/science/25sheep.html?em&ex=1169960400&en=83a8a0ffb7f393f8&ei=5087%0A">Of gay sheep, modern science and bad publicity." In case the article has disappeared into the archive by the time you read this, briefly, it was a rather funny cautionary tale about a scientist who set out to study homosexuality in sheep, made one too many comments about the possible implications in people, and ended up getting skewered by the press and the blogosphere, who thought the point of his research was eventually to alter people’s sexuality.
I was particularly struck by a comment that the scientist, Charles Roselli made.
Mentioning human implications, he said, is “in the nature of the way we write our grants” and talk to reporters. Scientists who do basic research find themselves in a bind, he said, adding, “We have been forced to draw connections in a way that we can justify our research.”
As a reporter, I’m guilty of this myself. Drawing human conenctions makes the story more accessible and it’s an easy, if cheap, way of drawing the reader in. Even in my previous life as a scientist, I had an American Heart Association grant although my thesis, on lipid transport, was classic cell biology and had little to do with heart disease. That’s where the money was, and so that’s how we wrote the grant.
But all and said done, it is dishonest, isn’t it? Is Roselli right? Is the system so warped now that we have to lie about human implications to justify working on important, but obscure, questions in science? Have you done it?
The system is indeed warped, but this isn’t new; it’s been like this since I started in research hundreds of moons ago.
But fortunately there’s still people who will give you a break by funding your research, even if it’s obvious to the educated reader that the human implications of your research are farfetched.
In other words, people making decisions about grants aren’t so gullible as to believe in everything they read in a grant, and yet they give you money.
We will face the real problem when these people and their funding agencies become an extinct species due to the lack of research funds and the priority granted to translational research.
If things continue going in the same direction, it will take a lot more than lies to get a grant.
More power to basic researchers who get their obscure questions funded, but good luck convincing newspaper readers that sheep brains are as interesting as human ones.
Sourcing a gay rights/animal rights activist who happens to be a sports celebrity—that’s a cheap tactic. Citing human implications, as a way to win money or publicity, is cheap only if scientists won’t pay the price—which is the bother of exploring and even responding to those implications in detail when people take interest (or outrage).
The Times article mentions an interesting conflict over the word “control,” which the researchers used in a technical sense and the activists interpreted in an Orwellian one. The usual response in such cases is “we must educate the public better,” but it’s also worth asking whether there’s a way for the lay perception to inform scientists, especially about the toxicity of certain metaphors. In any case, it’s not unreasonable to worry that cultural norms will be repackaged as biological ones (even where human implications are farfetched); this process permeates the history of science.
Jim Newman here from OHSU (the university doing the research.)
I want to clarify here as you only hear a small part of his comments in the NYT. Roselli was explaning that while the research may help answer global questions about mammalian sexuality, there is not a 100 percent direct correlation to humans. He was not lying, merely stating there are limits to how much the information can provide to mammals.
Unfortunately, those with an agenda like PETA and the left and the right have misused the research for their own gain.
If you are interested – here are a few more articles worth reading:
The Guardian: Gay sheep? Let’s get the facts straight
https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1989430,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11
TIME Magazine: Yep, They’re Gay
https://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1582336,00.html
National Post: How I fell for PETA’s gay ram scam
https://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=01a31a64-0add-4761-b5ef-35aafbc1d5e2
ABC News: Are Some Sheep Gay?
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2823706&page=1
Sunday Times apology and correction:
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2570061.html