“Does science matter? Do people care about it anymore?” William J. Broad and James Glanz asked, in their 2003 New York Times article titled Does Science Matter?. This question made me pause as I read through this article. Why DO so many people believe that science has lost its purpose? Why has scientific research been privatized across the board since the Cold War? 

Even if people believe science has lost reason, there is no doubt that science has served its purpose, whether its in medicine, public health, civil engineering, technology and all the conveniences that came with it. The reason Congress has lost interest in scientific research is because they serve to represent their statesmen’s opinions, which are far from positive. To be honest, I can understand the negativity. Currently, there is no perceived threat to humanity. There is no disease or world war that threatens us right now. Sure, we talk about nuclear arms and global warming all the time, but if you are an average American, born and raised in a small town in Arizona, such things may seem unperceivable, or even scary, especially when it comes to genetic modification and sorts.

I, for one, assumes that Darwin’s Theory is true (Trust me, the article talks about an alternative theory that a group of scientists wants taught in public schools). And as he states, along with proof of time and history, evolution is driven by threat of extinction: natural selection, survival of the fittest. A simple example is the evolution of crop bugs. If humans never invented pesticides, bugs would never have become immune to a certain pesticide. It is because pesticides threaten a species to extinction that it has to evolve to survive. After applying pesticides, only the bugs that have become immune to it will survive, they will then reproduce offspring that will also be immune. In a few seasons, the farmland will once again be swarmed with bugs, now immune to the pesticide once used to kill them. So we create different kinds of pesticides to deal with these evolving “superbugs.” And this evolutionary cycle repeats itself. This is natural selection, survival of the fittest: The strong survive, the weak perish. Threat of extinction drives evolution.

Similarly, humans have evolved in such a way. when we were attacked by SARS and H2N1, we found ways to contain, if not cure, such diseases. We quarantined patients to prevent a major outbreak, protecting humanity. Whenever there is a major disease, government funding will spontaneously appear. The problem with researching global warming is that it has not harmed us directly. Yet. Global warming is mother nature’s wake-up call for humanity. If we don’t put in the money and research soon, and humanity gets hit one day by global warming as it did in The Day After Tomorrow (2004) or 2012 (2009), it will already be too late for the public to learn their lesson. Hopefully, humanity will go through natural selection then. But as history has demonstrated many a time, natural selection is never smooth and peaceful, but regretful and deadly.