DEREK LOWE: Why Miracle Drugs Are (Almost) Never as Miraculous As They Seem.

Politics, the arts, finance: there’s hardly a field of modern human activity that isn’t saturated with promotion and pitchmeisters, most all of them going full yammer, 24 hours a day. I can’t help but think that a hunter-gatherer tribesman, brought into modern society and somehow protected from a complete nervous collapse, would end up being amazed at sheer number of things that people would be trying to persuade him of.

And if you think that science is any different, you really should get out and meet some more scientists. The hype varies, depending on what sort of science we’re talking about, but since the labs are staffed with modern humans, hype is what you get. In academia, the competition for grant money and prominent journal publication breeds exaggeration as to the importance of research programs, their past successes, and their future chances. The worst of these cross over the line into fraud, some of which makes the headlines, but even the honest stuff (the huge majority) is best-foot-forward all the time.

It’s a human activity, engaged in by human beings.