“The Nature of Science” altered my views significantly on the intellectual meaning behind science. I’d always assumed that science was all-encompassing and defined the world and its choices, but reading the article, I realized that science was actually only isolated to describe the mechanics behind the nature of this world. The article specifically argued that science did not collide with religious beliefs, morals, or unnatural events. Realizing this, the scientific method that they mentioned in the article (as there is not just one particular scientific method) made more sense to me. I’d always thought the general scientific method mentioned in all my textbooks growing up was lacking because it didn’t answer the beliefs and morals behind the theories raised up. But I guess, realizing now that science does not interlink itself with any of these helps me understand that the scientific method is purely to understand how the natural works.
Now, with this newfound knowledge, I’m able to understand prions and the Papua New Guinea case a little bit further. As according to Protein Data Bank’s article, a prion is a protein that can take the shape of two specific forms: a normal one and a misfolded one. However, one misfolded prion can spread and cause all the others to become misfolded. Due to this, it was assumed that when the tribe consumed one infected person with these misfolded prions, it spread to the others, causing a mysterious epidemic of this infectious disease. Very rarely, the PrP misfolds by itself and spreads to the others, which is what scientists guessed likely occurred in the Papua New Guinea case.
After attempting to solve and listening to this case, I was irked by the fact that there was very little mention of whether scientists stopped the Papua New Guinea tribe members from consuming their dead or whether they inserted new values/morals into the tribe. But after reading the article on the scientific method, I’ve now come to understand that it wasn’t really the job of the scientists to do so. If they’re truly following the guidelines of the scientific method, then their purpose was to only understand the nature of the disease, and not to meddle with the ethics and morals behind the root and spread of the disease. Although, I’m sure they were entitled to holding their own opinions, and if I was them, I’d surely be interested in the culture, but still turned off by their (almost gruesome) practices!