Purity of thought and the scientific spirit collide head on with politics, personalities and raw ambition. Data manipulation, broken promises, credit given where it is least deserved, avoidable immigration problems, and career sabotage are just some of the issues covered in Convergence, thus revealing what the world of biomedical science is really about.
Convergence: a tale of four women
Prior to 2008, there were some that suggested a crisis was imminent on Wall Street but were shouted down by those making obscene profits from bad bets. Prior to 2010, there were some that predicted an offshore oil disaster was highly probable but lax government oversight and regulation combined with corporate greed to give us the worst oil spill on record. In the biomedical world, alarm bells go off on a regular basis regarding professional malfeasance but as long as scientists deal with such misconduct as bioethical abstractions or case histories that only occur at other institutes, a Wall Street-like collapse or BP-like disaster will always lurk in the background. The novel Convergence covers a wide range of bioethical issues (data misrepresentation, corruption of the peer-review process and career sabotage to name but a few), shows how frequently the much-revered Honor Code is treated with contempt, and maps out how career advancement in the sciences can be accelerated by those well-acquainted with slight-of-hand or misdirection. Convergence carefully reconstructs the mechanics of the scientific process and how it is too often tainted by self-promotion or self-preservation. The book makes the strongest case possible that a new model for the way science is conducted is long overdue. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before the next thalidomide arrives and just like the 2008 financial crash or the 2010 Gulf oil spill, people will wring their hands and ask “Why wasn’t something done sooner to stop this from happening?”. There are lots of people out there that probably believe they don’t have a voice; hopefully Convergence will help them think otherwise.
© CP Turner 2008
