The Sobering Effect Of Suffering Among Patient Scientists

One of the things that I believe sets the chronically ill community apart from the rest of the scientific establishment is how personally we bear the costs of poor scientific thinking. We're not chasing the next scientific breakthrough because it's simply interesting to us. We're hurting, and we dont stop hurting at the end of the day when we go home for dinner. We can't leave this at the office. Its gnawing drives an all-consuming obsession to make the pain go away. And there's nothing quite like this pain for scrubbing the mind of shit scientific thought. When new information emerges which demands an updating of our paradigm, we dont have to consider how this might affect our funding, or our career goals, or whether we still have a shred of ego remaining which may feel threatened by this new change in thinking. We've long since been stripped of much of that typical baggage. We have no choice but to get this stuff right. And we often do.