This article is Talk 08 of Honest Data Science Talks series. Each talk of around 500 words length, is personal thoughts and deliberations on the domain.
Humans prefer to have a ‘but.’ There have been businesses with a solution for which they invent a problem and then float their solution. It has not only been about identifying a problem but also about glorifying the problem. A layman is exploited in several ways by the rule book experts. Without targeting any domain or sector and only to refer a specific example, I have known a lawyer who scares the shit out of people, mint some money, and quote to have solved the problem (I know because he did that to us).
Humans prefer complicated things. They pretend to have affection towards those they do not understand than the ones easy and simple!
When I had a viral infection on the neck, a city doctor suggested a laser treatment costing me 10,000 INR. He assured me that it is not a permanent solution, and we cannot kill the virus in one treatment. I had to visit him for every recurring wart that came up as per his study analysis. I took the courage to wait for a month and visited a doctor in my hometown. He gave an ointment of 300 INR, which cured the infection completely. The take away of this is left to the reader.
I have known a city where few schools in them do not admit the students who have not got the rota-virus vaccination (pneumococcal as well). It’s an optional vaccination given to kids before they reach 5. Without getting into the long debate of why that vaccination and why optional, let us rather ask the important question: Why do schools have that condition? Has education reached a peak of commercialisation? Or worse is yet to come? Why is the nursery school fees about two lakhs INR? No, we are not asking that question, either.
The word ‘cancer,’ which once put people into shock, has now been a household term. How did we get there? While the elite class gets exploited, they do not mind that either. The lower class has bigger issues, like food and shelter. The middle class suffers in suffocation, clueless of the hollow rules and regulations. Well, the best part is people are bound to atrocious social protocols and spend a lot of time in imaginary unsolicited issues. In contrast, the factual issues struggle to be identified (forget being solved).
Statistics say there is around 20,000 paper published on COVID-19 during the 2020 pandemic in the span of three months (and expected an exponential growth). This questions the very foundation of research on why papers are getting published? Isn’t that a laughable situation?
Where is the technology that was supposed to help out from all this? Wait a minute, is it the technology that created these problems in the first case? And why is science and data science not helping out in this? Why are they only adding more problems to the existing? Why is the community unable to see the greater good and vision? If not in this, what is that the community is up to then?
When we say Data Science, is the emphasis on ‘Data’? Or ‘Science’? It looks like all we have favoured is ‘data’!