[katieHaylor (OP)]

Arulan says:

I listened to your podcast on how science is looking for a way to help with the societal problem of addiction. Is there a way science can help to solve another big societal problem, corruption?

We see corruption from both the private sector and the public sector, and it leaves little resources for the poor and needy.  Can science help?

What do you  think?

[chris]

Yes; science has given us cryptography and data security (unless you are TalkTalk, Adobe, Sony or a host of other data breachers) for a start. It has also given us Benford's law of anomalous numbers, where we know the frequency with which digits should crop up in naturally occurring number sequences so we can spot outliers, which are likely to reflect fabrication.
 

[Zer0]

Hi Arulan ☺

Re: Can science combat corruption?
Yes!

Biological sciences one fine day might just discover the ' greed gene ' in the human genome n maybe find ways to delete it or replace it with a new ' donate gene ' .

But still I personally believe that won't entirely help  eradicate the ' poor & needy ' factor.
Cause the Universe might be infinite, but the earth isn't.
The Universe seemingly expands at the speed of light, but land & resources on earth don't.

P.S. - a lot of sailors can fit inside an ocean, but only a limited few can sail comfortably onboard a ship of limited size.
⛵

[alancalverd]

All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. As long as humans yield up power to other humans, they will suffer from the corruption of those in power.

If you want to be pedantic, you might ask for a definition of corruption. I guess the most widely acceptable one would be the use of power to advantage the powerful, so the only solution is revolution and even that only provides a transient change of those in power. Limited-term parliaments and presidencies limit the duration of corruption but not the extent of damage that can be done. The best solution seems to be a hereditary monarchy where the monarch has sufficient personal wealth and freedom not to need the support of anyone else and can thus disinterestedly represent the interests of the entire population, but has limited or no power over individual citizens. Likewise a senate of those chosen by popular vote or by virtue of their office, and not answerable to a political party, can restrain the inevitable corruption of political government.

A scientific analysis of society can help us determine ways to detect and mitigate corruption but as with many human endeavours, engineering a practical solution is a lot more difficult than analysing the problem.