Prizes and Penalties

Life is filled with pleasure and pain. Science and society are struggling mightily with both.

Written byBob Grant

| 3 min read

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ANDRZEJ KRAUZE

A couple of months ago, I was reading a graphic novel with my children, and one of the characters voiced this well-constructed line: “Food is the prize of living.” The simplicity of the thought appealed to me—that life comes with a handful of pleasures that compel us to march onward and, in some instances, serve as fuel for that march. But as we at The Scientist assembled this issue on the science of pain, my mind eventually wandered to the other side of that coin. If pleasures such as food, laughter, or dreams are the prizes of living, I thought, then surely pain is the penalty.

Pain is a penalty we all pay, to some degree. The lucky among us experience it only intermittently: the ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
Go to The Scientist's LinkedIn Page
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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