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6 Scientific freedom and responsibility in a biosecurity context Catherine Rhodes Scientific freedoms are exercised within the context of certain responsibilities, which in some cases justify constraints on those freedoms. (Constraints that may be internally established within scientific communities and/or externally enacted.) Biosecurity dimensions of work involving pathogens are one such case and raise complex challenges for science and policy. The central issues and debates are illustrated well in the development of responses to publication of (‘gain of
Never have the scope and limits of scientific freedom been more important or more under attack. New science, from artificial intelligence to genomic manipulation, creates unique opportunities to make the world a better place. But it also presents unprecedented dangers, which many believe threaten the survival of humanity and the planet. This collection, by an international and multidisciplinary group of leading thinkers, addresses three vital questions: (1) How are scientific developments impacting on human life and on the structure of societies? (2) How is science regulated, and how should it be regulated? (3) Are there ethical boundaries to scientific developments in some sensitive areas (e.g. robotic intelligence, biosecurity)? The contributors are drawn from many disciplines, and approach the issues in diverse ways to secure the widest representation of the many interests engaged. They include some of the most distinguished academics working in this field, as well as young scholars.
, and inserted into an enucleated cell with healthy mitochondria; the difference boils down to one of whether that nuclear material is taken from an unfertilised or fertilised ovum. In this chapter, I shall examine some of the senses in which mitochondrial transfer, and the law’s handling of it, might be taken to relate to scientific freedom. I shall try to avoid taking a position; my concern is simply to look at some of the potential argumentative fault lines. For the sake of ease, I shall conflate the terms ‘maternal spindle transfer’ and ‘pronuclear transfer’ under
accepted, then scientists should enjoy a substantial degree of freedom from various forms of restrictions. Financial restrictions obviously call into question wider issues about the morality of resource rationing. Other forms of restrictions, based on ignorance, fear or political or ideological credo, are harder to justify. Scientific freedom is not just a political or ideological matter. It is also a matter for scientists to actively deal with: it is the role of scientists to explain, in accessible terms, the importance of scientific endeavours that may appear either
hopeless prison, and today I respond with my thirst for air – because I am truly breathless – which is my thirst for truth, my thirst for freedom. As Marco Cappato and I noted in the conclusion of our first volume on scientific freedom (Giordano et al. 2012), this message reminded us all that when we speak about scientific freedom we are not discussing an abstract idea: we are talking about real people, who have real lives and suffer real vulnerabilities and illnesses. I wish to add now that, as human life has extended so significantly in the last few decades, and as it
Research is an international ongoing forum, which was formed in 2006 in response to concerns in the international scientific community that scientific freedom might be hindered by ideologies that do not stand up to moral or rational scrutiny. In the early 2000s, part of the international scientific and bioethics community was responding with profound concern to innovations in embryological science; the European Union decided to take time to think about the matter, and first imposed a moratorium, and then a series of limits to the funding of scientific research involving
control over their own research, which was held by some interviewees who left government science for careers in universities, several interviewees remark that they enjoyed a high degree of scientific freedom, within the wider aims of government science. RAE materials scientist Roger Moreton (b. 1935) recalled how the early development of carbon fibre owed much to William Watt’s continuing his research on the subject, in spite of their superior pressing them to work on other topics.25 Special merit promotions, awarded to some valuable specialists deemed to have made
at the top of the moral status ‘ladder’. Defenders of scientific freedom may have a tall mountain to climb to justify the risks of so momentous a change in society. Advances in these technologies are already affecting the world of work. A survey of the 100 most cited academics writing on AI suggests an expectation that machines will be developed ‘that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human’ (Müller and Bostrom 2016) with 90 per cent confidence by 2070, and with 50 per cent confidence by 2050. While these figures are speculative
decisions about how we wish to conduct our lives. Countries in which science flourishes also tend to be middle- and high-income countries, and there is thus a positive association between economic growth and scientific freedom. But they note that a more likely hypothesis is that the invention and use of the scientific method in the modern age introduced into human communities a new way of thinking, which allowed a significant percentage of people to go beyond a set of cognitive and emotional biases that we inherited from our evolutionary ancestors, who, however, lived in
weapons and greater public understanding of nuclear issues generally, Shils was embedded in the cultural and political ferment of the time. In 1956, at the height of McCarthyism, Shils published The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies (1956). While not directly concerned with higher education, this influential book focused on issues related to scientific freedom and had direct relevance to higher education. While American higher education started to expand in the early years of the twentieth century, its period of massive