Ethics plays critical role in scientific discovery

Don't be fooled by those who formed the group Scientists and Engineers for America about their motivations. They want you to think that they are defending science against those who want to manipulate it for political purposes. Not so.

The job of scientists is to make discoveries about our physical world, to investigate what makes it work and how we can use that knowledge to our advantage. Merely having the knowledge, however, does not mean that we should use it however we want.

For instance, many scientists claim that by blocking federal dollars for additional stem-cell research, President George W. Bush is rejecting science in favor of ideology. That bit of spin may sound compelling on the surface, but what is lacking in this debate is the glaring role that ethics plays. The decisions we face are not between science and ideology. They are instead all rooted in ethics, with science providing the landscape of possibilities that we can choose from.

Those that support stem-cell research believe that the benefits we can derive by potentially finding cures for cancer, alzheimer's and other afflictions makes the research practically irresistible. Opponents, including those who agree with supporters of stem-cell research on its potential benefits, believe that the ethical cost of destroying human embryos outweighs the gains to any cures that are found. In short, science has no values, or at least it shouldn't.

Those who advocate specific scientific policies do so because their ethics dictate that increasing scientific knowledge outweighs all or at least many other ethical considerations. Only when scientists admit their hidden ethical assumptions can we correctly place science back in the domain of agnostic discovery, and scientific policy back in the domain of ethical debate.

Aaron Hedlund

Trinity '06