Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Waxing and Waning of Faith in Science
- 2 Scientific Ideology and “Value Free” Science
- 3 What Is Ethics?
- 4 Ethics and Research on Human Beings
- 5 Animal Research
- 6 Biotechnology and Ethics I: Is Genetic Engineering Intrinsically Wrong?
- 7 Biotechnology and Ethics II: Rampaging Monsters and Suffering Animals
- 8 Biotechnology and Ethics III: Cloning, Xenotransplantation, and Stem Cells
- 9 Pain and Ethics
- 10 Ethics in Science
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Ethics in Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Waxing and Waning of Faith in Science
- 2 Scientific Ideology and “Value Free” Science
- 3 What Is Ethics?
- 4 Ethics and Research on Human Beings
- 5 Animal Research
- 6 Biotechnology and Ethics I: Is Genetic Engineering Intrinsically Wrong?
- 7 Biotechnology and Ethics II: Rampaging Monsters and Suffering Animals
- 8 Biotechnology and Ethics III: Cloning, Xenotransplantation, and Stem Cells
- 9 Pain and Ethics
- 10 Ethics in Science
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the course of reflecting on the issues dealt with in this book, I was reminded of an incident that took place when I was in the fifth or sixth grade during my elementary education. One of my elementary school's graduates had gone on to Harvard to do a Ph.D. with David Riesman, the renowned sociologist. For his Ph.D., he was studying how various groups in society viewed scientists. Toward that end, he administered a questionnaire to all the students in my grade asking us a variety of questions, essentially aimed at detecting whether children viewed scientists as markedly different from other people. The only question I remember was the following: What is a scientist most likely to do while on vacation – study a new science, work on research, or do what other people do? I recall thinking, “Well, scientists are human, just like everyone else, so they do what all people do – spend time with family, travel, etc.” The graduate student called me out of class a week later, after processing the data, and informed me that I had the best understanding of how scientists behave and asked me to further elaborate on my answers. I remember explaining that people's humanness took precedence over their occupations – how could it not?
Years later, in reading Hume, I recalled my opinion, and had it buttressed when Hume said, in essence, that one can be a philosopher (or scientist) but one must be first a man.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Science and Ethics , pp. 247 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006