Should scientists responsible for negative impacts of their discoveries?
Whenever some discoveries turn out to be harmful to the society, people seem prone to blame the scientists who have made them. It is, however, unjustifiable to require scientist to be responsible for the negative impacts of their discoveries for several reasons below.
First, almost all discoveries have their negative impacts. And these negative impacts mostly are not inherent with the discoveries but caused by people’s incorrect use of them. For example, when the computer was first created, its impacts were all positive, such as helping dealing with huge computing task of NASA, some universities and institutes. However, with the development of computer science, some skilled programmers created the computer virus. The virus destroyed millions of personal computers and many large servers in government’s department. In this situation, the scientists have little responsibility for the negative impacts.
Moreover, the negative impacts of discoveries are unpredictable. Could scientist know the gene engineering would raise social problems about human cloning in the future? Could Ford foresee the huge environmental issues caused by automobiles nowadays? And could hundreds of physical scientists who majored in atomic physics realise that their work would produce the atom bomb, a killing weapon which had slaughtered millions of people? If all these answer are no, we shouldn’t blame scientist for bringing these discoveries. After all, their original intention is to benefit the society.
Last, requiring scientist to be responsible for negative impacts would hinder the development of technology. If we strictly punish or censure scientists for negative impacts of their discoveries, it would greatly deaden scientists’ enthusiasm in doing research. They would be overcautious about the possible negative impacts of their research. Without brave attempt, few breakthroughs could be achieved. As a result, the development of technology would be little or even stops.
In conclusion, the negative impacts of discoveries are not caused by scientist but people’s misuse. Considering the unforeseeable impacts of discoveries, the scientists don’t need to be responsible for negative impacts of their discoveries. Or it may retard the development of technology.
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