the dark side of science?

The Scientist | Within the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, teams of biologists and engineers are making great strides in understanding the cell and its functioning. (See The Scientist’s recent feature on the topic.) However, there is more that should be discussed than the triumphs. There are also the dark purposes to which science (and synthetic biology in particular) can be put. Worries range from the development of pathogenic bioweapons to the potential contamination of native gene pools in our environment. The question is, are scientists responsible for the potentially negative impacts of their work?

Some have argued that the answer to this question is no—that it is not researchers’ responsibility how science gets used in society. But that is sophistry. Scientists are responsible for both the impacts they intend and some of the impacts they do not intend, if they are readily foreseeable in specific detail. These are the standards to which we are all held as moral agents. If I were to negligently throw a used match into a dry field (merely because I wanted to dispose of it), for example, I would be responsible for the resulting wild fire. In contrast, Einstein was not responsible for the use of his E=mc² equation to build an atomic bomb and its use in wartime, though the scientists at Los Alamos were.

Of course, impacts (whether harmful or beneficial) are not solely scientists’ responsibility—others involved will also bear responsibility for their actions. If scientific knowledge is used in a biological attack, the terrorists are first and foremost responsible for their heinous act. But the researchers who generated the knowledge may be also partly responsible. Consider, for example, the knowledge of how to build a virus like smallpox from the ground up or how to create other pathogenic, tailored organisms—targeted either to humans or the foods on which we depend. If it is readily foreseeable that such knowledge could be used for nefarious purposes, the scientists who introduce such new technological capacities are partially responsible for an attack that could ultimately cause millions of deaths.

Scientists can no longer hope naively that people will only use science for the public good. The world will always have the mentally unbalanced, the delusional, the vicious, and the sociopathic members of society, some of whom will also be intelligent enough to use the results of science. Recognizing this should be part of the everyday backdrop of science, the assessment of its potential, and the desirability of the pursuit of a particular project.