So far, we've been focusing on the ethics of how research should be conducted. This week, we shifted our attention to issues regarding hypothesis development and publication of results within the context of controversial and dual-use research. That is, it is generally presumed that the purpose of science is to better society by developing new knowledge to serve the public good. The problem arises, however, if the knowledge being produced may itself endanger the public good. In the case of controversial research, this occurs because the topic being examined is itself socially, and perhaps even morally, taboo. For example, research into gender and intelligence may contribute to sexist stereotypes about women; just as research into race and intelligence may promote and reinforce racist beliefs. In either case, such research has the potential of promoting prejudicial ideologies that do not promote the public good. In a more famous example, Congress attempted to force the American Psychological Association to retract and condemn a paper that found that pedophilia may be significantly less psychological harmful to minors than presumed; and may even be beneficial for 'willing' minors.
A similar tension is raised by dual-use research. Broadly speaking, dual-use research is research that produces results that could either contribute positively to the sciences and to the public good; or used to do harm unto others and even threaten national security. The two most well-known example are the resurrection of the Spanish Flu and the creation of highly infectious mousepox. In the former case, researchers developed a method to sequence genetic material from damaged sources, and use it to reproduce the genome of the deadly Spanish Flu virus (which killed anywhere from 17 to 100 million people between 1918 and 1919). In the latter case, researchers examining how to use to the mousepox virus to induce infertility among rodents discovered a way to create a new, deadlier variant of mousepox - one that would even infect and kill rodents that had been given the mousepox vaccine. Given that mousepox is closely related to smallpox (another deadly infectious disease), the research raised concerns over whether their results could be used to develop an even deadlier variant of smallpox. In both cases, the knowledge those studies produced could be useful to beneficial to their respective scientific disciplines; yet, both raise immediate concerns regarding their potential use in bioterrorism.
So, what do you all think? Do you think that research should ever be prohibited or censored because it is deemed controversial? Should it be prohibited if it raises dual-use concerns? Or is either reason sufficient for having research censored?
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