Science and engineering ethics
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To be a functional alternative to government regulation, self-regulation of science must be credible to both scientists and the public, accountable, ethical, and effective. According to some, serious problems continue in research ethics in the United States despite a rich history of proposed self-regulatory standards and oversight devices. ⋯ To be accountable, credible and effective, self-regulation must be inclusive and multidisciplinary, publicly engaged, sufficiently disinterested, operationally integrated with institutional goals, and must implement a genuine consensus among scientists and the public. The mechanisms of self-regulation must be sufficiently broad in their oversight, and interconnected with other institutional forces and actors, that they do not create fragmented solutions.
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It has been argued that bioethicists too often tend to represent the interests of scientists and not of the broader polity. Indeed, bioethicists seem predisposed to discard the voices and viewpoints of all but the cognoscenti. Focusing particularly on human pluripotent stem cell research, this commentary explores a variety of characterizations of bioethics and bioethicists in relation to forbidding science. Rather than proselytizing or prohibiting, bioethicists should work in partnership with scientists and publics to craft scientifically well-informed and morally sophisticated debates about forbidding science.
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Scientific research is subject to a number of regulations which impose incidental (time, place), rather than substantive (type of research), restrictions on scientific research and the knowledge created through such research. In recent years, however, the premise that scientific research and knowledge should be free from substantive regulation has increasingly been called into question. ⋯ There are, however, some problems with using law to restrict or prohibit certain types of scientific research, including (i) the inherent imprecision of law for regulating complex and rapidly evolving scientific research; (ii) the difficulties of enforcing legal restrictions on an activity that is international in scope; (iii) the limited predictability of the consequences of restricting specific branches of scientific research; (iv) inertia in the legislative process; and (v) the susceptibility of legislators and regulators to inappropriate factors and influence. Rather than using law to restrict scientific research, it may be more appropriate and effective to use a combination of non-traditional legal tools including norms, codes of conduct, restrictions on publication, and scientist-developed voluntary standards to regulate problematic scientific research.
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The potential for dual use of research in the life sciences to be misused for harm raises a range of problems for the scientific community and policy makers. Various legal and ethical strategies are being implemented to reduce the threat of the misuse of research and knowledge in the life sciences by establishing a culture of responsible conduct.
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Growing powers to manipulate human bodies and minds, not merely to heal disease but to satisfy desires, control deviant behavior, and to change human nature, make urgent questions of whether and how to regulate their use, not merely to assure safety and efficacy but also to safeguard our humanity. Oversight in democratic societies rightly belongs to the polity, not merely to self-appointed experts, scientific or ethical. Yet the task of governing the uses of dangerous knowledge is daunting, and there is little evidence that we have the will or the wisdom to do it well.