Progress in clinical and biological research
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The paper locates the problem of research ethics in a "value-free" science that has made researchers value-blind, insufficiently able to foresee possible negative consequences of what they do, but very able to design strategies to agree to structures that protect them. The intellectual style of a given research community enters as a key variable, and most intellectual styles are seen as ways of making scientific findings less threatening by focusing on data with little interpretation or speculation with little documentation. The famous Wilkes/Gleditsch case in Norway is cited as an example of research that offered both data (obtained from open sources) and interpretation, and was met with disapproval and sentence. ⋯ Universities may soon offer neither security nor academic freedom nor relevance. Researchers may find the academic commune more suitable, with economic independence. And they may argue for a redirection of research to satisfy basic needs--material and nonmaterial--for everybody.