ethics in science Quotes

We slow the progress of science today for all sorts of ethical reasons. Biomedicine could advance much faster if we abolished our rules on human experimentation in clinical trials, as Nazi researchers did.

Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?

Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.

In South Korea, a scientist considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of cloning has been sentenced to two years in prison. At least, they think it's him.

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?'

There's no scientist I know who wouldn't rather be a charlatan. And when circumstances allow you to be both, why it's great fun!

Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.

It is only when science asks why, instead of simply describing how, that it becomes more than technology. When it asks why, it discovers Relativity. When it only shows how, it invents the atom bomb, and then puts its hands over its eye and says, My God what have I done?

If scientists don't play God, who will?

Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West.

Non-cooperation in military matters should be an essential moral principle for all true scientists.

People without independence have no business to meddle with science. It should never be linked with lucre.

Unless science is controlled by a greater moral force, it will become the Antichrist prophesied by the early Christians.

Science without conscience is the death of the soul.

Science in itself is morally neutral; it becomes good or evil according as it is applied.

The science only perpetuates the vicious cycle of cronyism, power-mongering, influence peddling, corruption, bureaucracy, all of that.

There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.

Science sans conscience n' est que le ruine de l'âme. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruine of the soule.

I got a four year scholarship to Harvard, and while I was there they wanted to groom me for work in the Star Wars program designing weapons ignited by hydrogen bombs. I didn't want to do that. I thought about how many scientists had died in World War II.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Do you trust in your fellow citizens, in a sense that whatever they will have in additional tools they will use in balance more to the good or more to the bad? If you think they will use it more to the bad, you shouldn't do science, you know.

Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the 'superior knowledge' that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.