Nano-Science Center > Seminarer og events > Social irresponsibility

The social irresponsibility of scientists

Talk by Jean-Jacques Salomon

Abstract
The future of the world depends upon scientists men and women who are constantly striving to advance our knowledge. Yet most of them claim to bear no responsibility for the consequences of their work: as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, used to say, physics has known sin, but lets not confuse the actor and the instrument. Today, scientists play a variety of roles: as researchers, experts, strategists, diplomats, in the military and in trade, as industrialists or spies, even as traffickers or mercenaries; they are at home as advisors in government circles, military HQs and on boards of directors. Many are both warriors and missionaries for peace, defining a community in denial which questions whether there is still a place for socially responsible science or whether the courage of individual dissidents like Einstein, Bohr and Sakharov remains the only model for resisting the temptations and pressures from the military-industrial complex they nourish but also rely on.