Planck E PressCenter Articles

• Home
• Articles
• Press Releases
• Reports

---

Ethics in Science

"Relativity applies to physics, not ethics."

Albert Einstein

 

To those who are not part of it, the Academy seems to be a stronghold of wise people; of very intelligent people, totally dedicated to the search for knowledge.

Unfortunately, the human being is a beautiful project, but it didn't work out.  And scientists are humans.  Often one of them dedicates years and years of his life to a thesis that, in the end, turns out to be false.  What does he do, then?

If ethics is intimate to him, as in Einstein's sentence that opens this article, he/she reveals it to the world.  He/she accepts the error, and life goes on.  This rarely happens.  Since few people deeply understand scientific propositions, there is -almost always- a certain margin for polemics, for debates, and with that, even though she/he is aware of the intrinsic failure of his/her theory, she/he remains undaunted, defending the indefensible.

Although it may seem extremely naive, I firmly believe that scientists should never embark on a research path that leads them into moral dilemmas.  Ethics must be constantly evaluated when we encounter a scientific challenge or have a brilliant idea.

But what would be the criteria that would allow us to make a decision?

In times of great advances in artificial intelligence, I borrow and adapt Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics:

1 - A human cannot be used;

2 - A human cannot harm another human; and

3 - A man must protect his existence as long as he does not threaten the existence of others.

Recent Presscenter Articles

• The Parametrization of Science

• A Scientific Impossibility

• The Unsustainable Stability of the Atom

• The Bell-Curve and the Neutron

---

Planck E - Books

---

For further information about Planck E PressCenter, please contact us.