Responsible conduct of research

On Tuesday I attended another one of the RCR workshops that will count towards my degree requirements. The past semesters none of the seminars offered have really looked interesting to me, but this one was about humility and hubris in research and thinking about the dual uses of our research.

The presenter started out by talking about antibiotics and how they were an amazing innovation in the science world, but how over time they have been abused and prescribed unnecessarily so that resistant strains of bacteria have emerged. (PS: nothing annoys me like people who insist they need antibiotics to get rid of their cold/flu). Essentially these antibiotics were created as life-saving measures, but as a result resistant bacteria now exist that could be used in terrorist actions. Another example discussed was the work of scientists to improve the delivery of particulates for those who need treatment for asthma. Great to deliver medicine for asthmatics, great to deliver particulate bioweapons. It was just really interesting to me to really think about what all my work could be used for; I think as a scientist I don't look at the ways I could hurt someone with my research, but only the ways I could improve the quality of patient life through research and innovation.

The students in my seminar group got into the discussion about how exactly we should approach our research, because really anything we invent/work on could be corrupted and used for unintended purposes. Should we limit the scope of our creativity to prevent some possible misuse of our approach/application of our design? Are there some things we shouldn't even bother researching because the negative aspects far outweigh the positive ones?

None of us felt that this was the case for the very reason that anything we create could be misused, and really, anything we invent could also be invented by someone else, so who's to say that these horrible misapplications of scientific progress wouldn't occur anyway? And face it, if terrorists really want to find a way to deliver that virus or whatever, they'll find the way with or without perverting the existing approaches for particulate drug delivery. Essentially everyone was saying that hell no, we shouldn't limit our research just because it might be misused somewhere in the distant future for some unforeseen purpose. Ideally the best we can do is try to see how our work could be used in other applications and understand those risks going into the project.

During this whole thing I was thinking about how the Supreme Court was hearing a case about the handgun ban in Chicago that day. There is no difference between what we were talking about in seminar and that trial. It is absurd to me that this case should even need to go to the Supreme Court. Uh, hello? Right to bare arms? Why should the liberties of law-abiding citizens be restricted because of the chance that someone might misuse a gun? People who want to legally obtain weapons are NOT the ones that are going to use them to murder/rob people and cause general mayhem. The people who do want to use guns for this purpose will be able to find guns if they really want to, through various shady avenues, but then those of us who would not misuse the weapons are left unable to defend ourselves because of a crippling and unconstitutional piece of legislation. I just wonder how many of the liberal scientists wouldn't see things that way.