Blog Entry: Ethical limitaion of Science

I think there is a perfect example that will help me guide through the 2 questions written below.

1.       To what extent should scientific knowledge open to the public

2.       To what extent does science owe responsibility to the society that finances it

I am more than assured than everyone has heard about nuclear energy and its growing popularity as an alternative source of energy of finite energy sources such as oil over the globe. However, there are some downsides to nuclear energy. Despite the high productivity and environmental-freeness, there is no doubt that this source is by far the most dangerous and unpredictable among other sources. This leads us to the first question: To what extent should scientific knowledge be open to the public. I personally think that, in the case of nuclear energy, scientific knowledge should not be open to the public for many reasons. But the main reason is that, people might use the knowledge for their own benefits. In extreme cases, they might build their own nuclear power plants. However, I believe that there is an exception in this; Scientific knowledge that are minor and useful in the people’s daily lives should be open. Next, the second questions states to what extent does science owe responsibility to the society that finances it. To take a firm stand, I strongly believe that science owe utter responsibility to the society. In the case of nuclear energy, it is apparent that the citizens of a country must pay more tax in order to raise finance to build the nuclear power plants, and the costs of building a nuclear power plant costs $4 billion on average. Even after the power plants are built, the citizens are not guaranteed safety. As I have mentioned before, nuclear power plants are unpredictable and disastrous, and if it once explodes, a whole city, or perhaps a country can vanish. For example, the Chernobyl incident, which happened on 2 April 1986, was a catastrophic and shocking accident that started as one of the power plants exploded. The poor residences, who had to pay immense amount of money, died due to extremely high radiation. Like this, because science doesn’t result in positive outcomes, the society should always prioritize the people as they are the ones financing and undergoing the leap.