Thus, when we raise the question of how to reduce the potential for science to be used for ill, we must ask how it ends up being used that way. First who directs its use, and second, who follows that direction? This is why it is so crucial that physicists discuss ethics with their students, that physicists not only think about their responsibility but also act on it. Physicists must become something more than parlor liberals who just talk about being conscious of wanting to object. They must become active conscientious objectors.

In my mind, this is what makes Paul Cottle’s story so powerful. He took his responsibility to say “no” seriously. He didn’t just say, “Oh, I disagree. But oh well, back to work!” My hope is that if we encourage others to think that this is not only right, but it is normal, it is acceptable, and it is supported, then perhaps more will speak out, and it will at least be harder for the military to find people who will do their dirty work.

Of course, this is no guarantee, but at least we can say we tried! In other words, as Emiliano Zapata said, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

I guess the main point I was trying to make was that there are two aspects here. If you just accept the system (MIC, etc.) as is then channeling funding to civilian purposes is certainly the right subversive thing to do.

However the fact that you can gain this small victories within the system shouldn’t make you forget that the goal must remain to change the system.

Of course the strategic humanistic goal is to change the system, to no longer have these bills pass at all.

And I do fully believe that it is every scientists responsibility to be aware of the consequences of their actions in as far as possible. We can never know where each discovery will lead us. That is the nature of research after all. It can’t be separated into civilian and military because it’s neither.

On the other hand, building a bomber for the US military is somewhat less open ended.

Between these two extremes there is a world of greys and difficult judgments.

“We have only to look to Einstein to know that sometimes our theories change the world in unexpected and horrific ways.”

Einsteins theory didn’t change the world in horrific ways, it gave us new tools, tools which have kept us warm through nuclear energy, which might solve the CO2/energy problem in the long run, and also tools which for the first time enabled us to wipe out the human race. We took the theory and made tools with it that are horrific. But then we’ve always had horrific tools, starting with stones and sticks. Our responsibility has grown since but that doesn’t mean the world has become a more horrific place.
Science in itself cuts many ways. But we also both know that Einsteins theory of GR hasn’t exactly found many technological applications (none as far as the full theory is concerned).

You know as well as I do that our specific brand of science will not lead to technology for many centuries to come. If ever.

It’s worth noting that taking money that comes with a post-9/11 defense bill meant getting money because the US was about to drop bombs all over people who arguably have done nothing to deserve it. There’s no way to make that money clean in my mind. The only way to get it was to cheer on a bill that helped start an outrageous war. Maybe the bill would have been passed whether astronomers were routing for it or not, but the question is whether you want to be the astronomer who hopes that a war-making bill passes. I don’t.

That’s not to say I won’t take money from the NSF or the Department of Energy. I am happy to take money from a general pool provided by the government. But I refuse to take money from a bill that is specifically earmarked for a war. I refuse to take money from the Department of Defense and help them in any way, if only because they can say they funded good research (which of course mine will be!) and use it to get more money out of Congress to be spent on war and war preparation.

You make a mistake if you think that my argument is that we should all go take money from the Department of Defense and then spend it on research that isn’t useful to the military. As is documented in Sanjoy Mahajan’s writings, the military often actively pushes funding for civilian science because they see how they benefit from it, as was the case with the Supercollider that ended up being cancelled. I tried to make this clear from my example with adaptive optics. Often times, it’s hard to separate out whether something is civilian or military.

Since we’re in the same field of research, I’ll point out that perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to abdicate responsibility for these issues. I have mentored students who went on to work in aerospace/defense work. I have often felt responsible for not taking the time to talk to the students I have interacted with about the impact that they potentially make. Sure airplanes are cool, but think carefully about what it means to work for Lockheed Martin.

Plus, only someone omniscient knows that their funny little theory about spacetime will mean big things for the next generation of weapons. We have only to look to Einstein to know that sometimes our theories change the world in unexpected and horrific ways. Chanda

http://www.armscontrol.de/dokumente/goettingen-eng.pdf

A decent translation of the “Göttinger Erklärung”.

E.g. as you said given the funding situation physicists are caught between a hard place and a rock, so the jester like move to take some of the military funding and devote it to civil science seems to be the best one could do *within* the system. Your ire at the physicist proud of this trickery seems contradictory to me (with the details lacking)!

E.g. Germany didn’t push to develop its own nukes partly because of a very public push of famous German physicists (dead white men the lot of them ;)) against nuclear armament. (Göttinger Erklärung)

Anyway my observations differ sharply from yours, which shouldn’t be surprising given our in many aspects diametrically opposed backgrounds.
Let me add some of them:

* The only scholarship I ever got I got in large part because of my activities and interests outside of physics.

* I know not a single physicist who studied with me, who did not ask himself at one point about the impact of science on society, and whether or not to continue science if it can only be done for the military.

* There are two related questions: All knowledge has many uses, fusion was born out of the pure drive to understand, developed technologically to kill, never killed and now may play a part to save the planet. The pure scientist needs some awareness of what the knowledge they produce enables humanity to do, and has some responsibility in guiding humanity towards a rational use of science. But this concerns trying to influence society, not trying to do different science.

* Technology, as opposed to science, can be much more focused on a certain application and most scientists I know would definitely draw the line at developing technology to kill (as opposed to developing science which among many uses also enables such technology).

(Disclaimer: Due to the utter unlikelyhood that my own research has any relationship with reality I am safe from these moral quandrums myself. This is all Salon-pacifism)

The questions are intertwined just as science and technology are.

* Another somewhat related question lurks here: What to do with scientific data gained through unethical experiments? Can scientific data itself, which reflects reality

* To me the struggle is not about carers/humanity and technologists/military. The struggle is a struggle that some dead white men started a few centuries ago in the project of enlightenment. It is the struggle of reason over irrationality. Science, by default and by its very nature is on the good side of this struggle. It tells us that there are definitely not sufficient biological differences between men and women, white skin and black skin to justify the disparities we see in our society. It tells us that we do not have to fear the vengeance of a jealous god which moves around the stars, but that the laws according to which things happen around us are comprehensible. Thereby putting our fate in our own hands, making us responsible for how and who we are.

As an aside: On the other hand, as much as I often sympathize with or share their criticism, it are those who want us to get rid of technology, to get back to pre-technological times that are often champions of irrationality. Of a romantic ideal that never was nor ever can be.

And after all our times are not that bad. (e.g.: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2007_03_19_New%20Republic.pdf)

As always there is lots more to say, I really should get a blog I guess Thanks for an (overall) good article! Frank

The first talks about what a disaster the FY2008 Federal budget is for science, and the second discusses how resources should be divided up when we don’t have an infinite pot of gold.

Until fairly recently the NSF and NASA were a decent source of no-strings-attached funding, but the Bush Administration has significantly chipped away at that. Of course, the NASA projects frequently involved satellites, which are often a mixed mission with both civilian and military goals.

Some people think we should rely more heavily on private funding, such as the FQXi foundation (http://www.fqxi.org/) or Mike Laziridis who has been quite generous with the Perimeter Institute (my research base) in Waterloo, Ontario. There are pluses and minuses to doing that.

What I would rather see is a move toward demilitarizing government work, meaning that something like the NSF gives out money for pure science research, somewhat akin to the way the National Endowment for the Arts used to encourage artistic growth in society. But as I said, we’re in a tight spot. Scientists don’t have a lot of options.

I hope that as people become more aware of this they will become more interested in changing that. Chanda