“SCIENCE without conscience is the ruin of the soul,” wrote François Rabelais, the French monk, satirist and physician. Yet the notion that science operates above or beyond conscience and morality has persisted in the west for nigh on a hundred years. From Max Weber, the German sociologist of the early 20th century, to Lewis Wolpert, the UK’s erstwhile public-understanding-of-science guru, an influential constituency of thinkers and scientists has maintained that science is value-free. It is the politicians, military and corporations that twist science to good or bad ends, not the scientists: or so the argument goes.
A classic example…
