Columns::The big picture: Faculty of Engineering member discusses role of ethics in research projects

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Columns::September 8, 2003

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The big picture
Faculty of Engineering member discusses role of ethics in research projects

By Alan Flurry
aflurry@engr.uga.edu

As UGA’s newly established Faculty of Engineering develops curriculum for teaching engineering in the context of a liberal

David Landau

arts university, faculty members have been discussing the broad issues that come into play. David Landau, Distinguished Research Professor of Physics, recently discussed with Columns the role of ethics in research projects.

Columns: With regard to research, when does the larger idea of what you’re doing enter in?

Landau: There are times when you feel, “if I can only do this, there would be very broad implications.” And other times you’re focused on a very narrow problem, and suddenly you discover the methods that you develop to work on this narrowly focused problem have much broader implications. I’ve experienced both within the context of my research. And this is what makes research so exciting.

Columns: Once we’ve developed some new technology, when do ethical considerations come into play?

Landau: Much of what we do here is at such a fundamental level that we do not really get to that point. Very often, from my perspective, the biggest questions of ethics do not lie with the scientists but rather with people in the general population who make decisions about how something is going to be used.
One of the problems I think we face as a society is that non-scientists are far behind in terms of examining ethical issues. When they are suddenly confronted with technology which has the potential for great good--or for evil--they’ve not begun to look at the issues.

Columns: Does that reflect our overwhelming belief in science?

Landau: Many of the decisions that are being made are based on political-religious-sociological views, very often colored by personal feelings.
The lack of appreciation of both the advantages and the limitations of science does not allow society to use science as intelligently as it could and for the benefit of mankind to the extent that it conceivably could.
The non-scientist doesn’t understand basic science. Scientists have not reached out as well as we should have, have not taught basic science for the non-scientist as well as we should have. People don’t know what questions to ask; they don’t know how to make value judgments on the merits of scientific capabilities.

Columns: How do you teach this to students at an undergraduate or graduate level? Or do you rely on their well-roundedness in other disciplines?

Landau: Many of the undergraduates that I teach will not go on to be professional physicists, but they may well go on to be CEOs of corporations, politicians, medical researchers. They may be making decisions about the use of physics discoveries.
So I try at least to raise questions about the multifaceted nature of scientific discoveries, to point out the advantages and the potential disadvantages of certain types of discoveries and phenomena, to talk about certain types of technologies that are not implemented for reasons that have nothing to do with science.

Columns: How do we put new technology into a context that people can understand?

Landau: The nature of scientific research is serendipitous. Often you don’t even know where you are headed. One can imagine new high-performance materials enabling us to develop medical devices, to make better and lighter components for aircraft or for automobiles. At the same time, these very materials may be used to produce new guns that don’t show up at airport security screening of any kind and thus have the potential for doing evil. We face the greater problem as a society in balancing all of these different features. These are not trivial questions.
Again, the biggest problem I see is this gulf between the scientific understanding of the non-scientist and what goes on in the scientific laboratory. It’s a bit ironic that many non-scientists believe scientists are narrowly trained and impossible to talk to. Yet virtually any scientist has taken many courses in English, history and philosophy, may know foreign languages, is involved in music and art. Most non-scientists have not even taken freshman physics, or if they have it has been grudgingly, to satisfy a distribution requirement.
These are gross generalizations, but scientific literacy is particularly important for society, for the people who are not in any type of scientific discipline whatsoever--so that they can understand a little bit more of how complex these issues are. If your understanding of science is so superficial that you don’t even know what kind of questions to ask, then this is a recipe for disaster.
I don’t think scientists have all the answers, but having a dialogue between the scientist and the non-scientist is extremely important. Scientists cannot avoid responsibility for ethical issues, but they also cannot unilaterally provide the solutions to them.

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