Many governments, including that of the United States, control research by intentionally not funding certain areas that are either dangerous and unethical or difficult to regulate. This technique doesn’t work when foundations or start-up companies fund the work. It also fails when the techniques and materials being used are inexpensive, as is the case with CRISPR (chapter 9), and government funding isn’t needed (The Amateur Scientists; chapter 3). In the absence of clearer guidelines or regulations, scientists have to rely on themselves, on their own scientific norms. This doesn’t work too well in modern science because of the intensely competitive nature of academia, in which “the drivers are about getting grants and publications, and not necessarily about being responsible citizens,” notes Filippa Lentzos of Kings College London, who specializes in biological threats.[12] High-profile results matter. In addition, to prevent their competitors from knowing what they are doing and prevent being scooped, scientists keep their experiments under wraps until they are ready to publish, at which point the cat is let out of the bag, and it is too late to think about the ethical impact of the work or to try to stop the research.
Dual-use research, which could be used for either good and ill, presents its own challenges to the safe and ethical regulation of global scientific research. Occasionally scientists work their way to an invisible dual-use research line and cross it. In response, surprised, shocked, and scandalized scientists have urgent meetings to discuss the moral and safety implications. Scientists often proudly point to the 1975 Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA as a model response for dealing with science that has reached new and challenging boundaries in ethics and safety. They perceive the conference as a successful self-regulation in the public’s interest. Senator Ted Kennedy and other politicians of the time saw it differently; they considered the scientists a group of unelected experts making public policy without public input. Scientists need broader input from the general public and ethicists, but they are hamstrung by the goals and modus operandi of the expert collaborators they need. Philosophers and ethicists take a contemplative, long-term perspective, while engineers are eager to take results from the laboratory to the market, and investors are always in a hurry and looking for short-term financial gains. Consequently, we have been very good at commercializing scientific discoveries but less proficient at predicting their consequences and proposing the appropriate guidelines (e.g., DDT, fracking, nuclear chemistry). The increasing speed at which scientific breakthroughs are being made will also make it harder and harder to predict and regulate them in the future.
Scientists, despite their desire to have inputs into policy related to their community’s discoveries, are not trained to anticipate the consequences of their research, and their solutions are often ineffective, as evidenced by the frequency of such “transgressions’ and mini “Asilomars.” For example, in 2002 scientists from the State University of New York, Stony Brook synthesized a polio virus from scratch; in 2005 researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reconstructed a particularly virulent form of the 1918 flu virus; in 2012 two teams mutated the bird flu virus to make it more virulent in mammals; in 2017 a group at the University of Alberta resurrected a horsepox virus, a close cousin of the smallpox virus; and in 2018 CRISPR was used for the first time to create genetically modified human babies. Each of these experiments crossed a line that may have unforeseen consequences, and each led to an emergency conference. Each case leads us closer to the point at which one small accident or well-placed malicious scientist can affect a large portion of the human population or even accidentally wipe out an entire species. In an interview with the Atlantic’s Ed Yong, Kevin Esvelt, a CRISPR/gene drive expert at MIT, succinctly summarizes the problem: “Science is built to ascend the tree of knowledge and taste its fruit, and the mentality of most scientists is that knowledge is always good. I just don’t believe that that’s true. There are some things that we are better off not knowing.”[13] On the other hand, we have to remember that some research, such as in vitro fertilization, was once seen as a transgression of scientific norms but is now scientifically and socially acceptable.
Challenges to Science
President Donald Trump is not a strong supporter of science, the scientific method, or facts. In his tweets he promotes conspiracy theories and implores Americans to distrust conventional sources of information and traditional institutions. In his first 5,000 tweets as president, the words “science” and “technology” were never used. It took two years before he appointed a science adviser. Deregulation has been a priority of the Trump administration, and by July 2019 it had rolled back more than 80 environmental rules and regulations.[14] It has weakened the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), cutting staff and budgets and undercutting the agency’s ability to use science in its policy making, resulting in steep drops in civil and criminal enforcement of violations of laws such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.[15] According to the EPA, the number of “unhealthy-air days” has increased by 14 percent under this administration, and ozone, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter are more common than in 2016.[16] One of the most telling facts is that both the EPA and CDC have been prohibited from using the phrase “evidence-based” in their publications and press releases. So far, thanks to congressional intervention, the budgets of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have survived, despite three requests by the Trump administration to reduce their size and their budgets.
Ironically, although he has claimed that climate change is “bullshit,” “pseudoscience,” and “a total hoax,” President Trump’s representatives have applied for permission to erect a sea wall to protect one of his golf courses in Ireland from rising seas due to “global warming and its effects.”[17] (Although this book could easily have been a rant about the Trump administration and its attitudes toward science, I have tried to show some restraint and have limited my comments about the president to the first and last chapters.)
President Trump’s opinions weren’t formed in a vacuum. He was elected by the American public and still has support. This reflects the increasing public mistrust and resentment of experts. This rejection of scientific thinking and evidence comes from many directions: postmodernist academics and journalists, Christian fundamentalists, liberal new-age purists, and industrial interests and lobbyists. A 2015 Pew Research Center poll showed that “a sizable opinion gap exists between the general public and scientists on a range of science and technology topics,” and that “compared with five years ago, both citizens and scientists are less upbeat about the scientific enterprise.”[18] In The Workshop and the World: What Ten Thinkers Can Teach Us about Science and Authority, Robert Crease writes, “Some people, including many scientists, seem resigned to this. They hope that scientific authority is a natural thing that will shortly reassert itself, like a sturdy self-righting boat knocked over by a rogue wave.” He argues that this is not going to happen because the scientific process described earlier in this chapter is inherently vulnerable to attacks. “The fact that it is done by collectives, is abstract and always open to revision” provides fuel for science deniers. To change their minds, we can’t just explain the science over and over again; we have to learn how they think and why they are rejecting science.[19]
Many scientists and science supporters have rallied against the antiscience bias, climate denial, flat-earthers, and anti-vaxxers. For example, the first March for Science was held on April 22, 2017; many scientists ran for office in the 2018 elections;