issue 36 范文
issue 36/72Governments should not fund any scientific research whose consequences are unclear.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
Government funding is a major source of financial support that scientific researchers around the world rely on for doing their research projects. For projects that do not have clearly anticipated consequences, whether the governments should provide the funding depends on the specific nature of the research. For those projects that may lead to commercial applications or ethical crisis, the government should not spend taxpayers’ money on them. But for those theoretical research projects with no clear practical value, government support is essential.
The government should refrain from supporting the projects that may lead to commercially valuable technologies or findings. Such projects should be funded by the corporations which have better knowledge about the potential markets of the research results and can do better jobs to manage the risk. For example, the research projects on driverless vehicles have great potential to revolutionize the automobile industry. But the consequences of such projects in terms of financial success are far from clear. The government should stay away from such projects because private corporations such as Google have more experiences and resources to manage such projects. And it is not fair for the taxpayers to bear the potential loss of the projects which can be very costly. Projects like this should be left to the private sector to invest in while guided by the invisible hand of the market.
On the other hand, taxpayers’ money should not be spent on the research projects that may lead to ethically controversial results. Take the human cloning project for example. With the successful cloning of sheep, the technology for cloning human beings is on the horizon. While such technology may have huge potential for applications in different contexts such as biology and health care, the government should not support the research projecst involving cloning human beings because of the ethical controversies related to such research. In a short essay like this, there is no space for me to discuss the ethical issues in great details. But it is clear that the government should not provide financial support for such projects before the ethical issues are resolved.
Nevertheless, for theoretically oriented research project whose consequences are difficult to predict, the government should provided financial support to ensure efforts and money are devoted to such projects. Take the research projects on pure mathematics for example. For more than a century, a great many mathematicians have been working on Riemann hypothesis regarding the patterns of prime numbers. Until the recent development of online e-commerce and the growing demand for online security, however, the importance of such research was not fully understood. Without the full appreciation of the consequences of the research on Riemann hypothesis in terms of practical applications, the private sector may have little incentive to support the researchers in this area. In research areas like this, government support is essential.
In conclusion, given the scarcity of government funding, the research projects that can attract support from the private sector or those that may be ethically problematic should not receive support from the government. Nevertheless, the government should be generous in supporting the theoretically important research projects whose consequences cannot be predicted.
issue范文与提纲目录(tesolchina)
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