最后的战役 第二周 issue 69 by adam

adam05UID: 2670502

69"Government should place few, if any, restrictions on scientific research and development"
My issue:
Nowadays, scientific fruits can bring astounding profit to our society. As we all know, there is no smooth road to science. If governments place too many restrictions on this premise, the progress of scientific research would be harder everyday. But science is a double-edged sword at the same time. It could also do harm to our society. So government should neither put too many nor too few restrictions on scientific research and development.

For scientists, interest is the paramount impetus of research. That the government place too many restrictions on scientific work would damage scholars' interests. In the thousands of nights when Thomas Edison looked the most proper material for the filament, interest was the light of his heart in the endless dark night, encouraged and directed him to the final success. Without Edison's interest, we all might still live in dark at nights. Furthermore, what scientists are pursuing is to explore the unknown frontier of the world, which means even scientist themselves are not very sure what they would discover. Given that, the government could hardly place proper restrictions on every scientific research. So government should not put too many restrictions on scientific works.

Yet, science is a double-edged sword for the whole society. Scientist development the nuclear technique in order to create a new energy for the world, but the technique was also used for nuclear weapon at the same time. Thus not only the government but also all society should have an eye on scientific development to prevent some scientific work to hurt our world.

Besides the scientific research content, government should put more restrictions on scientific frauds. Because the consequences of scientific fraud can be wide ranging, with others working to confirm the false finding, or with research agendas being distorted to address the fraudulent evidence. The Piltdown Man fraud is a case in point: The significant of the bona-fide fossils being found was muted for decades because they disagreed with Piltdown Man and the pre-conceived notions that those faked fossils supported. The misdirection of resources kept others from taking the real fossils more seriously and delayed the reaching of a correct understanding of human evolution. So government should put more restrictions on scientific frauds.

Most importantly, the government should not only care about placing restrictions on scientific researches, but pay much attention to guide the direction of scientific researches. As previously stated, science not only provides people convenience and comfort, but also brings about many problems, such as global warming. Governments all over the world should encourage scientist to do more researches about green and low-carbon technique, and lay down rules to restrict and guide the direction of scientific researches.

Above all, the government should not only neither put too many nor too few restrictions on scientific research and development, but also guide the direction of scientific researches as well.