本帖最后由 melodyfeather 于 2009-8-5 18:23 编辑
69. Government should place few, if any, restrictions on scientific research and development
Should government control the fields of research? Freedom is always the desire of the researchers who are engaged in academic disciplines, and view the restrictions from government a form of depriving their privilege in exploring the unknown world. Given the significance of the freedom in academic fields, I think the regulation of government is rather indispensable.
It's true that too many restrictions lead to an obstacle to the development of the science and ultimately the whole society. Government is more a minister rather than a comprehensive institute that possesses a profound understanding of the academic disciplines and would propose specialized advice. For example, it's known that the earth is a ball rather than flat face, which is usually taken as the knowledge brought by the west to the east world. Actually, this fact had been found by early Chinese scientists who lived 1000 years ago independently. However, the government of that time regarded these fields as heresy and refused to admit the significance. This extreme constrain of science might explain the question why China have been laggard in science in spite of the prime status in the development of science in the whole.
However, result of research, especially those controversies, need a strong control to ensure the influence on the society free from harmful. The knowledge itself do nothing wrong, but the intension or the result might be harmful to the society for a development in science just stands for an improvement of the power to deal with the target no matter whether the target is right or wrong. The experiments for drugs would be a nice example to show why the restriction on scientific research is necessary: given the fact that drugs could be used as medicine for treatment, their side effects are actually utilized by individuals with avarice to extract profit from the drugsters. Such kind of research, though dispensable for the medical system, need restrains to prevent a disaster might be brought about.
In addition, fields of science is no longer, or even not at all, pure, or free from immoral activities like plagiarism, also calls for a system of laws to guarantee the true improvement. Regarded as pursuers for truths, scientists, on the other hand, more a group of individuals engaged in special professionals rather than giants devoted all of their life to the great fields of science, and possess a desire to be famous and rich in material as well as spirit. So, there's no reason to assume that the scientists themselves were able to prevent them from deceiving and plagiarism, and a system of ethics has been proved to be in sufficient for regulation in both scientific and other fields.
In conclusion, government's restrains for the research should be keep in a reasonable level to ensure a better development of the society and the fields of science itself.
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发表于 2009-8-4 12:59:15
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