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发表于 2009-7-25 22:25:22
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TOPIC: ISSUE69 - "Government should place few, if any, restrictions on scientific research and development" 521
Scientific research and development has brought significantly influence on social innovation, which accelerates advancement of the human civilization. Generally, scientific research needs large sums of money. In this case, governments seem always play a critical role to provide enough funds to help scientists finish their great work. However, tax payers may be concerned about that whether governments should restrict scientific research. In my opinion, to most extent, governments should not interfere in scientific research but give scientists enough free room. There are times when governments should stand out and reduce their support, especially to those scientific programs which may take serious harm to human.
Government should support those fundamental researches and do little restriction. To begin with, in the past several decades, we experienced a thoroughly change because of some important researches. No one doubts that digital techniques accelerate the improvement of productivity. We never have to stand beside the ponderous machines and do the same and tedium operation any more. Instead, intelligent machines or robots manage to give a perfect performance and make few mistakes. All these techniques have been well supported by governments not only on the level of funds but on level of policy bias. In addition, viewing from history, great scientific discoveries generally come into being without too much restriction. Chinese scientist Zhang Heng took great interest in Earth Physics, got many achievements in this field and even designed a device which helped to predict the coming of earthquake. If his research was prevented by government, we may never have the chance to visit this great machine. Furthermore, once governments interfere in scientific research, the creativity of scientist will be undermined. Maybe a satisfying result can be obtain through interference such as giving a deadline, but the underlying useful effection behind the research has been seriously reduced. When giving a deadline, the scientists only endeavor to finish the expected goal but ignore the systematic details. In other words, they just finish a simple project but easily fail to propose a meaningful theory, which is more important for scientific research.
On the other hand, some projects, which may endanger our human development, should be forbidden by force of governments. The first thing coming in our mind may be the weapons, especially the heavy weapons. To some extent, it is necessary for a country to do research on weapons to protect its people. However, because of emergence of weapons, people become much crueler and bloodier than ever before. It seems that wars or gun fights happen every day. A great many innocent civilians die of cool weapons. If possible, governments should keep friendly relations with other countries and reduce weapons and wars. It is a good sign that USA and Russia come to agreement to reduce their nuclear weapons. In this sense, disastrous weapon research and other similar researches, which threaten the whole lives of human, should be forbidden.
In the final of the analysis, we can find that scientific researches do bring great impetus to technology innovation and social advancement. In the light of this statement, governments should place little interference on general researches except those harmful projects. |
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