Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Scientific Restraint: The Balance Between Progress And Safety, Richard Bell

Senior Honors Projects

Mankind’s collective scientific and technological knowledge has progressed, and is progressing, at such a rate that humanity is now well within its means to bring about widespread devastation by its own devices. The high stakes of many projects in diverse fields of study, including those in nuclear, genetic, and biotechnical sciences, necessitates an analysis of how to decide if risky experiments are worth pursuing. This is not a matter, so much, of what safeguards we put into place in dangerous experimental environments, but rather how to weigh potential loss versus potential gain. Even in the best laboratories, disaster can strike, …