Theory of Knowledge: Scientists and Their Moral Responsibility

I’m currently working on a TOK presentation on Natural Sciences, one of the questions that I will be addressing is, “Are scientists morally responsible for the application of their discoveries?”

The most common example of this issue is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Should the scientists have known better than to have worked on the creation of this bomb? The short story, “The Weapon” written by Frederic Brown in 1951 addresses this question. It ends with the line, “Only a madman would give a loaded gun to an idiot.”

Is what Brown proposing correct? Should scientist be on a higher ground than people and be the ones to foresee the terrible results of the atomic bomb?

The scientists were not ignorant to the fact that the atomic bomb would be the ultimate weapon, and they did test runs withe atomic bomb. They had every opportunity to “blow the whistle” on this project.

Or are scientist responsible in so far as the atomic bombs working and not for what comes after? It was not a scientist that gave the order to drop the bomb, it was US president Harry Truman who gave that order. It was not a scientist that dropped the bomb, it was a bombardier aboard the Enola Gay who dropped the actual bomb.

In my opinion, I believe that it is the scientist’s moral responsibility if the risk and the outcome is foreseeable. We learned about the Precautionary Principle in relation to climate change earlier this semester: essentially, an action must be shown to be harmless beyond reasonable doubt before the action could be take. It’s of my opinion that scientists should be able to foresee possible outcomes and if they decide to accept the risk of something to go wrong, they should also accept moral responsibility for the outcomes.

Essentially I believe that if a scientist knows the possible applications of their discoveries, such as being use to kill thousands of people, they should be prepared to take responsibility for it. An accident or a miscalculation is different than knowing the possibility of something to go wrong and allowing it happen anyway.