Examining science's balance between free inquiry and responsibility

With our 21st-century sensibilities, there may be no debate that the Nazi experiments on Jews and the Tuskegee syphilis study on African American men were immoral. Not so clear, however, are the ethical boundaries of cloning and other emerging sciences.  How are scientists to behave between the poles of free inquiry on the one hand and responsibility on the other? And what is at stake for the rest of us?

The year-long Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Co-Curricular Initiative is bringing together members of the Trinity community and beyond to grapple with such issues. Exploring fundamental moral questions associated with scientific inquiry of the past, present, and future, the initiative includes panel presentations, a film series, a performing arts series, and a spring symposium that features experts from around the world. 

Lisa Oliveri ’04, a double major in biology and French, says the initiative’s broad theme is directly connected to her future. “Though I have not chosen a particular concentration of biology to study, the whole issue of responsibility in scientific freedom is important to me because I wish to work in a research field some day,” she says.  “What is decided in today’s society about the responsibilities and scientific freedoms for scientists will set the standard to which I will be adhering in the future.”

Inter-departmental collaboration

The initiative is sponsored by a diverse group that includes the Interdisciplinary Science Center, the Human Rights Program, the Luce Professor of Health and Human Rights, the Department of Theater and Dance, and the Trinity Center for Collaborative Teaching and Research. Co-organizer Suzanne O’Connell, director of the Interdisciplinary Science Center, emphasizes that the audience for the initiative goes well beyond Trinity’s science faculty and majors. She notes that it is important for scientists to think about their work in a larger context and that it is equally important for the larger community to concern itself with what scientists are doing. Thus, the initiative approaches the theme from a number of disciplines, perspectives, and media. The Department of Theater and Dance, for example, is contributing to the discussion with four performances, including Capitalistic Acts Between Consenting Adults, an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s prophetic novel Brave New World. Scheduled to run from November 1–3, the show was devised and directed by visiting lecturers Mara Lieberman and Mitchell A. Polin.

Sharing perspectives

Faculty members from the areas of philosophy, public policy, and psychiatry are among those participating in one way or another. Associate Professor of History Dario A. Euraque brought a very personal perspective to the topic as part of the panel held on October 2.  Euraque’s cousin “was disappeared” 20 years ago, a victim of state-sponsored political terror in Honduras. Euraque’s presentation, “The Science of Forensic Anthropology and Human Rights in the Americas,” was, he says, “an attempt to tie a personal experience with what I think are some important issues within the broader sense of scientific freedom and responsibility.” He discussed how forensic anthropology today can bring criminals of the past to justice and urged the audience to consider the dilemma of forensic scientists — such as those in Argentina in the 1980s — whose work could implicate the very governments that have charged them to find the truth.  In addition to participating in the initiative directly, Euraque is encouraging many of his students to attend the events as a way to enrich their understanding of issues brought up in class.  Many of his courses feature material on human rights issues in the Americas.

The initiative is in fact formally linked to a diverse cluster of courses, and students in these courses may take a half-credit independent study, which requires them to go to the initiative’s events, to keep a journal about both the events and their reactions to them, and to produce a culminating project to tie it all together.

Student and faculty exchange

In addition to being informative for students, Euraque believes that the initiative’s events are valuable because they promote a very broad, interdisciplinary approach to scholarship. Students, he points out, are seeing faculty members learning from one another. “People from different disciplines can see how borders are not closed,” he says. The initiative has also created opportunities for students to be involved as participants rather than simply audience members. Student moderators lead discussions after the faculty panel presentations. At film series screenings, they offer the audience some context for what they are about to see and give them some questions to consider for discussion at the end of the film. Allison E. Zanno ’04, a moderator for Fat Man and Little Boy, a film about the use of the atomic bomb in World War II, hopes to go to medical school and was drawn to the initiative because of her particular interest in the perspective of patients rights. She says the initiative provides a valuable forum for students.  “I think that it’s a really good place for students to voice their ideas, and it’s just interesting to see other people’s points of view,” she says.

An October panel will look at current issues of ethics in science and will feature Assistant Professor of Biology Kent D. Dunlap on “Conflict of Interest in the Funding of Contemporary Science”; Assistant Professor of Biology Hebe M. Guardiola-Diaz on “Gene Patenting and Ownership of Genetic Information”; and Chaplain Niahl C. de Lanerolle on “Consciousness: the Core of Responsibility and Freedom.” This panel will segue to the semester’s final panel on the future of science. Lisa Oliveri urges all members of the campus community to go. “Whether people like it or not, the advancement of science will affect virtually everyone at some point,” she says, “and now is the time to become familiar with and to ask questions about what the limitations are for science in the future.”

 –Leslie Virostek