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While we must invest in research irrespective of whether the results might be controversial,
at the same time we should be circumspect about research whose objectives are too vague
and whose potential benefits are too speculative. After all, expensive research always carries
significant opportunity costs--in terms of how the money might be spent toward addressing
society's more immediate problems that do not require research. One apt illustration of this
point involves the so-called "Star Wars" defense initiative, championed by the Reagan
administration during the 1980s. In retrospect, this initiative was ill-conceived and largely a
waste of taxpayer dollars; and few would dispute that the exorbitant amount of money devoted
to the initiative could have gone a long way toward addressing pressing social problems of the
day--by establishing after-school programs for delinquent latchkey kids, by enhancing AIDS
awareness and education, and so forth. As it turns out, at the end of the Star Wars debacle we
were left with rampant gang violence, an AIDS epidemic, and an unprecedented federal
budget deficit.
The speaker's assertion is troubling in two other r~sp,ects as well. First, no amount of
research can completely solve the enduring pr~l~rm of war, poverty, and violence, for the
reason that they stem from certain aspects of human nature--such as aggression and greed.
Although human genome research might eventually enable us to engineer away those
undesirable aspects of our nature, in the meantime it is up to our economists, diplomats, social
reformers, and jurists--not our research laboratories--to mitigate these problems. Secondly, for
every new research breakthrough that helps reduce human suffering is another that serves
primarily to add to that suffering. For example, while some might argue that physics
researchers who harnessed the power of the atom have provided us with an alternative source
of energy and invaluable "peace-keepers," this argument flies in the face of the hundreds of
thousands of innocent people murdered and maimed by atomic blasts, and by nuclear
meltdowns. And, in fulfilling the promise of "better living through chemistry" research has given
us chemical weapons for human slaughter. In short, so-called "advances" that scientific
research has brought about often amount to net losses for humanity.
In sum, the speaker's assertion that we should invest in research whose results are
"controversial" begs the question, because we cannot know whether research will turn out
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