Salvador Luria's Cathedral: Responsible, Humane Science

In the last few decades the relationship between the scientific enterprise and the society in which that enterprise is carried out has become increasingly tense and complex. The problem arises, I believe, from the internal stresses and contradictions within both society and science. Our society is fundamentally based on the premise of democracy. Modern democracy is the daughter of the rationalism of the 17th and 18th century and is therefore, in a sense, the twin sister of science. It is, by its very origins, committed to rationality, to optimism about the future of mankind, to faith in progress based on factual knowledge of the world. But, at the same time, Western democracy is also committed to a utilitarian view of the world, a world of budgets and appropriations and cost-benefit accounting that puts a price on every item and on every activity within society. And, in addition, democracy is buffeted by irrational forces, which range from the irrationality of various countercultures to the irrational persistence of economic injustice, to the aberrations of war and nationalism, racism, and to sectarian prejudices of all sorts. The scientific enterprise itself also presents a multitude of faces. To its practitioners and to a certain number of initiated observers, science preserves the quality that made it, from Newton to Darwin and to Einstein, the most daring and most successful adventure of the human mind. For the enthusiastic scientist, the scientific enterprise is a monument to humanity's intellectual power and freedom--a modern equivalent of the great cathedrals that the burghers of the Middle Ages raised as monuments to their newly found sense of economic power and political freedom. But, if science is a cathedral raised in praise of intellectual freedom, one must admit that too often, under the pressure of utilitarian society, the cathedral of science has come to look like one of those monasteries one sees in the French countryside, in which a modest church is almost hidden by a prosperous distillery. The sale of products becomes the justification for being allowed to pray to the Lord. It is a fact of life that science has become so expensive that its support can be justified only on the basis of the benefits that derive from it, which is to say that science has to be justified by the practical technologies that it generates. Unfortunately, having to justify itself by the cost-benefit criterion, science inevitably also becomes involved in participating in many of the questionable activities of society--a participation that in the long run is bound to undermine the rational heritage of science.... ...While I disagree with many of the arguments put forward by opponents of recombinant DNA research, I must admit that I feel some sympathy for the political implications of their opposition. Their criticism ultimately stems not just from distrust in science, but from a political disaffection for what I called earlier the irrational side of our society. It also reflects a challenge to the will of scientists and scholars to stand up as defenders of rationality against those irrationalities. Claims such as I have made, of the overriding human value of science, of its being a modern equivalent of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, should be matched by evidence that scientists and other scholars are, in fact, selflessly dedicated to the cultural enterprise. Unfortunately, we know that too often this is not true. Scientists have lent their work and their prestige to some of the shabbiest enterprises of our society. To take only the Vietnam war as an example, scientists and scholars have collaborated in all sorts of ways, from the weaponeering of the automated battlefield, to the programming of the rain of fire over undefended villages, to the planned uprooting of millions of innocent people. And Vietnam is only one of the domains in which many scientists have gone along, passively or actively, with the irrationality of politics and the call of power. Is it surprising that our claims to innocence and purity sound somewhat hollow? What can be done to change this situation? In the first place, I think that scientists should actively promote open discussion of the goals and limitations of science in order to generate that informed public opinion that alone can give legitimacy to any social undertaking, including science. In fact, I believe the work of the Cambridge Committee on the Impact of Recombinant DNA Research may ultimately prove to a be a positive step in the right direction. At a more fundamental level, what is needed to restore public confidence in the enterprise of science and in the intellectual enterprise in general is for intellectuals, including scientists, to exert an active leadership in the restoration of rationality to our democratic society. Scientists should take the initiative for a common front with the public, not just to direct the uses of science toward this or that goal of practical relevance, but to help redirect the priorities of society away from social inequality, racial injustice, wanton waste, and absurd weaponeering. We cannot call ourselves the builders of today's cathedrals if we close ourselves into the cult of a private chapel or if we are willing to worship in the temples of mammon. We cannot ignore or condone the irrational and inhuman uses to which the fruits of science are often put for reasons of power or of profit. If we scientists refused to join the ventures of injustice, if we denied our know-how to the dehumanizing enterprises of society, if we insisted that the rationality of our work be matched by rationality in the use to which the products of our work are put, then we could again claim to be the builders of a cathedral, open to all for worship and wonder. Reprinted by permission of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Copyright 1977. Excerpted from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, May 1977 One of Luria's favorite political platforms was the letters page of the New York Times. The following are some of the letters that appeared there. The dates are those of composition, not publication. Aug. 29, 1966 To the Editor: The article by Fred Hechinger on "New Look Campus Rebel" in the Times' "News of the Week in Review," Aug. 28, in commenting on Prof. Lewis S. Feuer's criticism of the New Left on the American campus, touches on a very significant point. He states that old and middle-aged men on the campus are "curiously adrift and unwilling to bring about a balance of democratic rule," while young intellectuals "assault the democratic institutions under the smokescreen of participatory democracy." A most distressing aspect of university life is the mock parliamentarism of formal campus democracy. Students engage in meaningless campaigns and elections for student governments which are concerned mainly with trivia such as curfew hours. Teachers attend faculty meetings to debate "parking facilities" or to rubber-stamp administrative decisions. It is not surprising that the most alert section of the student body, be it only a small percent of the total number, seeks to bypass these empty democratic structures in order to develop a machinery that can deal with the serious concerns of young citizens--civil rights, the draft, war, and peace. The empty, formal democracy of the campus is not only a frustrating experience; it becomes also a training ground for the acceptance of patterns of pseudo-democratic government, in which political machines determine the choices presented to the voters and a willful executive can frustrate the spirit of the Constitution by turning a legislative assembly into a rubber-stamp body. Witness the present plight of the United States Senate, trapped in the snare of the undeclared Vietnam war. Sept. 17, 1969 To the Editor: The triviality of the scientific returns from the man-on-the-moon program is finally becoming evident even to those--mostly scientists--who had been misled by publicity and by the play on popular imagination indulged in by Government and the mass media. The moon rock samples, about which full columns of news are released by NASA, cannot even answer the few questions some geologists are interested in solving. It is important that this be made clear because of the current discussion about big versus small Mars-landing programs--probably $3 billion a year for 50 years or $10 billion a year for 15 years. This at a time when the Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health has announced substantial cuts in new health-related research projects, news that has received much less prominence than any of the rock news from NASA. Even apart from the social benefits that American health research has been in the habit of delivering, such as polio, measles, and flu vaccines and a hundred other medical advances, almost any one of the hundreds of projects that the National Institutes of Health cannot fund has intrinsic scientific interest at least as great as a trip to the moon--in terms of the number of intelligently concerned people and addition to human knowledge. Technology, however sophisticated, is not science unless its goal is knowledge. Intellectual priorities are at least as important for human culture as socioeconomic priorities, and both are being distorted by the space program. It is time the American people were told frankly that the present space program is technically impressive, scientifically trivial, culturally misguided, and socially preposterous. Sept. 19, 1970 To the Editor: The comments attributed to Attorney General John N. Mitchell in Women's Wear Daily (news story, Sept. 19), if correct, raise, among other questions, a serious one with regard to legislation pending in Congress. I refer to bills now in conference (S.3246 and H.R.18583) that would place the main responsibility for regulating drug-related activities, including research, under the Justice Department, not the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The Attorney General is quoted as having said: "The pushers are importing the cannabis plant from other countries. The same kind of stuff that opium smokers use. It's hashish and you can really become addicted to it." It would be difficult to pile up more erroneous statements in so few words. Marijuana is a cannabis plant and so is hashish, a stronger variety growing in some parts of the world. They have no relation, botanical or pharmacological, to opium, the product of the opium poppy. All medical evidence concurs that cannabis products, whatever their strength, are not addictive. It is ironic that these statements should supposedly have been made by Mr. Mitchell in the same interview in which he allegedly referred to students and professors as "uninformed" and "stupid bastards." His alleged ominous prediction that our country "is going so far right you are not even going to recognize it," is probably based on equally solid factual knowledge. But persons like myself, less concerned with comparative intelligence testing than in the administration of laws that affect biomedical problems, feel justified in asking Congress to reject the proposed legislation and to place the responsibility for the study and supervision of drug problems (except illegal sales) where it belongs, that is, in the HEW Department. Oct. 24, 1972 To the Editor: Your Oct. 22 editorial on "The Presidential Issue" states that "the President and his men have injected into national life a new and unwelcome element--fear of Government repression, a fear reminiscent of that bred by the McCarthyism of twenty years ago." The truth of your statement has been brought home to me in a distressing way in the last few weeks, while collecting signatures for an advertisement against the Nixon Administration. Several distinguished members of the scientific community expressed the fear that by signing they might jeopardize the approval of pending applications for research grants from the Government. At least one well-known scientist, after having signed, asked that his signature be removed for that reason. If we have reached such a state of intimidation, people should realize what this means, not only in terms of Government corruption but also, and more importantly, in terms of corruption of the public by this Administration. There is every reason to fear that four more years of it may plunge our nation from a degrading fear of Government repression to a state of utter corruption and demoralization. Oct. 23, 1979 To the Editor: According to the Times, the report of the Three Mile Island Commission investigating the March 28 accident includes the statement "that there will be no detectable additional cases of cancer, developmental abnormalities, or genetic ill-health" due to that accident. This is a typical example of the biomedical double-talk that nuclear agencies have fed the public for close to 30 years. The key weasel word in the commission's statement is "detectable." Suppose a radiation leak were to result in 5,000 cancer deaths over a 10-year period. This would amountto only about 0.15 percent of the 10-year national cancer incidence and would therefore not be registered as a detectable change in the overall number, which fluctuates several percentage points from year to year. But this does not mean the 5,000 radiation-induced cancers did not exist. We can, in fact, fairly accurately estimate how many cancers were due to the radiation leak from a knowledge of the amount of radiation released and its geographic distribution, and from known relations between radiation dose and rate of cancer production. The same applies to developmental and genetic defects. Until the authorities stop trying to obfuscate the problem of radiation hazards, it will be impossible to conduct an informed debate on the pros and cons of nuclear power plants and on the adequacy of the safety measures on which our health and lives depend. Sept. 8, 1981 To the Editor: I was one of a group of scientists who some months ago visited Secretary [of Health and Human Services Richard] Schweiker's office and pleaded with him not to cut the biomedical research budget. I still believe we were doing the right thing, protecting the path to future health. But I am deeply troubled. The same Mr. Schweiker is now implementing the Reagan economics by slashing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, while the Department of Agriculture proposes a program that would severely cut the amount of food and the nutritional value of school lunches for 26 million American children (for a saving I estimate to be about $300 million a year or less). Is this war on children part of supply-side economics? Will the savings provide three more advanced bombers? I hope there will never be a shooting war to use the arms we buy instead of children's food. But if a war should ever come, will it be fought by a generation of soldiers weakened in mind and body by inadequate nutrition in childhood? Copyright 1966/69/70/72/79/81 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Salvador Luria's Cathedral: Responsible, Humane Science

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