We can hope that scientists and engineers will "consider the ramifications of their work in the broader context within which it is applied," but I for one am not holding my breath. We are not about the see the tail wag the dog. As long as the imperatives of the marketplace obtain, there will be people willing and able to carry out the experiments, whatever the social cost.
In this regard scientists are no different from other men, be they politicians left or right, bankers or trade-unionists. All act in what they see to be their own personal or group interest—family, company, country or corporate. It may take impending calamity for them to equate those interests with the rest of mankind. By then it might be too late.
Schmitt and his fellow advisers had invited some experts on the fashionable new subject of ceramic superconductors to brief them about its ...
