Via the Beeb, the article I mentioned the other day:
Caution urged over bio researchScientists must ensure research details do not fall into terrorists' hands, say experts.
The Royal Society says scientists have a clear responsibility not to work on the illegal development of weapons.
But they will tell a UN conference researchers must be careful about publicising legitimate research which could be used to cause harm.
For most of a decade, and especially in the past couple of years since the anthrax scare, a growing conflict between science and politics has been brewing. The main thrust of it lately has been towards Keeping Us Safe From The Terrorist Hordes; other recent attempts include strong political pressure against stem cell research (based off the laughable idea that all stem cells are human beings!) and strong social pressure against things such as biotechnology and nanotechnology as entire disciplines.
Traditionally this has carried implications like "don't think about thinking about this" - value judgements that declare a technology itself to be evil. The stem cell and cloning issues are the examples of this today, in terms of government pressure - the moment the feasibility of the technology came about, people immediately began to try to prepare and enforce a global ban on even thinking about cloning. Social pressure is aimed towards genetic engineering, anything with the word "nuclear," and to a lesser extent nanotechnology thanks to Bill Joy-esque ideas that nanotech is the Gray Goo Catastrophe and nothing more; however, there hasn't been much actual government pressure to suppress these fields.
A new type of pressure - the kind mentioned in the BBC article I link here - has been showing up for about a year and a half, however: pressure not to cease research, but to heavily censor publications in an attempt to keep the knowledge secret somehow. The latest change seems to be moderately more polite in that they're asking the scientists if they would please censor themselves, rather than cutting up their papers without warning.
There're a few problems with this whole idea in general. One of the main ones is the sheer uselessness of the concept. Security through obscurity simply does not work in the long run as an idea, unless one body or another successfully managed to suppress all research, worldwide, in a given field. A large part of the focus against scientific articles these days has been removing the methodology sections where they mention something potentially weaponizable - which can be just about anything, if you're vague enough. (I mean, geeze, if I talk about building a centrifuge it could potentially be used to produce nuclear weapons!) This kneecaps the entire concept of peer review by making experiments unrepeatable without asking the original authour for his or her methodology - which defeats the point of censoring it in the first place. As well, this kind of block is frankly dangerous, depending on the type of research being performed in an increasingly precise scientific world. I'd really like to know exactly what I'm supposed to do to reproduce a result, rather than risking time or personal safety to blindly guess at it. The whole point of publication is to eliminate those roadblocks.
The worst thing about this, however, is the sheer ignorance of the idea. People are talking about this Post-September-11 world as though something has actually changed in terrorist circles at a fundamental level. Nothing has. They got lucky; The Terrorists (I use the term as though They are a single bloc, which is obviously not true) did not abruptly become more talented and powerful because they hit the US in its own home. The world may have become more dangerous since, but I have other people I blame for that. Either way, madly scrambling to block all knowledge because of this is silly. The basic knowledge is out there, even if it is considerably more complex than most people think.
I doubt the pressure is coming from within academia as much as from governments and social pressure in general, however. The idea has come out in the past while about the "ease" of making chemical and biological weapons, how any whackjob with someone else's credit card and a PO box can just call Dial-A-Plague, pick up a liter of HIV, and modify it to be transmitted through the air in the comfort his his living room. This is, simply, a load of crap that only maintains itself because of the frightful ignorance people have towards science anymore.
While it is fairly easy to produce nasty chemical weapons at home - and even possess them, given the stuff that's stored underneath most kitchen sinks - weaponizing has only been pulled off a couple of times. Aside from the prevented attack in Jordan, the only ones that come to mind for me are the Japan sarin attacks, and a whoopsie in Bulgaria after someone dropped a tear gas grenade. I'm not saying attacks are impossible; I am saying that unless someone actually steals a nuclear weapon and uses it properly, people will be able to get a lot more bang for their buck out of some cheap explosives.
Biological weapons are even more complex; the one bioterrorist attack I recall hearing of was the pitifully inept anthrax attacks in the US in 2001. The "ease" of making these kinds of weapons comes out of those same, unsubstantiated "you can do it in your kitchen!" claims, often by saying things like "monkeypox shares 98% of its genes with smallpox!" while leaving out the fact that a dog probably shares about 95% of its genes with humanity. This doesn't mean it's exactly simple to turn a dog into a human yet.
"This just in: modifying a mere 25% of a human's genome will turn him into bubonic plague! We must prevent this menace from proli - er, wait..."
Well, yeah. This post originally started out with some kind of actual specific point in mind, but it quickly devolved into one of my standard rants. Suffice to say, the anti-knowledge attitude going towards technology these days is both infuriating and dangerous. A better solution, in my ever-so-humble opinion, would be to blow the doors wide open and ensure an even more open access to this sort of thing. The problem with security through obscurity is that it breeds complacency; people start deciding it's pointless to worry about X because, well, X won't happen now, will it? This isn't quite openly begging for X to happen, but it certainly makes it easier to get away with. Far better to make sure people know what's out there, up to and including the risks, to produce a pressure to adapt to them in a way that will be useful if something happens.
There's something to be said for knowing the possibilities and being prepared for them at the same time. It's a sad state of affairs when people begin actively seaking unpreparedness because knowing how to cope with the real world involves a bit more effort than they're willing to undertake. It's not as hard to have a basic understanding of technologies as many people tend to believe; it just takes a (very small) amount of effort and initiative. The specialization can be left to the specialists, but even a basic understanding of the world around us - something far too many people lack - can help people make more informed decisions about things as well as know what is and is not a threatening concern. If there is some menace lurking over one horizon or another, I'd be far happier if a lot of people knew about it so they could react intelligently, rather than tending towards the panic we see so often now at anything that isn't understood. Augh.
As it stands, this program of deliberate ignorance of the scientific is only going to cause problems down the road. A society that actually knows the score about things has a far better chance both of staying safe and of accomplishing great things over time. People, however, seem to be trying to pressure researchers towards a society where every door is locked, every window barred, and every timid citizen cowering under the bed to hide from a fear they've denied themselves even the ability to name.
Posted by zibblsnrt at April 24, 2004 08:47 PM