From Alan Carter
In your piece on the effect of 11 September on science, Harold Newby of the British Association for the Advancement of Science is right to say that the public is losing its faith in the Enlightenment belief that growth in knowledge automatically leads to social progress (14 September, p 11).
To quote a cliché, knowledge is power. Knowledge does not advance evenly on all fronts and all human knowledge cannot fit into a single human brain. So it matters who drives knowledge forward and controls it. Most research is paid for by companies who have profit, not social progress, as their explicit objective. The public quite rightly perceives that most new research is not quite on its side any more.
It is now obvious that more knowledge cannot of itself give us social progress. Newby picks out 11 September as a turning point, but two decades in which human knowledge and the gap between rich and poor have both grown inexorably surely laid the ground.
If scientists want to regain public trust, then we should speak out against the corporate control of science and the way science is used to benefit the rich. Only then might lost faith be regained.
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Aberdeen
