The scientist as atcivist: Glimpses from recentcontroversies
14 May 2004
Ullica Segerstråle, Illinois Institute of Technology
Scientific activism has a long history and has taken different forms. It typically involves concerns about the use of scientific applications or ideas, or about looming dangers at a global scale. The aim may be to reach policy makers or the general public, or both, but also to find support from the larger scientific community. After the cold war, scientific activism has largely moved from physics to the life sciences (and environmental sciences and earth sciences). In recent debates about IQ, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and research on genetic diversity, activism has found a somewhat new enemy: "the enemy within" – scientific colleagues, who are publicly accused of perpetrating "bad science". The result is typically scientific controversy and polarization of the scientific community, with a small number of activists leading the show while the rest are busy doing science. These activists have a wide array of solutions when it comes to combining a scientific and moral/political agenda, and creative strategies for getting their message across. The message may range from "distrust bad scientists and their bad science!" to "keep science objective!" (also seen in the recent Science Wars). What has not been much discussed directly in science so far is the responsibility of scientists for the use of their results, and whether scientists have a special duty as citizens to be watchdogs for the abuse of science. These topics, however, have been underlying much recent controversy.
Biography
Ullica Segerstråle is Professor of Sociology at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago, and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences. She is also on the Advisory Board of IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions. Segerstrale has written and lectured widely on the sociology of science, the ethics of research, science and social values, and science and human nature. She is the author of Defenders of the truth: The battle for science in the sociobiology debate and beyond (Oxford, 2000), and the editor of among others Beyond the science wars: The missing discourse about science and society (SUNY Press, 2000). Segerstrale is educated in science and sociology in Finland and the United States. Among her degrees is a PhD in sociology from Harvard. She has been a Fulbright Fellow, Senior Researcher at the Academy of Finland, Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF) in Bielefeld, Visiting Professor at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her current project is an intellectual biography of William D. Hamilton, the øfatherÓ of sociobiology, to be published by Oxford University Press.