Sicherheit im Forschungsbetrieb – Über die Balance von Freiheit und Risiko

• December 2012
• Tim H. Stuchtey, Reihnhard Grunwald

• BIGS Essence Number 10

Time and again, individual scientists and those who bear responsibility in the scientific system have to ask themselves the question whether certain findings should really be made freely available to the public. Whenever so-called dual-use research creates knowledge that can also be used to harm people, there is a conflict between scientific freedom on the one hand and society’s need for security on the other. With the life science revolution, the scientific system is once again faced with this question, as the discussion about the publication of Fouchier and Kawaoka’s results on mutated H5N1 viruses has clearly shown. In the present paper it is argued that no new regulatory powers are needed to resolve the conflict, but that only the science system itself can make the necessary trade-offs.