EDITORIAL

nature materials | VOL 2 | MAY 2003 | www.nature.com/naturematerials 285

Vol.2 No.5 May 2003 www.nature.com/naturematerials

Hard choicesMilitary funding is a keystone of materials science,and in the USA in particular that is likely to become increasinglytrue with defence spending ballooning to $355 billion under the Bush administration.How do we feel about this?

For some researchers,defence-based work is a valid, indeed essential aspect of national security.Others acceptmilitary money with misgivings; some refuse to engage in defence work at all.

The first and last positions have the virtue of simplicity,but between uncritical acceptance and total repudiationof military research lies a quagmire of ethical dilemmas.Many materials that have robust benefits for civilian society,such as aerospace alloys,were first developed for military use.And one might argue that there is an ethical distinctionbetween materials used for defence—in bulletproof clothing, say— and for armaments.

With the potential for unclassified information to end up in the hands of terrorists or rogue nations, the ethicalresponsibilities of materials researchers,discussed at a recent symposium at the Royal Society of Arts in London*,need perhaps to be addressed today more than ever.

There are plenty of difficult ethical choices outside of military research. Consider, for example, food scientistsseeking that irresistible taste and consistency. Do they bear any responsibility for a marketing strategy on a newsnack food that might encourage excessive, dangerous consumption of a product that is harmless in moderation?Similarly, growing concerns about the ethics of research into nanotechnology — see page 299 — will require thecommunity to formulate an appropriate response.

Scientists and engineers (and for that matter journal editors) receive little if any training in how to think aboutsuch issues in a structured way.Ought such training to be a requirement? It would be no trivial matter to decide howit might be implemented or evaluated; this might require more flexibility and inventiveness than traditionalevaluation models allow.Some universities do offer courses on ethics,but these often seem ad hoc, and ethics is notgenerally recognized as an important part of a materials or engineering curriculum.

In some cases, the context of research can often be more complex than it first appears.For instance, in the early1980s one materials scientist at the Royal Society of Arts meeting found himself offered a contract for metallurgicalstudies of depleted uranium,used for armour-penetrating projectiles.The health issues of depleted uranium werethen unrecognised,but nonetheless the matter seems at face value to be clear-cut: this research would feed directlyinto the technology of lethal weaponry.

Yet there was in those Cold War years a fear in NATO of a massive Sovietinvasion of Europe led by the (numerically superior) Soviet tank forces.The officialpolicy was to counter such an invasion with a pre-emptive nuclear strike if itremained uncontained by conventional forces after three days.

Would, then, the development of anti-tank weaponry diminish the danger of nuclear war — surely an ethical objective? Even if this was (and is it not always?)a short-term fix,was it not preferable to the alternative?

Underlying ethical choices in military research and beyond is surely thequestion of where the responsibilities of the individual scientist or engineer end.In the case above, the materials scientist found himself challenged at thesymposium by a Russian researcher who was, two decades ago,working on the other side of the Iron Curtain.Did he know whether the Soviets really hadthis superiority of tank divisions,and whether they truly intended to exploit it, the Russian asked? To what extent was it his personal responsibility to try to find out?

Perhaps these questions can only be answered in the political arena.Whether you are a defence contractor or not,as citizens and taxpayers oftechnologically advanced nations,many of us are indirectly responsible forfunding military research. If it is agreed that the recipient of military fundingbears greater ethical responsibility for the outcome of their work than theaverage citizen, then what standards does the public hold them to? And, in caseswhere the long-term benefits and dangers of fundamental research are unclear,should we be more or less concerned? Greater public debate on such issues isurgently needed.

*Material Choices Royal Society of Arts,London,28 March 2003.

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