Researchers, elites, and people in a rapidly changing world

The paper locates the problem of research ethics in a "value-free" science that has made researchers value-blind, insufficiently able to foresee possible negative consequences of what they do, but very able to design strategies to agree to structures that protect them. The intellectual style of a given research community enters as a key variable, and most intellectual styles are seen as ways of making scientific findings less threatening by focusing on data with little interpretation or speculation with little documentation. The famous Wilkes/Gleditsch case in Norway is cited as an example of research that offered both data (obtained from open sources) and interpretation, and was met with disapproval and sentence. The moral problem of value conflicts can best be understood by studying researchers in a social setting, together with elites and people. Only if researchers were on top and truth were the supreme value would the researchers' situation be unproblematic. But philosopher-kings, however omniscient and omnipotent, are rarely benevolent, and the very fact of concentrating so much on top leads to highly unacceptable societies, by demobilizing the rest, turning them into clients. Hence, researchers will live with their problems of being tempted into sins of commission--to pursue destructive knowledge--and sins of omission--not to pursue constructive knowledge, and not to pursue unpleasant truths, not because they want this, but because the structure leads them in that direction. Most researchers probably want security, academic freedom, and relevance, and the problem is this: Elites offer security and relevance, not academic freedom; universities offer security and academic freedom, not relevance; people may offer relevance, but neither security, nor freedom. In a rapidly changing world the interconnections and possibly destructive effects of research far away in space and time have become more evident, at the same time as formerly rich and dominating countries now are in economic and political decline. Universities may soon offer neither security nor academic freedom nor relevance. Researchers may find the academic commune more suitable, with economic independence. And they may argue for a redirection of research to satisfy basic needs--material and nonmaterial--for everybody.