Since the development of the bioethics movement in the 1960s, ethics of science is on the way up. "Ethical reasoning" is often presented as a way of thinking that is opposed to "scientific rationality", or even as a human faculty that is superior to science and should be linked to law and regulation to control science. In this view, ethics comes in when science risks to go too far. Realizing the dangers of such approach, others defend that ethicists - who do not understand the technicalities of science and whose visions are often based on fantasies or dubious facts - should not be allowed to limit science. Only scientists can decide when and under which conditions some developments, if any, should be halted. Still others believe that this discussion is beside the point, because it is simply wrong to separate scientific from ethical rationality. They explain that scientists are not the cold detached thinkers who are not interested in good or bad. Scientists are described as people who are motivated by social concerns and develop their science as a contribution towards building a more human world. In this view, the social concerns of scientists and the way these concerns guide science should be the basis of any ethical debate about science. What others, including ethicists, can do is to join scientists in their search for the good things they can do. When ethicists cannot clarify the ethical discourse of scientists themselves, their ethical debate about science will remain empty and is doomed to fail.
Ongoing.
