San Francisco

Should scientists, like medical doctors, pledge to do no harm? The question, which has largely lain dormant for years, was revisited this week by US researchers.

A symposium held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco considered the merits of adapting the Hippocratic oath to encompass all scientific disciplines.

Proponents say such an oath would help to regain public trust. But opponents say that it might cut off avenues of scientific inquiry that may eventually benefit society.

The movement to adopt oaths peaked in the United States during the nuclear arms race. It has now resurfaced in Europe, largely as a result of public concern about the role of science in the bovine spongiform encephalopathy debacle and in genetically modified food.

French scientists are seriously considering the merits of scientific oaths, says Gerard Toulouse, a scientific director at the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'École Normal Supérieure in Paris. He says they might provide an impetus to make scientists more conscious of their public duty.

But Irving Lerch, head of international affairs for the American Physical Society, is not sure that oaths will win public trust. He says it is hard for scientists to pledge to work only for the public good when they can predict neither the outcome of their research nor how someone else might apply it. And to be of any use, he notes, an oath would have to be enforced by someone. Scientific societies seem reluctant to take on such a role.

But a few blocks away from the crowded AAAS meeting, a clutch of pressure groups and scientists called on researchers to sign a pledge right now, disavowing work on all weapons of mass destruction.

One pledge supporter, Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, says that societies such as the AAAS — which declined to accommodate the pledge press conference — have vague discussions about oaths, but “shy away from anything that might affect peoples' careers”.

http://www.lasg.org/pledge