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Commentary
Nature 398, 281-282 (25 March 1999) | doi:10.1038/18543
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Is science dangerous?
Lewis Wolpert1
- Lewis Wolpert is in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
e-mail: Email: l.wolpert@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract
Does society need protecting from scientific advances? Most emphatically not, so long as scientists themselves and their employers are committed to full disclosure of what they know.
The idea that knowledge is dangerous is deeply embedded in our culture. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the biblical Tree of Knowledge, and in Milton's Paradise Lost the serpent addresses the Tree as the "Mother of Science".
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