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The Suppression of Unorthodox Science 181
"Unconditioned Virtue" in research. There has been no attempt, as far as
I know, made by anyone to discover these laws or to derive them from raw
data. I may myself approach the NSF [Nation Science Foundation] to
underwrite a few decades of Research to validate or invalidate the belief
that Ultimate Goodness lies at the bottom of All Research.
III. That the unbelievable amounts of suffering inflicted on living creatures,
including human beings, through research in biology, medicine, psychology,
and related Sciences, have been as necessary to our Salvation as torturings
were necessary to the Salvation of the victims of the Inquisition.
The definition of salvation changes from one era to the next, but the
facts of power and sadism undergo little alteration. As long as there exist
so many highly qualified professionals in respected fields who enjoy causing
suffering to the helpless, it matters little that they toil in this service of
some given creed or another one. Ten minutes of rational judgement could
easily cancel 50 percent of all the experiments in which living creatures
are subjected to such horrible tortures. (It is my belief that this figure can
be raised to 100 percent, but that constitutes another essay.)
Still, there is no arguing with Salvation.
IV. That there exists a well-defined methodology known as the "Scientific
Method," and that every intelligent person not only knows what it is, but
has exactly the same idea of what it is.
We are here confronted with yet another classical barge before the tugboat
dilemma: the standard definition of intelligence as that mental factor
which understands and uses the "Scientific Method." The vulgar definition
of this method, that which is adhered to by most members of the scientific
community, is some dreary mix of Positivism and Empiricism.
Positivism claims that Universals can be proven by the accumulation of
Particulars, while Empiricism claims that facts, and facts alone, are selfevident.
In point of fact, this author knows quite a large number of intelligent
people who don't buy either of these viewpoints, but they are also not
among the legions who recite the Credo every morning upon rising.
V. That science is not responsible for its creations.
We all know that Szilard, Fermi, Ulam, Oppenheimer, etc., didn't make
the A-bomb: God made the A-bomb. One is reminded of the famous
remark of Pope Clement II in the fifteenth century, when he was asked
how he and his friends might, in good faith, throw all the gold plates used
during their daily feast through the windows of the Vatican and into the
Tiber River, while at the same time most of Europe was starving:
"God made the papacy; it's our business to enjoy it."