sanyasi comments on A brief history of ethically concerned scientists - Less Wrong

68 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 09 February 2013 05:50AM

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Comment author: CCC 08 February 2013 08:45:53PM 9 points [-]

There are several ways to nullify, or even reverse progress:

  • Falsify some hard-to-duplicate results in a way that calls previous results into doubt
  • Subtly sabotage one or more experiments that will be witnessed by others
  • Enthusiastically pursue some different avenue of research, persuading others to follow you
  • Leave research entirely, taking up a post as an undergraduate physics lecturer at some handy university

There would have to be extremely good reason to try one of the top two; since they involve not only removing results, but actually poison the well for future researchers.

Comment author: sanyasi 09 February 2013 10:57:51AM 0 points [-]

It's debatable whether Heisenberg did the former, causing the mistaken experiment results that led the Nazi atomic program to conclude that a bomb wasn't viable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play) for scientific entertainment (there's a good BBC movie about this starring Daniel Craig as Werner Heisenberg)

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