Thank you very much.

First of all, let me thank you for inviting me. Unfortunately, when I set this up, I thought we would be finished by 4:30, and I have another appointment, I'm afraid, at 5:30. Let me just say that at the beginning.

In general, there is a big question about how governments support scientific research. Surely what they want to do, if they are thinking clearly and if they are thinking ethically, is to try to find and help those researchers who are likely to contribute to the public good.

Now, it's easy to make silly and short-sighted decisions with respect to these issues, because one can of course try to take a direct approach to a very serious problem and neglect basic research, so I want to begin by saying that one of the real lessons of 20th century science is that the route to work that really does contribute to the general good may be long and indirect. That's the first thing to say.

The second thing to say is that there are deep ethical issues here. There is no avoiding taking account of the needs and the differences in needs among the population of a nation. It is impossible, I think, to act correctly in funding without taking into account the fact that different research may affect different groups differently.

There have been, in the past, pieces of funded research that have done considerable harm. It's often thought, of course, that much research doesn't do much particular good. That is vulnerable to the error that I diagnosed to begin with: the error of not being patient, not recognizing that some things need to emerge slowly.

More importantly, in the age of AI, it is especially necessary to think about the consequences of research and how various groups will be affected. It's at this point, I think, that one has to take into account that within a nation like Canada, many groups have historically been neglected, but the ethical thing is not necessarily to go overboard in responding by, as it were, directing all resources towards that population. That population deserves help, but so do other populations in the country deserve a fair shake.

I have seen in my own country, the United States, an overemphasis on the needs of certain groups at certain times and, I have to say, the subordination of many needy groups to the interests of people who are already well off. This is an ethical tragedy, and one cannot get away from the fact that it's necessary to reintroduce the ethical stance into democratic policy-making.

What I want to urge you to do is to represent in your thinking all the various groups who might be affected by a given program of scientific research. I don't think we are going to get anywhere in crafting fair policies in complex multicultural societies today unless there is a lot more discussion to identify the needs of different segments of the population and to respond to those who are neediest without neglecting others.

This, I think, is an extremely complex task. There is no getting away from ethics; there is, and should be, a getting away from ideology. The important thing to do is to find a way to distinguish between ideological responses and ethical responses. That, I think, can only be done by thorough and repeated democratic discussion. There's no shortcut to that either.

Thank you very much.

Transcript

Discussions (0)