Times of Triumph, Times of Doubt by Elof Carlson

Elof Carlson’s book, Times of Triumph, Times of Doubt, addresses science and the battle for the public trust. His discussions range from ethics in science and why science is perceived as evil covering a wide range of topics from the Frankenstein image of science, to science crimes against humanity, to bad outcomes of unregulated or ineffectively regulated science, to conflicts with worldviews that are false or inconsistent with science.
The question of the evil of science is interesting. It is doubtful that many would ascribe science as inherently evil. Even though Carlson connects the words science and evil in the first two chapters of his book there is doubt that he is equating the two. He does not dismiss the scientist’ role as including the foresight to see a dangerous potential to his/her discovery, nor does he absolve the role of society in using the discovery for malicious purposes. So where does the responsibility lie? Is the scientist or society ultimately to be judged? Science is inherently neutral in the quest for truth in how the natural world functions, but the fact that science does not operate in a vacuum results in a very complex situation when negative outcomes occur. Because ethics is not as objective as scientific inquiry, judgment is involved, and that brings about fuzziness in apportioning responsibility. There are numerous examples of the blurred responsibility between science and society – atomic bombs, genocide, human genetic research, etc. and Carlson gives a good start on those topics.