Ethics of Science

Weizenbaum, via the economist Marc Roberts, makes a move that still hasn't fully landed: the choice between two uncertain hypotheses is never purely evidential — it's a wager, and wagers have stakes. A scientist who acts on whichever hypothesis is marginally more likely, without weighing what happens if she's wrong, isn't being rigorous. She's being reckless in a way that looks like rigor. This reframes the entire "science is value-free" debate. The question was never whether a hypothesis has moral content (it doesn't), but whether adopting one under uncertainty is a moral act (it is). Sagan circles the same drain from the other side — scientists who take credit for beneficial applications but disclaim the lethal ones are performing the same trick as the Inquisition handing heretics to the secular arm. The through-line: science's deepest ethical problem isn't mad scientists or weapons programs. It's the statistical machinery that lets value choices vanish into "conventional grounds, usually without discussion, justification, or even acknowledgement."