• Question: Why don't you just leave nature to it's own course? If you had never messed with nature we never would have had nuclear disasters, don't get me wrong, medical science is good but as for the rest...

    Asked by 9eltu to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 26 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Yes there are many things in science which are not ultimately for the good, but without experiments we don’t know which are good and bad. Often the good things can be found out quite by accident. It is unfortunate that bad things happen along the way too. The hope is that the good out weighs the bad.

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Harsh Dude!

      Sometimes the invention and investigation is not the problem, it’s the way that the knowledge gained is applied that causes the problem.

      For example, in Germany in 1938, a groups of scientist were working for a company trying to develop better pesticides to improve crop yeilds. The scientists were experimenting with fluorine containing compounds knowing that although fluorine was toxic to humans, it was more toxic to insects.

      The scientists generated a fluorine based compound called Tabun, which was an awesome insecticide, but a tiny little drop fell onto a bench, and the lab assistant that breathed in the vapor became violently ill, taking nearly a month to recover. Considering that Germany was controlled at the time by the Nazi party, a decree had been issued that said all inventions of potential military use had to be reported to the government (not doing so was punishable by death) and so Tabun was very duly reported.

      Tabun went on to be developed into the terrible and vile biological weapon Sarin, perhaps most infamously remembered for when it was released by terrorists on the Tokyo underground.

      If this had happened at another time, it’s likely Tabun would have been developed into an awesome and useful pesticide for use by farmers all over. It wasn’t the discovery that was the problem, it was the application of the knowledge that was gained.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I agree with you!!! We should be preserving our natural resources, and using energy that the sun provides and the wind provides by building better solar panels (which use nanoparticles to absorb sunlight!!) And windmills. But unfortunately, we have so many people on earth now that to give everyone the energy they need to survive, we are having to burn fossil fuels and create nuclear power plants. The Scientists of the future (you all!!) Will have to think up some very creative ideas to run our cities and power our homes without harming the planet.

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Surely knowing how something works is important. The mathamatician who worked out that you could get heavy elements to undergo fission, did not think about bombs, he wanted to know how the universe works. Curiosity is what makes us work as a society, we should not be scared of wondering how things work. It was not the scientist who dropped the bomb, it was the politicians. If medical science is ok, but nuclear physics is bad what happens when they meet, how do you know what science you can and can not investigate, you can’t with out the investigation.

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