5. Translate into English.

1.Розуміючи основні проблеми людства, вчені повинні знайти для них раціональне вирішення.

2.Любов, гуманізм, мудрість, справедливість і сумління вважають абсолютними цінностями людства.

3.Ми маємо знайти шляхи подолання таких проблем, як забруднення довкілля і втрату вічних цінностей.

4.Внутрішній моральний світ людини є однією з найважливіших індивідуальних цінностей.

5.Завдання сучасної молоді - створити кращий світ, щоб наступні покоління могли, насамперед, з гордістю продовжити їхню справу.

6. Work in pairs. Read the interview, clarify the meaning of some new words

and discuss the main ideas and problems arisen with your group-mate and then

with the class. Try to use your own experience and knowledge.

Ethics in Science

1.

T. Your opinion of the personality of a scientist, please.

S. Well, it should be someone with a perfectly clear record, who’s thinking creatively.

T. So, you emphasize two things: honesty and creativity, don’t you?

S. Quite so. Nowadays, many people don’t seem to understand that honesty is the best policy in science.

T. As far as I see, you focus on honesty, why?

S. Because lots of facts clearly show the contrary behaviour of some scientists. You know, there have been dozens of books published in the last ten years or so telling stories of successful scientific discoveries as episodes of cutthroat competition and cutting corners by scientists anxious to get there first and win the biggest prizes and grants.

T. They seem to believe that the end justifies the means.

S. Oh yes. I think this rush to get things done even if it means doing risky things, is a real threat to science.

2.

T. And what about criticism and praise which always accompany any research work?

S. I believe, peer review, mutual criticism should be objective and impartial. You need to judge work by how good the work is, not by who did it or where he/she is from.

3

T. Now, let us talk about conflict of interests.

S. To my mind, it’s a very serious and complicated problem. It’s difficult to award grades without being influenced by how you like or dislike student’s manners.

T. And if the student is also a friend, child, or a spouse?

S. You should avoid having such people in your class. First, it protects you from an intolerable conflict of interests, between wanting to be fair and desire to please someone you care about. Second, it also protects the rest of the class from being suspicious of the teacher and jealous of his protege.

4.

T. Well, you’ve given an example of conflict of interests as a problem for individuals. But is it only a personal matter?

S. No, it is not. Institutions too can and do suffer from conflict of interests. Universities, for example, need money for the desirable and valuable things they do.

T. Could you give some examples, please?

S. Sure. In September 1989, the National Institute of Health (NIH) (USA) proposed that people funded by NIH (or their assistants, consultants, spouses, or children) shouldn’t own stock in the companies that would be affected by the outcome of the research; and those results could not be shared with private firms before they had been made public. They also proposed that people applying for grant should disclose all sources of support, including honoraria and consulting fees.

T. Doesn’t all that sound reasonable?

S. Yes, but nevertheless NIH was flooded by protests. The NIH guidelines would have prohibited investigators from taking money from companies whose products they were evaluating in a government-funded project.

T. Seems a sensible enough safeguard, doesn’t it?

S. “Blanket prohibitions don’t work”, once said the Vice-President for Research at one of the leading universities of the USA.

T. And what works? What is common practice?

S. Accepting gifts from parents, graduates, and other benefactors has been standard practice.

T. And does it usually cause trouble?

S. Unless, of course, a wealthy donor has a stupid nephew whom he wants enrolled and given a degree.

T. And could you dwell on problems concerning scientific institutions, please?

S. Well, in the USA institutes hire lobbyists to persuade the government to designate some funds for a new building or program. Universities hire for 6-figure fees - people who try to persuade members of Congress to put into some bill, say $60 million dollars for a supercomputing center at Cornell University. That’s an actual example from about ten years ago. This new method of using political clout rather

than intellectual merit to make decisions, pork-barreling in other words, is an almost hallowed American tradition but it has only recently been taken up by universities. The American Association of Universities - the most prestigious organization of research universities in the United States - admitted that this pork-barreling is a bad thing, and wished that it wouldn’t happen; but it refused to criticize those of its members who were doing it, on the grounds that the need for resources is so great.

T. In other words, was the Association saying that the end justifies the means?

S. I think, the end can never justify the means. Use force instead of persuasion, and you’ll have a society that’s controlled by force; use pork-barreling to get what you want, and you’ll have a society that works through bribery and not on the basis of merit.