baibakova_i_gasko_o_fedorishin_m_red_getting_on_in_english_i

Ethical behaviour requires more than following the law, but following the law is an important first step.

G.It’s easy to criticize business for its moral and ethical shortcomings, but we must be careful in our criticism to note that society as a whole isn’t too socially minded either. It’s always reasonable when discussing moral and ethical issues to remind ourselves that ethical behaviour begins with you and me. We can’t expect “society” to become more moral and ethical unless we as individuals commit to becoming moral and ethical ourselves.

SECTION IV. DEVELOPING SPEAKING SKILLS

Task 6.26. The following are some values or principles that are discussed by those using computer systems and by the public. Working individually or in pairs read the four principles and check {/') whether you agree or disagree. Then discuss your answers with the rest of the class:

1.All knowledge and scientific information should be shared.

2.People’s privacy should always be respected.

3.Private property should always be respected.

4.Curiosity and the search for knowledge is the most important part of being a scientist.

Sometimes these values/principles conflict. Then you have to decide:

•Is one value always more important than another?

•Are there certain situations when one value might be more important than

another?

Task 6.27. Answer the following questions using the words and expressions from your essential vocabulary.

1.What is an advertisement? What is the main purpose of any advertisement? Are you inclined to believe advertisements or do you usually take them with a pinch of salt?

Sources of Greenhouse Effect

A:Hello. Why are you so puzzled?

B:Hi. You know, I have noticed that this winter began much later than usually. I think it was caused by the greenhouse effect which keeps our Earth too warm nowadays.

A:Oh, I know something about the greenhouse effect. It is produced by exhaust gases of fuel burning.

B:You’re almost right. Actually, there exists a natural greenhouse effect created by such gases as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. It contains water vapour too.

A:Some names of those gases seem familiar to me. I know that carbon dioxide emanates from burning fossil fuels.

B:It’s true. And do you know that since 1750 carbon dioxide in the air has risen by more than 30 per cent, due to the human activities?

A:But that’s great! The more gases we get the more heat we receive. In a few years we won’t need to go to Egypt for some sun!

B:Aha, and for some sea also! It will simply come to us. Don’t you understand that we are violating the natural balance!!! We heat the atmosphere, the atmosphere heats the pole caps, the pole caps melt and flood almost everything, to say nothing about

the total climate changes during the warming!

A:It’s really awful. But what can we do about it? Everybody needs cars, coal for heating and elimination of garbage.

B:Yes, but maybe it is not too late to change our lifestyle. We can use cars on solar power, for example.

A:And I’ve also heard about useful garbage recycling. Bottles and some plastic car parts are made out of it.

B:It is a great source of raw material as well. Instead of oil, coal and natural gas people have found alternative sources of power such as wind power and the power of waves.

A:It is so nice, but not that simple as it seems. There are lots of economic and political questions about this problem.

B:They’d better solve it quickly before it’s too late.

***

Global Warming

A:I’ve been thinking a lot about ecological situation in the world recently. The problem of adding nitrous oxide to the atmosphere is disturbing me.

B:Really? You know, yesterday I watched a TV programme on Discovery Channel dedicated to this issue. I was shocked to hear that every year we add seven up to thirteen million tons of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere.

A:Quite so. And it is the automobile exhausts as well as disposing of human and animal wastes that are responsible for that.

B:Yes, I quite agree with you because this is an urgent problem of humanity, but I think the global warming is also a big problem.

A:Some of the ways that the Earth may respond to the global warming must be rapid. By continuing to add the greenhouse gases to the air we may be surprised by some nasty changes.

B:As the Arctic gets warmer, huge amounts of methane, now frozen under the ocean and land could escape into the air. Because methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, those added emissions could cause the Earth to warm even faster than it is now expected.

A:Yes, and scientists are working on this issue. To estimate the impact of global warming on future harvests scientists build computer simulations or models of climate, crops and market conditions. The models are first tested in present day conditions, and then used to predict possible future changes. And have you heard how the global warming may affect people’s health?

B:Well, it may affect in a variety of ways. People may suffer from heart strokes and heart attacks. Also such diseases as malaria and yellow fever may become widespread in many countries that are situated in warm climatic zones.

A:In my opinion, we need a lot of such useful programmes telling us more and more about pollution on the Earth.

B:And also each of us needs to take practical measures to prevent the pollution of the Earth and not add to the global warming.

Task (b) 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 plass. 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.

(Adapted from the Internet)

Answer the following questions:

1.Should you choose a project which is interesting for scientific reasons or because there’s money to be made out of it?

2.What is your opinion about contact between academia and industry?

3.Are you always preoccupied with rapidity?

4.Is it better to be fast than to be sound?

5.Is it better to get false results quickly than valid results slowly?

6.If conflict of interests is permitted, why assume that only one person would suffer from it rather than everyone?

7.Can any person be trusted as much under a conflict of interests as when there is no such conflict?

8.What is your personal experience of handling a conflict of interests?

Task 6.29. Read the main body of Prof. Biletsky’s paper and give an oral summary of the text:

Ladies and gentlemen! The subject of my presentation is “Humanism, Ethics and Technological Progress”. ...

...As you know the question of existence of ultimate values has been discussed for centuries. Greek absolutists Socrates and Plato were disgusted with the relativistic values advocated by the Sophist philosophers of their days. They clearly suggested:

(1) absolute values exist, and (2) some values are more important than others. It was Plato’s statement that ideal forms exist in the realm of values just as ideal forms exist in the realm of geometry and logic. He claimed that among those absolute values are

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justice, humanism, love, wisdom and conscience which are the main laws of the science of ethics. The German philosopher E. Kant gave the world his understanding of ethics as “the categorical imperative”. He said, “There are two things in the world worth admiring: the sight of the starry sky and the inner moral world of a man”. The humanistic approach to science is also wonderfully described in the works of other thinkers and scientists of the past and present time: Confucius, Ecclesiastes and Thomas of Aquinas, A.Schweitser and T.Mann, our countrymen H.Skovoroda, I.Puluy and V.Vernadsky. They all spoke of human responsibility of a scientist.

Speaking about professional ethics of a specialist, we underline that a scientist, first and foremost should bear in mind absolute ethical values while he is working creatively. He must be responsible for his invention as it should be created and applied for the good, not for the bad of mankind. Unfortunately, there are cases when results of scientific investigation are tailored to the needs of the company which sponsors this investigation. So the publication of the results in mass media is an advertisement for the products manufactured by this company, even if these products are harmful to the health of consumers. Other ethical problems that should be considered by scientists are plagiarism and violation of the rights to intellectual property.

... Now the world has already accepted that nuclear war would mean the end of civilization, but still the threat of nuclear war is not yet completely eliminated. If mankind had understood that fact much earlier, there would not have been such tragedies as in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chomobyl, Bikini and Mururoa atolls. However, today environmental pollution has replaced nuclear war as the major threat to our survival.

Solving the problems of the environment - such as the depletion of the ozone layer, water pollution and global warming - is the task of today’s technology. Before the industrial revolution started in Europe, workers had been cruellyExploited. Then during the second half of the 19th century and in the 20lh century, a “humanization” of industry began. Child labour was banned, insurance and pensions were introduced. New inventions eased the labour. Today we need a second humanization - in the realm of environment.

For centuries most technological inventions and discoveries were directed either towards developing new kinds of weaponry, or towards making daily life easier, but consequences of the technological progress for the environment were not taken into consideration. Now we must find ways to maintain living standards in industrially developed countries and to improve them in developing ones, with as little damage to the environment as possible. Some people say that because science gave birth to industry and industry has destroyed the environment, science shouldn’t be encouraged. This is completely, misguiding. It is true that the mismatch which emerged between the technological progress and humanism caused such global problems as survival of man in the nuclear century, labour dehumanization leading to unemployment, ecological problems. Science and technology, by themselves, are not a source of ethics and values. They can tell us what will happen if we do this or that - for instance, how many people might be killed by a nuclear bomb. But the decision on whether to develop the bomb

cannot be a scientific decision. This can only be judged by ethics. So what we need is to fill scientific technological progress with humanistic ethical values.

However, the spiritual pollution which we face today, may be as dangerous as the material one. It manifests itself in what I would call the “greediness of society” - where people think only of money, wealth, entertainment and their own personal short-term well-being. And it can be seen in the lack of awareness of sense and purpose of life. Thus, we should promote ethical norms based on ultimate values such as justice, conscience, love, wisdojn and freedom. Only in this way we can solve the problems which threaten the world today - the destruction of environment, alcoholism, drugabuse, AIDS, totalitarianism and all sorts of extremism. It is our duty to shape a better world for all of us here on the Earth.

Task 6.30, Read and translate the text using dictionary if necessary, and answer the questions given below.

TECHNOLOGICAL CULTURE AND ITS PROBLEMS

That humans have been designated Homo faber (man the maker, tool user) rather than Homo sapiens (man the wise, thinker) indicates the centrality of technology in the life of even those primitive communities which we classify on the basis of their stage of technological development - stone age, bronze age, iron age. But as the Prometheus myth reminds us, fire and the metal-based technology it confers, although essential to the development of human civilizations, was surrounded by ambivalent attitudes: it promises to confer god-like powers of control over nature, but it is not clear that mere mortals are sufficiently god-like to be able to wield this (stolen) power wisely. It is a power which can be used to destroy as well as to create: medicines developed to restore health become poisons when used negligently or maliciously; mass media invented to enlighten are used for propaganda; and computers which extend our knowledge exponentially can invade our privacy in ways unthinkable only a short time ago. Even the most benevolent technology carries with it the potential for harm; implicit in every ploughshare there is a sword.

Since World War II the pace of technological development has increased drama­ tically, trailing in its wake problems of which our grandparents did not even dream. Waste disposal has always presented problems for settled human communities, but none remotely comparable to those presented by nuclear waste disposal, which, if not carried out properly, could contaminate portions of the earth virtually forever. But what are the proper methods of disposal? Here a public consensus is strikingly lacking. Genetic engineering opens up the possibility of manipulating hereditary material in such a way that species, including our own, can be significantly altered. Do we know enough about the development of organisms or about ecological balances to pursue this possibility prudently? Even granting that we have sufficient knowledge, should experiments of this kind be allowed, and on what species? Should experimentation on human genetic

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material be allowed? Computers have altered so extensively the way information is collected, interpreted and disseminated that it is appropriate to speak of an information revolution. Much of this development was prompted and funded by military interests. That generals have the latest computer-generated information seems desirable; that ’decisions’ to launch nuclear missiles may be made by computers rather than people, because people cannot respond quickly enough to (possible) enemy attacks, engenders terror and a feeling of helplessness.

Developments in First World countries generating dilemmas such as these have accentuated the divide between developed and developing nations. Can this gap be narrowed by a transfer of technology from developed to developing nations, and if so should developed nations give aid in this form? Not to do so may retard development to such an extent that the lives of hundreds of millions of people will remain materially and spiritually impoverished. Yet technology which may make perfect sense in a developed nation can be inappropriate when transferred to a developing nation. The use of chemical pesticides can bring benefits, but is also hazardous. Peasant farmers, unused to handling such substances, may cause serious damage to themselves and the environment. The emergence of resistant pests means that increased crop yields are frequently sustainable only by increased dosage or use of new types of pesticide, which have to be purchased using scarce foreign exchange. In transferring its technology a donor nation inevitably transfers its own ways of thinking and doing, its own institutions and values. These interact profoundly but unpredictably with the ways of life of the recipient nation.

The course of technological development in First World countries reflects their dominant values and institutions, their ways of thinking and doing. The results of science and technology are familiar enough, and can mesmerize us. But they are the results and embodiments of human problem solving practices, results which in turn shape the lives of people employing them. (Pesticides are a response to crop destruction. To be used effectively and safely, however, farmers must take all sorts of precautions, study crop development and carefully determine time and rate of applications. To do so with modem pesticides they must be numerate and literate.) As practices, science and technology involve presuppositions, the acquisition of skills, norms of behaviour and value commitments.

(Adaptedfrom Tiles, Mary and Oberdiek,

Hans *Living in a Technological Culture: Human Tools and Human Values \ London and New York, 1995, pp. 1-3)

Essential vocabulary

1.to designate - to specify, to describe as

2.community - body of people living in the same locality

3.to confer - to grant, to bestow

4.to wield - to control, to sway

5.negligently - carelessly