Scientists have an obligation to “tell the truth they know,” the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop recently told a forum at MIT in Cambridge, and they should keep in mind the average person’s unasked question about their research:  “What difference does that make for me?”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori cited controversial areas of current research—bio-fuel crops, stem cell science, women’s cancer screening—with human and environmental interconnections and consequences.

“The very passion that is expressed in these discussions is an indication of the greater need for the scientific community’s engagement with the larger society.  None of us can hide behind the technical work and leave the ethical work to other experts,” she said.

“Scientists have a responsibility to tell they truth they know and to invite others into challenging conversations about what nobody really knows,” she said.  “We fail our vocation as members of a larger system, academic, human, global and, yes, spiritual, when we’re unwilling to tell the truth insofar as we know it.”

An oceanographer before she became a priest and then bishop, Jefferts Schori joined stem cell researcher George Daley and pediatric neurologist David Urion for the Dec. 3 panel discussion on “The Social Responsibility of the Scientist.”  The evening was part of a 45th anniversary celebration for the Technology and Culture Forum, a program coordinated by the Episcopal chaplain at MIT.

The panelists raised ethical questions particular to their disciplines but sounded a common theme of social obligation, whether in balancing hope against hype in the case of stem cell research, or in providing wider specialty care access to the taxpayers who make government-funded medical training and research possible

“I think it’s clear that there’s perhaps nowhere in recent scientific history where the tensions between science and faith and social policy have been so acutely felt,” Daley said of his still relatively new field of stem cell science. 

He called for prohibitions against the marketing of unproven therapies, and said that scientists should welcome scrutiny beyond peer review.  “We must invite the scrutiny of our social leaders, our faith leaders, our policy leaders.  Scientists ultimately work at the will of the people,” he said.

Urion described his training, research and medical practice in the context of the community he serves.  “I will submit to you that what we do for each other and to each other matters in the largest possible context, and the stakeholders in any endeavor we undertake always deserve to be heard and have their interests represented and taken into account,” he said.

The Technology and Culture Forum presents 15 to 20 public lectures each year.  The Rev. Amy McCreath, Episcopal chaplain at MIT and the forum’s coordinator, told the gathering that the anniversary celebration was an occasion “to pause and be thankful for 45 years of people and conversation about ethical issues in science and technology and for what we believe to be our call here, which is to help form students, who are going to be leaders in the world, to be people of peace and justice who will defend human dignity.”

--Tracy J. Sukraw

See photos here.

Watch the video of the program at http://web.mit.edu/tac/.