As the practice of public or private scientific research generates discoveries and knowledge from intended and unintended processes, science can therefore threaten or undermine the very economic, social, political and cultural activities it was being funded to protect or develop. Scientific discoveries have always had a habit of jumping ahead of a societies readiness to accept them. A contemporary example such as genetic science and engineering has various implications for agriculture, health care and medicine, insurance, family planning, social ethics and population policy just to name a few. Much public policy still remains unresolved around many of these matters. This jumping ahead of a societies orthodoxies produces powerful responses that reveal the hidden existential forces in human societies and how science like psychotherapy exposes these frailties to a resistant consciousness.
These responses can be categorised into two common forms.
Suppressive and Exploitative. When science is perceived to threaten established
political, economic, social and cultural norms or power, there tends to be a
suppressive response. A suppressive
response takes many forms but common ones include, discrediting the science,
its practitioners and its institutions, defunding, economic-corporate market
anti-competitive behaviour, religious doctrine, political lobbying, political
donations, social-political moments, legislative obstruction and mass media
misinformation. Genetically modified food, weapons technology, cloning, nuclear
energy, aids research, abortion and birth control technology, stem cell
research, egg fertilization technology and alternative energy technology could
be some well-known examples facing this type of response.
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