Freedom of Research
Here is the concept document for this year's meeting of the World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research. As for the last meeting in 2006, I can't help but feel that they're missing the forest for the trees. The problem is simply and only government and regulation - the structure of "representative" democracry produces a accelerating creep of lost freedom over time. From the document: "Does a constitutional protection of freedom of scientific research exist in some, or all, liberal democracies? Does this protection - where it actually exists – find some implementation in juridical criteria which guarantee the objectivity of facts, faced to political and personal interests in manipulating the scientific truth? Does the chance to elaborate a quantitative pointer-indicator of freedom of scientific research in different countries exist, adding it to other pointers-indicators of political and economic freedom? In which way bioethics has contributed to the promotion of, or otherwise has contrasted the freedom of scientific research? How can the prohibitionist flow of many bioethical committees be faced? How can the political agenda manage the 'precautionary principle', which is often formulated as internally irrational, and applied in order to paralyze scientific research and technological innovation?"