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At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

What we want is scientists who don't become part of the policy discussion: All they do is produce science. If someone becomes an advocate, then I won't pay as much attention to their science.

The moral issue here is whether the United States Congress is going to stand in the way of science and preclude scientists from doing lifesaving research.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

It seems that this situation is not restricted to science but is more generally human.

I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.

The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time.

If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can't realistically go unnoticed.

Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law.