Question: Do you think what you are doing is right? Who does it benifit?

Caspar Addyman answered on 21 Mar 2011:

When you say right, do you mean ‘correct’ like in a maths exam? Or like in ‘right and wrong’ as in a court of law or a spiderman movie? They are both very interesting and difficult questions.

Thinking about the first meaning. It is the ultimate aim of science to find out what is true, to find the right or correct answers. And even the right questions. But the trouble is there is no-one we can ask for the ‘right’ answer. It might sound a little strange but we are making this up as we are going along. Because we are looking at things that nobody knows the answers to yet.

Is it right to do our research? Well, all universities have panels of experts who decide if it is ethical to run your experiments (this is especially important in human and animal research obiviously) So, for example, in psychology experiments we do not do any experiments without the parents being with their babies and knowing exactly what is involved.

All of the research the scientists in this zone are doing could benefit the world somehow (see these q.s http://ias.im/35.1463 , http://ias.im/35.473 ) My own research hopefully benefits everyone by giving us a better idea how the human brain works.