Scientists must help realise human rights

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Scientists must help realise human rights

Source: Science

3 December 2008 | EN | 中文

DNA evidence can help free wrongfully convicted prisoners

Flickr/remuz

Scientists must join the global effort to realise human rights, say Leonard Rubenstein and Mona Younis.

Scientific expertise is indispensable to upholding human rights. For example, forensic exhumation of mass graves can reveal evidence of crimes against humanity, satellite imagery can show the destruction of communities in remote locations, and DNA evidence can help free wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Yet more can be done, argue the authors.

They suggest that the scientific community can give the much-neglected right to "share in scientific progress and its benefits" better visibility. Scientists must recognise that human rights are not vague aspirations, but specific obligations of government. And they must use their influence as respected members of society to ensure that governments uphold them.

Many scientists believe that such involvement in human rights is too "political", say the authors. But, they add, scientific traditions of impartiality, rigorous analysis and peer review are all compatible with human rights.

Link to full article in Science

Comments (2)

John Daly ( United States of America )

9 December 2008

In their editorial commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the community of nations in 1947, Rubenstein and Younis write: "Perhaps the greatest challenge is for the scientific community to become a constituency for human rights. Many scientists eschew such involvement as too 'political,' and thus in conflict with scientific traditions of impartiality and independent inquiry. But these and other traditions, such as rigorous analysis and peer review, are both compatible with and essential to the realization of human rights."

I might add that it is especially important for social scientists to help us all to understand the societal processes that threaten and protect human rights, so that we all can better protect those rights!

Chalid talib ( Indonesia )

17 December 2008

SCIENTISTS SHOULD BE HUMBLE

Scientist should be humble with their knowhow in scientific effort for increasing the rate of new innovation in technologies, as those who would like to use it for commercializing have to pay for its. We can look at many examples that could raise up human beings, such as local knowledges of ancestors in medicine and domesticating animals, which has helped us to develop many kinds of medicines either chemically or naturally for protecting human life.

But now in a lot of articles, even though we only need to read for increasing knowhow in many fields, we have to pay it. This system only gives advantages for rich countries who can protect their scientists with patent rights, but others cannot protect their knowledge, and everyone can take it freely.

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