Responsibility in Science

Abstract

MY first letter (NATURE, October 15, p. 572) on this subject maintained that Prof. Poulton had no right to hold physicists as a body responsible for views presented by two or three of their number, however eminent. Prof. Poulton (NATURE, December 3, p. 100) seeks to justify his action on the ground that “in a matter of such great importance … it is probably fair to conclude that, with the great majority of physicists, ‘silence gave consent.’” This doctrine of silence is surely untenable. If an authority on acoustics pronounces views even on the fundamentals of sound, is an electrician to be held consenting when he forms no opinion or reserves it to himself? In the present case it should be added that whilst questions in geo-physics or astro-physics are often most interesting to the public, they hardly as yet touch the fundamentals of physics, but constitute merely theoretical applications. If we put at 5 per cent, the proportion of physicists who have studied for themselves any given problem in geo-physics, and who have the necessary qualifications to justify the expression of an opinion, we should probably indulge in an over-estimate. It is in fact only a very small minority of whom anything but silence could possibly have been expected.