Is scientific progress benefiting all of humanity?

A few weeks ago, I took part in an annual cultural conference organized by the French city of Orleans. The session I participated in discussed “scientific progress and the dialogue of cultures.”

Earlier sessions had defined progress as “human development in various avenues,” including social (particularly human rights, education and health), economic (higher standards of living), and political (the spread and robustness of democracy and freedom), but also cultural (appreciation of and greater spending on the arts) and scientific (more discoveries and advances).

Thus the first item on our session’s agenda was to examine “scientific progress,” which I have just defined as more discoveries and advances. One must first distinguish between scientific and technological developments and ask: While technological innovations have clearly continued and perhaps accelerated in the last few decades, is science continuing to progress as fast as in the first part of the 20th century? That was a notable period when major theories (Einstein’s relativity, quantum physics, the Big Bang theory, and later the discovery of the DNA molecule and the explosion of genetics) revolutionized science.

I recalled for the audience that, in 1996, John Horgan, a prominent science editor and commentator, published a much-talked-about book titled “The End of Science.” In it, he claimed that no important discoveries or theories had been made in the previous 40 years or so and, in that sense at least, science seemed to have reached its limits, having perhaps discovered the main aspects of nature and the universe. I reminded the audience that, almost exactly a century before, Lord Kelvin, one of the greatest physicists of his day, had claimed that physics was coming to an end, except for a few “details.” However, within a decade Max Planck had launched quantum physics and Albert Einstein had given us relativity, two revolutions in physics.

Perhaps it was not to the same extent but, soon after Horgan’s book was published, a big and surprising discovery was made: The universe is accelerating its expansion, pointing to some “dark energy” within it that no one had even contemplated, let alone proposed, and to this day no one knows what it is, even though it makes up more than two-thirds of the universe.

More recently, we have achieved the detection of gravitational waves, which Einstein himself had thought technically impossible to achieve, due to the extremely weak intensities of those waves. Since 1995, we have discovered almost 4,000 planets outside the solar system. Five years ago, we caught the Higgs boson particle. And let’s not even start mentioning major technological developments, starting with the Internet.

But, since the 21st century is expected to be the century of biology, just as the 20th century was the century of physics, the first two decades have already seen major advances and breakthroughs. These include: The complete mapping of the genomes of humans and countless other species, living and extinct, such as the Neanderthals; the "creation" of new “synthetic” forms of life (replacing a cell’s nucleus with an artificial one, made of artificial genes); and the development of a revolutionary technique called CRISPR that allows scientists to edit genes easily and cheaply. To give you an idea of the magnitude of these achievements, 30 years ago a famous medical doctor said: “It is unconceivable that the precise inventory of genes in man will be drawn up. To accomplish such a plan, thousands of researchers, doctors and engineers would be required to work on it for 3,000 years.”

It seems obvious that scientific progress continues to be strong. But the main questions that the session in Orleans discussed were: Is it benefiting all of humanity, and is it driven by the whole world or only by the developed “West?”

These are surely important questions and, to answer them, one must raise a number of issues. First, what (or who) determines the avenues of research? Is it important to spend billions of dollars to discover the Higgs boson or to spend a fraction of that to provide ingenious and cheap systems of water and electricity to all of humanity? Or curing AIDS, Ebola and other viral and transmittable diseases, not to mention cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other maladies that are now affecting almost half of humanity?

Secondly, when science makes progress, often in Western labs and research centers, does that progress “come down” to the rest of the world, or does it further raise the already privileged West, while leaving the rest further behind? Thirdly, does the continuing strong scientific progress in the West further exacerbate the brain drain by attracting our brightest minds and making them stay away from their countries of origin? The list of issues goes on.

The panel concluded with a list of recommendations that can help make scientific progress really benefit all of humanity: An easier — and free — circulation of scientific information (data and papers) instead of the current monopoly by research institutions and high prices imposed by publishers; regular and collective reviews of research agendas and priorities; more frequent visits by Western scientists to “Third World” universities and research centers; discussions of cultural and ethical issues surrounding various developments (gene editing, climate change, etc.), and other such constructive measures.

The scientific and technological progress of the past century has been quite stunning, dwarfing what humanity had accomplished in the previous 100 centuries. But progress must benefit all and involve all, and progress must be made hand-in-hand with ethics and culture.

• Nidhal Guessoum is a professor of physics and astronomy at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. You can follow him on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/@NidhalGuessoum.