LAI 525LEC - Science, Technology, and Human Values

The 21st century will pose a number of extremely serious challenges and policy decisions to be made including those around energy availability, climate change, gene-based technologies (foods, stem cells, cloning, diagnostics, enhancement, etc.), surveillance & privacy, intellectual property & knowledge privatization, and economic & cultural globalization. Decisions in these areas will require a substantial public dialog. This course will explore the relationship between science and its applications to a set of contemporary problems and will examine how science policy is made and translated. It will review what science is and how scientists arrive at conclusions, the distinctions between science and non-science, the principal science-public policy issues of the 21st century, and conditions that are necessary for an effective science-public-political interface.

Credits: 3