Introduction

The idea that the sciences are value free has long played a key role in the self-understanding and the public image of modern science. Poincaré, writing early in this century, captured its core as follows:

Ethics and science have their own domains, which touch but do not interpenetrate. The one shows us to what goal we should aspire, the other, given the goal, teaches us how to attain it. So they never conflict since they never meet. There can be no more immoral science than there can be scientific morals.