ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that all scientists and technologists have a responsibility to engage in critical assessments. The scientists and technologists' job is to do pure and applied technical research; implementation and its effects are the responsibility of political decision makers. All too often discussions of science, technology, and social responsibility sound as though the author is demanding, for example, that plant geneticists become specialists in cultural anthropology and agricultural economics to assess the impact of their work. There are a number of considerations which, in the case of rice technology transfers, make the issues of responsibility and values especially salient for the Scientific and Technological enterprise. In the first place the usual method by which responsibility is discharged is lacking: this is to have appropriate, duly selected overriding socio-political institutions playing an active role both in characterizing problems and in implementing solutions.
