ABSTRACT
Objectivity and ethics are often considered as two separate issues in science, but the position I will set out in this chapter assigns them both to the status of normative values. This is a position that the social constructionists I spoke of, in chapter 5, would have no difficulty in supporting. Indeed I concluded in that chapter that both social constructionists and rejectionists raised important issues about the social nature of science and the outcomes of scientific practice for the wider society. However I argued that the rejectionist view was incoherent because it ignored the interpenetration of science and technology into wider society and that furthermore the relativism of social constructionism would make science impossible or unrecognisable.
