The story of government’s control over science and research over the years has been controversial. This control exists to ensure that scientists and researchers continue their work in a way that poses no threat to life or even to make sure that the progress of the work conducted does not fall into the wrong hands. Although such limitations could often play a detrimental effect on the developer’s skill, if a researcher is prevented from doing something which is needed crucially to obtain a positive result, such restrictions play a negative role on scientific development. I think there should exist a balance between placement of restrictions and freedom to the researchers.
With placing few or no restrictions to the scientists working on their research it ensures that the researchers receive complete freedom which would boost their morale and may even lead to flexibility in the methods or processes they use to obtain their results. For example scientists that are trying to extract natural pigments from an edible source such as black rice to replace the existing synthetic dyes used in food industry, with no restriction to the scientists from where they may obtain their source could now get black rice in abundance from Japan where it is cultivated the most instead of trying to get them in countries where it is least known and may find it online from untrustworthy sources. Also without worrying about any rule imposed by the government the scientists can work flexibly to conduct their research.
Providing complete freedom to scientists could also lead to devastating issues as it could make certain developers or researchers careless about the experiments they conduct. Without existence of any safety protocols issued by the government, it could make the laboratory a dangerous working place such as improper sanitisation or improper containment of biological samples could lead to contamination leak which increases the risk of the scientists working in that facility and even may lead to an epidemic if not controlled. Inappropriate security measures could cause the infiltration of unknown individuals who could leak the research data of any extremely important project to the public. Speaking of complete freedom given to the scientists, during the mid 90s there were a lot of pharmaceutical companies that used humans as test subjects for their drugs especially in the research of painkillers for the detection of side-effects. Drugs that may not have been developed properly could prove fatal to humans. This signifies that proper scrutiny by the government is required prior to any research project. Testing of underdeveloped drugs on unauthorized human test subjects is strictly banned by almost all governments today.
Adding restrictions to scientists conducting the research is necessary to prevent such calamities even if it costs the researcher’s freedom. For example during the second world war, project Trinity, Los Alamos was under strict security by the government to prevent any scientist from leaving who could have leaked the progress of research to the Germans, this reduced chance of any spies also, the government made sure that the testing of nuclear weapons was conducted in an area devoid of any life. This also ensured safety protocols and made sure there was no one affected by the research.
The statement made by the author could be modified by making sure that scientific development still has flexibility but not at the cost of reducing restrictions from the government so that there exists a balance between limitations and flexibility.