Ethics and Politics of Science, Technology and Medicine
You should answer four questions in total. Answer one question from
Section A and three questions from Section B. All questions carry equal
weighting.
Begin each answer on a separate sheet.
Write legibly and on only one side of the paper.
Answers must be tied up in separate bundles, marked 1, 2, 3, etc.
according to the number of the question.
Attach a completed coversheet to each bundle and complete a master
coversheet listing all questions attempted. It is essential that you write
your examination number and not your name on the coversheet and on
each bundle.
You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent
pages of this question paper until instructed to do so by the
invigilator.
Page 2 of 2
SECTION A
1. How, if at all, could you write a social history of truth?
2. When science starts relying on value judgments, it stops being science.
Discuss.
3. Should scientists care about society?
SECTION B
4. “We look with our eyes, but we see with the eyes of the collective body:
during each single observation, we have the joint action of the entire
store of the knowledge of the collective body, and its customs” (Ludwik
Fleck). Discuss.
5. Does the experimenter’s regress matter to the work of the sciences?
6. What are rational choice models good for?
7. Is cost-benefit analysis the right approach to decision making?
8. There is more to the good life than preference satisfaction. Discuss.
9. How did dialectical materialism shape the organisation of scientific
research in the Soviet Union?
10. Is the argument from inductive risk compelling?
11. Informed consent is important in both research and treatment contexts,
but is it important for the same reasons?
12. Does maximisation of Quality Adjusted Life Years discriminate? If so, is
this a problem?
13. Should doctors kill terminally ill patients?
14. What are the conditions, if any, under which scientific research can
achieve objectivity?
15. Can one consistently be pro-choice and a vegetarian?