Scientific research can be the key to healing diseases, protecting the environment, and promoting a global culture of peace and understanding. However, it can serve other, more morally ambiguous purposes. For example, breakthroughs in research can be used to develop cruel weaponry. Scientific findings can be abused by authoritarian states or criminal groups, or have other unintended negative consequences.

Academic Ambivalence

In the world of academia, this ambivalence is often referred to as “dual use.” “Originally, the term was used to refer to the duplicitous ways in which research could be put to use – i.e., for both civilian and military purposes,” says Jens Rolff, professor of evolutionary biology at Freie Universität Berlin. “However, you can also understand it as the blessing and curse that academia represents as a whole.”

Together with Sven Chojnacki, professor at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Sciences and vice president of Freie Universität Berlin, Rolff has founded an interdisciplinary working group to raise awareness of the dilemma that dual use presents. Comprised of researchers from both the natural sciences and the humanities, one of the main activities of the group involves reflecting on the ethical challenges presented by their work. One of the results of this collaboration is an exhibition on display starting October 26, 2023, in the Henry Ford Building. “Many of Freie Universität’s departments have contributed to the exhibition with insights into important issues,” says Jeannette Hagen, who studied political science at Freie Universität and is helping organize the exhibition. “We are combining these insights with artistic works that invite guests to reflect upon these ethical questions for themselves.”

Some of the current challenges include scientific research in areas such as artificial intelligence, genetics, or virology. “For example, researching viruses is important for developing vaccines,” says Rolff. “However, it is also possible that this knowledge can be used to develop particularly contagious viruses for biological warfare or that may unintentionally escape from laboratories.” 

Academic research can also lead to unwanted negative consequences – for example, harmless photographs and satellite images of archaeological dig sites can be misused by authoritarian regimes for espionage.

Scientific Breakthroughs with Severe Consequences

Rolff says that the idea to create a working group was also related to the history of Freie Universität and the generations of researchers that have shaped Dahlem over the years: In December 1938 in what is today Freie Universität’s Hahn Meitner Building, chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann discovered nuclear fission– and in doing so, laid the foundation for not only nuclear power, but for the development of the nuclear bomb.

However, it was their former colleague Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch who, just a few weeks later, were able to provide the scientific explanation for how this reaction had occurred. Meitner had fled from Berlin to Sweden in the summer of 1938 due to her Jewish heritage, but still maintained regular correspondence with Hahn.

Nearby, in what is today the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, mustard gas was developed for use as a neurotoxin during the First World War. “Both places represent great scientific breakthroughs,” says Rolff, “but they also had terrible consequences in both world wars.”

Paradoxically, dual use can work both ways – military developments can lead to important breakthroughs in civilian contexts. For example, mustard gas, originally developed for warfare, has now been incorporated into multidrug chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease and has become a potent agent against cancer.

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This article originally appeared in German in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.