The Responsibility of the Scientist

The tradition of mutual trust between science and the public appears to have been broken in recent years. It is necessary to define the boundaries of science and to reflect upon the responsibility of the scientist.     

Climate change and our responsibilities as chemists

For almost all of 4.5 billion years, natural forces have shaped Earth’s environment. But, during the past century, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, which has had enormous benefits for humans, the effects of human activities have become the main driver for climate change. The increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels for energy to power the revolution causes an energy imbalance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing planetary emission. The imbalance is warming the planet and causing the atmosphere and oceans to warm, ice to melt, sea level to rise, and weather extremes to increase. In addition, dissolution of part of the carbon dioxide in the oceans is causing them to acidify, with possible negative effects on marine biota. As citizens of an interconnected global society and scientists who have the background to understand climate change, we have a responsibility first to understand the science. One resource that is available to help is the American Chemical Society Climate Science Toolkit, www.acs.org/climatescience. With this understanding our further responsibility as citizen scientists is to engage others in deliberative discussions on the science, to take actions ourselves to adapt to and mitigate human-caused climate change, and urge others to follow our example.     

Research, practice, uncertainty and responsibility

Three issues concerning the relationship between research and practice are addressed. (1) A certain ‘prototype mathematics classroom’ seems to dominate the research field, which in many cases seems selective with respect to what practices to address. I suggest challenging the dominance of the discourse created around the prototype mathematics classroom. (2) I find it important to broaden the school-centred discourse on mathematics education and to address the very different out-of-school practices that include mathematics. Many of these practices are relevant for interpreting what is taking place in a school context. That brings us to (3) socio-political issues of mathematics education. When the different school-sites for learning mathematics as well as the many different practices that include mathematics are related, we enter the socio-political dimension of mathematics education.On the one hand we must consider questions like: Could socio-political discrimination be acted out through mathematics education? Could mathematics education exercise a regimentation and disciplining of students? Could it include discrimination in terms of language? Could it include sexism and racism? On the other hand: Could mathematics education bring about competencies which can be described as empowering, and as supporting the development of mathematical literary or a ‘mathemacy’, important for the development of critical citizenship?However, there is no hope for identifying a one-way route to mathemacy. More generally: There is no simple way of identifying the socio-political functions of mathematics education. Mathematics education has to face uncertainty, and this challenge brings us to the notion of responsibility.     

《光谱实验室》投稿须知(2002)

《光谱实验室》是中国科学院主管，中国科学院化工冶金研究所等单位联合主办，科学出版社出版的中国科学核心期刊之一，是自主经营，自负盈亏的刊物，编委要有献身本专业科技出版事业的精神，来稿必须符合国家关于出版物的政治和技术标准，出版正常周期为2－6个月，“保质，高效”是本刊的主要特色。     

Synergistic relationships between Analytical Chemistry and written standards

This paper describes the mutual impact of Analytical Chemistry and several international written standards (norms and guides) related to knowledge management (CEN-CWA 14924:2004), social responsibility (ISO 26000:2010), management of occupational health and safety (OHSAS 18001/2), environmental management (ISO 14001:2004), quality management systems (ISO 9001:2008) and requirements of the competence of testing and calibration laboratories (ISO 17025:2004). The intensity of this impact, based on a two-way influence, is quite different depending on the standard considered. In any case, a new and fruitful approach to Analytical Chemistry based on these relationships can be derived.     

《光谱实验室》投稿须知(2003)

《光谱实验室》是中国科学院主管、中国科学院化工冶金研究所等单位联合主办、科学出版社出版的中国科学核心期刊之一，是自主经营、自负盈亏的刊物。编委要有献身本专业科技出版事业的精神。来稿必须符合国关于出版物的政治标准和技术标准，出版正常周期2－6个月。“保质、高效”是本刊的主要特色。     

Responsibility for inconsistency

It is desirable to identify the degree of responsibility of each part of a knowledge base for the inconsistency of that base to make some necessary trade-off decisions on restoring the consistency of that base. In this paper, we propose a measurement for the degree of responsibility of each formula in a knowledge base for the inconsistency of that base. This measurement is given in terms of minimal inconsistent subsets of a knowledge base. Moreover, it can be well explained in the context of causality and responsibility presented by Chockler and Halpern [1].     

Counterfactual and seeing-to-it responsibilities in strategic games

The article studies two forms of responsibility in the setting of strategic games with imperfect information. They are referred to as seeing-to-it responsibility and counterfactual responsibility. It shows that counterfactual responsibility is definable through seeing-to-it, but not the other way around. The article also proposes a sound and complete bimodal logical system that describes the interplay between the seeing-to-it modality and the individual ex ante knowledge modality.