Scientists are beyond the control of dictators

Adapted extract from an article in the New Scientist (21 Jan '95) entitled 'Science at the heart of the century' by Alun Anderson, who quotes in the following from the Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm (published by Michael Joseph).

Nations are now utterly dependant for their success on science and technology, but the only way which they have been able to make full use of scientists is to allow 'an otherwise incomprehensible elite to go its own way'. It is because nations need science and science requires intellectual freedom that scientists haven't ended up in forced labour, that men like Andrei Sakharov could not be silenced and, ultimately, that communism collapsed. A strange thought that scientists have ensured their freedom by handing over their world-changing powers.

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