University of Montana Ethics Center Lands $270K Grant to participate in public debates about sciences and emerging technologies.

The Center for Ethics at The University of Montana has been awarded a three-year $270,000 grant to help graduate research scientists participate more actively and effectively in public debates about science and emerging technologies.

The National Science Foundation grant will fund a program titled "Debating Science: A New Model for Ethics Education for Science and Engineering Students."

Biotechnology, nanotechnology and global climate change are already the focus of intense social, political, and ethical debates, said Dane Scott, director of the UM center. There is a role for ethicists in these discussions, but people from the humanities and social sciences do not always have the required technical knowledge.

"Scientists themselves must become fruitful participants in these debates, but scientists rarely have formal training for that in their backgrounds," he said. Traditionally, researchers have learned scientific ethics in standards-of-practice courses.

Full Story: http://news.umt.edu/index.asp?sec=1&too=100&eve=8&dat=9/5/2006&npa=1307