Science not yet without borders

Abstract

I was extremely displeased with the Opinion piece by Barry Sanders in which he described an international conference he recently organized in Iran. Taking an apparent holiday from history, Sanders proposed that “the complicated politics between Iran and the West is a compelling reason to support conferences in that country.” In his view, a scientific conference “reminds us through our shared discourse that we are all human and all fundamentally the same on our journey of discovery.” Sanders further notes that “the goodwill from the conference … will ensure Iranians are able to learn the latest and greatest that quantum information has to offer.”To hear all this, one would scarcely realize that Iran is the leading terror state in the world, with one of the worst human rights records, which includes such practices as the killing of blasphemers by stoning and the prescribed execution of infidels and homosexuals. Sanders even declines to consider whether the information Iranian scientists learned from his conference may be immediately applied to the regime’s stated goal of attaining nuclear might, wiping Israel off the map, demolishing America, and hastening the apocalyptic return of the Mahdi.Sanders’s quest reminds me of an oft-repeated pattern in history: liberal intellectuals attempting to make things better by appealing to lofty callings—joint science projects, gatherings to “discuss our differences,” and so forth. Unfortunately, that kind of devil’s bargain has little proven track record. For instance, it is well known that one desperate course taken by some European Jews in order to survive the Holocaust was to actually join—or attempt to join—Nazi German institutions.Giving aid, comfort, and scientific knowledge to countries run by barbarous regimes is not necessarily a good thing, no matter how virtuous it might make some of us feel.© 2008 American Institute of Physics.