Preserving professional autonomy outweighed ethical concern for elite scientists

Evidence

What truly mattered to German scientific (and more generally, intellectual) elites, and to the best and most distinguished individuals among them was the preservation of their integrity as scholars and spokesmen of Reason. And that task did not include (and did exclude in case of conflict) concern with the ethical meaning of their activity. As Alan Beyerchen found out, in the spring and summer of 1933 the luminaries of German science, people like Planck, Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, or von Laue, all ‘counselled patience and restraint in dealing with the government, especially regarding dismissals and emigration. The primary goal was to preserve the professional autonomy of their discipline by avoiding confrontation and waiting for orderly life and procedures to resume.’ They all wanted to defend and to save what mattered to them – and save it they did, as soon as they showed a readiness to forget about what mattered less. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 360

Categorization

• SHARE: The Heisenberg–Himmler detail about separating scientific findings from political conduct is a striking anecdote for anyone interested in the ethics of expertise.
• XREF: connects to: Freedom of research must be preserved from subordination to cultural policy; Science’s value-freedom dismantled normative barriers to genocidal co-operation — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 315; Ideology reproduces most effectively through non-biased professional practice (+3 more)

Related

• Freedom of research must be preserved from subordination to cultural policy (similarity 0.91)
• Elite silence follows the ideal of value-free rational professionalism (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Science’s value-freedom dismantled normative barriers to genocidal co-operation #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 315
• Ideology reproduces most effectively through non-biased professional practice #corroborates (0.75)
• Ideology reproduces through apparent professional neutrality, not overt bias #corroborates (0.75)
• Bureaucracy shifts moral concern from targets onto superiors’ judgment #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 455