The close link between both the U.S. military and the intelligence department to the scientific establishment is causing deep ethical concerns, particularly over the military’s and intelligence service’s funding and use of neuroscientific applications.

Even though neuroscience provides national security and the country’s defense with high-tech, deployable solutions for their needs, the solutions are or should be subject to questions in terms of consequential ethical considerations; whether they are scientifically valid and whether they concern the relationship between security and science.

The open access journal PLoS Biology has published a debate on the subject, with Michael N Tennison and Jonathan D Moreno in their March 20 issue, that aims to raise awareness in the scientific community as well as amongst the general public that advances have a dual impact.

Over the last decade, basic neuroscience has made rapid progress in various “dual use” applications that could be of interest for both the military and civilians. However, neuroscientists who are subsidized by military funding may not fully be aware of the potentially lethal impact their work can have.

Brain-computer interfaces, for instance, have already been utilized in monkeys to remotely control walking robots. These interfaces could also be used to allow humans to operate military devices whilst sheltered from real combat situations.

The research also demonstrated that neuro-modulation technologies, like transcranial magnetic stimulation, could be used in improving or restraining soldiers’ certain neurological capacities on the battlefield.

Another strategy, namely the neuroscientific deception detection, raises questions in terms of reliability and privacy, regardless of its better performance over the traditional ‘lie-detector’ polygraphs.

According to the authors:

“(issues like these) need to be addressed to ensure the pragmatic synthesis of ethical accountability and national security”.

Today’s neuroscientists could address the ethical, legal, and social implications of the militarization of their work, similar to the numerous nuclear scientists who addressed the use of atomic weapons at the time, which contributed to the test ban treaties in the 1960s.

Written by Petra Rattue