Science development has much to do with a society's prosperity. In order to create a thriving society, it is necessary for government to take an advisable attitude towards science development. From my point of view, government should supervise scientific researches in a proper way. Meanwhile, restrictions on scientific research should be few as long as public interest is guaranteed. Furthermore, government ought to invest in appropriate realms to support scientific development.
From the perspective of scientific research development, a free and unfettered atmosphere will be great to promote science development. Without too much limitation and scruple, scientists are able to engage their individual talents in their particular area of fascination. Many achievements were completed under such circumstances. During the World War II, Einstein left Germany for the United States because of the free academic atmosphere in America. Then it turned out that he devoted himself to scientific research and thus made a great achievement in physics. Thanks to the freedom academic atmosphere in the US, the wisdom of a genius was fully developed. It happens that there is a similar case in modern times. On March 9th, 2009, the American president Obama announced an executive order in the residence which announced the termination of Bush’s administration’s ban on embryonic stem cell research. Obama expressed that stem cell research is expected to bring better treatment although it had raised lots of ethical and political controversy. The scientific community also widely welcome the federal budget to support trlated research. This indicated the determination of Obama’s administration to prevent the integrity of science from being distored by political interference.
While emphasizing the importance of free academic atmosphere, we have to admit that restrictions must be placed on some controversial researches which may go against human ethics. For instance, if cloning technology or nuclear energy is used by evil people without any restrictions from government, the whole society will be thrown into a huge chaos.
However, the restrictions from governments at present seem to have certain preference. They tend to support programs which are more pragmatic at the real moment and care more about short-term results. Such restrictions cause the neglect of other researches which seem time and effort consuming but actually meaningful in the long run.
With disciplines of science getting so specialized, those scientific researches for long term call for increasingly financial and personnel support. Government should attach importance to solving these longer-term researches for sake of sustainable development. Even though these often include long-term basic researches, some of which are even ideal and will come up with an unexpected ending, appropriate investment is necessary. Take environmental protection as an example. Many countries have developed their economy at the sacrifice of polluting the environment. Now it’s every government’s duty to restore and maintain good environment. Though doing research on environmental purification will cost large amount of money, this cannot be restricted for everyone requires a clean and healthy world to live in. Analogously, genetic engineering is expensive and complicated. But we still consider genetic-relating research sorely needed because the more knowledge about human we get, the better we can do to prevent and cure disease in order to keep fit and live longer. If governments place restrictions on such researches because of their great input and no immediate return, it would be unwise.
To sum up, as long as public interest is guaranteed, it is necessary for government to place few restrictions on scientific research so that there will be free academic atmosphere to nourish valuable scientific results.