TY - JOUR T1 - Doing Socially Responsible Science in the Age of Selfies and Immediacy JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0114-22.2022 VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - ENEURO.0114-22.2022 AU - Christophe Bernard Y1 - 2022/03/01 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/9/2/ENEURO.0114-22.2022.abstract N2 - Responsible science has three components: doing science, the validity of the discoveries themselves, and the consequences of these discoveries. These three components are nondissociable, because science does not exist by and for itself: it exists within a societal context. Society and Science always interact with each other. Doing science has direct societal consequences, which can be positive, including novel therapeutic solutions and general advancement of knowledge, and negative, including using planet resources, producing waste, and contributing to global warming (with travel, for example). I shall not develop the latter components here; I shall develop the validity of the discoveries and their consequences in the present context of the immediacy of information and “selfie” science.An idealistic and naive depiction of a scientist is someone concerned only with the internal content of their scientific work and not with their external repercussions. A scientist is but one part of the complex organism that is human society. Except for the now rare cases when a scientist is wealthy, a scientist cannot do any work without support from society. Since state funding comes from taxes, any money given to science is money that taxpayers cannot spend for themselves. As scientists, the least we can do is to provide feedback to society and convince it that the money spent will provide for the benefit of all. This is the second level of socially responsible science: our production must be valid. After all, if a business makes deficient products, it will not survive long. What would happen, were taxpayers convinced that science is not producing what is being promised?The second level of responsibility to consider is when the results produced by the scientist can affect the society. It can be for the better good, as designing vaccines against viruses. Or it could have deleterious consequences. … ER -