Heather Douglas wrote her paper "The Dark Side of Science," which was published in The Scientist and reprinted in The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings, which emotionally postulates that scientists should share a degree of accountable for the intentions and outcomes of their scientific discoveries, regardless of whether those present intentions and future outcomes are good- or ill-willed. Heather uses the mercurial metaphor of a carelessly thrown match to ignite the understanding of her readers to the idea of scientific answerability. Ms. Douglas also suggests that a type of regulation be put in place to distribute the burden of responsibility, although she is careful to not overtly mention any type of governmental regulation. In the end, "The Dark Side of Science" is a suppositional argument which espouses that the responsibility of the misuse of science extends up and down the spectrum of ownership. However, Douglas' position leads to a spirit of fear and not hope, holds one accountable for the evil of others, stifles creativity, proposes unrealistic regulations, and postulates that a possible evil outweighs scientific good. The author's type …show more content…
Douglas suggests regulations to be imposed to manage these ideas when she stated "The more oversight scientists submit to, the less responsibility they bear, but it comes at the cost of the freedom to choose the type of work they can do and how they do it" (Bullock 126). While Douglas does not suggest government regulating, she seems to subtly imply that inventors and scientists should attempt to impose restrictions upon themselves. Whether these restrictions are mental and more organized is disappointingly omitted. From a logical stance, it is extremely confusing and very hard to understand why the author would require circumspection at the beginning of an idea instead of at the ideas culmination. In a society full of warning labels on even the most common sense items, her perceptions seem rigidly