For Science That Comes With Risks, a Key Question: Who Decides?
The project was so secret, most members of Congress didn’t even know it existed. In 1942, when an elite team of physicists set out to produce an atomic bomb, military leaders took elaborate steps to conceal their activities from the American public and lawmakers. There were good reasons, of course, to keep a wartime weapons development project under wraps. (Unsuccessfully: Soviet spies learned about the bomb before most members of Congress.) But the result was striking: In the world’s flagship democracy, a society-redefining project took place, for about three years, without the knowledge or consent of the public or their elected representatives. ….[READ]
