> plenty are doing cancer research simply to get paid. Presumably because they think being paid is good. Pure truth-seeking is fairly marginal. > Why have you

> plenty are doing cancer research simply to get paid. Presumably because they think being paid is good. Pure truth-seeking is fairly marginal. > Why have you put the word "truth" in quotation marks here? "Truth" and "good" weren't really the best words to use in either of the contexts I used them above ("knowledge" and "right" would have been more correct), but I wanted to specifically use those words because they were the ones you had originally framed the discussion with, so I put them in quotation marks to draw attention to the fact that I was reusing your words. It was kind of cumbersome, looking back on it. > The truth is always good in my view. Suppose a physicist in Nazi Germany runs away rather than help the German nuclear program to invent the atom bomb because he knows Nazi leadership would do terrible things with it. This is an example of a scientist choosing not to pursue knowledge because that knowledge would, in that context, be harmful. I don't think any truths are inherently harmful, but some are contextually harmful when known by certain people (e.g. Nazis), and I think it's ethically justifiable for even a scientist to prevent those people from learning those truths.