Censorship in Research and Scholarship

Censorship involves the suppression of communication that may be valuable or harmful to the censor, the individual or group censored, or the intended recipient of the communication. Researchers and scholars have been censored throughout history by religious, political, military, and corporate powers. During the twenty-first century, much debate has surrounded questions about the potential censorship of "dual-use" biological research that could enable production and use of biological weapons. Whether or not censorship would be ethically appropriate in this contemporary context depends on how trade-offs should be made between the values of free communication and harm prevention.