The concept of progress in science is acceptable if it is conceived as an incremental understanding of our physical universe. Scientific understanding based on the experimental method has a history of only three hundred years. Indeed it is the earliest stone age technology that initiated our present degree or mastery over physical events. One of the immortals of the science of human physiology Claude Bernard, the French pioneering physiologist, advocated a reinforcing relationship between basic and applied research and combined in his person, scientific excellence with human concern and grace or humility with candor of limitations. It is part of teaching and administrative responsibilities or is it a basic drive and urge to seek knowledge.
Science is ethically neutral.
Whatever else the world may need it does not need second rate scientists. We should focus less on production of Ph.D. s and more on production of scientists. Does it turn brilliant A-grade holders into dried up technocrats who grab the test tube and data spread sheets with not a thought for ethics the love of life. We cannot escape the fact that our research environment is ailing and polluted, ridded with conflicts of thought, word and action. The goal of research is to develop relevant instruments of change for betterment of society.