September 11 and Science

Watching the attack on the World Trade Center unfold, it was clear that some basic rules of politics and security have been changed irreversibly. We have all mentally rerun the footage of the callous use of an aeroplane as a terrorist bomb and the collapse of the twin towers, yet we remain in disbelief that it did actually happen. Now, we wait for the next phase, unsure if the counter‐attack against the Taleban regime in Afghanistan will provoke another terrorist atrocity. Writing this editorial early in October, I am aware that subsequent events may have altered some of these concerns. This alone is a small personal indication of the great uncertainty that September 11 has generated.It would appear that the scientific community escaped relatively unscathed, although, without any doubt, some have lost friends and acquaintances. This is tragic. But there is another—less immediate—fallout from the attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that has an impact on science. Shortly after the attacks, I read an article by Richard Dawkins in The Guardian newspaper in which he concluded that religion had created the fanatics that carried out …