Justin Bieber should be cloned, he and his clones should be used as a test subjects.

But seriously i agree that technological advancement should have some control over it. I don't want everything endup screwed up where some uncontrolled virus killing everyone or if you don't have a cyber hand or any other bodypart (yeah its cool but i prefer to touch real boobs instead of metal) your an outcast.

That really isn't how research works either. If you are making a virus, it is a bad investment to not place safeguards on it. If you are making a virus, you are generally not trying to increase its strength. If you manage to make body augmentation the norm and make lack of it something which causes stigma, then you'd have to have complete control of the education of at least one generation.

there are people out there who WILL make discoveries without being paid
people will invent without being paid

some people actually have fun with discovery and science, and do it for fun inside their houses

A lot of things simply aren't possible for one man to do inside his own house.
Advanced scientific equipment is expensive and difficult to build on your own. Many chemicals and substances are also extremely hard to get hold of if you do not work in a government funded position.

Many discoveries in the past were indeed made by people working in their sheds and I'm sure a few still will, but for every one man who splits the atom in his back yard a thousand more will be making greater progress by working as a team with a budget, using materials and machines that their hobbyist friends don't have access to and unconstrained by having to do another job at the same time.
The garage scientist isn't dead, however the list of things that a man can easily discover on his own is running low. There's only so much you can do with your wage, and you can't devote a whole day to your research as you have to go to work.
Any real discussion about scientific progress should really be about the people who are paid to do it and have access to government funding, that's where the real discoveries are made.

its also where the shall i say unproductive ones are made,

what do you use every day that was not created from a company, one that was started by these back yard scientists. You never forget the origin of what your doing. Also unless someone makes a profit off of an idea it will never become a "great" one such as electricity, the lightbulb, also anyone can get any equipment

Im talking more about invention, but they are very similar. Without products that inventors make, science would be useless

I am now fairly sure you don't have much of an idea of how modern scientific research is done.Not without incredibly expensive equipment and materials.Nothing terribly ground-breaking without, again, terribly expensive equipment.Can you list one invention that would be of significant import that can be done for 'fun' in someone's house?Lots of things that only required simple equipment and the mixing of cheap and readily available materials. There are few to none of this type of discovery yet to be made.And a huge majority made by large teams in labs using expensive equipment and materialsYou seem to have.Great ideas generate money. Money does not generate great ideas. By this metric, the Simpsons was a wonderful scientific advance.What equipment do you think is required for scientific research? Can you name any analytical techniques? Can you name 5 experimental apparatus?Invention and scientific research are wildly differing concepts. Scientific research may result in invention and invention may warrant scientific research, but they are very distinct.Invention takes as much expense as research, basically all of the time. Also, name the invention that makes calculus or knowledge of medicine useful.

I wouldn't really further discussion with that guy, he seems like he's a pseudo-intellectual who wants to be seen as some visionary.

Hmmm...I don't really think that scientific progression should be totally morally unbound, because really, while I see no problem with cloning, others do. Like, lots of people would be pissed off if you started trying to clone humans. And what's the benefit of being able to make a copy of yourself? I see none - it'd be way cheaper just to go out and ♥♥♥♥ somebody if you wanted someone to take care of or whatever. I think that if it is a morally-questionable endeavor, one should consider the usefulness. Take stem cell research - it could prove to be immensely useful, though it'll piss some people off. But in the long run, we can benefit from it.

Also, SNOW DAY!

Cloning results in different people anyway. Cloning occurs in nature as well. I believe that scientific progress should only be bound by educated majority opinion. If there are people basing their decision off misinformation or emotion, then they shouldn't be making the decision.

But still, if it has very little real benefit to anybody, why piss off a bunch of people, potentially causing more harm than help?

Cloning for organs arguably has quite a high benefit for some people, but is even more morally reprehensible than just cloning someone
But if you're going to throw away morals for science why keep them anywhere else? ;)

Because in other places it provides no potential benefit which would outweigh the sacrifice.

Scientists should be checked and regulated.
Now my reasons:
1- I wouldn't want a goddamn H-bomb fall on my head while I am sitting in my home in "my developing moslem country" because some ♥♥♥♥ for brains people blew some people speaking another language in a "developed" country and some politicians and know-it-all guys wanted to retaliate. If that bomb is not invented it cannot be dropped on my head in the first place. All technological investments and efforts specifically diverted toward creating weaponry should be stopped with mutual understanding. This planet is not the playground of a species that thinks of itself as the gifted child, but it is to be shared. And in order to share it we should avoid building things that are, by their purposes of invention, capable of destroying another living thing's life and ecosystem.

2- Unchecked progress calls for catastrophic results. There should always be tension between progress/going forth and restraint/contemplation. Intellect, while the driving force behind scientific leaps, should not be deprived of the advice and management of Wisdom. Because things that happen in films and books such as the Terminator, 12 Monkeys, The Day of the Triffids, Cat's Cradle and many others might not be as fictitious as they seem and take place sometime if science grows up and takes its steps unchecked. You can't notice the ants in your path while running and crush them, but while walking you can see and avoid them. Taking slow steps and looking back %25 of the time we look forward is a good way to avoid harm to ourselves and the environment because nobody is rushing us anywhere as long as we don't start the rush.

In short, scientists should be bound by some regulations so that they won't blow up the world or invent some virus that is going to kill everyone. Animal testing is also really cruel because they are torturing animals who only want to live their own damn life. Yes, we eat animals, but I don't eat twenty cows or lambs a year, let alone 20 mice, or 20 cats, 20 pidgeons, etc. For example, they should find out a way of creating their own special test subject homunculus and should cease to test on animals as soon as they are able to create that tabula rasa/clay pidgeon/clean sheet creature. But that is a utopic thing that will never happen as "self preservation" and feeling "the fittest" goes, so we don't need to panic as we are still the king!

You don't really seem to understand how weapons come to be. The nuclear weapon and nuclear energy are irrevocably intertwined; without research on one there wouldn't have been the other. 'X Fictional situation might not be as fictitious as it seems' isn't exactly a well-defined argument.

You don't eat 20 animals a year? Out of 365 days in a year, how many do you eat meat? And how much of that meat would come from the same animal?

Scientists aren't one ones wanting to nuke people, either. Mad science is pretty much unheard of: However, politicians and the military using scientific knowledge for weaponry isn't. One point: Haber used a method to create cyanide gas, Zyklon B, to use as an insecticide. The Nazis used it to kill Jews. Splitting the atom was used to discover ways of creating cheaper energy. The American and Russian governments wanted bombs.
In Day of the Triffids, the triffids are (possibly) made through bioengineering, likely funded by companies to make cheap oils from. The meteor shower is a government weapon.

Scientists are not the driving force behind dangerous discoveries. Science is a tool, and scientists use the tool to solve problems, or on the command of governments. Why say you should regulate science, but the regulation is by the very people who command scientists to find the most destructive discoveries? Science isn't a mad bomb-making scheme, it's seeking knowledge, and using that knowledge for practical applications.

When I gave that arbitrary 20 I was trying to suggest that I'mnot contributing to the suffering of generations of animals in labs and we couldn't possibly surpass animal testers in agonising those animals.

I gave those fictional examples because the line between science fiction and actual discoveries is usually a blurry and short one. Something you watched ten years ago in a movie might have as well been produced today which means that you have a lot to fear. Because as long as science and scientific discoveries offer less than they actually solve and reach less people than they should actually reach, they make more harm than good.

You said that research for nukes and nuclear plants go hand in hand. Now that we have another eco disaster like Chernobyl at hand in Japan has it ever occured to you that neither research should have been conducted in the first place? Harnessing the power of the sun here on earth would of course have a catch, wouldn't it? Scientists have been able to create energy, yes. But were they also able to keep it clean? If the consequences, unforeseen or not, equals to ruined lives and environment, is the price of progress worth it?

As for the concept of regulation; Let's say that scientists are kept under watch by other scientists. Say there is a global scientific research ethics council which consists of elder scientists who do not actively participate in research and who do not do business with any government and who accepts or refuses research proposals. The council would be an entity above all governments and would approve of the projects they deem worthy of being benefitable to the humankind. No polticians, military, or corporations/profiteers allowed on the decision to carry out the research or not. I would've trusted science then. But we are a long way from even that happening. Unless science guides us to more environment friendly ways of living, we or the ecosystem pays for our comforts.

A side note is that we should be able to "feel" some things in our way. In our era data and numbers can always be falsified and outdated, and superseded, and obsoloted, and discarded, or deemed right or wrong by opposing parties. We have a constant flow of information but no way to filter it or navigate through it aside from how we feel about it. However, that will not cut it for the scientists because we are not the ones who can go to work and create the next viral strain or discover a new way to affect and control the masses. Scientists should be able to filter the information they have obtained in their own light and feeling; not for the money, power, or glory but for the people of their Earth.

I hope my examples and analogies do not overshadow the main point I am trying to make. Basically good science in the hands of bad people has a lot more cons than pros which we usually cannot enjoy:
- Progress for making nukes = bad
- Progress for building nuclear reactors = bad
- Progress for more Toyotas and hamburgers = bad
- Progress for the disabled = good
- Progress for extinct species = good
- Progress for better drones = bad
- Progress for brainwashing = bad
- Progress for money/power/glory = bad
- Progress for the people/Earth = good
If science can not be released from the clutches of corporations, military, or the politicians = bad.