Scientific discoveries should be shared among scientists all around the world; governments and businesses should not keep any discoveries secret.

Scientific discoveries should be shared among scientists all around the world; governments and businesses should not keep any discoveries secret.

It is hard to deny that intellectual property rights should be preserved, and such a statement leads impressionable people to generate the idea that scientific discoveries should be kept inside their original countries or businesses. However, such a statement suffers from both factual and logical fallacies, and should be examined meticulously. As far as I’m concerned, all scientific discoveries should be shared among scientists all around the world.

The main purpose of doing research is to promote the progression of human society, and sharing scientific discoveries definitely corresponds with the principle. If the discoveries are kept secret, it may only benefit a single company or limited people by winning them advantages over other businesses and countries, and how could it help the whole human civilization? The discoveries which are purely exploited in the competition inside the human civilization could not fully prove their value, which is to benefit everyone living on the earth and lead the human civilization to go forward.

Nevertheless, a voice arises that sharing scientific discoveries might be a violation of the authors’ intellectual property rights, and lower researchers’ initiative in innovation. Ironically, for most of the researchers working for businesses and goverments, seeing their innovation being widely used and helping society can be not only important, but also cheerful, because it just proves the value of their research and satisfies their self-esteem. In fact, those who hinder the sharing of scientific discoveries are those selfish businesses and short-sighted countries who benefit from the discoveries, but keep them secret to help themselves stand out from their competitors. In one word, those who oppose the sharing of discoveries only think about themselves instead of really respecting intellectual property rights——they just pretend to be considerate to hide their selfishness.

In a nutshell, I strongly hold that scientific discoveries should be shared worldwide.