Somewhere across this mighty land, four human beings are enrolled in a secret Department of Energy experiment code-named Moose Drool. They are numbered among 331 souls in a dozen classified research projects listed by a FOIA release to the Federation of American Scientists. Now secret science is not really science, of course, removed as it is from the community of freely communicating scientists that has defined this type of endeavor since Francis Bacon’s day. So what is it? On numerous occasions since World War II, secret research sponsored by the U.S. Government has amounted to criminal abuse of unwitting subjects. (No one should be reassured by the Energy Department’s ranking of risk in the various experiments as “minimal.”) Arduous investigations by journalists and official committees long after the fact have placed some of these horrors in the public record. But there is no way to know whether the historical account is complete. There is no way to know what Moose Drool is, other than perhaps a stupid joke by some federal employee/beer-drinker who maybe thinks of himself or herself as a scientist. Bioethicists turn especially distraught about secret research, because there is no reason whatsoever to trust that the ends will justify the means.
