• What are the alternatives?
• What are the risks involved? For whom?
• What are the costs involved? Who will pay them?
• What are the benefits? For whom?

Having citizens who analyze the risks and benefits before taking action (or perhaps before choosing inaction) will benefit society in the long term.

• Current ethics in science hold that research involving human subjects may be conducted only with the informed consent of the subjects, even if this constraint limits some kinds of potentially important research or influences the results. Benchmarks 1C5.
• When if comes to participation in research that could pose risks to society, most scientists believe that a decision to participate or not is a matter of personal ethics rather than professional ethics.Benchmarks 1C5.
• The strongly held traditions of science, including its commitment to peer review and publication, serve to keep the vast majority of scientists well within the bounds of ethical professional behavior. Deliberate deceit is rare and likely to be exposed sooner or later by the scientific enterprise itself.Benchmarks 1C7.
• When violations of these scientific ethical traditions are discovered, they are strongly condemned by the scientific community, and the violators then have difficulty regaining the respect of other scientists.Benchmarks 1C7.
• The long-term interests of society are best served when key issues concerning proposals to introduce or curtail technology are addressed before final decisions are made.Benchmarks 3C3.
• New technologies increase some risks and decrease others. Benchmarks 3C5 (6-8).
• Understanding science alone will not resolve local, national, or global challenges.NSES F6b.
• Individuals and society much decide on proposals involving new research and the introduction of new technologies into society.NSES F6d.
• Decisions involve assessment of alternatives, risks, costs, and benefits and considerations of who benefits and who suffers, who pays and gains, and what the risks are and who bears them.NSES F6d.

Most Americans recognize that technology has provided new goods and services, but not that industrialization of agriculture, by eliminating the need for children to work in the fields, made it possible for them to attend school, thereby increasing the general education level of the population. Benchmarks p. 56.