{"id":3727,"date":"2026-06-04T23:01:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3727"},"modified":"2026-06-04T23:01:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:01:25","slug":"d41586-026-01770-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3727","title":{"rendered":"Science with military applications is cited more than civilian-only research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Drones are one example of a technology that emerged out of dual-use research.<\/span>Credit: Costfoto\/NurPhoto via Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

Dual-use research that leads to applications for both civilian and military or security purposes is geographically widespread and more scientifically influential than is research that has strictly civilian applications.<\/p>\n

An analysis of data from bibliometric databases and US patent records found that 14% of 600,000 scientific papers published between 1981 and 2005 originated from dual-use research projects (see \u2018Dual-use research is cited more frequently\u2019). The study also found that dual-use research publications are cited more than their non-dual-use research counterparts. The findings were published in Science<\/i> on 4 June1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil now, many of the discussions and relevant studies related to the dual-use research have been largely based on the anecdotal evidence for historical cases,\u201d says study author Seokbeom Kwon, who studies science policy at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea.<\/p>\n

The new analysis \u201cis the first large scale empirical baseline to illustrate dual-use research and provides a systematic way of identifying [it] at scale,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a shared understanding in the community, particularly those working at the cutting edge of technology, that dual use is extremely widespread. And this is confirmed by the data that we see here,\u201d says Mattias Bj\u00f6rnmalm, secretary-general of CESAER, an association of science and technology universities, who is based in Brussels.<\/p>\n

\"DUAL
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Source: Ref. 1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

What is dual-use research?<\/h2>\n

In the analysis, Kwon identified papers that had been cited by at least two patents, which had been submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) up until 2020. He considered a paper to be dual-use research if the USPTO flagged one of the two patents that cite the paper for a security review by US federal authorities. Around 0.2% of the total papers were cited by two patents that underwent such review.<\/p>\n

The papers cited by patents that did not require a security-sensitive review according to USPTO records were considered non-dual-use research.<\/p>\n

However, some researchers say this definition of dual-use research is too broad. Michael Imperiale, a biosecurity policy researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says that the analysis might be \u201cvastly overestimating the amount of dual-use research\u201d, because \u201cwe don\u2019t know what the national security concerns are that caused an application to be flagged\u201d.<\/p>\n

David Gillum, a biosafety and biosecurity researcher at Arizona State University in Tempe, agrees. \u201cThe study\u2019s definition of dual-use research differs substantially from the concept of dual-use research of concern that is used in contemporary US policy frameworks,\u201d he says. The latter refers to a narrower category of research with applications that can pose security risks to society and require oversight by national policies, Gillum explains.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Australia dials back effort to control \u2018dual use\u2019 research<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/article>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost any advanced scientific research can have both beneficial and potentially harmful applications,\u201d he adds. \u201cThere is a risk of conflating ordinary scientific advancement with the much smaller subset of research that presents significant biosecurity concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kwon acknowledges that the studies included in his analysis represent \u201ca small subset of the entire dual-use research\u201d and more sensitive scientific discoveries might remain confidential and are not published publicly. The idea was to identify research on \u201csensitive matters from a national security perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prioritizing defence<\/h2>\n

Kwon went on to analyse the affiliations of the authors of these studies and their funding. He found that dual-use research produced by or with the support of US federal agencies declined from 41% in the early 1980s to 22% by 2005.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drones are one example of a technology that emerged out of dual-use research.Credit: Costfoto\/NurPhoto via Getty Dual-use research that leads to applications for both civilian and military or security purposes is geographically widespread and more scientifically influential than is research that has strictly civilian applications. An analysis of data from bibliometric databases and US patent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[141,656,98,99,97,235],"class_list":["post-3727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-funding","tag-government","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science","tag-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}