Even "security", that word so fretful to science and to the free exchange of ideas, is no modern innovation. Witness Bacon's elaborate encrypting of his work, Newton's allegedly purposeful distortion of a formula, Da Vinci who kept his long undeciphered notebooks in mirror-writing, and other examples that might be cited where the aim was apparently to prevent harm from ensuing as a result of the unexpert use of knowledge or wrong intent.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice, that favorite fable of the laboratory assistant who learns the spell to make the mop carry water but who does not know how to stop the operation once it has begun, suggests the cataclysmic consequence where the sorcerer had not been sufficiently "security-minded" with, his formula. That might be a very, old piece of science-writing.