“Science has long been in the value business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best efforts to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. This is how norms of rational thought are made effective… The answer to the question "What should I believe, and why should I believe it?"”

Max Weber (1949/2011), Methodology of Social Sciences, Edward E. Shils & Henry A. Finch (transl. & ed.). p. 55

Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities.
Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 591

River out of Eden (1995)

Ends and Means (1937)

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 7, “Postmodernist Critiques of Science: Is Science Universal?” (p. 115)

Comparable to remarks of William Masters, in "Two Sex Researchers on the Firing Line" LIFE magazine (24 June 1966), p. 49: "Science by itself has no moral dimension. But it does seek to establish truth. And upon this truth morality can be built."
Variants:
Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.
As quoted in Futurehype: The Myths of Technology Change (2009) by Robert B. Seidensticker
Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently. Should the knife have not been developed?
As quoted in Science & Society (2012) by Peter Daempfle, Ch. 6, p. 97<!-- also in Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk: How to Tell the Difference (2013) by Peter Daempfle, Ch. 9, p. 166 -->
Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application (1976)
Context: One of the most disconcerting issues of our time lies in the fact that modern science, along with miracle drugs and communications satellites, has also produced nuclear bombs. What makes it even worse, science has utterly failed to provide an answer on how to cope with them. As a result, science and scientists have often been blamed for the desperate dilemma in which mankind finds itself today.
Science, all by itself, has no moral dimension. The same poison-containing drug which cures when taken in small doses, may kill when taken in excess. The same nuclear chain reaction that produces badly needed electrical energy when harnessed in a reactor, may kill thousands when abruptly released in an atomic bomb. Thus it does not make sense to ask a biochemist or a nuclear physicist whether his research in the field of toxic substances or nuclear processes is good or bad for mankind. In most cases the scientist will be fully aware of the possibility of an abuse of his discoveries, but aside from his innate scientific curiosity he will be motivated by a deep-seated hope and belief that something of value for his fellow man may emerge from his labors.
The same applies to technology, through which most advances in the natural sciences are put to practical use.

Anatol Rapoport Science and the goals of man: a study in semantic orientation. Greenwood Press, 1950/1971. p. 224; Partly cited in: Book review http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2040&context=lalrev by Harold G. Wren, in Louisiana Law Review, Vol 13, nr 4, May 1953
1950s
Context: A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concern with the best available map of reality. The scientist will always seek a description of events which enables him to predict most by assuming least. He thus already prefers a particular form of behavior. If moralities are systems of preferences, here is at least one point at which science cannot be said to be completely without preferences. Science prefers good maps.

Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), p. 448