Is “Playing God” A Meaningful or Useful Concept?

Writing in Prospect Magazine, Philip Ball argues that the phrase “playing god” is a meaningless concept that has become simply an anti-science pejorative,

But it seems remarkable that the “playing God” accusation has been afforded such currency, doing service in just about every news report from the Daily Mail to the Guardian. For one thing, no one seems in the least embarrassed to be parroting a cliché that would make football managers’ “at the end of the day” seem like inspired imagery. But what is more, no one seems in the least concerned to enquire what this phrase means or why it is being used. When Kirsty Wark launched it at Venter on Newsnight, he batted it back with the comment that it has been asserted for just about every medical advance ever made – an unconscious allusion, perhaps, to J. B. S. Haldane’s dictum that “There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.”

I’m not a fan of the phrase, but I think Wikipedia is correct that,

Usually the expression is used to invoke a precautionary principle or to suggest that someone should refrain from a controversial action.

To the extent that “playing god” as become shorthand for the precautionary principle, whether or not you find the phrase meaningless or meaningful large depends on whether or not the precautionary principle itself is meaningful.