“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans”

This has garnered quite a lot of reactions from the comments. I'd like to ask a genuine question about this, from the perspective of assuming that Nature is acting in good faith about this.

Let's say someone has calculated the polygenic scores (PGS) of Heteronormativity, meaning that a model, can predict with a decent level of accuracy that someone will or will not be straight from their DNA.

This, in an ideal world, would be good knowledge to have. You can raise you child knowing and accepting this reality.

In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance? It seems that many in the comments would say yes, and that the pursuit of knowledge is the clear winner, and anything else is merely the price of progress. Which I might ask, you would say the same thing if you were gay?

I want to make one thing clear, this is not a silly thought experiment. This is very possible right now with the advent of biobanks, GWAS tooling, and machine learning. Nature is thinking about these things when writing that up.

I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled. So, then, you fundamentally agree with Nature's stance, do you not? We're merely talking about where the line of publishing exists, not if one should exist at all? Are you not being a bit overzealous with your declarations of orthodoxy?

"[...] Subsequent pontiffs continued to exhort the episcopate and the whole body of the faithful to be on their guard against heretical writings, whether old or new; and one of the functions of the Inquisition when it was established was to exercise a rigid censorship over books put in circulation. The majority of the condemnations were at that time of a specially theological character. With the discovery of the art of printing, and the wide and cheap diffusion of all sorts of books which ensued, the need for new precautions against heresy and immorality in literature made itself felt, and more than one pope (Sixtus IV. in 1479 and Alexander VI. in 1501) gave special directions to the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Magdeburg regarding the growing abuses of the printing press; in 1515 the Lateran council formulated the decree De Impressione Librorum, which required that no work should be printed without previous examination by the proper ecclesiastical authority, the penalty of unlicensed printing being excommunication of the culprit, and confiscation and destruction of the books. The council of Trent in its fourth session, 8th April 1546, forbade the sale or possession of any anonymous religious book which had not previously been seen and approved by the ordinary; in the same year the university of Louvain, at the command of Charles V., prepared an “Index” of pernicious and forbidden books, a second edition of which appeared in 1550."

As usual, the academic sociopoliticals don't want to delve into issues of wealth and poverty. Notably this has been a real issue in pharmaceutical drug safety trials, which have tended to exploit poor populations in industrialized countries as well as, more recently, the impoverished populations in developing nations. There's no mention of this whatsoever, instead it's about this:

"We also developed two specific sections — on race, ethnicity and racism; and on sex, gender identity/presentation and orientation — that clarify issues with these constructs and explain that racism and discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation should have no place in science."

The trend towards moving clinical trials to developing nations was first commented on over a decade ago and is in full swing today, but it doesn't even get a mention. For example:

"Ethical and Scientific Implications of the Globalization of Clinical Research", Glickman et al. (2009)"

http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/schering-plough-workshop/file...

> "This phenomenon raises important questions about the economics and ethics of clinical research and the translation of trial results to clinical practice: Who benefits from the globalization of clinical trials? What is the potential for exploitation of research subjects?"

That's an explicit fundamentally important ethical issue, but raising it might imperil academic funding from pharmaceutical corporations, so they stick to their safe topics. It's really kind of pathetic.

I don't think this is true. I think a lot of people were insulated from information that created a perception for them that those disagreements didn't exist.

A lot of people are surprised to find out that people who don't live near them don't share their values.

Beautifully put. What I loved about science growing up is that it valued truth and knowledge (or such was the impression I had of science in history). If someone argues for self-censoring truth/knowledge to avoid XYZ values today, they would've been the same people to argue self-censoring the truth about heliocentrism yesterday. It's a tragedy to see science fall prey to dogmatism and I hope we can see some kind of new field emerge that has the courage to pursue truth first and worry about implications second.