151–160 of 883 posts
People must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. Science must be free from this nonsense, and just be science. What a joke.
Science is (and should continue to be) cold and unfeeling. That's why it's science. Science!
There is a lot of off the cuff reactions in the comments, most from non-scientists, who obviously did not read the actual guidelines that are being proposed, which primarily encourage full transparency and contextualization when scientists use group variables, and to avoid over generalization of findings by relying on stereotypes without empirical basis.
I am really curious about your source on this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moreover, how can any of these be enforced, and by whom? At least you know who your church authority figures are and who to criticize. Where do we even start if we let Twitter outrage decide whether science is potentially harmful and should be allowed or not? This is worse than religion because it’s pretending to be rational. And many many people will be fooled.
It can be enforced by Nature refusing to publish papers with bad results, obviously.
The question is how do you define bad results if you include provisions for socially constructed feelings about whether results are socially and politically correct or not.
I hope hope hope hope hope underneath all the crummy filler language and what appears to be rationalization for a distinctly unscientific expansion of editorial discretion to suppress unsightly factual results, Nature is simply saying: don't study social constructs, it's not scientific, a phrase with which I think I loosely agree (without deeper thought as to whether there are valid situations to study socially constructed groups that can't be better expressed by studying the non-social-construct characteristic).
If that's all this is, I think we'll be fine. But I have a real hard time believing that Nature would allow a paper that found there to be cognitive discrepancies between people with genealogical lineages that closely align to the socially constructed races, under these new guidelines, since arguably the "effects on society" might be negative.
And I know people who would ignore the science and fight to the metaphorical death to suppress that type of information regardless of the terminology used. So, understandably, I'm not super confident this will be handled carefully and appropriately. Notice there is no burden of proof or scientific rigor required to determine that the effects some some research are negatively impacting society. A presumption that they might is all that's needed. I worry scientific pursuit will suffer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The proposed medication is worse than the disease. Fight fascism/racism/whatever with state supported lies (of omission). What could go wrong?
If you read carefully I'm actually not proposing any specific course and I think the reality will be nuanced and highly context-specific. What I am opposing is the idea that researchers should be completely disinterested in, even ignore, what other elements are interested in their work and how they might use it. The consensus in this comment section is that that sort of ignorance is itself an ideal, and I think that'…
Why?
> The consensus in this comment section is that that sort of ignorance is itself an ideal, and I think that's very wrong and has lead to obvious harms in the past.
You think that because you have biases, like all humans do. You say harms can arise. Let’s try to do an exercise. It’s the late 40s early 50s and research is finally starting to show there are, in fact, no real biological races of humans. We are one human race. The dutiful scientist at that time considers the society he is in, the notions of morality he has and decides it would be harmful to publish his research. Who knows what some crazy extremists will do with this fact. They might give the blacks rights, they might rile them up, they might they might even allow miscegenation! Bear in mind, all these were societal harms at that time!
Is this the future you wish? Or this scenario doesn’t count because it’s the wrong politics? Have we found the end all be all of morality and must now protect it at all costs, even from facts if need be?
> Research on any domain of human activity is a political act and produces a political product, the researchers need to be aware of that and actively participate in that part of the process as well
I disagree. The way I see it, there is no politics in science. Science is not a set of beliefs. It’s a process. It’s a method of observing empirical reality and producing methods to describe it.
> Wishing or pretending it were otherwise is dangerous.
For whom?
Meta comment: It's disappointing to see this axed from the front page. While I agree we should generally avoid low quality flame-war inducing content, the fact that Nature , one of the most prestigious and renown scientific magazines/journals has adopted such a viewpoint certainly warrants exposure and discussion.
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,…
In this scenario the "oppressed" group could only be "oppressed further" if you assume the position that abortion is killing a person, otherwise you wouldn't be able to call it a further oppression since nobody came into existence to be oppressed. I don't see how, if you assume the common pro-choice paradigm which usually coincides with the views you express, this could be considered wrong.
Thinking that aborting female embryos because they will be considered less important in society is wrong, AND think that removing a women's right to choose entirely based on religious teachings is wrong, AND thinking that forced sterilization of a whole cultural/ethnic group is wrong, are not incompatible.
Where are you getting these opinions from? I'd honestly have a hard look at where you got these thoughts from, they are pretty backwards, and not morally considered at all.
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,…
>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.
No. What? Are you insane? If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.
EDIT: Although I disagree with your choice of example, I would also like to say, that I do think that there ethics is important in any profession, including in scientific research and publication.
EDIT 2: I think your reasoning and people who think like you comes from this (very American notion) of thinking that being homosexual or being deaf or being mute somehow makes you part of a "community". And then from this comes this idea of oppression when the community is deprived of one of their new prospective members. I find this whole thinking absurd.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, that was always true. It just wasn’t possible for those people to spend all day yelling at each other for it. The context of the disagreements was largely limited to newspapers and politicians. Some assumption of professionalism, editing and journalistic integrity was included with nationwide dialogues. The internet, Twitter, political amplification, bot amplification, media consolidation, etc have made it 1000x…
Some people could disagree on a topic and go about their day. That isn't true for everyone. One person's disagreement is another person's human rights. A lot of people prefer the comfort of ignorance to the discomfort of that knowledge.
A lot of people prefer the comfort of ignorance to the discomfort of that knowledge and even more prefer the comfort of their self made moral high horse from which they chastise everyone they deem unfit.
Meta comment: It's disappointing to see this axed from the front page. While I agree we should generally avoid low quality flame-war inducing content, the fact that Nature , one of the most prestigious and renown scientific magazines/journals has adopted such a viewpoint certainly warrants exposure and discussion.
I don't see any evidence that it was "axed", it is not getting that many upvotes and is falling to later pages.
"In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication." I'm sure our demigods will gladly enlighten us with their wisdom to distinguish between misthoughts and correct thoughts. So that when journalists claim to be following the science there will be no dissenting voice in research to disagree. Those who defend opposing ideas will have no leg to stand on and will…
At a very simple level, it’s akin to not yelling bomb in a theatre since it would be faster and more efficient for everyone to evacuate in an orderly manner without being informed of the bomb. I feel like our society does require some gatekeepers and can’t be run well if it’s just vocal collectives yelling at each other.
Which should be people who broadly speaking share your political and ethical beliefs, yes?
And, if the gatekeepers are people with a different sense of morality, it is fascism and must be torn down in the name of freedom, correct?