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

nature.com

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

#171

Post by wizofaus »

tarakat wrote: post #83
Enginerrrd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is worse than religion because it’s pretending to be rational. And many many people will be fooled. I hate to make the comparison because it's such a trope, but, IMO this is one of the most insidious things the Nazis did to indoctrinate the population: They did things like send people into schools and they would cherry-pick the weakest, least intelligent, least-liked Jewish kid they could find and set him along…

Good thing this practice has since ceased, and is entirely absent from movies and news reporting, where care is taken that even the most maligned groups are represented by, well, representative individuals, instead of cherry-picking the most unlikable members.

Hey at least Stranger Things had one semi-likable Russian.

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

#172

Post by nradov »

timr wrote: post #125
DrBazza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Editors, authors and reviewers will hopefully find the guidance helpful when considering and discussing potential benefits and harms arising from manuscripts dealing with human population groups categorized on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age,…

> How do you effectively discuss, and communicate, that for example sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance affects people of African descent, or skin cancer is prevalent in people of European ancestry? And that poor and badly educated people are susceptible to bad diets, lifestyles and medical issues that are a consequence of that? Don't worry, it says in the guidelines that race and ethnicity aren't real: > Race…

Everyone is of African descent, depending on how far back you look. So it's a rather vague term, and becoming less useful over time as previously distinct groups become more intermixed.

In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form.

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

#173

Post by wizofaus »

cycomanic wrote: post #117
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

No, science must pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. There is no such thing as a hate fact.

I think there is a lot more nuance than people admit. Lets take an example of we have a deadly disease spreading through the population (much more deadly than covid) . Let's say a scientist finds out that the disease is primarily (exclusively) spread by red haired people. Should they just publish the finding? The fact becoming openly known might lead to mobs of people chasing red hairs and locking them up or even lyn…

Those sorts of hypothetical "facts" don't just happen though. At best there might be some research indicating a very high correlation between hair colour and level of infectiousness. But just as often as not it turns out not to be the straightforward connection an initial finding might suggest. So there's no reason to withhold publishing of the results of such research, but every reason to ensure that new research is presented in a way that makes it clear that they're new preliminary findings that are likely to be overturned as more research is done and better understanding is achieved. If that still sets the mobs loose then your only option is government intervention to protect the victims. Suppressing knowledge about the real world is not a feasible long (or even medium) term strategy anyway - it's there to be discovered by anyone and everyone.

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

#174

Post by throwawayacc2 »

bitwize wrote: post #168

We are converging on a new definition of truth which takes into account social harm. Claims which protect the marginalized and/or harm those groups deemed to be hate groups must be taken as true; claims which do the opposite must be taken as false. It kind of sucks if you believe in objectivity -- but the postmodernists taught us there is no such thing. Any pretense to objectivity is a means to trick your sorry ass a…

I cannot help feeling like what we see in things like this is the manifestation of a new religion. My only hope is, this woke/scientist religion doesn’t become a new christianity and instead dies sooner. But even if it goes the way of christianity my only happy though is there will be a point in the future when the wokes will be looked down with the same disgust and revulsion they look down on christianity now.

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

#175

Post by nubero »

AlanYx wrote: post #86
nubero wrote: post #21

Enrico Fermi comes to mind: “Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.” I guess he wasn’t talking about the magazine…

It's interesting that the linked policy says almost the exact opposite of Fermi's statement, implying that ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge: "...considerations of harm can occasionally supersede the goal of seeking or sharing new knowledge, and a decision not to undertake or not to publish a project may be warranted."

Indeed… The rot has spread frighteningly far.

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

#176

Post by UnpossibleJim »

nradov wrote: post #165
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are truly worried about electing people like Donald Trump they'll broaden education and, in particular, education in the hard sciences like maths and computer science to bolster critical thinking and logic. At that point we won't elect reality show hucksters who blatantly lie and foment sedition.

And yet a surprising number of violent terrorists have engineering degrees. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-...

That's a fascinating paper. There are a couple of issues I take with it. Their dismissal of recruitment of engineers because they use them recklessly in terror attacks doesn't seem to hold much water. If They were recruited on the promise of heaven by Jihad, then logically, they would want to die by Jihad. And the small sample size, plus their own mentioned Saudi Exception seem to flaw their own paper, even to them.

But it's still fascinating and a great paper, thank you for sharing! Plus the over representation of both Nazis and Islamist terrorist groups is fascinating. I'm completely geeked out! Thanks again!

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

#177

Post by ZeroGravitas »

This all seems quite dull considering the other reactions here:

> Studies that use the constructs of race and/or ethnicity should explicitly motivate their use. Race/ethnicity should not be used as proxies for other variables — for example, socioeconomic status or income. For studies involving data collected from human participants, researchers should explain:

* who provided the classification terms (the participants, the researchers or third parties)

* what the classification terms are

* how racial/ethnic identity was determined (by the participants, the researchers or third parties)

> Biomedical studies should not conflate genetic ancestry (a biological construct) and race/ethnicity (sociopolitical constructs): although race/ethnicity are important constructs for the study of disparities in health outcomes and health care, empirically established genetic ancestry is the appropriate construct for the study of the biological aetiology of diseases or differences in treatment response. If race/ethnicity are used in the context of disease aetiology due to the unavailability of genetic ancestry data, this should be done with caution and clarification.

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

#180

Post by timr »

nradov wrote: post #172
timr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you effectively discuss, and communicate, that for example sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance affects people of African descent, or skin cancer is prevalent in people of European ancestry? And that poor and badly educated people are susceptible to bad diets, lifestyles and medical issues that are a consequence of that? Don't worry, it says in the guidelines that race and ethnicity aren't real: > Race…

Everyone is of African descent, depending on how far back you look. So it's a rather vague term, and becoming less useful over time as previously distinct groups become more intermixed. In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experime…

I was waiting for the first person to say this, which is why I explicitly wrote "black" when describing the disproportionate rates of sickle cell in black children vs. white children. This isn't some rhetorical game. We know what "race" is, intuitively, and we know that it correlates strongly with real-world biological outcomes.

These guidelines are gaslighting people into ignoring broadly useful categories because we don't have a reductive way of defining them. We don't have a biological test that defines race (yet), ergo, it doesn't exist. Except that's wrong. It's absurd.

> In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form.

If we could do that -- relate the (known) gene for sickle cell to some other "genotype" that captures the racial bias we know exists -- we'd have a strict biological definition for race, wouldn't we?

Aside from that, we know the "phenotype" that correlates with the illness. Black people have it, at high rates.

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