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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”

#181

Post by bergenty »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #160
bergenty wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I feel like our society does require some gatekeepers 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?

There is something to building around a consensus on who they are roughly around the phrase “first cause no harm”

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

#182

Post by throwawayacc2 »

bergenty wrote: post #181
throwawayacc2 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like our society does require some gatekeepers 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?

There is something to building around a consensus on who they are roughly around the phrase “first cause no harm”

What is harm?

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

#183

Post by teawrecks »

al_mandi wrote: post #89
tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

I'm a person of faith. At the same time, we point out that the religion of "scientism" exists whether people admit it or not, especially when they claim that they "believe in science". Correct faith and science are not contradictory. And those people mix up belief in the unseen with blind faith without proof or evidence.

I think your view on this is being influenced by the limitations of the language you're using.

When a religious person says they "believe" something, it means they operate as if it were true even though they have no evidence to indicate it as such (a.k.a. the god of the gaps).

When a scientist says they "believe" something, it means all evidence gathered so far indicates that it is true, but if more data comes in and a different conclusion is drawn, then the belief should be abandoned.

These are two entirely different concepts, but in English we tend to just say "believe". The scientific "belief" is more akin to a mathematical theorem: - if X, then Y - All data indicates X is probably true, so for now I believe Y. - New data indicates X is probably false, so I no longer believe Y.

And of course when you're engineering something, it's not that simple because you need contingencies. X may have a 99% chance of being true, but you still need to have a plan for for that 1% case.

None of this is something that religion considers whatsoever; with religion, a belief is true and anything contrary to that belief is considered false, even if that thing is a measurement of reality itself. There are still huge swaths of people who believe a person thousands of years ago was immaculately conceived, walked on water, turned water into wine, all things that you and I know are inconsistent with reality. But all contrary evidence simply doesn't matter, the "belief" remains. This is the antithesis of science.

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

#184

Post by teawrecks »

tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

The first part is just basic science: don't draw generalized conclusions from data that was poorly sampled.

But I agree the second part is questionable. Scientists shouldn't decide whether something is right or wrong. They just conduct experiments, gather data, draw conclusions, and share the results. Obviously they should consider the ethical impacts of conducting their experiments, but beyond that, all valid conclusions should be welcome.

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

#185

Post by mistrial9 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #88
tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

> "The teachings of the Church must not be undermined by heliocentrism or evolution research, so findings in those areas will be strictly filtered for heresy before publication." This is actually a bit of a historical myth that due to anti-religious bias prevails widely. Contrary to widespread belief, the works of Charles Darwin were never on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books, nor did the Catholic Church…

without handy references, I believe that part of the significance of Church dogma on stars and celestial mechanics, was that astronomy was widely practiced by many civilizations to varying rigorous results, but that science and most all abstract learning was also connected to religious or mythological meanings. Different societies, in particular the overall Muslim world of today, viewed the movements of the stars and planets with different meanings, which sometimes were taken very seriously. This connects to the imagery of the three wise men at christian nativity, who follow a star but give their gifts to the newborn.

Social prestige associated with higher learning was a subject of rivalry and competition, as most things were in those places at that time it seems.

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

#186

Post by contravariant »

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 are terrible examples. In both cases you're advocating to keep vital information about how a disease works and spreads hidden in order to protect the social standing of an ethnic group while that very group is most at risk.

Heck this isn't even an hypothetical scenario, you'd suggest we should have kept secret the ways in which monkeypox spreads?

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

#187

Post by antiquark »

tarakat wrote: post #6

Yet, people can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. [..] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potent…

> ableist

This seems like an implicit denial that people can have different abilities.

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

#189

Post by freejazz »

singlow wrote: post #81
volkadav wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd probably benefit from reading and thinking about this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism sadly, what is called a fact is a malleable thing in the hands of the ill-intentioned, and all too many bigots are more than happy to pass off pseudo-science as the real deal. "science" isn't some abstract thing, it's composed of people and their actions, and as i think every adult will recog…

If the science is bad, then the science is bad. If you do good science and find a result that doesn't fit your preconceived ideas of right and wrong, that doesn't make the science bad. You don't need to be concerned with the ethical impact of the truth, but you do need to be concerned with the ethics of your process. I don't understand what the actions of pseudo-science bigots has to do with someone who is doing real…

Oh, good and bad. It's just that simple!

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

#190

Post by 8note »

wizofaus wrote: post #171
tarakat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stranger things has had many likeable Russians though?
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