Well connected - and I think this comparison is becoming more apt each passing day. These statements and policies are just so… egotistical … for lack of a better word. What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? How can you claim to respect all humans when you don’t respect the human cognitive ability to disagree? Thanks for posting.
> What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? "We" always agree on what the good is. If YOU don't agree, well, we'll have to sort that out, won't we?
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 never understood this perspective, that aborting fetuses whose prospects are guaranteed to be worse, is somehow wrong or even oppression, and somehow oppression of a whole group of other people completely unrelated to the family. If me and my wife are planning a baby, that's between us. There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child who is going to…
There is one very common case where people abort fetuses because of reasons that are not "saving the child from worse prospects". This is people not wanting girls because "girls are economic and social liabilities and boys are assets". In my country, sex-selective abortion has been so prevalent that doctors now don't tell parents the sex of the fetus. If they did, very quickly would there be a difference of millions between males and females in the population with all the social problems that brings about.
If somehow tomorrow, some research project resulted in a very cheap device, usable by anyone, that could tell the sex of a baby, I think one would have to at least seriously debate and ponder whether publishing such work is good for the country or not.
Well connected - and I think this comparison is becoming more apt each passing day. These statements and policies are just so… egotistical … for lack of a better word. What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? How can you claim to respect all humans when you don’t respect the human cognitive ability to disagree? Thanks for posting.
> What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? Did we ever agree? I always felt like Democracy is some kind of status quo between the incompatible.
No, there is no universal "good" otherwise wars would not occur. The American Civil War and WW2 are pretty classical examples of massive disagreements over the legitimacy of certain classes of humans. Had those wars not ended the way they did, black people would still be property, and Jews, Romani, and LGBT people would have been exterminated. There are still people who wish that we lived in that alternative history. Democracy is always a compromise, and when that breaks down, you get wars.
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'…
> I think the reality will be nuanced and highly context-specific
If you actually think that, you haven't been paying much attention to the behavior of the Twitter mob over the past few years.
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…
> A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first.
Who will then have to create a public health campaign targeted at, for example, gay men, and everyone will learn of the research anyways.
Besides which, most countries are led by people who constantly leak secrets. It would get out long before any action could be taken.
Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level. And yes that's all really bad and non-secular and society will be harmed because people, even with the best intentions, will try to filter facts. The two terminology clarifications they make I don't mind though: sex vs gender and race vs biological lineage. I think society would be better off with very clear and precise usage of those terms. I mentally fli…
>Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level.
At a practical level, it's very enforceable. You just setup a a "science-must-respect-dignity-of-all-humans" committee at every major publication and university, and just block any violating papers from publication, prevent grants from going to 'bad' research and don't hire anyone who does subscribe to your orthodoxy.
We're well on our way to do that (if not already there).
I posted this to garner some discussion but wanted to be clear it's not an endorsement. The new IRB ethics guidelines Nature is pushing here is absurd and would be a disaster in my opinion.
And sadly, I correctly guessed what the article would be about just from reading the title.
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 w…
Are you taking about scientific research (as per the original article) or healthcare delivery? Medical researchers should take the take the time to be precise about characterizing their subjects, and rely on subject-reported demographic data as little as possible. Practitioners and public health have to take a more pragmatic approach, and rely on generalizations for the sake of convenience. Those are different use cases with different best practices.
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.
> And many many people will be fooled. At least you can spot the acolytes with "I believe in Science" bumper stickers and yard signs. Science is not a belief system.