251–260 of 883 posts
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…
I'm having difficulty reconciling these two opinions: 1. This ethics guidance is bad because it limits, or even censors, scientific investigation related to socially sensitive topics. 2. Social science has a reproducibility crisis and is mostly useless (a viewpoint commonly expressed in response to other articles). Does anyone hold both of these opinions, or is it just different people talking at different times?
These are orthogonal issues.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
David Shor was ostracized for presenting this research: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow... > Shor, citing research by Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, suggested that these incidents could prompt a political backlash that would help President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection. At the same time, he noted that, historically, nonviolent protests had been effective at driving politica…
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.
If our choices at election time continue ro be between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich without the bread, we will continue to have similar issues. Lesser of two evils and all that.
Ps which one has the bread is just a matter of perspective for each individual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Black isn't a "race", it's a social category. You can't actually be serious? In America, black includes people of Caribbean descent, people from South America, African-Americans, someone that stepped off a plane from Ethiopia. It's a completely meaningless term in regards to science. You can't actually be serious?
Those people have a shared biological lineage, with only a relatively short period of differentiation — while they have radically different cultures.
What you’re describing is “black” being useless as a social construct (ie, I know nothing about their culture) but useful medically/scientifically (ie, there’s groupings of medical conditions correlated with that lineage).
I would go so far as to say only racists use “black” as a social construct — and project that the medical groupings are the same.
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 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. Are you sure about that? We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females. >So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledg…
But we do...
> The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 103 to 106 males for 100 females.[37][38] However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2 in Mainland China.[6][18] As a result, counts of missing women are often due to missing female children.[18] It is estimated that the cumulative number of missing female births due to sex-selective abortion globally is 45 million from 1970 to 2017.[38]
I'm having difficulty reconciling these two opinions: 1. This ethics guidance is bad because it limits, or even censors, scientific investigation related to socially sensitive topics. 2. Social science has a reproducibility crisis and is mostly useless (a viewpoint commonly expressed in response to other articles). Does anyone hold both of these opinions, or is it just different people talking at different times?
If you're using outrage to select science for what's pleasing to hear instead of what's true, you can use 1 as an explanation for 2. And 1 isn't exactly new.
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…
To do you the favor, as ashkenazi jew (at higher risk for a number of different genetic illnesses) nothing about my understanding of this is predicated upon the concept of a race. That there is a genetically distinct haplotype group that corresponds to many folk that share these traits with me, is sufficient. By the way, I don't think "African descent" is a race by any means of my understanding of the word...
This is what race means. You are taking the same referent and giving it a different designator.
Principle 1:
Researchers should be free to pursue lines of inquiry and the communication of knowledge and ideas without fear of repression or censorship.
All following principles:
Eh, on second thoughts, maybe not so much...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Black isn't a "race", it's a social category. You can't actually be serious? In America, black includes people of Caribbean descent, people from South America, African-Americans, someone that stepped off a plane from Ethiopia. It's a completely meaningless term in regards to science. You can't actually be serious?
Well — no. Those people have a shared biological lineage, with only a relatively short period of differentiation — while they have radically different cultures. What you’re describing is “black” being useless as a social construct (ie, I know nothing about their culture) but useful medically/scientifically (ie, there’s groupings of medical conditions correlated with that lineage). I would go so far as to say only rac…