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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”

#311

Post by dane-pgp »

goethes_kind wrote: post #157
i_love_limes wrote: post #112

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 no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child

I guess you're counting the child him/herself as an "outside group" in this process too.

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

#312

Post by sacrosancty »

rurp wrote: post #271
psyc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone's gonna tell you this is fully explained by nostalgia and various cognitive biases, actually, cuz that's what we do hyea. But I'll back you all day. I know they literally can't hear it, but I always have the urge to tell Gen Y and later that for a minute in the mid-late 90's we had this shit mostly, not totally - that'll never happen - but mostly figured out. And then they blew it all up, and damned us all t…

I would go further and say we actually do have quite a bit of hard evidence that societal disagreements were more civil several decades ago. Bipartisan legislation, violent threats against public figures, mass murders, and attempts to violently overthrow an election have all gotten objectively worse since the rise of the internet. I don't know how much the internet has caused this deterioration, but it is strongly co…

You say objectively, so where's your data? I must be very hard to measure pre-internet violent threats. I know someone who personally told me he'd kill George Bush if he had the chance. That won't be in your records, so how can you measure it?

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

#314

Post by puffoflogic »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #293
rurp wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and say we actually do have quite a bit of hard evidence that societal disagreements were more civil several decades ago. Bipartisan legislation, violent threats against public figures, mass murders, and attempts to violently overthrow an election have all gotten objectively worse since the rise of the internet. I don't know how much the internet has caused this deterioration, but it is strongly co…

There were bombings almost every day in the US in the 1970’s.

We're not allowed to talk about those any more.

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

#316

Post by reb »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #145
drorco wrote: post #78

Can anyone actually think of an actual discovery that harmed people? I'm missing some actual examples of what they're trying to protect people from.

Even if there are examples, they will be political examples and not scientific ones. Of course, they'd conveniently conflate the two to mislead the less observant among us.

Your observational powers have somehow missed the reality that politicians customarily lean on science-derived "science" to lend credibility to their actions.

The public, broadly, cannot tell the difference between science and "science." Any scientist who doesn't perform their work with this in mind is a politician's pawn, whether they want to be or not.

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

#317

Post by TulliusCicero »

ausbah wrote: post #263

like most here I don't particularly agree with the main premise of the piece (objectivity taking a sideline to how something might affect a population), but I am a little saddened if not scared at how vitriolic some of the comments are here. there are many vulnerable populations in the world that might negatively be impacted by publications, to label even the thought of that as a factor in ethics as evil makes me unc…

People see where this is going: treating facts as violence.

If nothing else, HN commenters are all pretty strongly for a culture of free speech, so yeah, they're gonna hate things that try to suppress scientific understanding in order to advance ideological goals. That's a thing worthy of hatred.

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

#318

Post by thomassmith65 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #268
brightball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s before mass internet adoption, it sure felt like it. We had disagreements, but nothing compared to what we see today.

I wouldn't call being on the receiving end of racial slurs for dating outside your "race", being shunned for being queer, and other such things mere "disagreements". (This was me, as a teen, in the 90s). It is really easy to romanticize the past, back when you were younger and just didn't have the same grasp of the world. Especially if you had a decent enough life at the time.

That is true, but the difference between then and now is that, back then, it felt like the world was on an inexorable road to greater open-mindedness.

The world has made progress since you were a teen, but there is also an atmosphere of fear that the world is starting to backslide.

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

#319

Post by TulliusCicero »

reb wrote: post #297
causality0 wrote: post #280

the guidance helps in considering whether it is ethically appropriate to question a social group’s right to freedom or cultural rights Somebody want to explain to me what the heck "cultural rights" are and how publishing data could interfere with them?

Sure: the LDS church teaches that pre-marital sex is a sin, and engaging in it is grounds for the termination of a variety of spiritual privileges, depending on the judgement of a local church leader. The legal freedom to live by that belief makes it a cultural right afforded to any practicing LDS person in the US. A scientist could perform research investigating the impact of those teachings. They might find that it…

> could take those findings and use them to justify a new policy that all LDS children

No, they couldn't. Your proposed scenario here is insane. This would be blatantly unconstitutional.

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

#320

Post by matheusmoreira »

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."

Well, sometimes information can cause harm. For example, revealing a terminal diagnosis to a patient could lead to suicide.

I don't think science should be censored, scientific inquiry should continue with integrity regardless of what people think. What I think is people who can't handle it should not have access to the truths revealed. I generally believe in unrestricted free information but I've been rethinking that for certain cases.

It's not just gender identity. I've seen similar behavior in other groups such as obese people revolting against the "oppressive" science documenting the numerous risks associated with being overweight because it supposedly causes society to marginalize them.

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