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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”

#331

Post by [deleted] »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #39
effingwewt wrote: post #3

Science must only be objective. Science should not care one whit about humans or what we want/think/feel. We should respect people, there's a huge difference. As far as I'm concerned, this is the final nail in the coffin for nature magazine or whatever they call themselves now. This entire blog post is them contradicting themselves repeatedly.

Science is only objective. But scientists are subjective and biased. The paper is not speaking about how people feel, they are speaking on the subjectiveness of scientists leading to the harm of minority people. What do you think happened in Nazi Germany?

[deleted]

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

#332

Post by indymike »

Banana699 wrote: post #244
AlanYx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I know the people behind statments like these are coming to it with extremly unintelligent and bad faith definitions and intentions, but the actual words are actually correct. If you had the option to delay humanity's discovery of atomic bombs to late 20th century or after, and therefore delay any substantial deep understanding of the atomic physics beneath, you would probably do it. If you had the atomic bomb, you p…

> If you had the option to delay humanity's discovery of atomic bombs to late 20th century or after, and therefore delay any substantial deep understanding of the atomic physics beneath, you would probably do it.

The alternative was 20-30 million more dead people via conventional means. There were many teams around the world working to build the bomb. One always wonders about the German team and why they were not first - and I"m glad they were not.

> philosophy of science

Not sure what that is, but do not want.

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

#333

Post by crooked-v »

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…

Just looking at the 90s to today is ignoring an awful lot of context about what political tensions in the US actually used to look like.

Just over 100 years ago, political disagreements in West Virginia over unionization led to a full-scale paramilitary battle at Blair Mountain [1], with upwards of 13,000 people involved and complete with the anti-unionization side bringing in private planes as improved bombers.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

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

#334

Post by bergenty »

macspoofing wrote: post #199
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 and can’t be run well if it’s just vocal collectives yelling at each other. I'm glad you recognize in yourself that you can't be trusted with certain information and you need, personally, a big brother to lie to you. You do you. I'd appreciate if you didn't make the same assessment about me, and others.

Idealism is great, as an ideal. It starts to become a little delusional when you think your idealism lines up with reality.

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

#335

Post by bradyd »

Banana699 wrote: post #246
freejazz wrote: post #196

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?

"Blind isn't an actual biological condition, it's a social category" The same thing can be different categories. Black is social category, and is also a very well defined biological state of the most visible organ in your body, and is associated with certain genes. Instead of repeatedly stating the name of those different genes every time you say something about them, you can simply say the name of the most visible m…

> "Blind isn't an actual biological condition, it's a social category"

Uh, this is actually true. Blindness is a legal definition not a medical condition. There are numerous medical conditions that can lead to a person being legally blind.

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

#336

Post by buu700 »

DrBazza wrote: post #35
alphabetting wrote: post #2

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.

> 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,…

Scientific language is terse and unambiguous for a reason. Efficient and precise transfer of ideas. "Go the shops and get a loaf of bread. If there are eggs, get a dozen".

I can't tell if this was tongue-in-cheek, but I've only ever heard that as an example of unclear communication: https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_...

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

#337

Post by reb »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #319
reb wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, and it could then be challenged in court. And depending on the alignment of the courts, they might find in favor of the policy, setting a precedent for future law.

Do you really not understand how things work in this country?

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

#338

Post by bombcar »

intimidated wrote: post #215
n4r9 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great example, much better than the one I thought of. The line has to be somewhere, right? Even if someone dismisses your example, you can make it more and more extreme to the point of "if this knowledge becomes public, a maniac will 99% likely destroy the rest of the earth".

Which is more likely: 1. These censorship policies will be used to save the world from 99% certain destruction at the hands of a maniac. 2. These censorship policies will be used to crush evidence that [GROUP X] is overrepresented in [FAVORABLE SITUATION Y] due to [FAVORABLE TRAIT Z], thus legitimizing policies unjustly punishing [GROUP X]. Even if you think this censorship is righteous and good, how will you deal wi…

Once you realize that censorship is a defensive action, not an offensive one, it becomes clear.

You don’t censor to get more people on your side. You censor to defend the people you’ve already collected (ie prevent losing them to the other side).

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

#339

Post by kelseyfrog »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #28
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…

>>Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication Are they really advocating for self censorship in the sciences? And when the whims of societal taste turn or, God forbid (and yes, I put this with all irony intended), Twitter decides it doesn't like an opinion for five minutes... does science…

The only reference to Twitter on the page is in the footer "Follow us on Twitter" which links to https://twitter.com/NatureHumBehav. Where are you getting this Twitter stuff from?

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

#340

Post by TulliusCicero »

reb wrote: post #337
TulliusCicero wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, and it could then be challenged in court. And depending on the alignment of the courts, they might find in favor of the policy, setting a precedent for future law. Do you really not understand how things work in this country?

I do, and I understand that something this blatantly unconstitutional (and widespread enough to be notable) would get slapped down by the courts super hard before being actually acted on.

Do you understand how things work in this country? When's the last time there was a statewide policy like this that explicitly targeted people of one particular religion? Especially kids going to state schools?

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