“Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans” • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by chmod600 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:30 AM UTC

What problem is this solving? Are there a bunch of scientists who put random racist rants into the middle of papers? And if so, are these papers high enough scientific quality to publish in Nature, and therefore they need this new policy to prevent such publication?

The article makes it sound like the answers are "yes" and "yes"; but I'm skeptical. I suspect the answer is that there's no real problem here with racist rants and the like.

Instead, this seems like a blanket policy that helps keep research from going in directions that lead to uncomfortable (politically-incorrect) truths. That sounds bad for science.

Then again, I assume this will mostly apply to social sciences, which don't have much respect to lose.

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

#562

Post by donatj » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:32 AM UTC

cetahfh14615 wrote: post #556

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…

> ignorance is never better than knowledge this is a moral judgement and a strong claim. I can think of a few types of knowledge off the top of my head that aren't making the world a better place Something like learning how to tie a noose: this is (in most cases) bad knowledge. This isn't something anyone should learn unless they need it for something that isn't its best known purpose when it comes to something like…

The knowledge of how to tie a noose hurts no one. Knowledge in and of itself is harmless at rest. As with all knowledge it’s what you do with it. Keeping people in the dark is an immoral solution to evil.

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

#563

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:32 AM UTC

MichaelCollins wrote: post #496

WalterBright wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cotton gin did indeed revive slave produced cotton when it came out. But it was hardly industrialization. It was a hand cranked box. But that was not enough by mid century, and the slave economy was foundering again.

Eli Whitney's patent depicts a hand-cranked cotton gin, but I believe by the mid 19th century they were making much larger cotton gins powered by water wheels or animal power (e.g. four mules walking around a shaft.) And on the cotton consumption side of the industry, mechanized thread spinning and power looms were by then a mature technology. The industrialization of textile industry began in the 1700s, particularly…

The textile industry was being industrialized - but it wasn't being operated by slaves. An educated workforce is needed to operate industrial machinery, and it was illegal to teach slaves to read.

Industrialization and slavery are incompatible.

Forced labor has never been able to compete with free labor.

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

#564

Post by UIUC_06 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #305

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

>But we do.. Who is 'we' here? USA? Canada?

you said "If it is possible today, where are those mass abortions?" and he gave you the answer, notably China, the largest country in the world.

So now you're saying you actually meant just North America?

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

#565

Post by tbrownaw » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #367

dane-pgp wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was immaculately conceived, walked on water, turned water into wine, all things that you and I know are inconsistent with reality. All those things are completely consistent with reality. Every year there are virgin births[0] (not immaculate conceptions[1], which is a term specific to the birth of the Virgin Mary herself), water turning into wine[2], and people walking on water[3]. I think what you mean is, the spe…

You're right. People forget things like: Jesus' disciples witnessed his miracles and wrote about them, other nonbiblical scholars wrote about Jesus and his miracles, there was recorded evidence to his death, there were witnesses to his ascension, 11 of the 12 apostles died for believing that Jesus was God (the 12th was Peter, marooned on Patmos, also for believing Jesus was God)

Sure, but can any of those things be replicated in a controlled experiment?

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

#566

Post by _ofdw » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:40 AM UTC

dudeinjapan wrote: post #552

bglazer wrote: post #485

This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…

Rather than suppressing research, wouldn't a simple primer on "why the paper shouldn't be used for hate" suffice, similar to the warning label on a pack of cigarettes? (Unlike cigarettes which are universally harmful, it's unlikely these papers do any real harm to an educated reader. They are only harmful when used completely out-of-context by a moron.) There is some grand irony that hate groups point to racial diffe…

I think it's equally dangerous to write off extremism as the product of stupid people.

Hitler certainly wasn't a dunce, for example.

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

#567

Post by guelo » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:44 AM UTC

drekipus wrote: post #558

bglazer wrote: post #485

This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…

> This should be handled with care, and extra consideration should be given to whether the tenuous, fallible results from this research will result in violence. What is "results in violence" though? One person's violence would be another person's justice. I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. Would research in allowing transgenderism for children be considered violence or not in your eyes? I'm sure t…

[flagged]

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

#568

Post by andreskytt » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

drekipus wrote: post #558

bglazer wrote: post #485

This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…

> This should be handled with care, and extra consideration should be given to whether the tenuous, fallible results from this research will result in violence. What is "results in violence" though? One person's violence would be another person's justice. I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. Would research in allowing transgenderism for children be considered violence or not in your eyes? I'm sure t…

Exactly. Anything novel is, by definition, risky. Therefore any and all research has the potential to harm people. What the article says is, that there is an apparently all-knowing group of people, who will decide, where an article lies on a scale between abstract algebra and direct calls to genocide in terms of its impact on people. Oh, and the same group of people is also directly interested in publishing (so they’ll have to let _some_ papers through) as well as being part of the scientific community preparing the papers. So a massive conflict of interest. What could possibly go wrong?

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

#569

Post by AgentME » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

bglazer wrote: post #485

This is in Nature Human Behavior. This is a social science/psychology journal, a field which is suffering from the reproducibility crisis, perhaps worse than any other field. So, any result in this field should be viewed with significant skepticism. This is true for research into population group differences, and extremely true for IQ research into race, which is almost hopelessly noisy and confounded. It is a simple…

It frustrates me how in many discussions people act as if certain controversial research is always obviously correct and objective science up against inherently anti-science people tearing it down. Not at all! Plenty of it is of science specifically known to be done badly, presented badly, in a field with regular systematic issues. If a field is regularly producing these inaccurate results with bad social side effects, it's not out of line to tell people in the field to pay more attention to these things.

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

#570

Post by Jensson » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 5:50 AM UTC

hikingsimulator wrote: post #554

kromem wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, because the best way to get groups to not spout misleading rhetoric is to unabashedly bias the publications in the other direction. Giving validity to the claim that a particular perspective is being actively suppressed historically works out great in reducing that viewpoint... Maybe they'd be better off restricting publishing to studies reproducing earlier results or meta-analysis, encouraging more rigorous…

Extremists may use whatever they want to justify their means, but shody science can make people become radical, radicalized, and then extremists. It's a gradual change that can be enabled by many things. What the article says is not to make science, and especially the field in question, one of those triggers.

> but shody science can make people become radical

If Nature said they won't publish shoddy science nobody would have minded.