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

nature.com

621–630 of 883 posts

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

#621

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 read that this is the intention, so when some content that can be used for harm (in a discriminatory or racist way for example), authors should make all the needed considerations, including confounding factors, in their research and their paper.

For example, say someone publishes statistics about school grades and race, and, maybe unsurprisingly, black people in the US turn out to have lower average grades, what does that say about black people? Here lies the responsibility of the researcher to make it clear that the problem is social rather than genetical, either using statistical means to remove confounders, or by highlighting this when discussing the numbers. Actually unless the purpose of the research itself is to extract those social differences, why would you stratify your cohorts by race in the first place?

Even seemingly innocuous decisions, like stratifying (because, why not?, you have the data) may have consequences, or may hide biases, if they are not considered with care. Ask anybody doing ML how confounders are behind every corner in whatever messy human data you collect!

Then there are other topics which specifically look into, say, sex and brain composition etc. Those may be scientifically sound, but ethically more controversial. I am happy I don't work in that field...

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

#622

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?

> >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.

Same "we" as the line you responded to, and your own response.

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

#623

"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." If it's good research, then it shouldn't have any of these biases. Stigmatization and restrictions of rights is a policy issue. Science is not policy . I think we need to promote this separation more. Too often I see "but the study…

This infuriated me during the Covid pandemic. “The science says we need to close schools”. No, the science at most says that Covid will spread more slowly if we close schools. Whether that’s worth it or not is a political question, not a scientific one.

They are using the word science differently, to mean Science, as in "the group of recognized (by us) authorities on a subject".

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

#624
post #606

"Science", such is my understanding, is a rigorous process to get to the truth of a situation. As such, "Science" has no overlap with concepts such as respect, dignity, or rights. Science exists outside of those concepts in, as my own definition above, it is a search for the truth of a situation without fear nor favour. Objectivity, as pure as possible. Subjectivity; the interpretation of scientific results is where…

funny why do we do no experiments on humans and try to minimize experiments on animals and control it with an ethicsboard if it has no overlap?

Of course we do experiments on humans.

Every psychology student is subject to them (and that's often mandated by their universities to enter the next semester). Pharmaceutical companies are mandated to run human test-runs of new medication before making them available to the general public.

Human harm is considered, and migitated, but there's always a certain level of harm that is considered "acceptable". That's what the ethics board does.

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

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fir…

If you don't want philosophy of science, don't comment on an article about the philosophy of science? This isn't some fringe topic for "woke" people, philosophy is fundamental to science and has been from the beginning. It's questions from everything like "what even counts as science" to scientific ethics, to "what is the purpose of science". It's not always about ethics, in fact the 20th century philosophy of science debates were dominated by more practical topics like realism vs instrumentalism.

You cannot just dismiss something you've never heard of and have no idea about

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

#626
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…

there is a difference between science, as in "understanding nature" and technology, which is about exploiting that knowledge for building something useful. Knowing everything about the atom is harmless, using that knowledge to build an horrendous weapon is evil.

Also, knowing everything about the atom does not affect our behavior, except through technology. Social sciences are more problematic though because they are about us, as part of nature sure, but in the social context we live, which can be affected by what we know about it. So proper considerations must be made when designing the research questions and methods, and when discussing the results.

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

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a weird phenomenon in and of itself right? The amount of political violence pre-internet is just an order of magnitude higher than today’s. Most young people (millennials, Gen Z) are completely unaware - unless you studied this stuff - that e.g. the Senate building was bombed in 1983 by a bunch of leftists upset over the US’s involvement in Lebanon. This is to say, I’m skeptical of the argument that the inte…

I think it depends how you look at it. The intensity of the conflict has diminished, but I think the scope of the conflict has increased. There are fewer bombs going off, but there seems to be a lot more family estrangement due to political differences. The partisan lines in my extended family haven't changed for as long as I can remember, but there are fewer get-togethers and more political arguments at the dinner t…

I mostly agree with this. I think we can describe it as: vertical conflict has decreased (kinetic action up and down the political spectrum), while horizontal conflict has increased (passive action across the political spectrum). Things like actual assassination attempts against major figures in government (Justice Kavanaugh's assassination attempt notwithstanding) are not as common today as they were 40-50 years ago, while separation from peers for political reasons is much more common.

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

#628
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…

Also, let's remind the author that quote next time he or she needs surgery: no aenestesia, ignorance is never better than knowledge.

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

#629

"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." If it's good research, then it shouldn't have any of these biases. Stigmatization and restrictions of rights is a policy issue. Science is not policy . I think we need to promote this separation more. Too often I see "but the study…

So how do we decide what to study, and who funds what studies? How will the results be communicated to people who lack scientific literacy? What will we do with the results and how will they be published? With or without a paywall? In studies that are impossible to double-blind, how do we make sure that the researchers and participants are not allowing their biases to get into the research?

You can do your best, but you can never completely remove bias from the scientific process

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

#630

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…

IQ tests are also unreliable by design. They might work once, but you get different results depending on the test subject was challenged by questions and problems of similar design.

Highlighting that fact would be helpful and expose such tests as nothing but maybe a rough estimate. Your education is probably more important for that than your capacity to solve problems.

Additionally those that focus on these numbers seem to not be the ones that score particularly well here. And in the end "science" that asserts it can determine intellectual capacity of a group is most likely wrong.

That said, you should NEVER censor yourself because someone could perhaps misinterpret your finding for their own perverted goals. That would undermine science itself and it isn't worth it.

> This isn't fucking Orwell, its people trying to make sure that dogshit research in their journal doesnt get cited by mass shooters.

This is the wrong approach.

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