8 ms·

Granted, but should 'purpose' of a scientific research project or conclusion, you know, matter? If the science is bad, it won't get published or it will get pu

Granted, but should 'purpose' of a scientific research project or conclusion, you know, matter? If the science is bad, it won't get published or it will get published and destroyed. Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data? Get the data first, worry about interpretations after that. The moral question should not block / impede the inquiry of a topic and quest for more data. Perhaps, with the possible exception of some superweapon or bio weapon research? Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable? What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn Reason?

gotocake 8y ago
You seem to have read something in my post that wasn’t there, namely that I was suggesting some kind of restriction on research, rather than what I did say, which was the need for more research. I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  > I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way. Hey, man. Insinuation/assumption. This is exactly the sort of remark that quickly toxifies the discussion. Keep it rational.
  - gotocake 8y ago
    That wasn’t my intention, I just meant that I didn’t understand the reasoning, not to infer something sinister.
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      Ah. I've seen wording like that from people trying to insinuate that the person has a racist/sexist worldview that they're either covering up or trying to intellectually rationalize. Or as a subtle dig on their intelligence. :)
mhermher 8y ago
I don't think the controversy you're describing exists in the academic world, at least not in the neuroscience field (that I can partially attest to). That controversy you're describing just exists in popular culture. It's not inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  This came out two days ago: https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sexism/ https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sex...
  - mhermher 8y ago
    It's a book review of a popular science book.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  It's not inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for. It is inhibiting scientists from communicating with the public. Tenured professors in the field are fearful or hesitant to do this now. Some professors are being actively targeted. Many members of the public have highly distorted views of the science. In only the past two years, I've heard more times than I can count on the digits of all of my limbs, from well educated professionals, that all gender differences are the result of a patriarchal conspiracy.
  - mhermher 8y ago
    Well, maybe I should walk back my comment a bit. I haven't worked in academia for a half decade or so. The topic may have become hotter than I imagined from where it was. I don't know. And point taken about affecting communication with the public. That is sort of outside my perspective. Academia always felt super insular to me and that scope was beyond anything I ever had to deal with.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
fixermark 8y ago
> Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data? Great question. Unrelatedly, mind if I correlate your medical history and a genetic profile of you with your purchase history at three major retail chains and the contents of your inbox? I'm not intending to do anything special with it; I'm just accumulating data. (... everything has a political dimension, including data accumulation. Because ultimately, humans use the data, and what humans do is politics).
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Great question. Unrelatedly, mind if I correlate your medical history and a genetic profile of you with your purchase history at three major retail chains and the contents of your inbox? Bad point. Violating the privacy of individuals is worlds different from studying gender differences on average. (... everything has a political dimension, including data accumulation. Because ultimately, humans use the data, and what humans do is politics). But from that, it can't follow that we should alter the results to avoid hurt feelings. That would render the "data" no better than mythical just-so stories. Politics should be subservient to empirical data and science. We've seen what doing it the other way results in historically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    TIL of Lysenkoism. Wow. That's a powerful example right there.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      One of the first times I mentioned it on HN, the reaction was basically, "Thank you for showing me this right-wing talking point, now I can counteract it." No curiosity about the history. No valuing of knowledge and truth. This says a lot about our world today.
      - pmarreck 8y ago
        How is it a right-wing talking point? It's basically pro-science (and to be fair, the right has their anti-global-warmacists and the left has their antivax and antinuclear baseless beliefs)
stcredzero 8y ago
Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable? No. Many of the same social instincts underpinning religion are now motivating tribal groupthink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7x-tUxyvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7x-tUxyvY
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Because data is subject to political interpretation, and while we'd all like to believe that science is noble, objective, and utterly dispassionate, it really isn't - especially not in the social sciences. You only have to look at the history of "research" into economics, or race and IQ, or genetics and psychology to see how this works. It isn't even particularly dispassionate in physics. There's a huge amount of politics involved in deciding which ideas and hypotheses in fundamental physics get time, money, and PhD candidates, and which are considered "the wrong choice for a successful career." So it is not true that if the science is bad it won't get published. A huge amount of very bad science has been published, and some of it has been used to influence public policy. I can't think of anything that works better than science, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to treat it as a stand-in for religious infallibility. Objective insight is a constant struggle against external influences, internal biases, and political conflicts of all kinds. It's not something you get for free from science by pushing a magic button and waiting for Revealed Truth to come out.
DuskStar 8y ago
> What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn Reason? It's not just the last 5 years - if "human biodiversity" turns out to be accurate (HBD could be summarized as "almost all human traits, including intelligence, have genetic components, and different population groups may have different distributions of these traits" or more simply "some population groups are better runners, some are better swimmers, some are more intelligent") and there's a fair bit of evidence for it... Well, we've been suppressing that particular shitstorm for the past 20+ years, largely due to the repugnant conclusions it can lead to, and the kind of person trying to lead us there.
abathur 8y ago
The problem is somewhat recursive. Ideally, politics wouldn't get in the way of accumulating the data. Ideally, unverified data would stay out of our public/institutional/organizational decision-making processes until the dust has settled (studies reproduced, methodologies fully critiqued, synthesized into frameworks that square large amounts of high-quality data, frameworks withstand decades of counter-proposals and attempts at falsification...). But it doesn't really work like that. If the results sound salacious, they'll get picked up in the science/popular press. Someone else might destroy it later, but no one's going to update every PDF, abstract and bit of news coverage to note it was destroyed. Even if the destroyal is so salacious that everyone trying to use the result as a buttress for their favorite ideological/policy positions sees it, they have to have the intellectual integrity to stop trying to use it that way. And people they're using it on have to be curious enough and capable of finding out that it's been destroyed. (To be clear; I don't think this means we should avoid researching uncomfortable/controversial topics.)
Daniel3 8y ago
Reason becomes dangerous when you have an agenda to push because. It mandates that there is a source and authority of that reason. Corrupt religion is a very interesting (and true example, because while vocally, a source of reason is acknowledged (God), the control freakishness of corrupt religion, or anything else, makes plain that they have no unwavering trust in anything besides themselves and power. Non-corrupt religion does not display these failings.

gotocake 8y ago

You seem to have read something in my post that wasn’t there, namely that I was suggesting some kind of restriction on research, rather than what I did say, which was the need for more research. I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way.

pmarreck 8y ago
> I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way. Hey, man. Insinuation/assumption. This is exactly the sort of remark that quickly toxifies the discussion. Keep it rational.
- gotocake 8y ago
  That wasn’t my intention, I just meant that I didn’t understand the reasoning, not to infer something sinister.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    Ah. I've seen wording like that from people trying to insinuate that the person has a racist/sexist worldview that they're either covering up or trying to intellectually rationalize. Or as a subtle dig on their intelligence. :)

mhermher 8y ago

I don't think the controversy you're describing exists in the academic world, at least not in the neuroscience field (that I can partially attest to). That controversy you're describing just exists in popular culture. It's not inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for.

mancerayder 8y ago
This came out two days ago: https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sexism/ https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sex...
- mhermher 8y ago
  It's a book review of a popular science book.
stcredzero 8y ago
It's not inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for. It is inhibiting scientists from communicating with the public. Tenured professors in the field are fearful or hesitant to do this now. Some professors are being actively targeted. Many members of the public have highly distorted views of the science. In only the past two years, I've heard more times than I can count on the digits of all of my limbs, from well educated professionals, that all gender differences are the result of a patriarchal conspiracy.
- mhermher 8y ago
  Well, maybe I should walk back my comment a bit. I haven't worked in academia for a half decade or so. The topic may have become hotter than I imagined from where it was. I don't know. And point taken about affecting communication with the public. That is sort of outside my perspective. Academia always felt super insular to me and that scope was beyond anything I ever had to deal with.
  - stcredzero 8y ago

fixermark 8y ago

> Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data? Great question. Unrelatedly, mind if I correlate your medical history and a genetic profile of you with your purchase history at three major retail chains and the contents of your inbox? I'm not intending to do anything special with it; I'm just accumulating data. (... everything has a political dimension, including data accumulation. Because ultimately, humans use the data, and what humans do is politics).

stcredzero 8y ago
Great question. Unrelatedly, mind if I correlate your medical history and a genetic profile of you with your purchase history at three major retail chains and the contents of your inbox? Bad point. Violating the privacy of individuals is worlds different from studying gender differences on average. (... everything has a political dimension, including data accumulation. Because ultimately, humans use the data, and what humans do is politics). But from that, it can't follow that we should alter the results to avoid hurt feelings. That would render the "data" no better than mythical just-so stories. Politics should be subservient to empirical data and science. We've seen what doing it the other way results in historically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
- pmarreck 8y ago
  TIL of Lysenkoism. Wow. That's a powerful example right there.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    One of the first times I mentioned it on HN, the reaction was basically, "Thank you for showing me this right-wing talking point, now I can counteract it." No curiosity about the history. No valuing of knowledge and truth. This says a lot about our world today.
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      How is it a right-wing talking point? It's basically pro-science (and to be fair, the right has their anti-global-warmacists and the left has their antivax and antinuclear baseless beliefs)

stcredzero 8y ago

Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable? No. Many of the same social instincts underpinning religion are now motivating tribal groupthink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7x-tUxyvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7x-tUxyvY

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

Because data is subject to political interpretation, and while we'd all like to believe that science is noble, objective, and utterly dispassionate, it really isn't - especially not in the social sciences. You only have to look at the history of "research" into economics, or race and IQ, or genetics and psychology to see how this works. It isn't even particularly dispassionate in physics. There's a huge amount of politics involved in deciding which ideas and hypotheses in fundamental physics get time, money, and PhD candidates, and which are considered "the wrong choice for a successful career." So it is not true that if the science is bad it won't get published. A huge amount of very bad science has been published, and some of it has been used to influence public policy. I can't think of anything that works better than science, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to treat it as a stand-in for religious infallibility. Objective insight is a constant struggle against external influences, internal biases, and political conflicts of all kinds. It's not something you get for free from science by pushing a magic button and waiting for Revealed Truth to come out.

DuskStar 8y ago

> What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn Reason? It's not just the last 5 years - if "human biodiversity" turns out to be accurate (HBD could be summarized as "almost all human traits, including intelligence, have genetic components, and different population groups may have different distributions of these traits" or more simply "some population groups are better runners, some are better swimmers, some are more intelligent") and there's a fair bit of evidence for it... Well, we've been suppressing that particular shitstorm for the past 20+ years, largely due to the repugnant conclusions it can lead to, and the kind of person trying to lead us there.

abathur 8y ago

The problem is somewhat recursive. Ideally, politics wouldn't get in the way of accumulating the data. Ideally, unverified data would stay out of our public/institutional/organizational decision-making processes until the dust has settled (studies reproduced, methodologies fully critiqued, synthesized into frameworks that square large amounts of high-quality data, frameworks withstand decades of counter-proposals and attempts at falsification...). But it doesn't really work like that. If the results sound salacious, they'll get picked up in the science/popular press. Someone else might destroy it later, but no one's going to update every PDF, abstract and bit of news coverage to note it was destroyed. Even if the destroyal is so salacious that everyone trying to use the result as a buttress for their favorite ideological/policy positions sees it, they have to have the intellectual integrity to stop trying to use it that way. And people they're using it on have to be curious enough and capable of finding out that it's been destroyed. (To be clear; I don't think this means we should avoid researching uncomfortable/controversial topics.)

Daniel3 8y ago

Reason becomes dangerous when you have an agenda to push because. It mandates that there is a source and authority of that reason. Corrupt religion is a very interesting (and true example, because while vocally, a source of reason is acknowledged (God), the control freakishness of corrupt religion, or anything else, makes plain that they have no unwavering trust in anything besides themselves and power. Non-corrupt religion does not display these failings.