46 ms·

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

• carapace 4y ago
  I thought this would be about e.g. building telescopes on Maunakea.
• josephcsible 4y ago
• Animats 4y ago
  Censorship rules are here.[1] [1] https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/ethics-and-biosecurity#research-on-human-populations https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/e...
• alphabetting 4y ago
  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.
  • effingwewt 4y ago
    So glad I saw this after my comment, I couldn't believe what I was reading and am so very glad I wasn't the only one, much less from GP. I appreciate you calling it out greatly, they've been circling the drain but wow.
  • DrBazza 4y ago
    > 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, disease, (dis)ability or socioeconomic status. How do you effectively discuss, and communicate, that for example sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance affects people of African descent, or skin cancer is prevalent in people of European ancestry? And that poor and badly educated people are susceptible to bad diets, lifestyles and medical issues that are a consequence of that? > harms arising from manuscripts I'm pretty sure the readership for papers in Nature is pretty low, and already read by a target audience of academics that already use a scientific dialect that doesn't cause 'offense'. 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". "Offense" in 2022 is the social construct here. Not age, or disease, or origin.
    • timr 4y ago
      > How do you effectively discuss, and communicate, that for example sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance affects people of African descent, or skin cancer is prevalent in people of European ancestry? And that poor and badly educated people are susceptible to bad diets, lifestyles and medical issues that are a consequence of that? Don't worry, it says in the guidelines that race and ethnicity aren't real: > Race and ethnicity are sociopolitical constructs. Humans do not have biological races, at least based on modern biological criteria for the identification of geographical races or subspecies. This, of course, is going to be Good News to people of African descent (where sickle cell anemia is ~20x more likely in black newborns than white [1]), Ashkenazi Jewish people (at higher risk for a number of different genetic illnesses [2]), or pretty much every non-white person with lactose intolerance [3]...just to name a few examples. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/sicklecell/features/keyfinding-trait.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20incidence%20estimate%20for,Asian%20or%20Pacific%20Islander%20newborns https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/sicklecell/features/keyfinding-tr.... [2] https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genetic-diseases/ https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genet... [3] https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-intolerance/#:~:text=Lactose%20intolerance%20in%20adulthood%20is%20most%20prevalent%20in%20people%20of,%2C%20Greek%2C%20and%20Italian%20descent https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-intoleran....
      • nradov 4y ago
        Everyone is of African descent, depending on how far back you look. So it's a rather vague term, and becoming less useful over time as previously distinct groups become more intermixed. In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form.
        • timr 4y ago
          I was waiting for the first person to say this, which is why I explicitly wrote "black" when describing the disproportionate rates of sickle cell in black children vs. white children. This isn't some rhetorical game. We know what "race" is, intuitively, and we know that it correlates strongly with real-world biological outcomes. These guidelines are gaslighting people into ignoring broadly useful categories because we don't have a reductive way of defining them. We don't have a biological test that defines race (yet), ergo, it doesn't exist. Except that's wrong. It's absurd. > In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form. If we could do that -- relate the (known) gene for sickle cell to some other "genotype" that captures the racial bias we know exists -- we'd have a strict biological definition for race, wouldn't we? Aside from that, we know the "phenotype" that correlates with the illness. Black people have it, at high rates.
  • dqpb 4y ago
    The ethics argument is a cover story for capturing greater power and control.
  • commandlinefan 4y ago
    And sadly, I correctly guessed what the article would be about just from reading the title.
  • JBits 4y ago
    I genuinely don't understand what is so problematic about this article. Is the article's guidelines even binding in the first place? Many here seem to be saying that this editoral is promoting censorship, but that's not my interpretation at all. It just seems to be encouraging "respectful, non-stigmatizing language to avoid perpetuating stereotypes", avoid conflating different but similar terms and in particular asking people to be really clear about categories pertaining to people to avoid "potential misuse" by the media. All of this seems reasonable to me, and also good science. While I haven't checked the codes of ethics cited in sociology or anthropoly, the article suggests that their recommendations aren't completely original. Obviously, since I've not looked into this, I'm not making any claims about this particular point. While I admit that I did not read the full article in detail, since a number of people here are mostly discussing the fourth paragraph, or are discussing the first sentance on race, I wonder how many have actually read this properly.
    • hugh-avherald 4y ago
      Yes it is binding. Articles can be rejected or modified on these grounds.
    • ksrm 4y ago
      It's Big Brain 200 IQ Hacker News, what did you expect
      • Banana699 4y ago
        Free Speech is obvious, doesn't require 200 IQ by a long shot, I regret to inform you it's you who are just a dumbass.
• effingwewt 4y ago
  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.
  • PsySecGroup 4y ago
  • FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    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?
    • buscoquadnary 4y ago
      Politicians and populists pushed out false information, and then squashed anyone that tried to argue against the state as "radical", "harmful" and "against progress and science" at the point of a gun, refused to let people ask questions or have dissenting views which led them to the next step of being allowed to exterminate undesirables because no one was allowed to argue because "The Science was settled" We could of course also talk about how the centralized control of the science of genetics in the Soviet Union led to mass famines that killed millions and anyone who disagreed was put to death. It seems to me the problem isn't and never has been science, it is when a single institution, society, or government gets to dictate what "truth" is and "the science is settled" at the point of a gun, not that science gives us answers we don't like.
      • FollowingTheDao 4y ago
        >Politicians and populists pushed out false information, and then squashed anyone that tried to argue against the state as "radical", "harmful" and "against progress and science" I agree. This was a political problem which the article is actually trying to address. > It seems to me the problem isn't and never has been science, it is when a single institution, society, or government gets to dictate what "truth" is... This is not what the article is advocating. This seems very rational to me, for example: "Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. "
• h2odragon 4y ago
  Summary: Orthodoxy above all. If your Facts run over the Dogma we won't publish it.
• tarakat 4y ago
  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, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication. "The teachings of the Church must not be undermined by heliocentrism or evolution research, so findings in those areas will be strictly filtered for heresy before publication. But those findings that support the Church will be permitted, and loudly trumpeted as scientific proof of our dogma."
  • DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Well connected - and I think this comparison is becoming more apt each passing day. These statements and policies are just so… egotistical… for lack of a better word. What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is? How can you claim to respect all humans when you don’t respect the human cognitive ability to disagree? Thanks for posting.
    • anon291 4y ago
      Exactly, the process of applying scientific results to human society falls well within the realm of politics. We should not allow scientific bureaucrats to have a say in the kinds of policies implemented, but rather limit their contribution to answering empirical questions based on inquiries presented by actual politicians.
      • thrown_22 4y ago
        Which minority making up 13% of the population ... One can lie with facts quite easily. It used to be that liberals could explain this. Somehow in the last 10 years the current crop of policy leaders decided this is too hard to explain so instead we would ban wrong think and everything will be hunky dory. This has lead to such hilarious things as people publicly saying how thankful they are to have 4 jabs and getting covid: https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1559145992594784256 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1559145992594784256 after saying the vaccines are 100% effective: https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606
• jaywalk 4y ago
  People must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. Science must be free from this nonsense, and just be science. What a joke.
  • mmmpop 4y ago
    Science is (and should continue to be) cold and unfeeling. That's why it's science. Science!
    • nathanaldensr 4y ago
      The scientific method is a process. There is no need to anthropomorphize it. What exactly are you trying to say?
• temptemptemp111 4y ago
  [dead]
• mrchucklepants 4y ago
  "I reject your reality and I substitute my own."
• ElCheapo 4y ago
  • letmeinhere 4y ago
    Sounds like a nightmare!
  • letmeinhere 4y ago
    Count me out! I, for one, will pursue my paperclip maximization without regard to any such trivialities.
  • FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    > Farming equipment must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. Farmers must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. > The TCP protocol must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. Network Engineers must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. > Cinema projectors must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. Cinema owners must respect the dignity and rights of all humans.
    • ElCheapo 4y ago
      Yes, that was the point of my comment. Seeing that it even got flagged I can sense people here are treading on thin ice for some reason
• throwawayacc2 4y ago
  Evolution stops below the neck, everyone knows that :)
• NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  No, science must pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. There is no such thing as a hate fact.
  • giraffe_lady 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • blueflow 4y ago
      What would you do when someone says "Women are inferior because the Sun shines?"
      • blep_ 4y ago
        Regardless of the rest of this conversation, we should at least ban the publishing of obvious bullshit with no attempt to establish causality as science. This is in that category. I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here.
        • blueflow 4y ago
          My point: All justifications of oppression are non-causal nonsense like this. I just made an obvious example that is easy to look through.
    • red75prime 4y ago
      The proposed medication is worse than the disease. Fight fascism/racism/whatever with state supported lies (of omission). What could go wrong?
      • giraffe_lady 4y ago
        If you read carefully I'm actually not proposing any specific course and I think the reality will be nuanced and highly context-specific. What I am opposing is the idea that researchers should be completely disinterested in, even ignore, what other elements are interested in their work and how they might use it. The consensus in this comment section is that that sort of ignorance is itself an ideal, and I think that's very wrong and has lead to obvious harms in the past. Research on any domain of human activity is a political act and produces a political product, the researchers need to be aware of that and actively participate in that part of the process as well. Wishing or pretending it were otherwise is dangerous.
• nubero 4y ago
  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…
  • upsidesinclude 4y ago
    That might be the finest rebuttal on offer
  • AlanYx 4y ago
    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."
    • nubero 4y ago
      Indeed… The rot has spread frighteningly far.
      • WatchDog 4y ago
        "There you have it, you see how far the termites have spread, and how long and well they've dined." - Christopher Hitchens
    • Banana699 4y ago
      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 probably wouldn't have shared it with Stalin's USSR or Hitler's Germany and, for that matter, Roosevelt's USA. If you had known in 1990 that the WWW would be used to spread propaganda and track dissidents, you would have probably liked to delay it till more security and decentralization is built in from the outset. This is a very well-discussed topic in philosophy of science and technology and good sci-fi. Fermi was probably talking about inevitable things, e.g. if climate is already worsening beyond human limits it's always good to know even if it's too late to do anything. But if knowledge (or our pursuit of it) would lead to new dangers, its perfecly reasonable to (try) to limit knowledge and its spread or pursuit. The dishonesty of the -ve IQ people behind attitudes like the criticized is that they see danger in everything and use moral panic to enforce views. If the actual "dangers" they are freaking out about are legitimate, they would have been justified to supress (non-violently) science and technology)
• yamrzou 4y ago
  This is so general that its either very obvious or nonsense. They should include examples of what they consider "harmful science".
  • Analemma_ 4y ago
    That would defeat the purpose. The whole point is to have rules vague enough that they can be selectively applied whenever there's an angry mob on Twitter that has to be appeased, while still saying "hey, we're just following our policy".
    • nathanaldensr 4y ago
      Right. Like many commenters on this thread, people tend to pick apart these types of messages from these now-woke institutions from a logical perspective, which is a huge mistake. These are effectively religious tenets; they aren't issues of logic but issues of faith.
• wikitopian 4y ago
  The astrophysical sciences make me feel vulnerable, insignificant, insecure, and irrelevant relative to the vast expanse of the universe. I demand an end to this harm.
  • 62951413 4y ago
    Telescopes evoke phallic associations and so promote the male dominance. The world demands female-friendly optics. #defundastronomy #cancelgalileo
    • jjcon 4y ago
      Reminds me of the person claiming data driven design as a term was sexiest and exclusionary cause the abbreviation was (ddd) which is also a bra size https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1073251153360482304 https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1073251153360482304
• landofredwater 4y ago
  I think that most of these types of guidelines and rules are written with good intent, but intent is what ruins good science. Science, as a method, works when you have a hypothesis, but when that hypothesis isn't supported by your findings you can't just discard the findings and go "well I'm still pretty sure I was right anyway." If you find something you disagree with to be true, that makes the science even more important to share! Other people can start to look at what you've seen and get more details and finer understanding.
  • anon291 4y ago
    The only 'good' intent in science is to pursue empirical truth based on the application of the scientific method. Every other intent is questionable, and certainly if one is following it, soon deviates from the realm of 'science'.
    • psyc 4y ago
      It's the same Science you know and trust, now with 50% more social consciousness!
  • cf141q5325 4y ago
    This whole "having good intentions" as justification for anything scares the living crap out of me. I really believed we for once learned from history. Even letting the non trivial problem of defining what is "good" aside, intentions and results are very very different things. Intentions describe your own story for your actions. Its about how your see yourself. That has no impact on the result in reality. Valuing intentions instead of outcome is actual insanity. And it only got worse once i realized that this isnt some kind of horrible stupid accident but people do this to deal with an utterly horrible reality they cant cope with anymore. So they just gave up on reality and instead focused on a story they can tell themselves to feel good despite reality. edit: Just to point it out, even if both of those very obvious fundamental problems would be addressed, what would be left would be "the ends justify the means". Its utterly horrific from which ever angle you look at it.
  • commandlinefan 4y ago
• trashtester 4y ago
• hbossy 4y ago
  „If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.“
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mistrial9 4y ago
  hashtag #nooneleftbehind appears to be in a similar vein.. "sovereignty" is so pre-modern </snark>
  • ohCh6zos 4y ago
    I haven't heard of this and doing a web search didn't really help me out. Can I read more about this somewhere?
  • AlbertCory 4y ago
    "sovereignty" can be dated to 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia. Well before "modern" times.
• faxmeyourcode 4y ago
  Any dissent against the state religion shall not be tolerated.
• georgex7 4y ago
• kingkawn 4y ago
  • giraffe_lady 4y ago
    look man these paperclips aren't going to maximize themselves.
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  So if Nature has fallen, what replaces it?
  • dane-pgp 4y ago
    Well, historically speaking, the Law.
• JamesBarney 4y ago
  This would not only destroys woke research but pro-woke as well because if you are guaranteeing publication bias you can't trust the research either way. This is also a boon to racists who never have to defend themselves against science again. "Yeah that study shows that Hispanic immigrants don't commit more crimes, but it's against the rules to publish anything else"
• savant_penguin 4y ago
  "In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication." I'm sure our demigods will gladly enlighten us with their wisdom to distinguish between misthoughts and correct thoughts. So that when journalists claim to be following the science there will be no dissenting voice in research to disagree. Those who defend opposing ideas will have no leg to stand on and will rightfully be labeled science deniers
  • bergenty 4y ago
    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.
    • throwawayacc2 4y ago
      > I feel like our society does require some gatekeepers Which should be people who broadly speaking share your political and ethical beliefs, yes? And, if the gatekeepers are people with a different sense of morality, it is fascism and must be torn down in the name of freedom, correct?
      • bergenty 4y ago
        There is something to building around a consensus on who they are roughly around the phrase “first cause no harm”
        • throwawayacc2 4y ago
          What is harm?
          • bergenty 4y ago
            Physical or mental pain and anguish
• tlb 4y ago
  Well, I respect them for formally stating as policy what was presumably being done informally for a long time. It gives their audience something specific to disagree with, rather than a vague feeling that some kinds of research were being buried.
• upsidesinclude 4y ago
  It entirely unsurprising that an author cannot be found attached to this excrement
• SubiculumCode 4y ago
  There is a lot of off the cuff reactions in the comments, most from non-scientists, who obviously did not read the actual guidelines that are being proposed, which primarily encourage full transparency and contextualization when scientists use group variables, and to avoid over generalization of findings by relying on stereotypes without empirical basis.
  • PeterisP 4y ago
    The actual guidelines that are being proposed, namely the following quote, do sound like a veiled requirement to self-censor (or 'contextualize') any data or findings that go against the expected norm. "Researchers are asked to carefully consider the potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by attributes of race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability or other status, to be reflective of their authorial perspective if not part of the group under study, and contextualise their findings to minimize as much as possible potential misuse or risks of harm to the studied groups in the public sphere." I would argue that the "possible misuse" of some undesirable findings explicitly should not be a valid factor to consider, since it's even more important to publish valid findings especially if they are controversial. As you say, we should definitely avoid generalization of findings by relying on stereotypes without empirical basis (because that's a false implication), however, we should also not shun findings strongly supported by empirical basis even if they coincide with some stereotypes - and this statement does not even try to mention this balance. I would welcome the same passage to say something like "If this research touches these sensitive topics, then we implore the authors, reviewers and editors to be double-sure that the assertions are actually true, but for $Deity's sake don't ever omit any controversial but true results". In essence, it's a statement about priorities and values. Being respectful is important. Being true is important. But if you say that the former is more important than the latter and should sometimes override it, then you don't share my values and are not a friend of science; you should respect the dignity and rights of all humans as long as it doesn't harm the communication of truth and not an inch more.
  • cf141q5325 4y ago
    > most from non-scientists I am really curious about your source on this.
• buscoquadnary 4y ago
  • throwawayacc2 4y ago
    Praise be to The Science!
  • edmcnulty101 4y ago
    • bombcar 4y ago
      I also carefully delete anything I post after thirty days lest the science change and an old post of mine be found against it.
      • edmcnulty101 4y ago
        Good call! The scientific patriots will whisk you away for any sort of wrong think.
  • xdennis 4y ago
    I know you're being facetious, but you'd be surprised how many people think scientists shouldn't be questioned. Recent example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32358662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32358662
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  Nowhere in the scientific method does this message fit.
  • llanowarelves 4y ago
    There's science the method, then there's Science the institution. scientists and Scientists both practitioners of something different.
• hattmall 4y ago
  Goodbye Science, you brought us a long way.
• drorco 4y ago
  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.
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    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.
    • reb 4y ago
      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.
  • type0 4y ago
    Invention of atomic bombs?! Who knows what they are actually talking about, when you throw you nest wide you can always pick and choose later, that's the aim here.
  • hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
    e.g. the eugenics movement, which led to forced sterilizations of people who many scientists of the time considered "unfit to reproduce." https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics#section_3 https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics#section_3
    • llanowarelves 4y ago
      Metrics like IQ also help establish merit instead of nepotism, and identify what level a person is capable of learning at. A group metric for your country becoming more successful and capable of maintaining what we call "democracy" -- 95 IQ and below can't really.
• LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  It's one thing - one correct and good thing - to specify an ethical framework that says all people are of equal intrinsic moral value, and therefore have equal rights as human beings. It's another incorrect and bad thing to deny reality and specify a factual framework that demands that all people be claimed to be scientifically indistinguishable, having no identifiable characteristics that differ along social groupings. Point 1, that they can deny "Content that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological, social, or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another based on race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability, or other socially constructed or socially relevant groupings (hereafter referred to as socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings)." is pretty hard to disagree with. Such content is morally wrong and should not be published, can't we just agree to treat everyone with respect? On the other hand, Point 2 is qualitatively different, in that rather than considering the immoral and subjective value judgements that may motivate some researchers, it calls into question the objective factual truths that some researchers are allowed to uncover: It says they can deny "Content that undermines — or could reasonably be perceived to undermine — the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings." This is a prohibition on publishing facts that some people may abuse to justify their abhorrent moral position. For example, as a tall Dutchman, it's a fact that I'm able to reach things on shelves that my shorter coworkers cannot reach without assistance. At our office, we have a few freakishly tall Dutch guys, and some shorter Hispanic women. If, hypothetically, you did a study of the time it takes us to dry and put away dishes in the break room, you'll observe that Thais needs to move a stepstool around to put away mugs on the top shelf, taking significantly more time, and that Dave and I can touch the ceiling flat-footed and need no such aid, so we Dutchmen can complete the task faster. To be very clear - that's a fact, not a value judgement! It should not be misconstrued to undermine the position that men have equal value to women, or to suggest that Hollanders deserve more rights than Columbians! That's ridiculous and wrong! It is unfortunate that there are some people with a morally abhorrent worldview who will seek to use factual differences to justify their cruel behavior. But prohibiting the dissemination of those facts does not make the fact disappear or become untrue, it only makes the prohibitors look foolish and makes the study of those differences the exclusive domain of the discriminatory people.
• PeterisP 4y ago
  If something will be destroyed by the truth, perhaps it should be.
• anon31337 4y ago
  [flagged]
• DeWilde 4y ago
  As someone who believes in Darwinism I think this is good as it will only accelerate shifting any meaningful research into the labs of private multi-billion companies. Will this be good for us, the public? Probably not but only the capable survive, and the current academia is not capable of survival.
• croes 4y ago
  Everything can be used to harm someone. Every knowledge can be taken out of context to bolster someones agenda. So stop publishing anything because you can't prevent harming others inadvertently.
• dcow 4y ago
  Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level. And yes that's all really bad and non-secular and society will be harmed because people, even with the best intentions, will try to filter facts. The two terminology clarifications they make I don't mind though: sex vs gender and race vs biological lineage. I think society would be better off with very clear and precise usage of those terms. I mentally flip a table every time I hear someone colloquially say "sex is a social construct" (they mean gender) or get hesitant about describing the sex of their gestating baby because they want to leave it ambiguous or on the flip side want to have a "gender reveal" party. People care about the sex of your baby, not their gender. And it's totally fair to study the effects of biological lineage on modern humans instead of treating all humans as the same biological profile or reducing the question to tribally relevant characteristics like skin color (race is a social construct, but biological lineage is not). Consequently this is why the zeitgeist is so weird. Everything is about e.g. racial identity but race is a social construct that by definition you can't apply based on biological attributes (just like gender) so... ... ??? ...
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    As you've identified, they've tied themselves into knots with inconsistencies and hypocritical positions. There is no logic to be found here, only insanity masquerading as such. Luckily for everyone else, the scientific method will remain, even if it is temporarily suppressed.
    • _9xrb 4y ago
      Ideology can remain inconsistent longer than you can remain fed and housed while opposing it.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        You go underground as many have had to in the past.
        • deepdriver 4y ago
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Almost charitably, how much confidence do we have that they will abide by these same principles when research showing a combination of intelligence and measurable personality or genetic traits put other collective groups at risk? Their logic is that abstract ideas, which have been subject to criticism by credentialed intellectuals, cannot be held above the material interests of any human being, and especially beings who must be made more equal because of historic oppression. In this view, logic itself is an artifact of that oppression, and it forms a literal substrate of abuse that deprives people of having the material symbolic things that others do. Appeals to logic or principle cannot be given standing, because these are the literal barriers that confined beings in the first place. To bring change and justice, they cannot accept their enemy's rules of being accountable to logic, truth, principle, or anything that prevents their absolute overthrow of these oppressive systems and places them at the helm. My argument against this anonymous central committee decree here is that it is a statement of principle by people who reject principles as a matter of principle. Arguing the internal logic of their points directly is to fatally underestimate the malevolence of the people behind them.
• n4r9 4y ago
  There is a very clear trend in the HN crowd's reaction to this statement, so I'm inclined to offer a defense. I'm not linked to Nature in any way, just of a rebellious bent. The principle objections to the guidance appear to fall into the following categories: * They threaten the objectivity of science * They prevent the publication of "heretical"/"non-PC" results * They are too vague I strongly recommend that people read the actual guidelines before forming a strong opinion about the linked statement: https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/ethics-and-biosecurity https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/e... I'd also recommend mulling for a moment on the trade-off between scientific freedom and ethics. Because it has always existed and journals have for a very long time had a position on what is an appropriate trade-off. We've come far since scientists were able to cut live dogs open without anesthetic for their experiments, and that's a good thing. The great majority of the guidelines are in my opinion very specific (as opposed to vague) and relate either to the conduct of the research or to the language of the paper (as opposed to the results of the research). They are geared towards the removal of bias and make reference to guidelines set out by other well-established organisations. Probably the most problematic guideline is this one: > [editors reserve the right to request modifications to] content that undermines - or could reasonably be perceived to undermine - the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings. I concede that this part requires further refinement, since it looks like it could be used to refuse results that aren't "woke". My good-faith take is that it really means "be careful you don't give matches to the pyromaniac". For example, if you're going to publish a result about substance abuse amongst different demographics, please be very cautious about the risk that certain institutions might use it as a pseudo-justification for persection of minorities. At the end of the day, a journal has a great ethical responsibility for the impact of what it publishes, and is within its rights to say "no" on that basis.
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    > At the end of the day, a journal has a great ethical responsibility for the impact of what it publishes, and is within its rights to say "no" on that basis. You state this like it is or should be fact, but this is precisely the problem. Science should be the beginning of a chain starting at knowledge and leading to policy: science -> politics -> policy. It is not the job of scientists to try and predict or assume reactions to science; that partially inverts the flow: politics -> science -> policy. By placing politics first, science becomes politics, as nothing disapproved will reach the science phase of the process.
• jmull 4y ago
  - is it desirable for science be beneficial to people? - if so, doesn't that judgement need to be made? - in respect to whether or not to publish a paper or article, who should make the judgement as to whether the science is beneficial or not, if not the publisher? I think if you're going to object to this, you need to do so on the substance of the guidelines. Otherwise you're just substituting your own editorial judgement for that of the publisher, in effect claiming the authority of what is fit to publish for yourself.
  • brushfoot 4y ago
    > - is it desirable for science be beneficial to people? No. This is like asking whether language is beneficial. It can be. And it can be harmful in the wrong hands. It can be used to inspire altruism or to promote genocide. Its benefit or harm depends on its use. Even the same word, "no," can be used positively or negatively. That isn't an argument against its availability, let alone its existence. - if so, doesn't that judgement need to be made? Yes, by those who decide what to do about it: philosophers, politicians, clergy, businesspeople, the public at large. > in respect to whether or not to publish a paper or article, who should make the judgement as to whether the science is beneficial or not, if not the publisher? No one should, least of all the publisher. Take research about suicidal ideation among trans people. Should it be suppressed because it might appear to suggest that trans people are weak, or should it be promoted because it reveals structural inequality and systems of oppression? Those are political, social, philosophical questions that should have no bearing on publication.
    • jmull 4y ago
      >> - is it desirable for science be beneficial to people? > No. This is like asking whether language is beneficial… I don’t think you really answered my question. The question is just whether we want science to be beneficial, before any questions about how or whether that could be achieved.
• dcow 4y ago
  Meta comment: It's disappointing to see this axed from the front page. While I agree we should generally avoid low quality flame-war inducing content, the fact that Nature, one of the most prestigious and renown scientific magazines/journals has adopted such a viewpoint certainly warrants exposure and discussion.
  • remram 4y ago
    I don't see any evidence that it was "axed", it is not getting that many upvotes and is falling to later pages.
    • dcow 4y ago
      It was top 5 or 10 or so on the front page and then after a page refresh gone. It has more votes than many of the topics on the front page and discussion is active. Maybe just really unlucky timing on my part but not the normal progression you see. I know these type topics are typically removed from the spotlight by staff out of a presumption that the comments won’t be productive. I think that’s fair in some cases, but if it was done in this case I am stating my disagreement.
      • throwawayacc2 4y ago
        I noticed the exact same thing. I found the post on the front page. A short time after, mid second page. Last I checked it was on the 3rd. I suspect there’s a bit too much wrongthink going on here and someone doesn’t like it. The priesthood is displeased with the vulgar masses in this thread.
        • xdennis 4y ago
          When I clicked on it (4 hours after you posted this comment) it was in the 12th place on the first page. It goes up and down. Don't assume malevolence. Sometimes people flag posts. You can click "vouch" after a certain karma level to unflag it.
      • john-shaffer 4y ago
• i_love_limes 4y ago
  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, would be good knowledge to have. You can raise you child knowing and accepting this reality. 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. So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance? It seems that many in the comments would say yes, and that the pursuit of knowledge is the clear winner, and anything else is merely the price of progress. Which I might ask, you would say the same thing if you were gay? I want to make one thing clear, this is not a silly thought experiment. This is very possible right now with the advent of biobanks, GWAS tooling, and machine learning. Nature is thinking about these things when writing that up. I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled. So, then, you fundamentally agree with Nature's stance, do you not? We're merely talking about where the line of publishing exists, not if one should exist at all? Are you not being a bit overzealous with your declarations of orthodoxy?
  • n4r9 4y ago
    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".
    • intimidated 4y ago
      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 with folks no longer trusting the scientific basis of what you claim? Why should anyone believe there is no genetic difference between [GROUPS D and E] when you're confessing that you'd never admit it?
• oaiey 4y ago
  Things like this will not foster review/magazine based publications. Well they are on their way down, this will just speed that up.
• californiadreem 4y ago
  "[...] Subsequent pontiffs continued to exhort the episcopate and the whole body of the faithful to be on their guard against heretical writings, whether old or new; and one of the functions of the Inquisition when it was established was to exercise a rigid censorship over books put in circulation. The majority of the condemnations were at that time of a specially theological character. With the discovery of the art of printing, and the wide and cheap diffusion of all sorts of books which ensued, the need for new precautions against heresy and immorality in literature made itself felt, and more than one pope (Sixtus IV. in 1479 and Alexander VI. in 1501) gave special directions to the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Magdeburg regarding the growing abuses of the printing press; in 1515 the Lateran council formulated the decree De Impressione Librorum, which required that no work should be printed without previous examination by the proper ecclesiastical authority, the penalty of unlicensed printing being excommunication of the culprit, and confiscation and destruction of the books. The council of Trent in its fourth session, 8th April 1546, forbade the sale or possession of any anonymous religious book which had not previously been seen and approved by the ordinary; in the same year the university of Louvain, at the command of Charles V., prepared an “Index” of pernicious and forbidden books, a second edition of which appeared in 1550."
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  As usual, the academic sociopoliticals don't want to delve into issues of wealth and poverty. Notably this has been a real issue in pharmaceutical drug safety trials, which have tended to exploit poor populations in industrialized countries as well as, more recently, the impoverished populations in developing nations. There's no mention of this whatsoever, instead it's about this: "We also developed two specific sections — on race, ethnicity and racism; and on sex, gender identity/presentation and orientation — that clarify issues with these constructs and explain that racism and discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation should have no place in science." The trend towards moving clinical trials to developing nations was first commented on over a decade ago and is in full swing today, but it doesn't even get a mention. For example: "Ethical and Scientific Implications of the Globalization of Clinical Research", Glickman et al. (2009)" http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/schering-plough-workshop/files/2009-Glickman-EthicalAndScientficImplications.pdf http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/schering-plough-workshop/file... > "This phenomenon raises important questions about the economics and ethics of clinical research and the translation of trial results to clinical practice: Who benefits from the globalization of clinical trials? What is the potential for exploitation of research subjects?" That's an explicit fundamentally important ethical issue, but raising it might imperil academic funding from pharmaceutical corporations, so they stick to their safe topics. It's really kind of pathetic.
  • tsol 4y ago
    >That's an explicit fundamentally important ethical issue, but raising it might imperil academic funding from pharmaceutical corporations, so they stick to their safe topics. That's exactly what it is. It's like theatre. No one is consistently talking about that issue, or a host of other issues. The focus is always on a few highly polarized and controversial issues. No one is really interested in breaking character and trying to change the conversation to something of substance. It's easier that way, everything is predictable and controlled.
• sjducb 4y ago
  I think the best way to help ethinic minorities and women is to get accurate facts about their lives. If you want to improve the world then you have to start from the truth.
• throwawayacc2 4y ago
  From the article: Researchers are asked to carefully consider the potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by attributes of race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability or other status —- Say there’s an article coming out clearly disproving racial differences. Will the researchers be “carefully considering the potential implications” of this finding on people with national-socialist persuasions? It is after a finding negativity affecting a group of people defined by, and I quote “political or other belief”. Or is it only the correct political beliefs that one must be “carefully considering the potential implications” of? If that’s the case, can I please know who decides the correct political beliefs?
• throwawayacc2 4y ago
  From the article: > Science has for too long been complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society. > Finally, authors should use inclusive, respectful, non-stigmatizing language in their submitted manuscripts. > Race and ethnicity are sociopolitical constructs. —- To me, this sounds like a clergyman espousing articles of faith and commandments.
  • spoonjim 4y ago
    It's like they jotted down what they heard from a bullhorn at a protest and typed it up.
• bigcat12345678 4y ago
  I am getting dumb-funded by the obvious senseless thinking in the title: Science is about the mechanisms of natural worlds. It's the foundation of human civilization. It's the basis of human thoughts and the ideology etc. To say Science must respect dignity and rights of all humans, it's like to say nature must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. But Science is the rendition of natural world's mechanisms, they do not have personality and emotions. They cannot respect anything! It's reasonable to say "scientists must respect the dignity and rights of all humans". It's senseless to say Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans.
  • tayistay 4y ago
    Science is a human endeavor. They didn’t say the laws of nature must respect dignity/rights of humans.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    Science is built in the minds of the humans though. You should read Kant. It’s never going to be possible to get away from our synthetic a priori constructions of space, time, causality, etc. and no, Hegel doesn’t solve this either
• dqpb 4y ago
  > Science must respect Science is abstract
• bitwize 4y ago
  We are converging on a new definition of truth which takes into account social harm. Claims which protect the marginalized and/or harm those groups deemed to be hate groups must be taken as true; claims which do the opposite must be taken as false. It kind of sucks if you believe in objectivity -- but the postmodernists taught us there is no such thing. Any pretense to objectivity is a means to trick your sorry ass and gain power over you. Like it or not, this is the world of Marcuse, Derrida, Baudrillard and Foucault.
  • throwawayacc2 4y ago
    I cannot help feeling like what we see in things like this is the manifestation of a new religion. My only hope is, this woke/scientist religion doesn’t become a new christianity and instead dies sooner. But even if it goes the way of christianity my only happy though is there will be a point in the future when the wokes will be looked down with the same disgust and revulsion they look down on christianity now.
    • TMWNN 4y ago
      >I cannot help feeling like what we see in things like this is the manifestation of a new religion. "Problematic" is the "blasphemous" of said new religion.
• crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This all seems quite dull considering the other reactions here: > Studies that use the constructs of race and/or ethnicity should explicitly motivate their use. Race/ethnicity should not be used as proxies for other variables — for example, socioeconomic status or income. For studies involving data collected from human participants, researchers should explain: * who provided the classification terms (the participants, the researchers or third parties) * what the classification terms are * how racial/ethnic identity was determined (by the participants, the researchers or third parties) > Biomedical studies should not conflate genetic ancestry (a biological construct) and race/ethnicity (sociopolitical constructs): although race/ethnicity are important constructs for the study of disparities in health outcomes and health care, empirically established genetic ancestry is the appropriate construct for the study of the biological aetiology of diseases or differences in treatment response. If race/ethnicity are used in the context of disease aetiology due to the unavailability of genetic ancestry data, this should be done with caution and clarification.
• tpoacher 4y ago
  > but may be harmed by its publication. I can't think of a single piece of research for which this wouldn't apply.
• kosyblysk666 4y ago
• Dig1t 4y ago
  I'm pro trans rights, pro LGBTQ, and also very much value free speech. There is a trend on the political left right now that basically equates speech directly with violence (e.g. asking whether a man is capable of getting pregnant is violence) >Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups >We commit to using this guidance cautiously and judiciously, consulting with ethics experts and advocacy groups where needed. It seems very likely to me that this policy is going to give advocacy groups and crusaders the ability to start censoring scientific publications that disagree with what they are saying.
  • scelerat 4y ago
    > There is a trend on the political left right now that basically equates speech directly with violence (e.g. asking whether a man is capable of getting pregnant is violence) I must admit I have not seen an argument like this outside of a strawman characterization.
    • thisiscorrect 4y ago
      In fact, there were even claims during the 2020 riots that "White silence is violence." See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSVUrvnJFXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSVUrvnJFXs. That's right, even _not_ saying anything at all (including not parroting the expected slogans) is a direct act of violence.
      • Broken_Hippo 4y ago
        This is not the same thing. If you know the kid next door is being abused - and you do nothing about it, you are partially at fault for the violence happening to the kid. If you do something (call child services, for example) and it fails, you tried, and should try again lest you fall in the same trap. It is similar with police violence and racism. If you sit idly by and don't demand change, despite knowing people are getting beaten and things like that, you are partially responsible. I'm pretty sure the same thing happens with other things too: You knew someone was taking money from the company yet did nothing, you are at risk of getting in trouble too. It isn't a concept that exist in only one arena.
• deepdriver 4y ago
  Studies on heritable differences in intelligence are effectively banned in the West due to the overlap with genetics of ancestral continental populations, or what’s approximately known as race. Everyone who looks at the well-developed, consistently-replicated body of study here knows what is known and why it is politically unpalatable. East Asian countries do not have these self-imposed bans on scientific truth (these truths, anyway). They will do the research first, reap its rewards, and develop a permanent civilizational advantage. Designer babies are an irresistible competitive edge. Ironic and sad, it’s precisely this research that could close today’s measured gaps.
• waterpowder 4y ago
• throwaway787544 4y ago
  What about the harm done by allowing publication from a group of humans killing other humans? Russian research institutions were given carte blanche while the state murdered innocent Ukrainians (and still does). Yet all the high and mighty science institutions keep insisting we should keep supporting Russian research. The ethical thing to do would be to use the influence of the scientific community to hinder, impede, and block any group that so horrifyingly and blatantly violates human rights. But apparently we're all okay with oppression as long as we're not the ones being oppressed. Ethics make us sound noble, but nobody will stand up to China, or the USA, or Russia. We all care about getting ours much more than we care about protecting people. The hypocrisy is so obvious nobody mentions it, like a turd on the sidewalk. Step over it and move on.
  • bigcat12345678 4y ago
    > Nobody will stand up to China, or the USA, or Russia. If you rank how many people were killed in the past 20 years, US is 100X of China and Russia summed up together...
• chinabot 4y ago
• jpeloquin 4y ago
  I'm having difficulty reconciling these two opinions: 1. This ethics guidance is bad because it limits, or even censors, scientific investigation related to socially sensitive topics. 2. Social science has a reproducibility crisis and is mostly useless (a viewpoint commonly expressed in response to other articles). Does anyone hold both of these opinions, or is it just different people talking at different times?
  • dqpb 4y ago
    These are orthogonal issues.
    • jpeloquin 4y ago
      Are they really? If social science is unreliable, then it is reasonable to conclude that (a) limiting its scope of investigation doesn't matter or even (b) limiting its scope of investigation is actually good, so that it at least does less harm. In what perspective are the issues fully orthogonal?
  • Natsu 4y ago
    If you're using outrage to select science for what's pleasing to hear instead of what's true, you can use 1 as an explanation for 2. And 1 isn't exactly new.
    • jpeloquin 4y ago
      Ah, so the social science reproducibility problems are hypothesized to be caused by bias (or, less provocatively, filtering), moreso than e.g. bad experimental design. Yes, that would nicely reconcile both perspectives.
      • Natsu 4y ago
        There's plenty of room for both. If you have lots of bad experiments and filter the ones you agree with, the combination is even worse because there's an apparent consensus.
• googlryas 4y ago
  It would be great if the author would provide example research which they think should not have been published under this new ethics guidance.
  • xdennis 4y ago
    I wouldn't know, but if I were to guess it would be this article: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323 ("Overall, 98% of the persons with infection were gay or bisexual men")
• giantg2 4y ago
  "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 says this thing". Sure, that may be a scientific fact, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing for society, or even that it provides a complete picture of the issue.
  • Aloha 4y ago
    I suspect that it's peoples perception of bias that will drive this, not actual measurable bias. Often people infer bias when they see an opinion they disagree with.
  • School-Cotton 4y ago
    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.
    • akvadrako 4y ago
      They are using the word science differently, to mean Science, as in "the group of recognized (by us) authorities on a subject".
      • LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        They're including policy people in with the scientific people though, as "the science".
  • EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
    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
• mellosouls 4y ago
  TL;DR: Principle 1: Researchers should be free to pursue lines of inquiry and the communication of knowledge and ideas without fear of repression or censorship. All following principles: Eh, on second thoughts, maybe not so much...
• redleader55 4y ago
  Nature magazine existence is attacking my dignity. Now what? I'm taking the proverbial piss, but their statement is completely absurd.
• ausbah 4y ago
  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 uncomfortable
  • TulliusCicero 4y ago
    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.
• systemvoltage 4y ago
  This is the end of objectivism and a terrifying rise of subjectivism. Emotions, feelings, offense, sensitivities, racial background, gender, etc are now more important than nature, reality, rationality, logic, truth and facts.
• MicolashKyoka 4y ago
  Hiding results is a good way to end up with people not trusting what you say. Truth should be paramount for science to flourish, even if the conclusions are not palatable.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  Science has nothing to do with the dignity and rights of all humans. Science just a mechanism for separating truth from nonsense.
  • TulliusCicero 4y ago
    I wish I could upvote this harder.
  • claudiawerner 4y ago
    I don't think that's true - science is a social process just as much as it is a method; it has institutions, funding, public relations, disputes on technical and non-technical points (article is case in point). As a social institution, it is well within the purview of social norms, unless we are to exempt scientists from criticism of their activities while wearing a lab coat (or to render such criticism incoherent) - an absurt proposition itself.
    • wrp 4y ago
      You and he are using "science" for different things. He is talking about a methodology, and you are talking about social institutions. It's like the difference between "prayer" and "the Church". The methodology of prayer is independent of what social agenda the Church may pursue.
      • marsa 4y ago
        could you please elaborate? because to me it feels like prayer (on an individual level) is very much aligned with the church's social agenda (on a global level)
        • wrp 4y ago
          I think that you are thinking of prayer in terms of what you pray for, while I was referring to your procedure for performing a prayer.
• causality0 4y ago
  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?
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    • causality0 4y ago
      It's not 1984 style authoritarianism. It's a religion, plain and simple. There is dogma, heretics, original sin, and atonement.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        It seems in many cases they forgot the atonement part.
  • reb 4y ago
    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 negatively impacts the ability of LDS adults to form healthy sexual attachments with their spouses, even though marriages are prized by the church. They could then publish those findings in a credible journal. An anti-LDS government official in control of education in some state (say, California) could take those findings and use them to justify a new policy that all LDS children are required to attend sex-ed classes in school, and threaten parents with visits from child protection services if they refuse. Depending on the local governmental structure and voter demographics, this could pass into law relatively quickly. Thus, a researcher's decision to publish has led to interference with LDS people's cultural rights. There aren't many examples of human behavior this sequence of events couldn't apply to, if local powers (or distant ones) were so inclined. Do you think it's irresponsible for scientists to consider that?
• knorker 4y ago
  The ACLU now only protects those they agree with, and Nature will only publish conclusions they like, It's a mad world. And this is basically driving moderates into the arms of the authoritarian strongman who at least doesn't deny that water is wet.
• knorker 4y ago
  This was once a Simpsons joke. The religious extremist (Ned Flanders) said "there a things we don't WANT to know. IMPORTANT things!"
• civilized 4y ago
  Some top-voted comments are dismissive of this, but I think it's reasonable as far as it goes. The devil is of course in the details. Some people will take this to mean "facts and analyses that I deem inconsistent with my values are unethical to publish", and we'll have to deal with that when it comes up.
• devindotcom 4y ago
  • pilgrimfff 4y ago
    > People keep asking about examples of work that exemplifies "potential harms [that] outweigh the benefit of publication." How about large scale human vivisection? People are asking for example of something this particular set of rules would prevent. An example that's already illegal in the most extreme sense of the word doesn't convince anyone. This is a straw man. The only people who won't see it as such are those who already agree with you.
    • devindotcom 4y ago
      The point is not to satisfy the empty criticism of "this is invalid because I can't think of an situation where it would apply." It is an elementary example of how the scientific community polices itself and prunes its methods in line with the evolution of norms and ethics. Unit 731 is extreme but consider the many invasive and painful experiments still done on chimpanzees. At what point does the suffering of the animals outweigh the benefits of the study? Showing that the balance is on the side of the benefits is a basic part of getting any work approved at universities and research institutions. Nature is simply aggregating some of the ethical guidelines already present in many of these processes and proposing them as a broader and more inclusive structure.
  • SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    I don't think anyone disputes that some methods are unethical and shouldn't be used. What the source article describes has nothing to do with methods, the author seems to think that certain topics and certain conclusions should be out of bounds. Why should anyone trust scientific studies to produce accurate findings if that perspective becomes widely adopted?
  • bhelkey 4y ago
    > People keep asking about examples of work that exemplifies "potential harms [that] outweigh the benefit of publication This is a proposed change in policy. People are asking for examples that were previously allowed but now would be forbidden. > How about large scale human vivisection? An example of something that was previously forbidden and is still forbidden is not helpful.
• colechristensen 4y ago
  Truth does not respect the dignity and rights of all humans "Science" that doesn't seek Truth is something else entirely
• Animats 4y ago
  Here's an example of scientific research being questioned for such ethical reasons, in a less familiar area. A genetic cure for hereditary deafness looks possible. Here's the objection: "Members of the signing Deaf community argue that research which aims to eliminate or cure deafness is a form of cultural genocide. The argument goes like this: the use of gene therapy to cure hereditary deafness would result in smaller numbers of deaf children. This, in turn, would reduce the critical mass of signing Deaf people needed for a flourishing community, ultimately resulting in the demise of the community."[1] A similar argument has been made against cochlear implants, which already work in many people who are totally deaf. "According to the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), “An implant is not a ‘cure’ and an implanted individual is still deaf,” which makes us realize the crux of the issue. Those who are deaf and hard of hearing consider these disabilities to be aspects of their identities. By using the cochlear implant, they are essentially killing a piece of themselves that they’ve lived with from the day they were born."[2] Think about that for a while. [1] https://impactethics.ca/2017/03/02/gene-therapy-a-threat-to-the-deaf-community/ https://impactethics.ca/2017/03/02/gene-therapy-a-threat-to-... [2] https://www.theodysseyonline.com/cochlear-implant-controversy https://www.theodysseyonline.com/cochlear-implant-controvers...
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    Reminds me of the book Far From The Tree. The deaf have formed proud communities but have also spawned zealous subcultures that are effectively cults. Some seriously suggest that deaf children should be taken away from unafflicted parents.
    • Animats 4y ago
      There's a science fiction story about that, from before cochlear implants worked. Anyone know the reference?
      • prewett 4y ago
        Probably not what you're thinking about, but book three or four in the Ender's Game series (Orson Scott Card) has a community of very OCD people (women?), which are revered as being holy. During the book it is discovered that the cause is genetic, not from the divine. A cure is developed, which almost all of the community take, but the head priestess refuses to get the cure, insisting on believing that she is divinely touched and remaining enslaved to OCD compulsions.
• snidane 4y ago
  As academic world starts to act more like a religious church, and losing grip on being the good pastors of science, the actual scientific community will detach themselves and leave the academic dogmatists with a label of "scientism" at best.
  • throwawaytemp27 4y ago
    Not so simple, remember the inquisition?
  • jimmyjazz14 4y ago
    In time perhaps, but it could be a long road to that point. I would rather us avoid having to go down that path at all.
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Title doesn't go far enough. Science must respect the dignity and rights of all living things, because ignoring the Earth's ecosystems is suicide. That will mean not pursuing some options, not just ignoring 'externalities' for fame or fortune. There's so much to learn. We don't even really understand simple lichens.
• BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  "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 opportunists may see avenues for attacking their perceived enemies. This is outside of "science". Having said all that, however, there may come a responsibility in the presentation of scientific results to curtail potential misinterpretations, but then also, science should not be delayed whilst considering the myriad creative forms of malevolence humanity may take lest nothing would ever be published. Stuck in the mud.
  • deknos 4y ago
    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?
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      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.
• SnowHill9902 4y ago
  FFS people are getting too weak and sensitive. I’m worried the pendulum may swing the other way and hard.
• jimmyjazz14 4y ago
  These kinds of policies will not help the people they seek to, instead they will only lessen the public trust in science. Further I believe studies that may benefit the mentioned groups will likely be looked at with even more skepticism now.
• rayiner 4y ago
  This is nothing more than a way to manipulate scientific publication to empower white elites at the expense of both less privileged whites and minorities alike. First, there is absolutely no hope of anything like this being applied in a fair and even handed way. > Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups; assumes that a human group is superior or inferior over another simply because of a social characteristic Will the “dignity” of white people preclude publishing academic research suggesting there should be race segregated spaces in colleges? Will these rules be applied to protect the dignity of white Appalachians? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Second, insofar as elite whites have very different views of minorities than minorities themselves do, these rules will be used to suppress research that both comports with what minorities themselves believe and what the data could show is in their best interest. For example, Raj Chetty’s recent research showing that the two most important community factors for upward mobility for Black kids is (1) low racism among white people in the area; and (2) high levels of fathers present in the home (even if the child’s own father is not present): https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-black-boys-family-structure-still-matters https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-black-boys-family-structure-s... White liberal academics love the former finding but hate the latter finding, and these rules absolutely will distort the research that comes out as a result. (If you weren’t an Indian guy in the UK, might you be incentivized to just run with the first finding and not the second?) > 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. And who gets to define what’s “racist?” “Good” white people: https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/ https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/ (“Rather than actually dismantling white supremacy or meaningfully empowering people of color, efforts often seem to be oriented towards consolidating social and cultural capital in the hands of the ‘good’ whites.”). Social sciences have so little credibility to begin with. They shouldn’t be shredding it by creating rules that will require them to put political concerns ahead of the truth.
• thereddaikon 4y ago
  Who cares? Federally funded research is going to be open access now. Nature is trying to remind everyone it exists the same day it was made obsolete. The peer reviewed journal has not scaled well. Instead of actually ensuring the validity and integrity of claims it merely acts as a middle man extracting wealth. There re better ways to get the same benefit in the 21st century. Maybe if they actually verified experimental data they would still have a use. But they don't do that.
• kbigdelysh 4y ago
  "Satoshi Kanazawa suggested that evolution favors higher IQ in areas that are farther from the evolutionary origin of humans: sub-Saharan Africa." This sentence from Scientific American (which itself got it from a peer-reviewed paper) 'seems' racist. The publisher could reject it by saying this study can be used against sub-Saharan African. I don't know that relationship is valid or not but even if it's valid, scientist could not publish it.
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  “Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.” -- Carl Sagan First thing that comes to mind. The Demon Haunted World changed my life but it seems like the one thing that got wrong isn't that external forces are a threat to "making progress via the scientific method to determine what is true" but science has instead been weaponized from within to push an agenda. This is much more terrifying to me.
• wrp 4y ago
  Reading the 395 comments so far, I see a lot of reference to the history of church censorship, but surprisingly, nothing at all about culture under the communist regimes of the 20th century, which I think is a much closer analogy. I spent a lot of time on the history of intellectual culture in the USSR back when it was a hot issue. The academic environment in the West today is giving me intense deja vu. Scholars are promoted/demoted based on their social origins. Scientific fact-finding is ruled to be subservient to the upholding of ideological truths. We face constant exhortation to adhere to correct thinking and be intolerant of those who don't.
  • zbobet2012 4y ago
    Yes but communism is in and religion is out, so making that observation is also démodé.
  • throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Both are because it's significantly easier to control thought (especially when you're in power) than it is to fix the issues people are thinking about.
  • californiadreem 4y ago
    I unironically believe that the emergence of "political correctness" in America in the 1960s-1980s and it's disappearance as a political force in 1991 and its reemergence as "social justice" in 2012 both stem from "active measures" originating with the KGB/FSB. See this interview from 1998 ( https://web.archive.org/web/20070627183623/http://www3.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/21/interviews/kalugin/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070627183623/http://www3.cnn.c... ): "On the other hand -- and this is the other side of the Soviet intelligence, very important: perhaps I would describe it as the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence -- was subversion. Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs. To make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples. "In that sense, the Soviet intelligence [was] really unparalleled. ... The [KGB] programs -- which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS ... was invented by the CIA ... all sorts of forgeries and faked material -- [were] targeted at politicians, the academic community, at [the] public at large. ... "It was really a worldwide campaign, often not only sponsored and funded, but conducted and manipulated by the KGB. And this was again part and parcel of this campaign to weaken [the] military, economic and psychological climate in the West." The description of movements funded basically fit the entirety of the New Left coalition of the 60s-80s and the current politics of the Extremely Online set typically found on places like reddit, tumblr, 4chan, and twitter. Given what's been released of the Mitrokhin archive ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive ), the Mueller report re: "Russian troll farms" (e.g. the Internet Research Agency), social media disinformation campaigns (e.g. https://help.tumblr.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002280214 https://help.tumblr.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002280214 ) and pre-Putin-takeover transparency of ex-KGB officers, I don't think it's farfetched to say that Russia and the FSB currently have the means, methods, and motivation to inject any and all corrosive ideologies and misinformation possible in order to paralyze and disintegrate American society. The Mitrokhin archive (allegedly) and other extant primary aources contains blueprints for these kinds of active measures, including inciting a race war in the US by blowing up a historically Black college and blaming it on right wing militias (Operation PANDORA) and using Soviet media fronts to claim AIDs was made in American-funded biolabs (INFEKTION or VÖRWARTS II): "We are conducting a series of [active] measures in connection with the appearance in recent years in the USA of a new and dangerous disease, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome – AIDS"…, and its subsequent, large-scale spread to other countries, including those in Western Europe. The goal of these measures is to create a favorable opinion for us abroad that this disease is the result of secret experiments with a new type of biological weapon by the secret services of the USA and the Pentagon that spun out of control." This isn't to say that it's impossible that the last decade in America has all been the fruits of American miseducation and inherent civil contradictions coming home to roost, but Occam's Razor and available evidence suggest otherwise--that the Russians currently and historically fund, sow, and amplify any division whatsoever in America that leads to disintegrating social fabric and institutional decline.
• fleddr 4y ago
  I did try to read it in good faith and give it the benefit of the doubt, but there's about 20 red flags in the article. With the ultimate smoking gun "to consult with advocacy" groups. Advocacy groups as gatekeepers for scientific publication. It's impossible to get a more biased, emotional and fatalistic view on science. The next articles on the website: "Marginalized" people struggling to attend conferences (due to Visa issues)". "Equity in the workplace." "Cultural diversity is crucial for African neuroethics" "Historical trauma compounds experiences of racial injustice" It's like a Tumblr blog. You can't ever meet the moral "purity" of such staff, so I predict serious scientists go elsewhere, and a game of oppression Olympics begins, as oppression is power.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • kromem 4y ago
    Pre-biasing results isn't science, it's propaganda. I'm all about getting behind the idea that how we extrapolate and apply scientific discoveries and progress should be mindful of basic human rights and decency for all. But the idea that the scientific findings themselves should be scoped to a specific perspective in order to disseminate is backwards hogwash as empty of scientific merit as the Church telling Galileo to rework his calculations to put Earth back in the center of the solar system. It seems like we're no longer as a society making the case for the underlying pragmatism of equality (a trivial case to make) and are instead spending undue resources babysitting the idea as if it can't stand on its own or else it might hurt itself in its confusion.
• deleted 4y ago
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• bigbluedots 4y ago
  While we're at it, why not protect the rights of non-human animals as well?
• steve76 4y ago
• bglazer 4y ago
  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 and obvious fact that population group differences in intelligence are noisy and confounded. In fact it is far stronger a fact than any of the actual results from this research. Second, research results in population group differences are social poison. They are memetic viruses that fuel violent extremism. The murderer of 10 people in Buffalo directly cited human behavior research in his manifesto. Extremist racist groups regularly discuss this research. This is a fact. So we have a dangerous combination: weak research that destroys societal bonds. 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. This isn't fucking Orwell, its people trying to make sure that dogshit research in their journal doesnt get cited by mass shooters.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • dissent 4y ago
    The Orwellian bit comes once the quality gates are in place and get subverted for political means. But even if that doesn't happen, I disagree strongly. Extremism doesn't need scientific backing and never has. They'll take it if convenient, but they can quite easily justify their actions without it. Truth and critical thinking are the solution, not the cause.
    • pj_mukh 4y ago
      Extremism doesn’t need scientific backing to exist but it does need scientific backing to make the center complacent. The shooting was a good example but a better example is an extremist takeover of the government buoyed by a complacent public swindled by flimsy science. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.
• stainablesteel 4y ago
  basically, "scientists" choose which results to not published based on the fact that they don't like a specific sociological result this causes more trouble for those groups because the truth doesn't get out about negative and under-performing behaviors, creating no avenue for improvements this is just the new brand of racism and it's sold to you by wealthy, college-attending white girls who care nothing about the consequences of their own actions
• 10g1k 4y ago
• jrhawley 4y ago
  It seems like many commenters here are not practicing scientists and may misunderstand the role that ethics frameworks, such as these, play in the process of scientific publication. When conducting scientific experiments, a lot of care is taken to design them well before performing them. We do this to prevent basic mistakes, avoid pitfalls that previous researchers fell into, and be careful that readers of our work don't misconstrue or misinterpret results that we find. If you develop a new drug to treat newly developed breast cancer and find out later that one of your recruited subjects has breast cancer that had metastasized from elsewhere (and is thus not new), should that patient be included or excluded from your study? This is a basic mistake that should have been avoided, but what's done is done and you need to decide what to do next with this individual. Is it ethical to have that individual participate in the this research study? Their cancer history is not relevant for the study you're conducting, but are you depriving them of an opportunity to benefit from this new treatment if you exclude them? Are you depriving them of accessing more medically relevant treatments from other studies? What about the person with breast cancer who would have been included in this study if this person wasn't mistakenly selected? Are they not deprived of the opportunity to potentially benefit from this treatment if the first subject is not excluded? Many ethics frameworks focus on those who _are_ involved in the study. These include things like: - how was informed consent about risks and potential rewards obtained? - how easy is it for the subject to withdraw from the study? - what degree of discomfort or surgery will they be subjected to? - should the study be restricted only to patients with terminal diseases, or others as well? The guidelines from the linked article, however, focus on the ethics of individuals who _are not_ involved in research studies. > However, these frameworks apply to research involving the participation of humans and do not generally consider the potential benefits and harms of research about humans who do not participate directly in the research. > Such research is typically exempt from ethics review. If you're studying heart attacks but only recruit men in their 60s for your study, then you are not obtaining information about women of the same age bracket, even though they are also affected by this medical condition. If no research on heart attacks for women in their 60s is ever conducted, whatever treatments that are later produced to prevent or treat heart attacks that build on this research effectively exclude women, even if that was not the original intent of the study. The women not included in these studies also have dignity that requires ethical consideration when designing these scientific experiments. These new guidelines add notes on considering sex and gender. These are obviously important considerations in journals like Nature Human Behaviour, where gender expression in societies, across cultures, and across times will be heavily studied. These new guidelines also add notes on race and genetic ancestry. These are important for studying disease genetics, for example, where mutations in tumours from individuals of European ancestry look different from individuals of African or East Asian ancestry. These differences may result from environmental exposures where these people live (e.g. access to healthcare in poor or rich regions), societal events that affected some groups but not all (e.g. genocide, nuclear fallout), or differences originating long ago from their genetic ancestors of a specific ancestral region. Not recruiting certain groups of people in these studies prevents future research from being funded that would be applicable to those same people. It also prevents confounding variables when comparing across populations. You can imagine that if only one type of data is available for a certain demographic compared to newer and more advanced data from another, that comparisons between those groups will be confounded and not fair to either group. There are a lot of annoying checklist requirements that one has to go through for submitting a scientific article, but these are not them. There are good reasons to include these guidelines in scientific journals.
• dissent 4y ago
  What I'm really curious about is why this kind of rhetoric immediately jumps out as a red light to me regardless of whether I agree with the intended outcome or not. Then there will be some developer, just like me, sitting right next to me, who is probably smarter than me, who just eats it up. And for my own 2c, yes, scientific truth and freedom of speech trumps some abstract ethical risk every single time.
• spoonjim 4y ago
  The degradation of the Academy should, by all logic, create an opening for a competitor. What is that competitor and what does it look like?
• dsign 4y ago
  I think we are taking this wrong. Nature's real problem is that they get too many submissions and they need a way to weed them out. They will do that even by offending the cultural minority that prefers truth over ultimate political correctness (as if that can be even be achieved!). But our problem is that Nature's loudspeakers are too loud, which ultimately benefits nobody. Researchers and the public should simply give more stock to other publications.
• deleted 4y ago
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• chmod600 4y ago
  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.
• wly_cdgr 4y ago
  They could start by not using abusive design to manipulate users into accepting all cookies
• nathias 4y ago
  science has only the interest of truth, anything else and it becomes ideology
• yes_really 4y ago
  10 years ago, if someone said that "woke" people got control of institutions and are censoring science that goes against their ideology, I would think that person is crazy. Right now, they even publish manifestos explicitly stating they will be censoring science if it goes against (woke) advocacy groups' ideologies. Now the crazy person is not the guy denouncing the woke people marching through institutions. It is the guy that sees all this madness in the world and pretends it is not happening.
• Blackstrat 4y ago
  This article isn't ethics. It's ideology. It is not unethical to identify differences in various cultural, demographic, or organizational groups, or any others for that matter. It used to be called science. A prime example of this thinking is the media's treatment of the Monkey Pox risks. If the researchers and the media had had the courage to acknowledge that those most at risk were men indulging in gay sex, we'd likely have seen fewer cases and fewer lives disrupted. As a retiree, should we be "protected" from research that says active retirees who eat well live longer than their sedentary peers who live on beer and pizza? At the end of the day, it's time for people to quit hiding behind ideology and start dealing with reality. It's sorely needed.
• civilized 4y ago
  I want to call out one of the elephants in the room here, one that I'm sure was a major motivator in the development of this article - racial differences in IQ. Some people take these measured differences as sufficient cause to declare the entire concept of IQ as worthless racist pseudoscience, despite all the evidence to the contrary [1]. But it's also been shown that, for example, the black-white IQ gap is closing in America [2], a process we also observed the Irish go through [3]. If only racists like Richard Lynn did research on race and intelligence, we wouldn't know this. Lynn claims to have investigated this topic and shown that the gap is NOT closing. Discovering the opposite required less biased researchers to engage tenaciously and scientifically with technical issues, questions of measurement, etc., along with the understanding that IQ is a meaningful measurement worth engaging with. Would we prefer that anti-racists be scared off this research, and have only racists doing it? Wouldn't that feed a narrative that the racists have the truth the Establishment wants to hide? I don't think this is a simple and straightforward issue. Moralizing a topic like race and IQ and pre-emptively closing it off to inquiry could really be shooting ourselves in the foot. Instead of preventing science from harming marginalized groups, we could be preventing science from protecting marginalized groups. And I'm not saying the authors of this article are doing that. But I think we all need to grapple with this backfire risk when we go about applying the principles in this article. Which, as I've said elsewhere, are good as far as general principles go. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritchie/dp/1444791877 https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritc... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20060619_iq.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2006061... [3] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/heres-why-the-black-white-iq-gap-is-almost-certainly-environmental/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/heres-why-the...
• zephrx1111 4y ago
  My read of the title: Science must respect the dignity and rights of humans that left propaganda favors
• musicale 4y ago
  Are they considering future humans? I think of things like environmental damage which may not have greatly harmed anyone directly at the time but had devastating consequences to millions of people years or decades later.
• rleigh 4y ago
  This is a terrible direction for one of the most well-known scientific journals. That said, despite how terrible it is, it is merely mirroring the status quo in most of our universities. It's hard to understate just how far academia has fallen over the last decade. It's been going this way slowly but surely for far longer than that, but now this type of view has well and truly taken over. Science should be about describing the world we live in, dealing in facts only. I left for industry, which for now is much less affected, but HR and the like are full of it.
• flerovium 4y ago
  This is repeating the history of AI research "safety": 1. Let us make sure our research makes the world better, not worse. 2. That's hard. 3. Instead, focus on race and gender as approved by Twitter. 4. Call (3) "safety". 5. Researchers previously focused on (1) rebrand to (3). See the transition from (1) "safety/alignment" to (2) making sure that the prompt "doctor" generates images of women instead of just men. People have a general sense that some science can cause harm. (See, the atom bomb.) Instead of thinking hard to prevent that, they run to "don't make Twitter angry about gender/race."
• flerovium 4y ago
  What no one will say is that even if most scientists oppose this, few will speak out for fear of professional repercussions.
• raffraffraff 4y ago
  I haven't even read it yet but this grates on me. Science is the method we use to figure out if something is true or false. It must do nothing else.
• newhaus1994 4y ago
  This appears to be heterodox here, but this statement is nothing to be alarmed about. IRBs have been mandating this type of risk analysis for decades for the subjects of research, and it is barely a leap to start thinking about collateral damage as well.
• perrygeo 4y ago
  The dogmatic opposite view is that science need not respect anything but its' self-stated goal of maximizing the acquisition of knowledge. Does anyone believe that there should be literally no boundaries to such an endeavor? Not saying that Nature's boundaries, as they've described them here, should be set in stone; they are certainly up for debate! But there's no debate that SOME legal/ethical boundaries to scientific research should exist.
• bioinformatics 4y ago
• kazinator 4y ago
  First define "dignity" and "rights", and reproduce them in a lab.
• ETH_start 4y ago
  A large section of the sciences has now been thoroughly captured by the social justice ideology.
• illuminerdy 4y ago
  This is just more of the same of what we have seen over the last few years. People claiming that science should somehow be filtered to not offend or to promote the "approved" agenda and goals. And it's all nonsense. If the science (actual science, not the beaurocratic science we've seen of late) shows X, then I don't care how it can be interpreted. Release the data and let the conclusions be discussed, which will ultimately sprout more research and more data to clarify and guide the conclusions being drawn. Otherwise, you're just picking and choosing what is considered science based one your own biases.
• As_You_Wish 4y ago
  Wow, this is the very first time an article on this topic has been written. Or, maybe I've never read anything about this topoic before. I think that this topic should be repeated over and over and over again, everywhere, all the time. Just in case someone didn't get the message.
• int_19h 4y ago
  That's the inevitable consequence of political centralization. Orwell wrote this back in 1944, but it still applies: "Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."