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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

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.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        Black isn't a "race", it's a social category. You can't actually be serious? In America, black includes people of Caribbean descent, people from South America, African-Americans, someone that stepped off a plane from Ethiopia. It's a completely meaningless term in regards to science. You can't actually be serious?
        Banana699 4y ago
- buu700 4y ago
  Scientific language is terse and unambiguous for a reason. Efficient and precise transfer of ideas. "Go the shops and get a loaf of bread. If there are eggs, get a dozen". I can't tell if this was tongue-in-cheek, but I've only ever heard that as an example of unclear communication: https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_her_programmer_husband_to_the https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_...
  - musicale 4y ago
    I think it's a joke to illustrate the point. This reminds me of the HN threads on programmer jokes. ;-)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
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.

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.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      Black isn't a "race", it's a social category. You can't actually be serious? In America, black includes people of Caribbean descent, people from South America, African-Americans, someone that stepped off a plane from Ethiopia. It's a completely meaningless term in regards to science. You can't actually be serious?
      - Banana699 4y ago
buu700 4y ago
Scientific language is terse and unambiguous for a reason. Efficient and precise transfer of ideas. "Go the shops and get a loaf of bread. If there are eggs, get a dozen". I can't tell if this was tongue-in-cheek, but I've only ever heard that as an example of unclear communication: https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_her_programmer_husband_to_the https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2z83kl/a_wife_sends_...
- musicale 4y ago
  I think it's a joke to illustrate the point. This reminds me of the HN threads on programmer jokes. ;-)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

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.