4 ms·

If a group has power to prevent other people from writing or saying things about them that they do not like, even otherwise legitimate scientific findings in a

If a group has power to prevent other people from writing or saying things about them that they do not like, even otherwise legitimate scientific findings in a scientific journal, I would say it is proof that they DO have power. Kind of like how Putin and Xi are able to prevent citizens in their respective countries to write bad things about them. > Would we allow terminating pregnancy on the basis that the parents don't want to have a gay or lesbian child? Let's assume we're both pro choice, why should a mother be forced to carry a child in her womb that she doesn't want to give birth to? How would sexual orientation be different from having an abortion after getting pregnant because it contradicts with her vacation plans, career or maybe the father was not one she wanted to have babies with? Ok, I do know why, because it's the same as when people do not want to allow abortion when a baby is likely to have Down's syndrome or some other condition when born, as it is seen as invalidating the identity of those who already born with the same condition. In my opinion, though, as long as we prioritize the interests of the mother (lets say that most will do that at least for the first trimester), the mother should decide what conditions are justifiable for having the abortion.

generj 4y ago
Moving beyond the abortion issues, in the hypothetical above there’s a real chance various regimes would do blood work on their living populations and kill or imprison non-out LGBT people (plus whatever straight people get included due to measurement error). Knowing that this outcome is likely, is it ethically responsible to publish?
- trashtester 4y ago
  With all due respect, I don't buy your premise. There is a handful of places in the world (mostly in the Middle East) that have the death penalty for homosexual practice, as it is seen as a sin. But in the cases I know, it is sin as a sin for being a voluntary act, not because it's in the DNA. The abortion case is at least realistic. A lot of parents go through the effort of having children at least partly because they want to perpetuate the family line. Whether or not you respect such a goal, for someone with such a goal, it is more likely to happen if your children are straight. You can also imagine the opposite case. A lesbian couple that WANT to have only female, lesbian daughters, and wanting to abort fetuses that are unlikely to match that pattern. Should that also be illegal?
  - generj 4y ago
    At the very least those regimes would likely target additional surveillance towards people genetically predisposed to homosexuality. That’s oppressive in and of itself. And that surveillance would thus catch and punish more people. To flip things around, would it be justifiable to enable a society to punish voluntary acts of heterosexuality? Voluntary acts feel much less voluntary when they are extraordinarily self-actualizing. I’m not informed enough about selective abortion to offer good thoughts. I tend to believe if a metric is not allowed for selection for one direction it shouldn’t be allowed in the other.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      > At the very least those regimes would likely target additional surveillance towards people genetically predisposed to homosexuality. That’s oppressive in and of itself. Ok, now you're becoming reasonable > To flip things around, would it be justifiable to enable a society to punish voluntary acts of heterosexuality? Some of those same countries do exactly that. What do you think happens to a woman in Iran who has sex outside of marriage? Anyway, why should a few crazy countries like that determine what can be published in Nature? If there are low-hanging fruits that they can abuse to persecute people, they will just fund the studies domestically. But honestly, this sounds just like paranoia. The real discussion is about the parent not wanting to give birth to a kid with trait X.
pryce 4y ago
I feel like you've interpreted my comment mainly by the diving into the ethical content of the specific example I was using. The point of my example, if I was unclear, was that ethical questions very demonstrably arise from scientific discovery, and demonstrably arise from the availability of technology. This point should be considered pretty hard to dispute. That being the case, when we see scientists getting together among themselves to try to better establish what responsibilities they have or do not have, that's broadly a good thing. Could such a policy be misused in a bad way? Sure, absolutely, do doubt it could. But to me it seems historically illiterate that so many readers here immediately picture that "scientists decide they should have an ethics policy" could be used in harmful ways but these same readers struggle to picture that scientific discoveries themselves or technologies relating to these could also be used in harmful ways, and if so, whether that places ethical obligations on anybody at any point. Perhaps, too, it ought to be considered that "scientists shouldn't decide to develop an ethics policy" is also a position itself, one that could also pretty obviously be used in harmful ways as well.

generj 4y ago

Moving beyond the abortion issues, in the hypothetical above there’s a real chance various regimes would do blood work on their living populations and kill or imprison non-out LGBT people (plus whatever straight people get included due to measurement error). Knowing that this outcome is likely, is it ethically responsible to publish?

trashtester 4y ago
With all due respect, I don't buy your premise. There is a handful of places in the world (mostly in the Middle East) that have the death penalty for homosexual practice, as it is seen as a sin. But in the cases I know, it is sin as a sin for being a voluntary act, not because it's in the DNA. The abortion case is at least realistic. A lot of parents go through the effort of having children at least partly because they want to perpetuate the family line. Whether or not you respect such a goal, for someone with such a goal, it is more likely to happen if your children are straight. You can also imagine the opposite case. A lesbian couple that WANT to have only female, lesbian daughters, and wanting to abort fetuses that are unlikely to match that pattern. Should that also be illegal?
- generj 4y ago
  At the very least those regimes would likely target additional surveillance towards people genetically predisposed to homosexuality. That’s oppressive in and of itself. And that surveillance would thus catch and punish more people. To flip things around, would it be justifiable to enable a society to punish voluntary acts of heterosexuality? Voluntary acts feel much less voluntary when they are extraordinarily self-actualizing. I’m not informed enough about selective abortion to offer good thoughts. I tend to believe if a metric is not allowed for selection for one direction it shouldn’t be allowed in the other.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > At the very least those regimes would likely target additional surveillance towards people genetically predisposed to homosexuality. That’s oppressive in and of itself. Ok, now you're becoming reasonable > To flip things around, would it be justifiable to enable a society to punish voluntary acts of heterosexuality? Some of those same countries do exactly that. What do you think happens to a woman in Iran who has sex outside of marriage? Anyway, why should a few crazy countries like that determine what can be published in Nature? If there are low-hanging fruits that they can abuse to persecute people, they will just fund the studies domestically. But honestly, this sounds just like paranoia. The real discussion is about the parent not wanting to give birth to a kid with trait X.

pryce 4y ago

I feel like you've interpreted my comment mainly by the diving into the ethical content of the specific example I was using. The point of my example, if I was unclear, was that ethical questions very demonstrably arise from scientific discovery, and demonstrably arise from the availability of technology. This point should be considered pretty hard to dispute. That being the case, when we see scientists getting together among themselves to try to better establish what responsibilities they have or do not have, that's broadly a good thing. Could such a policy be misused in a bad way? Sure, absolutely, do doubt it could. But to me it seems historically illiterate that so many readers here immediately picture that "scientists decide they should have an ethics policy" could be used in harmful ways but these same readers struggle to picture that scientific discoveries themselves or technologies relating to these could also be used in harmful ways, and if so, whether that places ethical obligations on anybody at any point. Perhaps, too, it ought to be considered that "scientists shouldn't decide to develop an ethics policy" is also a position itself, one that could also pretty obviously be used in harmful ways as well.