3 ms·

It's probably not ethical. How repeatable it is is for an experiment to decide, if it was possible to arrange ethically.

• yreg 2mo ago
  What's unethical about it? It sounds the locals consume it anyway. If the experiment is blind you can even tell the participants what is it about beforehand without losing too much validity.
  • leni536 2mo ago
    I don't know much about standard ethical frameworks used in these kinds of experiments, but giving hallucinogens with unknown long term health effects to participants feels somewhat unethical to me. Also, to get stronger results you would probably want to conduct the experiment on participants who don't have an expectation of seeing little people, so that rules out locals or people who heard of or eaten the mushroom before.
  • bonoboTP 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    • UpsideDownRide 2mo ago
      There were some very questionable experiments done in the name of science that lead to development of ethics guidelines. Being respectful of other people is hardly pearl clutching
      • deleted 2mo ago
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• anon48293 2mo ago
  Ethics are just someone else’s opinion. Something isn’t ethical or unethical, somebody just doesn’t like it. They might have a reason for it at best.
  • reichstein 2mo ago
    Ethics is what people agree on. Not doing unnecessary harm is usually easily agreed on. Don't exploit people who know less it's also on the list. Doesn't mean we didn't learn something valuable from KZ camp experiments, we just don't think it outweighed the costs. And we don't like, or want to encourage, people who think it did. There are very strict rules for scientific experiments _because_ we know that without them, just guided by "common sense" or "be reasonable", someone would get blinded by ambition or "the potential" and go further than the majority want to accept. Anyone can "experiment" without it being an accepted scientific experiment. But then they're personally responsible for any and all bad outcomes. If you follow the rules and get the experiment pre-approved, you'll likely be covered by your employer's insurance and free from criminal liability . That's a very good incentive.
    • anon48293 2mo ago
      But people don’t agree on ethics. That’s the whole reason you have ethics boards. Otherwise the scientists wouldn’t need one since they already thought the same. I agree there ought to be rules, but ethics is just a word to make things sound fair when it’s just an authoritative decision, often taking bad arguments (like religious ones or public misconceptions) unnecessarily into account.
      • deleted 2mo ago
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