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.”
"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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... ... ??? ...
>Most of this seems wildly unenforceable at a practical level.
At a practical level, it's very enforceable. You just setup a a "science-must-respect-dignity-of-all-humans" committee at every major publication and university, and just block any violating papers from publication, prevent grants from going to 'bad' research and don't hire anyone who does subscribe to your orthodoxy.
We're well on our way to do that (if not already there).
It's trivially enforceable. Academic institutions have been absolutely ideologically and politically captured. The long march through not only the institutions, but especially the HR departments has achieved total victory.
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.
"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.
I think there is a lot more nuance than people admit. Lets take an example of we have a deadly disease spreading through the population (much more deadly than covid) . Let's say a scientist finds out that the disease is primarily (exclusively) spread by red haired people. Should they just publish the finding? The fact becoming openly known might lead to mobs of people chasing red hairs and locking them up or even lynching them.
A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first.
Another example could be that there is some disease that is entirely harmless but 100% infectious and deadly to some group (e.g. Black people). Now should that research just be released into the public? This might encourage some groups to purposefully infect these people, thus putting them in significant danger.
I admit these are somewhat hypothetical scenarios, but you said the truth should always come up,. I just give counterexamples. I'm sure we had many situations where resesearch was suppressed in reality for some reason or another.
I don't think this is the right way to think about this.
The editors of a journal do screen the articles that get published. Their criteria are hidden. They do not need to justify in any way why the accept or reject a submission. The process is entirely opaque. Scientists are thoroughly obsessed with publishing in top tier journals in many important fields, like biomedicine, so the whims of the editors are extremely influential. Here we have the faceless editors at least specifying some of the criteria they will be using. This is beneficial. We can now discuss and critique these criteria. We can also, if we disagree, choose not to publish in these journals, or post on twitter that our article was rejected on these grounds.
So overall, I think this is a net win.
The Nature Publishing group is not science. Science will survive whatever self-righteous fad the Nature editors decide to champion next week.
If you want to criticise anyone, criticise the post-war generation of academics who have allowed journals to have too much power and landed us in this stupid soul crushing arrangement we have today.
Imagine if we devoted a tremendous amount of resources to studying whether being left or right handed increased your chances of transmitting COVID. Then millions of people online start citing scientific papers saying that right handed people spread COVID more often. Then some left handed people attack right handed people (similar to how Asian Americans are being brutalized in public during the pandemic). The point is that choosing to study the differences in certain demographic groups makes a big assumption that it's important to study the groups for whatever reason.
sadly, what is called a fact is a malleable thing in the hands of the ill-intentioned, and all too many bigots are more than happy to pass off pseudo-science as the real deal. "science" isn't some abstract thing, it's composed of people and their actions, and as i think every adult will recognize, people can be turbo-shitty. like every other human endeavor, it deserves a close eye and critical thought. (i say this as a big fan of science in general and a degree-holder in the physical sciences.)
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.
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)"
> "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.
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.
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.
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?
I never understood this perspective, that aborting fetuses whose prospects are guaranteed to be worse, is somehow wrong or even oppression, and somehow oppression of a whole group of other people completely unrelated to the family.
If me and my wife are planning a baby, that's between us. There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child who is going to suffer more than necessary due to being dealt the wrong cards.
>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.
No. What? Are you insane? If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.
EDIT: Although I disagree with your choice of example, I would also like to say, that I do think that there ethics is important in any profession, including in scientific research and publication.
EDIT 2: I think your reasoning and people who think like you comes from this (very American notion) of thinking that being homosexual or being deaf or being mute somehow makes you part of a "community". And then from this comes this idea of oppression when the community is deprived of one of their new prospective members. I find this whole thinking absurd.
>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.
Are you sure about that? We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females.
>So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance?
Abortion is oppression?
Today, in most regions, you can abort a fetus for any reason ... even terrible reasons. Are you advocating for abortion controls so that abortion is only done for the 'right' reasons?
>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.
If it is possible today, where are those mass abortions?
>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.
You assume you can hide this information. Why do you assume that?
And no, I don't agree that it should be controlled.
> 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.
If you think that aborting babies, in general, is not immoral, then I, personally, don't see this as a problem.
Let's try a different thought experiment:
If you were doing IVF because you wanted one child. And you had two embryos. So you knew you would discard one. And you found out one of the embryos was going to be born blind. Which would you discard?
Most people (I think) would discard the to-be-blind one. You could argue that that is ableist. But another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide if your child can see. You chose to give them sight.
In this scenario the "oppressed" group could only be "oppressed further" if you assume the position that abortion is killing a person, otherwise you wouldn't be able to call it a further oppression since nobody came into existence to be oppressed. I don't see how, if you assume the common pro-choice paradigm which usually coincides with the views you express, this could be considered wrong.
> from the perspective of assuming that Nature is acting in good faith about this
Wrong. Unless you consider "good faith" saying what they really mean, in which case, yes, it IS good faith.
> 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
No, most of HN's readers would not agree with that. A good many of us, maybe even most, would agree with the Bible, John 8:31-32:
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
It's an interesting thought experiment. However, a lot of scientific discoveries have the possibility of being used for good or ill. Why single out this one?
Scanning of foetuses allows you to spot any issues to help keep the developing baby healthy, but is also used to abort female foetuses in some places.
Or what about nuclear physics - you get a decent energy source (subject to green objections) but also nuclear bombs.
I think until a scientific discovery is widely known, you never know what uses for good or ill it would be put to. Supposing the technology you outline above plus gene editing cured heart disease or cancer?
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".
> 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.
Does it matter? Neither fetuses nor abstract population groups are moral agents, only individual people are. Therefore, selective abortion of any kind (that does not cause potential offspring to be worse of) is morally neutral act.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"[...] 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."
[+] [-] nubero|3 years ago|reply
I guess he wasn’t talking about the magazine…
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alphabetting|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrBazza|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JBits|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] commandlinefan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effingwewt|3 years ago|reply
I appreciate you calling it out greatly, they've been circling the drain but wow.
[+] [-] dqpb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcow|3 years ago|reply
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... ... ??? ...
[+] [-] macspoofing|3 years ago|reply
At a practical level, it's very enforceable. You just setup a a "science-must-respect-dignity-of-all-humans" committee at every major publication and university, and just block any violating papers from publication, prevent grants from going to 'bad' research and don't hire anyone who does subscribe to your orthodoxy.
We're well on our way to do that (if not already there).
[+] [-] commandlinefan|3 years ago|reply
I suspect it will be enforced the way open source codes of conduct are enforced. Very, very selectively, by very, very suspiciously agenda-ed people.
[+] [-] deepdriver|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Banana699|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] NotYourLawyer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
Another example could be that there is some disease that is entirely harmless but 100% infectious and deadly to some group (e.g. Black people). Now should that research just be released into the public? This might encourage some groups to purposefully infect these people, thus putting them in significant danger.
I admit these are somewhat hypothetical scenarios, but you said the truth should always come up,. I just give counterexamples. I'm sure we had many situations where resesearch was suppressed in reality for some reason or another.
[+] [-] Gatsky|3 years ago|reply
So overall, I think this is a net win.
The Nature Publishing group is not science. Science will survive whatever self-righteous fad the Nature editors decide to champion next week. If you want to criticise anyone, criticise the post-war generation of academics who have allowed journals to have too much power and landed us in this stupid soul crushing arrangement we have today.
[+] [-] mike00632|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] volkadav|3 years ago|reply
sadly, what is called a fact is a malleable thing in the hands of the ill-intentioned, and all too many bigots are more than happy to pass off pseudo-science as the real deal. "science" isn't some abstract thing, it's composed of people and their actions, and as i think every adult will recognize, people can be turbo-shitty. like every other human endeavor, it deserves a close eye and critical thought. (i say this as a big fan of science in general and a degree-holder in the physical sciences.)
[+] [-] savant_penguin|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
"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/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.
[+] [-] yes_really|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwawayacc2|3 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] Dig1t|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] i_love_limes|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] goethes_kind|3 years ago|reply
>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.
No. What? Are you insane? If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.
EDIT: Although I disagree with your choice of example, I would also like to say, that I do think that there ethics is important in any profession, including in scientific research and publication.
EDIT 2: I think your reasoning and people who think like you comes from this (very American notion) of thinking that being homosexual or being deaf or being mute somehow makes you part of a "community". And then from this comes this idea of oppression when the community is deprived of one of their new prospective members. I find this whole thinking absurd.
[+] [-] macspoofing|3 years ago|reply
Are you sure about that? We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females.
>So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance?
Abortion is oppression?
Today, in most regions, you can abort a fetus for any reason ... even terrible reasons. Are you advocating for abortion controls so that abortion is only done for the 'right' reasons?
>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.
If it is possible today, where are those mass abortions?
>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.
You assume you can hide this information. Why do you assume that?
And no, I don't agree that it should be controlled.
[+] [-] timmg|3 years ago|reply
If you think that aborting babies, in general, is not immoral, then I, personally, don't see this as a problem.
Let's try a different thought experiment:
If you were doing IVF because you wanted one child. And you had two embryos. So you knew you would discard one. And you found out one of the embryos was going to be born blind. Which would you discard?
Most people (I think) would discard the to-be-blind one. You could argue that that is ableist. But another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide if your child can see. You chose to give them sight.
[+] [-] TheFreim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UIUC_06|3 years ago|reply
Wrong. Unless you consider "good faith" saying what they really mean, in which case, yes, it IS good faith.
> 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
No, most of HN's readers would not agree with that. A good many of us, maybe even most, would agree with the Bible, John 8:31-32:
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
[+] [-] gadders|3 years ago|reply
Scanning of foetuses allows you to spot any issues to help keep the developing baby healthy, but is also used to abort female foetuses in some places.
Or what about nuclear physics - you get a decent energy source (subject to green objections) but also nuclear bombs.
I think until a scientific discovery is widely known, you never know what uses for good or ill it would be put to. Supposing the technology you outline above plus gene editing cured heart disease or cancer?
[+] [-] n4r9|3 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] zajio1am|3 years ago|reply
Does it matter? Neither fetuses nor abstract population groups are moral agents, only individual people are. Therefore, selective abortion of any kind (that does not cause potential offspring to be worse of) is morally neutral act.
[+] [-] brushfoot|3 years ago|reply
It would also be used to support babies. Parents would be motivated to move to communities with support, education, affirmation.
Any helpful tool can also be harmful. The solution to misuse isn't enforced ignorance, it's education in virtue.
[+] [-] bilvar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tckerr|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] h2odragon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wikitopian|3 years ago|reply
I demand an end to this harm.
[+] [-] fleddr|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kromem|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tlb|3 years ago|reply
It gives their audience something specific to disagree with, rather than a vague feeling that some kinds of research were being buried.
[+] [-] bigcat12345678|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jimmyjazz14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] californiadreem|3 years ago|reply