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

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2

by alphabetting • 4 years ago

357 754 4 years 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.

effingwewt2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

timr9• 4 years 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-tr....

[2] https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genet...

[3] https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-intoleran....

buu700• 4 years 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_...

dqpb4• 4 years ago

The ethics argument is a cover story for capturing greater power and control.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

And sadly, I correctly guessed what the article would be about just from reading the title.

JBits2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Yes it is binding. Articles can be rejected or modified on these grounds.

ksrm• 4 years ago

It's Big Brain 200 IQ Hacker News, what did you expect

effingwewt2• 4 years 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.

FollowingTheDao4• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

anon2913• 4 years ago

Certain lanes of inquiry that Nazi scientists engaged in were engaged in by many non-Nazi scientists. For example, craniometrics, despite it being now pretty conclusively shown to make no difference, was pursued as a science in both Germany and everywhere else. Just because its claims were untrue does not mean that those who honestly pursued it were not scientists. I mean, the hypothesis that head size affects brain size and thus intelligence makes intuitive sense. Those scientists who pursued such lines of inquiry and did so honestly and truthfully, and arrived at the proper conclusions based on the data (which many did), faithfully engaged in 'science'.

Of course, manipulating data for political ends is wrong, and using any evidence you collect to advocate for the slaughter or imprisonment of innocent people is also wrong, but these are philosophical, ethical, moral, and religious questions, not scientific ones.

There is a place for ethics in science... namely in the means in which one applies the scientific method (especially when experiments concern humans or animals). However, the data generated by the scientific method, if examined without bias, even if they're unpleasant, do not cause harm. The question of what to do with any unsavory facts is a question for ethics, philosophy, and religion.

Facts don't kill people. People do.

falcrist• 4 years ago

Human-created science carries human biases and so does engineering and even math which is supposed to be pure and objective.

James Burke presented this idea really well in episode 10 of The Day The Universe Changed. Biases sneak in when you decide what you're studying, how you're studying it, how you collect data, how you interpret the data, etc.

The process itself might be unbiased, but that doesn't mean the application of that process is devoid of bias. Anyone remember the stanford prison experiment, the machine learning chatbot that 4chan turned to racism, or however many AIs people have designed that have looked at data and drawn racist conclusions?

Are these things racist because racial stereotypes are objective immutable facts, or because the bots don't understand the context of those stereotypes?

It's probably prudent to figure out the answer to that question before publishing. At least present a few hypotheses to explain the results.

throwaway8582• 4 years ago

But scientists are subjective and biased

Maybe, but how much does that matter? If the bias of these scientists is leading them to publish incorrect or low quality research, then Nature should reject it on the grounds that it's bad science. The fact that Nature feels the need to publish this is basically an admission that the political ideology of their leadership is not able to stand up to scientific scrutiny.

What do you think happened in Nazi Germany?

Probably something a lot like this: Powerful institutions sacrificing objectivity to push propaganda and ideology

refurb6• 4 years ago

But the article isn't saying "scientists should avoid being bias". It's saying "truthful findings that harm people should not be published".

h2odragon• 4 years ago

Summary: Orthodoxy above all. If your Facts run over the Dogma we won't publish it.

tarakat2• 4 years 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."

DiggyJohnson3• 4 years 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.

anon2913• 4 years 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.

blueflow5• 4 years ago

What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is?

Did we ever agree? I always felt like Democracy is some kind of status quo between the incompatible.

silicon24012• 4 years ago

What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is?

"We" always agree on what the good is. If YOU don't agree, well, we'll have to sort that out, won't we?

fatherzine• 4 years ago

Q: What happens when we stop agreeing on what the “good” is?

A. I am right and you are evil. Age old conflict resolution method.

hilbert427• 4 years ago

In philosophy good is known as a simple notion, that is it cannot be reduced further. We cannot define its length, breadth etc., even adding very or little to it doesn't put a measure on it. Saying '0.5' or '10%' of good is essentially meaningless.

Good and bad, etc. are metaphysical constructs and thus we have a fundamental problem when using these terms in connection with Science which intrinsically and inextricability measurement-driven.

We need to be very careful using these terms when we're referring to or discussing Science and scientific research or conflict will be inevitable.

eli_gottlieb• 4 years ago

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.

Do these people think there are motherfucking X-Men living among us who we want to save from stigma? These kinds of statements read like the authors don't actually believe people are meaningfully equal.

dcow8• 4 years ago

Exactly. What happens when some research may feel socially dirty but is actually a huge boon to some group? I can’t stand the privilege required to say you know better for some other group. Let groups of people stand up for themselves and call out BS when they see it. How can the hegemony possibly understand the feelings of minority groups?

FollowingTheDao4• 4 years ago

Do these people think there are motherfucking X-Men living among us

In fact, there are. You know, we all have genetic differences, and most studies do not account for these genetic differences. So a medicine that helps one person might cause drug induced Lupus in another.

Lithium is a good example of this stigma. I have Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder and Lithium is constantly forces on me even though it does not work. I am what they call a "Lithium Non-Responder" and this has bee shown to be linked to varying genetics.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814312/

The stigma is that researchers still think there is only one genetic human.

And what do you think the X-Men was about? It was about genetic difference and mental health. It is about trying to have people see that we have value that others cannot see because all they see is the illness.

User23• 4 years ago

What do you mean by “meaningfully equal?”

It strikes me as a tricky set of not always terribly related concepts. As a Christian I believe all human beings are equal in inherent dignity. As an American who likes the Anglo-American legal tradition I believe that all people ought to be equal before the law, even though that’s observably not the case. As someone who has performed hundreds of tech interviews and worked in this industry a long time, I don’t believe people are remotely close to equal in developer ability or productivity and I don’t see any way they could be made to be without bringing high performers down to the lowest common denominator.

Animats4• 4 years ago

"These kinds of statements read like the authors don't actually believe people are meaningfully equal."

Right. Which is the problem. If differences between humans were down near the noise threshold, none of this would be an issue. What qualities should be valued or devalued, rewarded or punished, is an ethical and political issue. Measuring them is a scientific one. "Nature" is, supposedly, in the science business.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

immigrantheart• 4 years ago

Seems that they show their true colors.

setgree• 4 years ago

In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication.

I see a counterfactual claim ("may outweigh") and therefore an opportunity for some causal identification, i.e. a scientific answer!

An RCT would be ideal, but we might also look to the literature on attitude change in general to see how new information impacts discourse and attitudes. Here's a few things off the top of my head:

* https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/692739

* https://alexandercoppock.com/graham_coppock_2021.html

* https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-...

I think that in general, researchers find racial/prejudicial attitudes very resistant to change, either in an anti-prejudicial or "confirm my existing biases" direction...

dcow8• 4 years ago

Moreover, how can any of these be enforced, and by whom? At least you know who your church authority figures are and who to criticize. Where do we even start if we let Twitter outrage decide whether science is potentially harmful and should be allowed or not?

This is worse than religion because it’s pretending to be rational. And many many people will be fooled.

Enginerrrd• 4 years ago

This is worse than religion because it’s pretending to be rational. And many many people will be fooled.

I hate to make the comparison because it's such a trope, but, IMO this is one of the most insidious things the Nazis did to indoctrinate the population:

They did things like send people into schools and they would cherry-pick the weakest, least intelligent, least-liked Jewish kid they could find and set him alongside the most athletic, attractive, smart, well-liked Aryan looking kid.

They'd bring them both up in front of the class and from that point on, they'd use "scientific" discussion and observation of their qualities to convince the kids that the Aryan kids were superior in every way. I'll tell you what, I was a pretty savy independent thinker and empathetic kid, but I really think I might have fallen for that type of technique, masquerading as science.

mizzack4• 4 years ago

And many many people will be fooled.

At least you can spot the acolytes with "I believe in Science" bumper stickers and yard signs. Science is not a belief system.

BurningFrog2• 4 years ago

It can be enforced by Nature refusing to publish papers with bad results, obviously.

psyc3• 4 years ago

I guarantee you that if the guideline documents in TFA came to the attention of Twitter, they'd already be dated, and somebody would start righteous-indignation-tweeting to get their personal army to boycott Nature until they change it to say what the mob wants it to say. And I'm not being flip. For once.

trashtester8• 4 years ago

Many religions start out pretending to be rational. It just so happens that a millennium or two later, science may have advanced to a point where religion starts to look more and more allegorical.

UnpossibleJim4• 4 years ago

>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<<

Are they really advocating for self censorship in the sciences? And when the whims of societal taste turn or, God forbid (and yes, I put this with all irony intended), Twitter decides it doesn't like an opinion for five minutes... does science self censor then as well?

rrauenza• 4 years ago

David Shor was ostracized for presenting this research:

https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow...

Shor, citing research by Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, suggested that these incidents could prompt a political backlash that would help President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection. At the same time, he noted that, historically, nonviolent protests had been effective at driving political change “mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.”

kelseyfrog4• 4 years ago

The only reference to Twitter on the page is in the footer "Follow us on Twitter" which links to https://twitter.com/NatureHumBehav. Where are you getting this Twitter stuff from?

haunter• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

bjt2n3904• 4 years ago

Science must always report the truth. What was the old saying? "That which can be destroyed by truth, should be"?

Whenever science attempts to prop up political regimes by obscuring the truth, then tragedy and travesty occurs.

nomel8• 4 years ago

Science must always report the truth.

The only way I can interpret their statement is that harmful truths actually do exist, they're known, but we must ignore them.

bergenty8• 4 years ago

There is a difference here. One was to maintain the power of a theocracy while the other is to protect the lives of individuals. Is it the right course of action? I don’t know but the motivations are definitely not analogous.

DiggyJohnson3• 4 years ago

The stated, overt goal of that theocracy was to save the souls of individuals. I’m not sure this distinction is as real as you state.

qikInNdOutReply• 4 years ago

A theocracy is nothing more then a "protect the rights of individuals" for contract safety (marriage), primitive justice and against more then absolute ruler overreach, going heywire and corrupt.

This whole machine will reincarnate again and again though. With fairytale or without, the part of society not trusting the judical system to uphold contracts and social safety, will make there voices heard in pseudo religion after pseudo religion.

Let me venture into the testable area. I venture the guess, that the more reliable and longer existing a states social safety net is, the more religion will be absent from its society. It should also corellate with reliability of the justice system.

lr4444lr2• 4 years ago

Salvation of every last immortal human soul was a deep and abiding concern of the church. A lot more so than the "woke" of today who would happily brand newborn babies of the wrong color into oppression hierarchies.

gjsman-10003• 4 years ago

"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."

This is actually a bit of a historical myth that due to anti-religious bias prevails widely.

Contrary to widespread belief, the works of Charles Darwin were never on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books, nor did the Catholic Church ever state that Evolution as a theory could not be believed, but rather emphasized that a few specific theological events (a garden in which man fell) must remain, though the lead-up to those events was not rigidly defined. This is also why a Catholic priest is responsible for the Big Bang theory.

As for heliocentrism, this is also baloney as it was initially proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, who was not censored for his beliefs[1], and also served as a Catholic canon (religious member but not necessarily a priest). This idea was backed by Galileo using astronomy, however, Galileo was tried for writings other than his heliocentrism that were arguably heretical (including attacks on the Pope within his work) and not necessarily for the heliocentric view itself, as seen by the Church making Copernicus mandatory reading in some universities for astronomy courses.

[1] The Roman Inquisition would later censor it for a short time, however, their main requirement was that it definitions be changed from fact to theory, and the Roman Inquisition actually used 13 mathematical arguments of their own from the astronomer Tycho Brahe, versus only 4 theological ones. The Spanish Inquisition never censored the book. Even though Brahe was later proven incorrect in his arguments, he was still one of the most accurate astronomers of the era, and Johannes Kepler (of the Kepler Space Telescope fame) would later use his measurements to create the 3 planetary laws of motion. In any event, it would appear that this censorship of Copernicus requiring revisions before publications was due to Copernicus' overconfidence in potentially erroneous mathematics, rather than a theological dispute.

phaistra• 4 years ago

Can you provide some books or links if so that I can read up on these misconceptions?

mistrial92• 4 years ago

without handy references, I believe that part of the significance of Church dogma on stars and celestial mechanics, was that astronomy was widely practiced by many civilizations to varying rigorous results, but that science and most all abstract learning was also connected to religious or mythological meanings. Different societies, in particular the overall Muslim world of today, viewed the movements of the stars and planets with different meanings, which sometimes were taken very seriously. This connects to the imagery of the three wise men at christian nativity, who follow a star but give their gifts to the newborn.

Social prestige associated with higher learning was a subject of rivalry and competition, as most things were in those places at that time it seems.

r3trohack3r2• 4 years ago

I've been reading some old books lately including:

* From Atomos to Atom

* From Alchemy to Chemistry

* The Main Currents of Marxism Part 1 (not about Marxism - just a bunch of, mostly Christian, philosophers)

* The Skeptical Chemist

* Some of Descartes' work

I've noticed two notable things. First, the early Christian thinkers were _extremely_ logical. They did not shy away from human observation and philosophy, they embraced it. They spent a a majority of their study time reconciling human knowledge with scripture to try and understand their place in the world. Churches sponsored a lot of this research and invested heavily in making their religions consistent with human knowledge.

Second, not only did the church invest heavily in making their religion consistent with human knowledge, all of humanity did the same. So much effort went into reconciling the early greek philosophers with modern observation and religion. From medicine, to law, to religion, to alchemy - everything was very inter-dependent and few (if any) bodies of knowledge could stand on their own, they appealed to facts from diverse philosophies to justify their stances.

You see a pattern in the 1500s-1700s where, in a very short period of time, humans got _very good_ at attaching philosophy to physical phenomenon and reconciling what was observed with what they believed. During this period, pretty much every branch of human understanding underwent unprecedented massive paradigm shifts. Huge amounts of what was "known" were, fairly quickly, toppled when extremely foundational beliefs were questioned (i.e. the 3 element theory vs. the 4 element theory). A lot of folks were fairly invested in what they "knew" and didn't react well to the rug being pulled out from under them. It wasn't just "the church" that had a bad reaction to some of these thinkers; medicine rejected many early scientists like Paracelsus (generous to call them scientists) striping them of their credentials, jobs, etc.

I guess what I'm learning is that European history was a lot more messy than I thought it to be (shocker, I know). And it's really fascinating seeing these currents of thought develop over time. It's pretty amazing that it took us nearly 2000 years to question Aristotle and, once we did, the rapid progress that followed. It's only been about 400 years since we thought maybe there were 3 elements instead of 4, and we are already seriously considering colonizing another planet.

lr4444lr2• 4 years ago

Arthur Koestler in "Sleepwalkers" cites numerous criticisms from Vatican backed scholars that strongly suggest even though Copernicus may not have faced the unbridled legal wrath of the Church, that his career and reputation were severely tested for doing so.

al_mandi6• 4 years ago

I'm a person of faith. At the same time, we point out that the religion of "scientism" exists whether people admit it or not, especially when they claim that they "believe in science". Correct faith and science are not contradictory. And those people mix up belief in the unseen with blind faith without proof or evidence.

teawrecks2• 4 years ago

I think your view on this is being influenced by the limitations of the language you're using.

When a religious person says they "believe" something, it means they operate as if it were true even though they have no evidence to indicate it as such (a.k.a. the god of the gaps).

When a scientist says they "believe" something, it means all evidence gathered so far indicates that it is true, but if more data comes in and a different conclusion is drawn, then the belief should be abandoned.

These are two entirely different concepts, but in English we tend to just say "believe". The scientific "belief" is more akin to a mathematical theorem: - if X, then Y - All data indicates X is probably true, so for now I believe Y. - New data indicates X is probably false, so I no longer believe Y.

And of course when you're engineering something, it's not that simple because you need contingencies. X may have a 99% chance of being true, but you still need to have a plan for for that 1% case.

None of this is something that religion considers whatsoever; with religion, a belief is true and anything contrary to that belief is considered false, even if that thing is a measurement of reality itself. There are still huge swaths of people who believe a person thousands of years ago was immaculately conceived, walked on water, turned water into wine, all things that you and I know are inconsistent with reality. But all contrary evidence simply doesn't matter, the "belief" remains. This is the antithesis of science.

altruios• 4 years ago

Tell me how your believe is better than someone else's 'blind faith'?

Science is falsifiable - anything pushed forward by science has a way to be disproved built in (other wise it is not science). That's important because then you can update your worldview based on new evidence.

For the same to be true of religion - it must be falsifiable: it MUST have a way to disprove itself via experimentation... oh wait... the (Christian version) does...

Go do this test: "Kings 18:20-40": When you've soaked your bull in water and it doesn't magical catch fire by praying... I'll be waiting. (Or I'll be waiting video proof of the Christian god - that should be repeatable by many people... right?)

MAKE THE BULL CATCH FIRE WITH YOUR PRAYERS OR GTFO WITH YOUR NONSENSE

silicon24012• 4 years ago

Beautifully put. What I loved about science growing up is that it valued truth and knowledge (or such was the impression I had of science in history). If someone argues for self-censoring truth/knowledge to avoid XYZ values today, they would've been the same people to argue self-censoring the truth about heliocentrism yesterday. It's a tragedy to see science fall prey to dogmatism and I hope we can see some kind of new field emerge that has the courage to pursue truth first and worry about implications second.

teawrecks2• 4 years ago

The first part is just basic science: don't draw generalized conclusions from data that was poorly sampled.

But I agree the second part is questionable. Scientists shouldn't decide whether something is right or wrong. They just conduct experiments, gather data, draw conclusions, and share the results. Obviously they should consider the ethical impacts of conducting their experiments, but beyond that, all valid conclusions should be welcome.

antiquark• 4 years ago

ableist

This seems like an implicit denial that people can have different abilities.

warning26• 4 years ago

Yeah I never really got the whole "ableist" thing; for example, obviously someone who can't see is less capable of performing visual tasks than someone who can. Does that mean shipping a device with a screen is ableist because not everyone can take advantage of the fact that it has a screen?

armchairhacker• 4 years ago

This reminds me of the short story in “I, Robot” (Asimov) about the robot who could read people’s minds.

The robots in that world were hard-coded to be incapable of injury humans, and the mind-reading robot considered emotional damage “injury”. Of course the robot got into a paradox where it had to hurt someone’s feelings, so it just…died.

pryce3• 4 years ago

Perhaps it's wise for everyone to carefully distinguish physical injury versus emotional damage. Perhaps it is true that we can tie ourselves into knots if we treat emotional damage as completely equivalent to physical injury. And, perhaps also, notorious serial sexual harassers groping apparently hundreds of women (such as our man Asimov) have something of a vested interested in teaching us all that emotional damage in important ways doesn't count.

What's interesting to me, revisiting Asimov after medical school, is that we are unable to create a workable definition of pain that is absent an emotional component. This is of course not to claim there are no important ways that physical violence and non-physical emotional harm differ.

abeppu2• 4 years ago

I think that's a pretty unreasonable comparison. There's a difference between religious dogma which makes claims about reality, and norms or ethics. Discrimination and harm as discussed in this document isn't about factual findings, but is about "superiority or inferiority of one human group over another" (i.e. a value judgement), "the rights and dignities of an individual or human group" (i.e. social norms and conventions), "text or images that ... disparage" (again, value judgement), "embody singular, privileged perspectives" (an issue of viewpoint, not disagreement about facts in reality).

None of these prevent researchers from sharing their evidence-based conclusions, only the projection of value, status, dignity, or privilege onto those findings. As a society, we can agree to be civil, respectful and uphold particular values while we investigate objective reality.

Trying to claim that an ethical stance for non-discrimination is equivalent to creationism or geocentrism is making type error; one makes claims about norms and how we should behave, and one makes claims about how the world works whether irrespective of our beliefs or behavior.

elefanten• 4 years ago

But that’s not what the quoted text is saying. It’s saying research whose outcomes could be “harmful” (where the definition of “harmful” is very broad) may have harms that “outweigh” the benefits… implying it shouldn’t be done.

And now you’ve attached a high leverage handle to research allocation/gatekeeping and put it in deeply politicized hands that don’t care about the research.

stonogo• 4 years ago

This strikes me as an incredibly bad faith interpretation of the article. I do not understand how this widespread determination to pretend that scientific research is "just another religion" got so popular but I do understand the practical effect is to convince people that their superstitions are as valuable as research, which is just going to lead to another Dark Ages. Nevertheless, your immediate leap to political conspiricy is tiring, irrelevant, and ultimately pointless.

Science (as in organized, rigorous research efforts) has had a problem with respecting human rights for most of its history. This ethical guidance is here to prevent horrible shit like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Operation Upshot-Knothole downwinders, the CDC Tuskegee Study, and so forth. The sociopathic robots who believe that research must ignore human dignity in order to be valid are not correct. There is still room in research to treat human beings like human beings, regardless of the destructive paranoia currently en vogue on web forums.

slothtrop3• 4 years ago

Indeed. I'm tired of paradigmatic nonsense. Scott Alexander had a good piece about that relatively recently.

rowanG0772• 4 years ago

Very frightening that something like this is posted on Nature.com. Burying the truth because it might be inconvenient.

jwarden• 4 years ago

The statement from Nature has been very carefully worded.

The quote in the parent comment seems to suggest that perfectly valid scientific findings should be withheld if there is a possibility that bad people would misuse them. The consequence of this of course would be a complete victory of "Blank Slate"[1] Dogma (because any scientific finding that finds differences between social groups could be misused to undermine the human rights of one group).

And yet the statement never quite explicitly says findings should be withheld only because they could be misused. Rather it says that research that contains contain hate speech, etc. should perhaps not be published. It says authors should consider the potential harm of their research, and so on.

The intended result I think is a sort of chilling effect with plausible deniability. It pleases the inquisition, and at the same time leaves the scientists with a remainder of self-respect. I am not sure how long this delicate truce can last.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

Retric2• 4 years ago

“Researchers should be free to pursue lines of inquiry and the communication of knowledge and ideas without fear of repression or censorship. At the same time, they have the ethical obligation to uphold intellectual integrity and avoid preventable harms that may arise in the course of research or its communication.”

Alternatively, it could be saying a lot of bullshit gets published because people are incentivized to publish crap research (see replication crisis). So, if you know it’s crap and it’s also likely to be harmful perhaps consider before you publish it.

And that’s the thing, if you assume the worst interpretation possible you can be offended by anything.

narrator• 4 years ago

Imagine the confusion that would result by future CRISPR modifications to adults that would increase intelligence by replacing genes found in less intelligent people with genes found in more intelligent people. Imagine if those genes are only found in certain races. I guess we can't have that according to the journal's rules, can we? You will simply not be allowed to research or publish that because it would break the "blank slate" narrative even though it would provide a huge benefit to humanity.

nine_k• 4 years ago

perfectly valid scientific findings should be withheld if there is a possibility that bad people would misuse them.

This approach basically means that each and every scientific finding should be withheld (better yet, never produced) because chances are high that a bad actor would try to use it for evil purposes.

Mathematics has run into it with encryption: for fundamental reasons, it cannot be made hard only against bad guys, but penetrable to law enforcement.

We should stop any progress if we want to guarantee that any new evil would never apper. The promise of the progress is that it brings more good than evil, more jet liners than jet fighters.

pryce3• 4 years ago

This alarmist comparison of yours would impress basically no one who has studied in relevant fields, such as bioethics. The relationship between ethics and research has a fascinating and sobering history, one full of richness, horror, and a good deal of quiet ego shattering awe at all the multitude of different ways of being human we have previously organised to eradicate.

The calls you see for greater attention to be paid to ethics in research are not coming from a sense of obsequioous piety and genuflection toward establishment interests wielding political power, but the exact opposite—a call to consider the effects on groups not wielding power, such as different minorities—and obscuring this crucial difference, the way your analogy does, comes pretty close to leaving your readers less informed about the issue of research ethic rigor than they were before encountering your comment.

Bioethics researchers are regularly coming across questions like this one:

Gay and lesbian people are no longer considered as having a disease or disorder by any reputable medical organisation, are experiencing, broadly, a widening acceptance from different societies and their governments. At the same time, there several prominent nations attempt to criminalise, suppress, ostracise and otherwise punish people for being gay or lesbian. Suppose tomorrow a set of genes are discovered that are strongly or even absolutely predictive of homosexual orientation. What would that look like for our society, when people could say have an embryological test that indicates whether their fetus is gay or not. Would we allow terminating pregnancy on the basis that the parents don't want to have a gay or lesbian child? What would the outcome of having a 'gay test' availble look like in the hands of oppressive regimes, like the Russian Federation. Would having that technology spark a literal genocide of sexual minorities there?

Perhaps you feel you can dismiss this as maybe you (mistakenly or not) picture your own country as unlikely to regress to legally enabling persecution of gay or lesbian people, and think issues outside your own country don't matter. I can tell you there is basically no country in the world that people in the trans community would feel safe in, if we took my above example of 'suppose someone invented a genetic test for being gay or lesbian' and replaced that hypothetical example to detect trans people and/or gender dysphoria instead.

trashtester8• 4 years ago

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.

refurb6• 4 years ago

You know any time someone says "Although [academic] freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded.", watch out!

It's a common trope many use to slowly whittle away freedoms. A more accurate rephrasing would be "Your rights are all ready limited, so limiting them more shouldn't cause any concern,"

It's lazy thinking, because whatever limitations are in place today, have no bearing on the validity of the limitations the author is proposing - those should be viewed independently and skeptically.

What people don't realize is that when your freedoms are taken away, it's not some evil dictator yanking them from your clutches and you are beaten down by armed thugs, it's you and fellow citizens willfully giving them up for "the greater good".

jaywalk• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Science is (and should continue to be) cold and unfeeling. That's why it's science. Science!

nathanaldensr5• 4 years ago

The scientific method is a process. There is no need to anthropomorphize it. What exactly are you trying to say?

mrchucklepants• 4 years ago

"I reject your reality and I substitute my own."

throwawayacc212• 4 years ago

Evolution stops below the neck, everyone knows that :)

NotYourLawyer• 4 years ago

No, science must pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. There is no such thing as a hate fact.

volkadav• 4 years ago

you'd probably benefit from reading and thinking about this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

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.)

singlow• 4 years ago

If the science is bad, then the science is bad. If you do good science and find a result that doesn't fit your preconceived ideas of right and wrong, that doesn't make the science bad. You don't need to be concerned with the ethical impact of the truth, but you do need to be concerned with the ethics of your process.

I don't understand what the actions of pseudo-science bigots has to do with someone who is doing real science. Idiots will be idiots regardless of what real science says.

kodyo• 4 years ago

Positing ideas that can be disproven is science. It's also how thinking works.

nitrixion2• 4 years ago

Sorry, this is completely off topic. Why aren't you using capital letters? I've seen this trend starting to gain more traction and it makes no sense to me.

cycomanic• 4 years ago

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.

throwawayacc212• 4 years ago

Science brings facts.

Politics deals with how we use those facts.

If the fact brought about by science leads one group of people to kill another, we are faced with a political decision. Do we allow this or do we stand against it.

We need the separation of science and politics. Otherwise, important facts will be politically suppressed and falsehoods will be presented as truth for political gain.

It’s a story as old as the world, I don’t understand why so many people still want to mix those two.

hbrn• 4 years ago

The question is where and how do you draw the boundary for censorship? If you can't use science to draw the boundary, what is left? Let humans with their own biases do it? This inevitably turns into dictatorship.

You can come up with hypotheticals where truth strategy may harm some people. But censorship strategy is guaranteed to harm more people in the long run.

Also your hypotheticals can be easily countered:

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.

Let's say you decided to censor your research. And then few years later the groups that you mentioned got lucky enough to discover the same disease. Now, because your research wasn't public, the world was not able to develop a cure.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

mizzack4• 4 years ago

You don't need to make up a hypothetical disease. Just look at the current monkeypox situation with health authorities waffling on how best to message that 98% of cases are in men who have sex with men.

It's simultaneously totally relevant information from a public health standpoint while also being stigmatizing. Completely ignoring the facts/suppressing that info to avoid stigma would contribute to greater spread within and outside of that community, and is irresponsible. Nuance, indeed.

dqpb4• 4 years ago

quietly talk to the authorities first.

This is risky because the authorities are are almost certainly idiots.

kansface2• 4 years ago

Ah, we've already tried this! Check out the early history of HIV in SF - scientists/doctors/politicians knew how it was spread and refused to do or say anything lest they further stigmatize the gay community, which was disastrous to the actual gay community.

wizofaus3• 4 years ago

Those sorts of hypothetical "facts" don't just happen though. At best there might be some research indicating a very high correlation between hair colour and level of infectiousness. But just as often as not it turns out not to be the straightforward connection an initial finding might suggest. So there's no reason to withhold publishing of the results of such research, but every reason to ensure that new research is presented in a way that makes it clear that they're new preliminary findings that are likely to be overturned as more research is done and better understanding is achieved. If that still sets the mobs loose then your only option is government intervention to protect the victims. Suppressing knowledge about the real world is not a feasible long (or even medium) term strategy anyway - it's there to be discovered by anyone and everyone.

contravariant• 4 years ago

Those are terrible examples. In both cases you're advocating to keep vital information about how a disease works and spreads hidden in order to protect the social standing of an ethnic group while that very group is most at risk.

Heck this isn't even an hypothetical scenario, you'd suggest we should have kept secret the ways in which monkeypox spreads?

macspoofing9• 4 years ago

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?

Yes, they should.

A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first.

OK - talk to the authorities first, and then publish the results.

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?

Yes, it should.

I admit these are somewhat hypothetical scenarios, but you said the truth should always come up,. I just give counterexamples.

You didn't give counter-examples. You gave examples of times where the information should be shared with the public and then asserted that it shouldn't for .. I don't know what reason.

Here's a pragmatic reason for sharing truthful information with the public: If you want the population to trust public health officials, public health officials need to trust the public with the truth.

nitwit005• 4 years ago

A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first.

Who will then have to create a public health campaign targeted at, for example, gay men, and everyone will learn of the research anyways.

Besides which, most countries are led by people who constantly leak secrets. It would get out long before any action could be taken.

ryandrake• 4 years ago

Finally, a charitable reading!

The article draws the comparison with the ethics of doing science on human subjects. We mostly agree in principle, that some science simply shouldn't be done if it harms human test subjects[1], even if it would produce important scientific output. We're willing to make that trade-off because the cost outweighs the potential results. The article simply extends this principle to harms done to humans that are not test subjects.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

rufus_foreman2• 4 years ago

> A better way is likely to quietly talk to the authorities first

Which ones?

The church? Trump?

People have different authorities.

refurb6• 4 years ago

What alternative are you suggesting? That the public be lied to? Misled? "Despite report, this disease is not primarily spread by red hair people"?. Then what happens when the truth does get out? Who do you think the public believes then?

It was pretty clear this approach was used during Covid. "You don't need to wear a mask", "Covid vaccines prevent infection" are just a couple claims that were made "for the public's own good".

Then when people found out they were lied to, they were then skeptical of everything said thereafter.

It's a terrible approach.

Banana69910• 4 years ago

The fact becoming openly known might lead to mobs of people chasing red hairs and locking them up or even lynching them.

You missed this small little thing called Rule of Law, which - in any polity worth living in - bans vigilante justice and forming mobs to punish people without trial.

You also missed this other small little thing called the Internet, where you can publish a paper on arxiv for free without review, or post its PDF link on 4chan completely anonymously. Together "Red-Haired People Spread Disease" being a fact, and thus is almost certainly being discovered independently by several labs and institutions at the same time, this will ensure that the truth will come out, and much faster than you think. The only difference is if the public hears it from your institutions first, i.e. your legitimacy and credibility in the public eye.

Gatsky• 4 years ago

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.

mike0063215• 4 years ago

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.

dymk2• 4 years ago

That sounds like an unrealistically stretched hypothetical to justify not pursuing otherwise interesting scientific avenues.

VerminOctopus13• 4 years ago

You could also become some kind of “hate researcher” if you wanted to. Pick a group of people you don’t like(ethnic, socio, political, whatever), and start hammering out publications on their IQ, epidemiology, sociopolitical beliefs, etc. Maybe do a bit of P-hacking to make the deleterious stuff really pop out. Eventually you’ll have a nice corpus of literature out there framing your target group as stupid, disease ridden and ignorant.

nubero5• 4 years 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…

upsidesinclude2• 4 years ago

That might be the finest rebuttal on offer

AlanYx• 4 years 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."

nubero5• 4 years ago

Indeed… The rot has spread frighteningly far.

Banana69910• 4 years 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)

matheusmoreira2• 4 years ago

Well, sometimes information can cause harm. For example, revealing a terminal diagnosis to a patient could lead to suicide.

I don't think science should be censored, scientific inquiry should continue with integrity regardless of what people think. What I think is people who can't handle it should not have access to the truths revealed. I generally believe in unrestricted free information but I've been rethinking that for certain cases.

It's not just gender identity. I've seen similar behavior in other groups such as obese people revolting against the "oppressive" science documenting the numerous risks associated with being overweight because it supposedly causes society to marginalize them.

323• 4 years ago

Fermi's quote is not acceptable for publication in Nature according to these new guidelines because he centered on the "men" privileged group and excluded "woman, non-binaries, ..." non-privileged groups.

cetahfh146153• 4 years ago

ignorance is never better than knowledge

this is a moral judgement and a strong claim. I can think of a few types of knowledge off the top of my head that aren't making the world a better place

Something like learning how to tie a noose: this is (in most cases) bad knowledge. This isn't something anyone should learn unless they need it for something that isn't its best known purpose

when it comes to something like race/gender/etc, I can't think of one positive usage of that kind of knowledge, if we can even call it that. I'd argue that even the idea of race/gender/etc is against the goal of equality and if we want true equality these ideas need to be discarded

donatj• 4 years ago

The knowledge of how to tie a noose hurts no one. Knowledge in and of itself is harmless at rest. As with all knowledge it’s what you do with it. Keeping people in the dark is an immoral solution to evil.

nubero5• 4 years ago

Well, I for one think “the goal of equality” should be discarded. People are to be treated equally and we already have the declaration of universal human rights as a foundational and international document for that.

If you want people to end up all “being equal” to one another you will just end up on the farm, where all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Also, I think it quite amusing that you call what Fermi said “a strong claim” and a “moral judgement” and a few lines down you have the audacity to say that certain “ideas need to be discarded”. First of all, some of the “ideas” you talk about are indeed facts. And then who on earth do you think you are to tell other people what they may think of?

colordrops2• 4 years ago

You are conflating knowledge and arbitrarily constructed definitions. My understanding of knowledge is that it is based in some objective ground rather than a changeable definition.

Race and gender are social constructs, not objective facts of reality. I agree though, discard social constructs.

claytongulick• 4 years ago

The noose knot is very similar, if not exactly the same, as several fishing knots[1].

Also, in a rational society, the goal isn't blanket "equality". People are not equal. I'll never have a career as a basketball player.

Equality of opportunity is the goal, not equality of outcome.

Equality of outcome arguments generally boil down to some derivative of "we should take from group a and give to group b, and I should be the one to oversee this".

[1] https://www.knotsforfishing.com/hangmans-knot/

BiteCode_dev• 4 years ago

Also, let's remind the author that quote next time he or she needs surgery: no aenestesia, ignorance is never better than knowledge.

yamrzou• 4 years ago

This is so general that its either very obvious or nonsense. They should include examples of what they consider "harmful science".

Analemma_• 4 years 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".

nathanaldensr5• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Telescopes evoke phallic associations and so promote the male dominance. The world demands female-friendly optics. #defundastronomy #cancelgalileo

jjcon• 4 years 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

landofredwater• 4 years 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.

anon2913• 4 years 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'.

psyc3• 4 years ago

It's the same Science you know and trust, now with 50% more social consciousness!

cf141q53252• 4 years 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.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

You're more charitable than I am. I think these things are written with a mindset of "how far can we push this/what can we realistically get away with?"

hbossy• 4 years ago

„If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.“

carapace• 4 years ago

I thought this would be about e.g. building telescopes on Maunakea.

mistrial92• 4 years ago

hashtag #nooneleftbehind appears to be in a similar vein.. "sovereignty" is so pre-modern </snark>

ohCh6zos• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

"sovereignty" can be dated to 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia. Well before "modern" times.

faxmeyourcode• 4 years ago

Any dissent against the state religion shall not be tolerated.

BurningFrog2• 4 years ago

So if Nature has fallen, what replaces it?

dane-pgp6• 4 years ago

Well, historically speaking, the Law.

JamesBarney• 4 years 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• 4 years 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

bergenty8• 4 years 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.

throwawayacc212• 4 years 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?

macspoofing9• 4 years ago

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.

I'm glad you recognize in yourself that you can't be trusted with certain information and you need, personally, a big brother to lie to you. You do you. I'd appreciate if you didn't make the same assessment about me, and others.

tlb• 4 years 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.

upsidesinclude2• 4 years ago

It entirely unsurprising that an author cannot be found attached to this excrement

SubiculumCode2• 4 years 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.

PeterisP2• 4 years 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.

cf141q53252• 4 years ago

most from non-scientists

I am really curious about your source on this.

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

Nowhere in the scientific method does this message fit.

llanowarelves4• 4 years ago

There's science the method, then there's Science the institution.

scientists and Scientists both practitioners of something different.

hattmall• 4 years ago

Goodbye Science, you brought us a long way.

drorco• 4 years 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.

nathanaldensr5• 4 years 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.

reb6• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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

llanowarelves4• 4 years 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.

refurb6• 4 years ago

Eugenics was never "discovered". It was a theory latched onto by politicians to deadly ends.

staticman2• 4 years ago

Journal articles aren't necessarily about discoveries, the results of the study may contribute nothing other than "noise" that will be creatively interpreted by a community.

LeifCarrotson• 4 years 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.

PeterisP2• 4 years ago

If something will be destroyed by the truth, perhaps it should be.

DeWilde• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

dcow8• 4 years 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... ... ??? ...

nathanaldensr5• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Ideology can remain inconsistent longer than you can remain fed and housed while opposing it.

macspoofing9• 4 years ago

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).

slothtrop3• 4 years ago

I already recall reading about several instances of it happening.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

wildly unenforceable at a practical level

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.

deepdriver3• 4 years ago

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.

motohagiography• 4 years 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.

n4r914• 4 years 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/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.

nathanaldensr5• 4 years 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.

n4r914• 4 years ago

Science should be the beginning of a chain starting at knowledge and leading to policy

I sympathise with the goal of separating science from cultural politics. It feels like I'm against the tide here but I actually think the great majority of the guidelines strengthen this chain by promoting clarity and eliminating cultural assumptions. For example, specifying that the commonly accepted and/or scientific meanings of words like "sex" and "race" are used, and that the language adheres to bias-free practises.

A thought experiment: if you were an editor and received a manuscript which was perfectly fine up until the last line which said "and as well all know, homosexuals are weak-willed sissies", would you still go ahead and publsh if the author completely refused to remove that line?

Banana69910• 4 years ago

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.

No. This is really hilarious, but really though, No.

The whole point of science is no content-related norms. You can put content-related norms wherever you want. You can put them in your useless HR departments, you can put them in the brainwashing (uh, ahem, "orientation") of new hires. But the moment you start saying "All papers dealing with topic X are refused, regardless of supporting evidence or explanatory\predictive power" then you're literally not doing science. You're playing dress up.

Every single philosophy of science from pre-Popper onwards is very clear that good science doesn't give a single shit about the moral content of an idea and how politically-correct it is, only how well supported it is and how elegantly it explains existing data and how accurately it predicts new data.

Evolution says you're no better and no worse than rats, who are also your distant cousins btw, neuroscience says that what we call "you" is really just a bunch of electrochemistry that anybody can learn to manipulate and push to do things. Science doesn't give a shit about your panic that somebody can "misinterpret" those results, that's your problem, stop being lazy and find other solutions to it, don't censor science.

n4r914• 4 years ago

I don't feel that the guidelines could or would ban entire topics from being published. Do you have any specific topics in mind?

TulliusCicero8• 4 years ago

The whole point of science is to find the truth, not to only find the truths that we feel comfortable with.

Of course many scientists throughout history have sucked at that at various times, but that doesn't make it a bad ideal.

JanneVee• 4 years ago

I read through the guidelines. I'm firmly in the camp that the fundamental ideas of the guidelines stem from ideas that deny the existence of objective shared reality. But science is and always has been the pursuit of knowledge of objective shared reality. The guidelines are antithetical to science.

jmull2• 4 years 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.

brushfoot5• 4 years 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.

jmull2• 4 years 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.

dcow8• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

I don't see any evidence that it was "axed", it is not getting that many upvotes and is falling to later pages.

dcow8• 4 years 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.

i_love_limes2• 4 years 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?

n4r914• 4 years 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• 4 years 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?

gadders• 4 years ago

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?

TheFreim• 4 years ago

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.

i_love_limes2• 4 years ago

Is this a real opinion? My god.

Thinking that aborting female embryos because they will be considered less important in society is wrong, AND think that removing a women's right to choose entirely based on religious teachings is wrong, AND thinking that forced sterilization of a whole cultural/ethnic group is wrong, are not incompatible.

Where are you getting these opinions from? I'd honestly have a hard look at where you got these thoughts from, they are pretty backwards, and not morally considered at all.

goethes_kind• 4 years ago

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.

throwawayacc212• 4 years ago

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.

Thank you for putting this into words. I share the same perspective but never articulated it so elegantly. You made my evening.

abdullahkhalids• 4 years ago

There is one very common case where people abort fetuses because of reasons that are not "saving the child from worse prospects". This is people not wanting girls because "girls are economic and social liabilities and boys are assets". In my country, sex-selective abortion has been so prevalent that doctors now don't tell parents the sex of the fetus. If they did, very quickly would there be a difference of millions between males and females in the population with all the social problems that brings about.

If somehow tomorrow, some research project resulted in a very cheap device, usable by anyone, that could tell the sex of a baby, I think one would have to at least seriously debate and ponder whether publishing such work is good for the country or not.

dane-pgp6• 4 years ago

There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child

I guess you're counting the child him/herself as an "outside group" in this process too.

asoneth• 4 years ago

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.

In addition to the question of morality and autonomy, I think it's also worth considering the practical second-order effects we are likely to see once this kind of libertarian eugenics inevitably becomes easier. Industries like engineering and math will change once parents can avoid having children on the spectrum. Not to mention theater and fashion when parents can choose to have only heterosexual children.

Reminds me of the message at the end of Gattaca.

The biggest real-world example of societal change is probably the sex-selective abortion someone else mentioned which results in an excess of males in several regions of the world. A gender imbalance where males outnumber females by a significant margin seems to result in societal instability so it's not surprising governments work so hard to crack down on it.

UIUC_063• 4 years ago

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.

zajio1am• 4 years ago

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.

macspoofing9• 4 years ago

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.

ZeroGravitas7• 4 years ago

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.

But we do...

The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 103 to 106 males for 100 females.[37][38] However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2 in Mainland China.[6][18] As a result, counts of missing women are often due to missing female children.[18] It is estimated that the cumulative number of missing female births due to sex-selective abortion globally is 45 million from 1970 to 2017.[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women

timmg2• 4 years ago

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.

dane-pgp6• 4 years ago

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.

Yet another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide whether your blind child should live. You chose that they should die.

Your desire to only want one child in this circumstance is not free of ethical implications.

bilvar• 4 years ago

I think we should terminate all pregnancies, as the baby could become a racist. We should be able to deprive the KKK community of all future members.

brushfoot5• 4 years ago

In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies

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.

oaiey• 4 years ago

Things like this will not foster review/magazine based publications.

Well they are on their way down, this will just speed that up.

californiadreem2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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/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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

throwawayacc212• 4 years 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?

throwawayacc212• 4 years 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.

spoonjim2• 4 years ago

It's like they jotted down what they heard from a bullhorn at a protest and typed it up.

bigcat123456782• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Science is a human endeavor. They didn’t say the laws of nature must respect dignity/rights of humans.

bowsamic• 4 years 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

dqpb4• 4 years ago

Science must respect

Science is abstract

bitwize• 4 years 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.

throwawayacc212• 4 years 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.

TMWNN2• 4 years 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.

ZeroGravitas7• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

but may be harmed by its publication.

I can't think of a single piece of research for which this wouldn't apply.

Dig1t2• 4 years 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.

scelerat2• 4 years 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.

thisiscorrect2• 4 years 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. That's right, even _not_ saying anything at all (including not parroting the expected slogans) is a direct act of violence.

Dig1t2• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/uU7nzwbJ-Hk?t=41

Here is a good example:

"I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic and opens trans people up to violence"

This is a US senator and a Berkeley law professor talking in court.

throwaway09223• 4 years ago

I have been directly told this several times. In one case, in an awareness presentation at a large tech company.

I suspect many of us have had this experience.

brippalcharrid• 4 years ago

Perhaps you hadn't yet encountered the subject of Epistemic Violence, in that case:

“I have thus defined epistemic violence as a forced delegitimation, sanctioning and repression […] of certain possibilities of knowing, going hand in hand with an attempted enforcement […] of other possibilities of knowing.”

Sebastian Garbe 2013

https://epistemicviolence.aau.at/index.php/en/home-2/

https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-epistemic-violence/

mpalmer3• 4 years ago

There is a quality of leftish ideas and initiatives that people find discomfiting, even those with liberal values like myself.

"Speech is violence" is an over-simplification of this quality. It is easy to dismiss in its sensationalism, and its lack of prominent examples.

It's a special case of the real insidiousness - what you should really be looking for when people say things that don't sound right to you:

    You are not only responsible for what you do and say, but for what anyone chooses to do or say as a result, at *any* time.

The legal definition of incitement is something like "the deliberate encouragement of imminent lawless action". Remove "imminent" and replace "deliberate" with "inadvertent" and you'll have something resembling a explanation of the impulse behind "speech is violence".

"Speech is violence" means that by expressing opinions that are critical of X (or arguments for policy that protects X), you are making it more likely that bad actors will commit violence against X.

reb6• 4 years ago

I see it more as an acknowledgement that, in the midst of a propaganda war (which the entire world is now engaged in 24/7, thanks to the internet), the information you put out into the world may have strategic value to individuals or groups whose goals are contrary to the good of the human race. When true things are used to justify horrific actions, it's particularly difficult to prevent because that truth lends serious credibility to the supposed rationality of the horrors being enacted. Superficially-rational evil is the most destructive force in the world specifically because it's built on a foundation of carefully-selected truths.

That doesn't mean the truth should die or we should hide from true things. But it's impossible to avoid the amoral power of true things, and pretending "just telling the truth" won't or can't lead to horrific outcomes is a level of naiveté intelligent people can't afford to have in an era when political and civil violence is back in the Overton window throughout the world.

xdennis4• 4 years ago

individuals or groups whose goals are contrary to the good of the human race

These types of exaggerations are part of the problem.

It would be fine if by that you meant supporters of totalitarian regimes, but I often hear this type of language from people who think that using pronouns in the conventional way is genocide.

thrown_225• 4 years ago

Which human race?

The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was both a genocide against the Aztecs and a war of liberation by every other tribe which was used as human cattle for sacrifices by the Aztecs.

userbinator2• 4 years 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)

No doubt because they wanted to be "inclusive" of such opinions.

I am reminded of this old warning: "Have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out."

deepdriver3• 4 years 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.

throwaway787544• 4 years 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.

bigcat123456782• 4 years 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...

jpeloquin3• 4 years 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?

dqpb4• 4 years ago

These are orthogonal issues.

jpeloquin3• 4 years 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?

Natsu2• 4 years 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.

jpeloquin3• 4 years 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.

tomp• 4 years ago

I hold both of these views.

Science is about figuring out the truth about the world.

Censorship prevents that.

Something that is not reproducible isn’t even science.

I really don’t see a contradiction.

llanowarelves4• 4 years ago

Stereotypes (about all groups) and their accuracy are some of the most replicable in social science, yet would likely be considered hateful or insensitive.

Any measures of difference between people. Neoteny, IQ, etc.

googlryas• 4 years 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.

xdennis4• 4 years 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 ("Overall, 98% of the persons with infection were gay or bisexual men")

giantg23• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

umanwizard• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

They are using the word science differently, to mean Science, as in "the group of recognized (by us) authorities on a subject".

EntropyIsAHoax6• 4 years 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

FabHK6• 4 years ago

This. That editorial and its new policies might be justified, but it is definitely a watershed.

The old model was: scientists discover facts about the world, politicians/society decide what to do with these facts.

This new policy undermines the separation of descriptive (purely factual) and prescriptive, normative (infused with value judgements) statements.

Should physicists and engineers worry about whether a discovery they make could be used for new weapons?

musicale3• 4 years ago

Should physicists and engineers worry about whether a discovery they make could be used for new weapons?

Szilard and Einstein thought it was worth worrying about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Szilard_letter

d0mine• 4 years ago

You are too generous. In practice, silencing science is not about good of the people, it is about censorship.

ZainRiz• 4 years ago

This is basically saying "Scientific research that supports my politics should be allowed, and those that refute it should be banned (because of course anyone who opposes my politics will be hurting people)"

mellosouls• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Nature magazine existence is attacking my dignity. Now what?

I'm taking the proverbial piss, but their statement is completely absurd.

ausbah• 4 years 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

TulliusCicero8• 4 years 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.

systemvoltage5• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

WalterBright6• 4 years ago

Science has nothing to do with the dignity and rights of all humans. Science just a mechanism for separating truth from nonsense.

TulliusCicero8• 4 years ago

I wish I could upvote this harder.

claudiawerner• 4 years 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.

wrp3• 4 years 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.

causality03• 4 years 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?

reb6• 4 years 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?

TulliusCicero8• 4 years ago

could take those findings and use them to justify a new policy that all LDS children

No, they couldn't. Your proposed scenario here is insane. This would be blatantly unconstitutional.

causality03• 4 years ago

Since LDS children are a subset of children, they should be required to take a comprehensive and accurate sex ed course in school. You have the right to teach your kids anything you want. You do not have the right to keep them ignorant of anything you want.

knorker2• 4 years 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.

knorker2• 4 years ago

This was once a Simpsons joke.

The religious extremist (Ned Flanders) said "there a things we don't WANT to know. IMPORTANT things!"

civilized2• 4 years 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.

Animats4• 4 years ago

Censorship rules are here.[1]

[1] https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/e...

colechristensen• 4 years ago

Truth does not respect the dignity and rights of all humans

"Science" that doesn't seek Truth is something else entirely

Animats4• 4 years 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-...

[2] https://www.theodysseyonline.com/cochlear-implant-controvers...

slothtrop3• 4 years 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.

Animats4• 4 years ago

There's a science fiction story about that, from before cochlear implants worked. Anyone know the reference?

apeace• 4 years ago

Can I infer from this comment that you disapprove of the Deaf community's stance on this?

If so, I suggest reaching out to your local Deaf community and spending some time with them. Maybe take an ASL class. You will find that, indeed, there is a unique culture in the Deaf community. You may not end up agreeing that deafness should never be cured, but it will at least give you some context you seem to be missing.

Since you said cochlear implants "already work in many people who are totally deaf" I think you may be missing the most crucial part of one of the quotes you gave: An implant is not a ‘cure’ and an implanted individual is still deaf.

Cochlear implants don't let you hear very well. Most users still rely heavily on lip reading and sign language.

I will give a personal anecdote. I am not deaf, but I have taken ASL classes and engaged with the Deaf community. I met one person who was born totally deaf but got cochlear implants as a child. She cannot converse with hearing people as normal. She is impressively good at lip reading, but still misses a lot of nuance in conversation, and her speaking voice does not sound like a normal person's. So she has been ostracized from social and professional groups. At the same time, she is also ostracized from the Deaf community, because she can't sign as fluently as a child who grew up signing, and the majority of the community is against implants. So she has the worst of both worlds.

So, if I'm correct and your implication is "Obviously deafness should be cured," then I think you may be missing a lot of cultural context and some facts about how the implants work. Perhaps a 100% effective genetic cure would change the discussion somehow, but I'm not sure it changes the cultural implications.

blep_• 4 years ago

(I'm not that person, but I have opinions on this. I'm also not deaf, but I am autistic, and the autistic community has a lot of parallels to this that I can't help but notice.)

because she can't sign as fluently as a child who grew up signing, and the majority of the community is against implants

This is two separate issues.

I view the first as like any other language fluency thing: should English-speaking communities ostracize members who are less fluent in English? If they're extremely non-fluent, to the point of not being able to communicate at all, then there is no morality here; it's kind of just an unfortunate thing that happens as a result of non-communication, like if I (a non-Mandarin speaker) showed up to a Mandarin-speaking social group and tried to be their friend. If they just have a thick accent and word things oddly sometimes, doing so might be an asshole move.

The second is entirely the community's problem. People should, at least, have the option of curing (even partially) their own deafness, without facing weird stigma from other people who choose not to do so. It is ridiculous to ostracize other people for doing things that they feel improve their own lives, even if you would not make that same change to yourself.

In our universe where we don't yet have a good way of doing so, what this means is that research into developing better implants is a good thing. Forcing implants on all deaf people would be immoral, as would forcing any other medical thing on people. But just making the option available is not.

I don't know how this translates to children too young to meaningfully consent, and I will stubbornly refuse to form an opinion on that because it depends on factors that I know nothing about. I don't think it matters, because it is immoral to hold back things from consenting adults solely because we haven't decided whether children should have them too.

snidane• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Not so simple, remember the inquisition?

jimmyjazz142• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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?

DocTomoe3• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

FFS people are getting too weak and sensitive. I’m worried the pendulum may swing the other way and hard.

jimmyjazz142• 4 years 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.

rayiner3• 4 years 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-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/ (“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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

wrp3• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Yes but communism is in and religion is out, so making that observation is also démodé.

throwayyy479087• 4 years 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.

californiadreem2• 4 years 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.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 ), 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 ) 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• 4 years 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.

kromem2• 4 years 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.

bigbluedots• 4 years ago

While we're at it, why not protect the rights of non-human animals as well?

bglazer• 4 years 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.

dissent5• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

willis9362• 4 years ago

Psychology has always been rife with political fanatics. Since its inception there have been loud cranks using pseudoscience for the express purpose of influencing social policy. It is still happening today. Just look at Joseph H. Manson.

strken• 4 years ago

If extremely sexist groups were discussing PCOS as proof of the inferiority of women, would it therefore be a good idea to assess all research involving ovaries and refuse to publish anything that made PCOS seem harmful?

FabHK6• 4 years ago

In case you didn't know, like me:

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age.

kromem2• 4 years ago

Ah yes, because the best way to get groups to not spout misleading rhetoric is to unabashedly bias the publications in the other direction.

Giving validity to the claim that a particular perspective is being actively suppressed historically works out great in reducing that viewpoint...

Maybe they'd be better off restricting publishing to studies reproducing earlier results or meta-analysis, encouraging more rigorous standards without legitimately adding a bias.

But if this is genuinely about reducing racist or sexist misappropriation of research to legitimize those views, this is exactly the sort of measure that is going to backfire by giving the broad lack of supporting evidence for those positions a legitimate claim of explicit censorship.

It no longer matters if there are barely any reproducible results supporting their views, as pointing out that asymmetry is rendered an argument from silence in the face of active censorship.

This is a bad idea coming from a good place.

hikingsimulator• 4 years ago

Extremists may use whatever they want to justify their means, but shody science can make people become radical, radicalized, and then extremists. It's a gradual change that can be enabled by many things.

What the article says is not to make science, and especially the field in question, one of those triggers.

vasco• 4 years ago

Bad people will use whatever they have at hand to justify their actions. If there wasn't a paper to discuss there would be something else. That being said it's a disaster how many people go into social sciences and waste their lives on useless research.

dudeinjapan• 4 years ago

Rather than suppressing research, wouldn't a simple primer on "why the paper shouldn't be used for hate" suffice, similar to the warning label on a pack of cigarettes? (Unlike cigarettes which are universally harmful, it's unlikely these papers do any real harm to an educated reader. They are only harmful when used completely out-of-context by a moron.)

There is some grand irony that hate groups point to racial differences in "intelligence" specifically. I doubt the members of these groups are in the upper tail of the bell curve...

na85• 4 years ago

I think it's equally dangerous to write off extremism as the product of stupid people.

Hitler certainly wasn't a dunce, for example.

dariosalvi784• 4 years ago

I read that this is the intention, so when some content that can be used for harm (in a discriminatory or racist way for example), authors should make all the needed considerations, including confounding factors, in their research and their paper.

For example, say someone publishes statistics about school grades and race, and, maybe unsurprisingly, black people in the US turn out to have lower average grades, what does that say about black people? Here lies the responsibility of the researcher to make it clear that the problem is social rather than genetical, either using statistical means to remove confounders, or by highlighting this when discussing the numbers. Actually unless the purpose of the research itself is to extract those social differences, why would you stratify your cohorts by race in the first place?

Even seemingly innocuous decisions, like stratifying (because, why not?, you have the data) may have consequences, or may hide biases, if they are not considered with care. Ask anybody doing ML how confounders are behind every corner in whatever messy human data you collect!

Then there are other topics which specifically look into, say, sex and brain composition etc. Those may be scientifically sound, but ethically more controversial. I am happy I don't work in that field...

Santanlan• 4 years ago

So instead of debunking or raising the bar of research into race, gender, sex, and more we should just not have any research into it?

Isn't this just going to fuel that kind of "research" in other places but then stand uncontested?

Might sound good in a meeting but doubt this is the way to go...

drekipus• 4 years ago

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.

What is "results in violence" though? One person's violence would be another person's justice.

I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence. Would research in allowing transgenderism for children be considered violence or not in your eyes? I'm sure there's people on both sides of the fence, so who would be the one to gatekeep?

Most transgender studies come from the same "reproducibility crisis" and largely the same branch of social/psychology science.

So to put in effect that "we are allowed to suppress science depending on who it affects" would be a bad precedent for when "the other side" gets in power.

Or do you not agree?

andreskytt• 4 years ago

Exactly. Anything novel is, by definition, risky. Therefore any and all research has the potential to harm people. What the article says is, that there is an apparently all-knowing group of people, who will decide, where an article lies on a scale between abstract algebra and direct calls to genocide in terms of its impact on people. Oh, and the same group of people is also directly interested in publishing (so they’ll have to let _some_ papers through) as well as being part of the scientific community preparing the papers. So a massive conflict of interest. What could possibly go wrong?

rhcom2• 4 years ago

"trans activism with kids"

What does this even mean? Medical care?

bawolff4• 4 years ago

I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence.

You think trans activism is equivalent to shooting someone?

I mean, i think most people are going to dismiss you as crazy if you think words and ideas of any form are equivalently violent to shooting someone in the head. At the very least you would need to back up such a radical proposition with some very compelling arguments.

DanBC• 4 years ago

Most transgender studies come from the same "reproducibility crisis" and largely the same branch of social/psychology science.

No, this is wrong. A lot of the research into trans healthcare comes from endocrinology, not psychology. Psychologists are not prescribing meds or performing surgery.

EntropyIsAHoax6• 4 years ago

Well words like "transgenderism" don't even mean anything and are just far-right buzzwords to scare people like you, so consider first looking into what's informing your worldview. It's certainly not anything approaching objectivity

trasz4• 4 years ago

I think trans activism with kids is a severe violence.

Have you ever occurred to you to consult a dictionary, to check the meaning of the word “violence”?

AgentME• 4 years ago

It frustrates me how in many discussions people act as if certain controversial research is always obviously correct and objective science up against inherently anti-science people tearing it down. Not at all! Plenty of it is of science specifically known to be done badly, presented badly, in a field with regular systematic issues. If a field is regularly producing these inaccurate results with bad social side effects, it's not out of line to tell people in the field to pay more attention to these things.

Jensson2• 4 years ago

If it is bad science then just reject it for being bad science. Don't reject it for not catering to your special interests group.

yes_really2• 4 years ago

IQ research is the one area in social sciences that does not suffer from reproducibility crisis. You're clearly not against it because of reproducibility; you are against it because it goes against your ideological worldview.

Second, research results in population group differences are social poison. They are memetic viruses that fuel violent extremism.

We had a full summer of violent riots because of the "Black Lives Matter" ideology. Are we going to ban research that studies police treatment of different races too?

barry-cotter2• 4 years ago

IQ research is the one area in social sciences that does not suffer from reproducibility crisis.

This isn’t true. Areas like psychophysics have similar extremely high reliability. Economics did quite well compared to political science and sociology. Social psychology and personality psychology were and are unusually bad.

aaplok2• 4 years ago

You're clearly not against it because of reproducibility; you are against it because it goes against your ideological worldview.

Please avoid ad hominem arguments like this. They are unlikely to convince anyone, and on a topic as sensitive as this might be interpreted as personal attacks.

Your comment would have been more useful if you had restricted yourself to responding to GP's argument that the data is too noisy and confounded to draw serious conclusions.

davidguetta2• 4 years ago

Serious question why would you need "studies" or "research to know thr police is racist.

That will just not help solving the problem

FFRefresh2• 4 years ago

How can you be sure any research won't result in violence? How do you establish whether a given piece of research/data will result in violence?

Is your basic operating model for this: "Never show any data that shows there are group differences, because it can be used by violent extremists"?

If that is your operating model, do you support getting rid of ANY data out there that shows differences between groups in ability/behavior, as it could result in violence? For instance, should we ban all public violent crime reporting, if that showed group differences, as it would be something used by those violent extremists you mention?

diu vivere tabula rasa!

ZeroGravitas7• 4 years ago

https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/...

This chapter shows that the right wing's essentialized construct of the Jew as criminal in the Weimar period was translated into policy and action in Germany after 1933. Until 1938, when the Nazis unequivocally embraced the guiding principle that “The Jew is outside the law,” they often took pains to charge individual Jews with specific crimes, usually focusing on technical aspects of tax laws and currency-exchange regulations. On the one hand, they sought to exploit the racist agenda and traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes. On the other, they wanted to give the impression that the Nazi State was simply zealous in applying the letter of the law.

bawolff4• 4 years ago

So hypothetically, say the reasearch is well founded, reproducible, gold standard, etc.

If you think it would be ok then, why are we talking about "dignity" when instead we could have the less controversial statement "science research must not be dogshit quality".

If you don't believe so, why are we talking about quality?

nathias2• 4 years ago

Even if this was true what you are describing is impossible to predict. School shooter are not scientists and don't comprehend anything past basic stuff served to them by the media. Doing research with these condiderations in mind probably fuels extremism much more and makes people (justifiably) sceptical of science in general.

throwawaylinux• 4 years ago

Sorry you feel that way, I prefer to trust the science.

winReInstall• 4 years ago

Now, imagine, real good research (Data-mining/AB-virtual-experiments) being done, with FG cooperate DBs containing the behaviour of almost all of western humanity. One can imagine the bombshells on which Google and Facebook (and others with acccess Palantir) are sitting quietly right now.

And while the racists and ideologists might use parts of the results to go at each others throats, the truth might even be more weird, turning humanity into a fully self aware grandfather clock, knowing what makes it tick, but unable to stop it.

The fact that Thiel just looked at it, and went full support of totalitarian decline, cause it can not be prevented anyway, gives you an idea on how total of a defeat through knowledge awaits in those DBs.

raxxorraxor2• 4 years ago

IQ tests are also unreliable by design. They might work once, but you get different results depending on the test subject was challenged by questions and problems of similar design.

Highlighting that fact would be helpful and expose such tests as nothing but maybe a rough estimate. Your education is probably more important for that than your capacity to solve problems.

Additionally those that focus on these numbers seem to not be the ones that score particularly well here. And in the end "science" that asserts it can determine intellectual capacity of a group is most likely wrong.

That said, you should NEVER censor yourself because someone could perhaps misinterpret your finding for their own perverted goals. That would undermine science itself and it isn't worth it.

This isn't fucking Orwell, its people trying to make sure that dogshit research in their journal doesnt get cited by mass shooters.

This is the wrong approach.

FabHK6• 4 years ago

IQ tests are also unreliable by design.

I doubt that they are specifically designed to be unreliable.

dusted• 4 years ago

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.

Am I paraphrasing correctly: "Some bad people react badly to research results in this field, so there should be no research in this field" ?

parkingrift3• 4 years ago

Good grief I can’t believe you are serious. Mass shootings almost never happen, and when they do they aren’t because of bad research. It’s almost comical that you believe extremists are scouring scientific journals to fuel their hatred.

Censorship has never worked, but oh don’t worry in this circumstance it will definitely work. Because reasons.

geoduck146• 4 years ago

I wonder if research into the frequency and severity of mass shootings would be permitted into the journal - or if it would be blocked because it might promote harm

rosmax_1337• 4 years ago

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.

I am unable to write something to argue against this point because it would lead to this account being banned. I am unable to publish a paper on Nature that argues against the common beleif of racial equality. I am unable to use most modern communication media to do any of these things.

Why do people resort to violence?

stainablesteel• 4 years 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

jrhawley• 4 years 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.

dissent5• 4 years 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.

spoonjim2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

chmod600• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

They could start by not using abusive design to manipulate users into accepting all cookies

nathias2• 4 years ago

science has only the interest of truth, anything else and it becomes ideology

yes_really2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

civilized2• 4 years 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-Ritc...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2006061...

[3] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/heres-why-the...

zephrx1111• 4 years ago

My read of the title: Science must respect the dignity and rights of humans that left propaganda favors

musicale3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

flerovium2• 4 years 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."

flerovium2• 4 years ago

What no one will say is that even if most scientists oppose this, few will speak out for fear of professional repercussions.

raffraffraff• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

kazinator• 4 years ago

First define "dignity" and "rights", and reproduce them in a lab.

ETH_start• 4 years ago

A large section of the sciences has now been thoroughly captured by the social justice ideology.

illuminerdy2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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_19h2• 4 years 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."

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

Related Stories