Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbj | Hacker News Reader

Destroying the knowledge now is counter productive and if anything it makes all lives lost in vain

The corollary of this argument is that the deaths contribute to some noble purpose and and are thus justified to some degree. That instinct to engage in retroactive bargaining is understandable but dangerous. What is the point of having ethical standards if there isn't a high cost for breaking them?

The cost should be paid by those who allowed the organs to be provided in this way, not by destroying the learnings that came from the science.

Er, the people conducting the research who took the organs were at the very least not following ethical guidelines. This is sufficient grounds for punishment in my eyes.

You know if someone ignored ethical guidelines about organ donations in performing medical research it's equally possible that they fudged the results or cut other corners. They've already decided to value expediency over integrity so why do you assume they're being rigorous in every other respect? The whole peer review enterprise depends on a baseline level of probity, and given the questions raised by the reproducibility crisis we could probably benefit from a more skeptical approach.

> What is the point of having ethical standards if there isn't a high cost for breaking them?

society is already harmed by the initial crime, and now it has to pay the price a second time by forgetting?

strip the researchers' names and institutions from all copies of the articles, and adjust bibliographic standards of all reputable journals to require citations say the articles were authored by "Ethical disgrace" or whatever.

You're treating the harms as fungible, and for a lot of people that's not the case. If the research was good it can be done again in an ethical fashion.

Here's a longish but well-argued explanation of why it's a terrible idea: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-med...

Do you take the same position regarding evidence found in searches executed without a valid warrant, i. e. fruit of the poisonous tree?

In any case, a retraction would not necessarily erase that knowledge. It would, however, limit its usefulness for the authors of these papers, in terms of reputation and citation count. That should serve as an incentive to more thoroughly investigate the provenance of that brain with a gun shot wound you're dissecting.

Wouldn't it effectively erase the knowledge though? It would'nt be searched out when relevant.

And no I dont view ill gotten evidence as a similar issue, seeing that the 'gained knowledge' is so narrow in it's scope.

For heaven's sake people, the knowledge is not being destroyed. The credit is being destroyed.

Anyone can now replicate it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com