No, science must pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. There is no such thing as a hate fact.
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.
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.
That said, I think scientists should be given pretty wide latitude to explore wherever their curiosity leads them, and results shouldn't be rejected from publication without really good reasons that go beyond "the results of this experiment make us uncomfortable". (Though as a practical matter, research that doesn't serve some political or social objective probably isn't going to get funding.)
> the question of which hypotheses are worth pursuing and which experiments should be done is political
In a sense yes, but it also proves my point.
The example I think of is this. For the sake of argument, imagine there is a left leaning scientist and a right leaning one and they study economic differences between ethnic groups. The left leaning scientist will have political biases, politics, etc, because he is human, and guided by these biases he makes the decision to hypothesise the economic differences are caused by systemic inequality. This is indeed an example of a political choice guiding the scientific process.
I think that is perfectly fine. I don’t see this as “politics being in science” I see this as “politics being in humans practicing science”.
Now, coming back to the right leaning scientist, he too has biases and politics and a sense of morality etc because he is human. Also guided by these things he hypothesises economic differences between ethnic groups are caused by innate biological differences.
Just like the left scientist, I think this is fine. This is politics in the human practicing science, not politics in science directly.
Where politics in science appears is, if the prevalent political system discourage research into innate biological differences between humans and interferes in the scientific process to prevent researcher into this topic.
And that is what I have a problem with. And that is exactly what is being done through guidelines like this.
> the results of this experiment make us uncomfortable
I think we both know that is exactly how these rules will be used.
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.
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.
This is risky because the authorities are are almost certainly idiots.
Heck this isn't even an hypothetical scenario, you'd suggest we should have kept secret the ways in which monkeypox spreads?
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.
I don’t think a lot of scientists and health officials realize that their work is two sided. ESP if you’re working with public health the other side is who you view as the unwashed masses. You don’t get to make commandments
Maintaining trust with the public is the most important thing to do, and the best way to do that is transparency.
All the games about if we “should tell people xyz” needs to end if these institutions want to rebuild their credibility with the broader public.
The cdc is at least being retrospective but it seems like nature has gone the opposite way and are institutionally entrenching this idea that the public can’t be trusted with the truth.
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.
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...
Which ones?
The church? Trump?
People have different authorities.
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.
You can look up the clinical trial endpoints. Patients were only tested for infections if they experienced symptoms. I believe it was only AZ or J&J that regularly tested to capture any effect on infection rate.
But it was stated several times "The vaccine will stop you from getting Covid". Why? Because if you tell people "Well, the vaccine won't stop you from getting it, but it will make it less likely you'll get really sick", they thought people wouldn't take it.
It's the case with ALL vaccines that they don't provide 100% protection. They are still incredibly useful for preventing infection, reducing the severity of disease and preventing further transmission.
Btw, vaccines work by clearing infection quickly, not preventing infection. The virus infects you and begins to multiply. Whether your body has the antibodies to recognize the virus determines whether you will suffer from illness or be well.
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.
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.
To put it another way: the way you feel about studying handedness being linked to COVID is the way I feel about studying an assumed link between race and "intelligence". It's not "otherwise interesting" at all. It's ignorant at best.
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.)
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.
Proper or "improper" writing can signal formality and casualness and that sort of casualness is how I read the response. For example, I deliberately pick a register when I consider the audience I'm addressing and use it as a tool to convey side-band information. You may have seen social media posts where nearly every word is suffixed with an emoji. I'd consider this its own register. While I might use all lowercase in a text message or on a discord server, I'd likely only expect to read an emoji-laden message on Facebook or Twitter. Also if it came from me, it would probably look sarcastic as that's not a register I typically use.
Either way, people can do this accidentally, purposefully, or sometimes as a function of the medium. Eg: I can't write in an emoji-laden register here because HN strips emoji. An entire register, simply, and absolutely inaccessible. We probably agree that it doesn't fit the tone of the site, but still, we can imagine how the texture of the site would change if it was allowed and the pros and cons of that decision.
Emojis are different; they're an addition, meant to convey extra meaning or information that's difficult to convey with pure text. Omitting capitals doesn't do this; it just makes the text harder to read.
Dear respondent,
Your points are duly noted. However; may I suggest you write in a more formal register? Your prose reflects the lack of effort with which I am displaying by using this very form of writing. A higher degree of effort on your part will demonstrate the level of commitment to the written word that this audience expects. Please respond in kind.
Yours Truly,
kelseyfrog