Comment by kgarten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kgarten | Hacker News Reader

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Again, it's in the discretion of the editor. There has been and still is a lot of sexist, misogynistic, and racist stuff published in the past and today ... horrible stuff.

So you want people to continue publish racist, misogynistic etc. assumptions and implications? Want to understand what your goal is here.

I learned in my methodology class, if you didn't do a controlled experiment it's not possible to claim causation (that didn't stop people in the sciences to put out the wildest claims ... for example in genetics it would be pretty unethical to do a controlled experiment).

My point: in the past it was worse in terms of scientific integrity, racism, sexism (e.g. 60s versus now) etc. Seeing also the progression of the sciences. Show the opposite if you can.

There were scientific trials on poor and black people in the US without informed consent, because they were seen as lesser ... there were horrendous crimes against humanity done in the name of science. I think today it's better, yet you seem to disagree :)

> So you want people to continue publish racist, misogynistic etc. assumptions and implications? Want to understand what your goal is here.

"racist, misogynistic etc. assumptions and implications" is very broad and vague and I don't trust that my understanding of what qualifies as such is the same as that of the editors. My concern is that legitimate science will be suppressed in the name of "diversity, equity, and inclusion".

> There were scientific trials on poor and black people in the US without informed consent, because they were seen as lesser ... there were horrendous crimes against humanity done in the name of science. I think today it's better, yet you seem to disagree :)

I agree that performing trials on people without informed consent is unacceptable and should be prevented. Your attempt to conflate legitimate studies that may challenge the narrative of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" with inhumane trials performed without informed consent is fallacious.

My point: There was and there still is a lot of racist, misogynistic stuff published in the past and today. The trials were just an example of that: assuming informed consent does not apply to Black people is racist, isn’t it? If you don’t believe me that race science is still publishable, there’s the Mankind Quarterly peddling race science since 1960. Do I want to see these papers in Nature? No! You want to?

> My concern is that legitimate science will be suppressed in the name of "diversity, equity, and inclusion".

Ok, valid concern. I am concerned that scientific publications due to bad generalizations support racist ideology as they did in the past. I can show you that racist stuff is still published in academic journals (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind\_Quarterly ). Can you show me where legitimate papers with decent studies (and decent methodology) are suppressed and not published? There are a lot of people screaming "We are silenced by the establishment." However, if you look at their work, it's often flawed and horribly wrong (in terms of methodology). Like I pointed out about the Bell Curve in another thread.

I read the Nature editor notes, as "be careful with your assumptions as we cannot explore and know some causation as controlled experiments in those fields would be unethical." especially highlighting the problems from the past (oh man... there are so many horrible sexist and racist papers published).

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