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Comment by badcppdev | Hacker News Reader

I am really confused. Specifically regarding whether you disagree with my general points which I would 100% totally understand or the bracketed statement which would leave me doubting my understanding of any of this topic.

I'd like to say the statement I'm querying is really relevant to my career as I work on back-end systems and my understanding is that it is really important for medical databases to be expanded so that doctors can schedule the right type of medical screening for somebody based on their body. I'm also aware that in certain parts of the world people might not want information stored in databases because they fear persecution based on that stored data.

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Hi also I work in software and manufacturing but like most of us on here have an appreciation for Science and its methods, as well as other topics not in our domain, it's what makes HN great. Im confused now also.

We should all be careful and sensitive to issues effecting others, and I think by your response you agree with this, well done, lets all keep it up, the world will become a better place for minorities of any kind. This post was more active for me than I expected, really due to an offensive comment I made about the original commenter so I thought I should correct where I made a mistake but also defend my general point of view in my original comment, our discussion got caught up in the rest which was unfair to your point of view.

I am going to contradict my original comment to you:

I absolutely agree with you on 'There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening ... where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation'

I do also think unless we are experts in the domain, we need to be careful in referencing an example because any issue can be complex and varied individual to individual, we can also cause offence with such, without realising it. so I agree my 'bizarre; comment was not the correct way to explain this.

I also agree broadly with 'If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.'

However I also think Science does need oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not, as history has often shown left uncontrolled bad things can happen. There's bigots in Science right, same as anywhere.

Thanks for questioning me, pleasure talking with you.

Agree with you 100% now. I think I should have followed the general rule of keeping quiet in sensitive sub-threads unless you're really adding something to the topic.

> However I also think Science does need oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not, as history has often shown left uncontrolled bad things can happen.

I'm curious as to what you mean by this. Are you talking about avoiding doing or publishing research that could have undesirable social effects? E.g. in the hypothetical world where it had been discovered in 1980 that there was a gene that made African Americans less bright than white ones this research should not be published?

Or is it that you are worried about biased scientists faking results to harm disadvantaged minorities?

Do you not think Science needs oversight and agreement from society on what is acceptable or not?

Don't get me wrong this agreement from society is not always balanced, correct and often Science has to disagree and argue the point, but this oversight must still exist, surely?

I don't understand what you mean by "Science".

There's a formal methodology, a social practice, a set of results, a perceived canon...

Is it the problem of lawbreaking experiment side effects you're interested in? E.g. infecting a bunch of people with syphilis to see disease progression?

The original thread is regarding medical science.

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