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.
>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.
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.
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.
You mean in the United States. Monkeypox isn't a MSM disease worldwide. And you should perhaps look at the case trends in countries where children have started going back to school.
And France. And Spain. And the UK. Basically everywhere that it wasn't previously endemic it's 95%+ MSM cases. It isn't 100%, nor is it only sexually transmitted. But burying our heads in the sand to overlook obvious facts and preventing messaging to at-risk communities out of sensitivity is contributing to _why_ there are cases in kids at schools.
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.
I don't think you can separate science from politics. The scientific method that relies on repeatable experimental results is just a workaround for the general problem that the search for knowledge is done by highly opinionated, stubborn, egotistical, and very biased human beings. When people become scientists they don't lose those attributes, it's just that reproducibility of results act as a check on their biases. You can't remove politics from science without removing people from science. Even if the methodology is good, the question of which hypotheses are worth pursuing and which experiments should be done is political.
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.)
You can’t remove politics from the people practicing science. Because they are people. But science it’s self is a process. It does not have, by definition, political inputs or outputs.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
This is incorrect. Politicians and doctors refused to do very much about it because gay lives weren’t considered worth saving. Before the viral factor was discovered it was believed it was literally divine punishment to kill gays.
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.
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.
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.
The two major vaccines - Pfizer and Moderna, never tested for infection prevention. There was literally no data to even say if they did or didn't prevent infection.
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.
I didn't mention COVID. You're focusing on COVID vaccines because that is the anti-vax cause at the moment.
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 suggested that the COVID vaccine was somehow bad for being like every other vaccine. I'm suggesting that you need to learn about vaccines and get vaccinated.
> 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.
Agreed, this is the future, ie. Decentralization. I must admit, the term "decentralize" directly conjures up a vivid, bright high resolution image of a day trading megalomaniac crypto-bro living in Miami pumping iron and taking testosterone supplements. It is kinda like how Hitler ruined a mustache style however gorgeous that damn mustache is. Folks, decentralization is cool when centralization is not viable, tenable or stable.
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.