Ethics 101
jstemwedel | April 27, 2009Like a lot of other people, I'm watching the swine flu outbreaks unfold with some interest. As they do, I can't help but think about the ethical dimensions of our interactions with other humans, since it's looking like any of us could become a vector of disease.
There are some fairly easy ethical calls here -- for example, if you're sick and can avoid spreading your germs, you should avoid spreading them. But there are some other questions whose answers are not as clear.
Stay in bed or seek medical care?
Currently public health officials in Mexico and the U.S. are scrambling to determine…
jstemwedel | April 26, 2009Probably you've been reading about the new swine flu outbreak on Effect Measure and Aetiology. At this stage, public health officials are keeping careful watch on this epidemic to try to keep it from becoming a pandemic.
And this is the news in the back of my mind as I need to arrange air travel in the coming months. Nothing makes me want to book airline tickets more than the project of being in a metal tube with germy humans.
I did some poking around to see what kinds of measures the airlines might be taking to avoid helping spread swine flu and the people carrying it around.
US Airways…
jstemwedel | April 24, 2009After considering the many different roadblocks that seems to appear when people try to discuss research with animals (as we did in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this series), it might be tempting to throw up your hands and say, "Well, I guess there's no point in doing that, then!"
Resist this temptation!
As we noted in part 7, there are good reasons that we (by which I mean scientists and the public) ought to be engaging in dialogue about issues like research with animals. Avoiding dialogue altogether would mean cutting off the flow of information about what actually happens in animal…
jstemwedel | April 23, 2009In this post, it's time to pull back from the specific kinds of dialogue blockers we've been examining (here, here, here, here, here, and here) to start to consider other ways we might get around them. Here, I want to start with some insightful remarks from a friend of mine, philosopher Vance Ricks:
When you describe "dialogue" in that post, it sounds as though you're mostly focusing on communication between A and B. One wrinkle in the animal research case (and many ethical cases generally) is that A and B aren't just (not) talking to each other; they're talking to each other AND to an…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2009So far in this series, we've talked about ways that attempts to have a dialogue about animal research can be frustrated by inability to agree on a shared set of facts as a staring point or by unclarity about the positions people are trying to put forward. Today's featured impediment to dialogue has less to do with the mechanics of laying out and engaging with a clear argument and more to do with reasons people might be fearful even to voice their positions:
Ignoring the impact of the tactics used to advance a position.
The philosopher Kant made a famous statement that he who wills an end…
jstemwedel | April 21, 2009Today we discuss an impediment to dialogue about animals in research that seems to have a special power to get people talking past each other rather than actually engaging with each other:
Imprecision about the positions being staked out.
Specifically, here, the issue is whether the people trying to have a dialogue are being precise in laying out the relevant philosophical positions about animals -- the position they hold, the position they're arguing against, the other positions that might be viable options.
Why is imprecision about your philosophical position a dialogue blocker? It tends…
jstemwedel | April 19, 2009As with yesterday's dialogue blocker (the question of whether animal research is necessary for scientific and medical advancement), today's impediment is another substantial disagreement about the facts. A productive dialogue requires some kind of common ground between its participants, including some shared premises about the current state of affairs. One feature of the current state of affairs is the set of laws and regulations that cover animal use -- but these laws and regulations are a regular source of disagreement:
Current animal welfare regulations are not restrictive enough/are too…
jstemwedel | April 18, 2009Today we continue our look at the reasons that attempts to have a dialogue about the use of animals in scientific research routinely run aground.
Dialogue, you'll remember, involves the participants in the dialogue offering not just their views but also something like their reasons for holding those views. In addition, in a real dialogue, participants engage seriously with each other's positions. Serious engagement doesn't necessitate that one of the positions on offer ends up persuading everyone in the dialogue, but everyone is supposed to be open to considering each view -- and open to…
jstemwedel | April 17, 2009In a post last month about an animal rights group targeting a researcher's car with an incendiary device, I closed by expressing my profound pessimism at the prospects of having a serious dialogue about animal rights:
As a philosophical position, the case for animal rights is not completely empty or indefensible. However, as it's being propagated "in the wild", as it were, the case for animal rights is being made with lies and intimidation. Among rational people, this is a bad way to make a case for your position. Thus, it seems to me, people arguing in good faith for the animal rights…
jstemwedel | April 15, 2009A bunch of people (including Bora) have pointed me to Clay Shirky's take on #amazonfail. While I'm not in agreement with Shirky's analysis that Twitter users mobilized an angry mob on the basis of a false theory (and now that mob is having a hard time backing down), there are some interesting ideas in his post that I think merit consideration. So, let's consider them.
Shirky starts by considering how sentiments were running on the Twittersphere Sunday evening, when Amazon still hadn't put out a statement about what was going on, and how those sentiments didn't ratchet down much by the time…
jstemwedel | April 13, 2009Those of you on Twitter yesterday probably noticed the explosion of tweets with the hashtag #amazonfail. For those who were otherwise occupied carving up chocolate bunnies or whatnot, the news spread to the blogs, Facebook, and the traditional media outlets. The short version is that on Easter Sunday, a critical mass of people noticed that many, many books that Amazon sells had their Amazon sales rank stripped, and that these books stopped coming up in searches on Amazon that were not searches on the book titles (or, presumably, authors).
What fanned the flames of the frenzy were certain…
jstemwedel | April 9, 2009Earlier this week, Ed Yong posted an interesting discussion about psychological research that suggests people have a moral thermostat, keeping them from behaving too badly -- or too well:
Through three psychological experiments, Sonya Sachdeva from Northwestern University found that people who are primed to think well of themselves behave less altruistically than those whose moral identity is threatened. They donate less to charity and they become less likely to make decisions for the good of the environment.
Sachdeva suggests that the choice to behave morally is a balancing act between the…
jstemwedel | April 2, 2009At Aardvarchaeology, Martin describes an ethical conundrum:
Let's say that Jenny's in bed with a cold and asks her partner Anne to take out a book for her from the library. This Anne does, but on the way home she loses the book. Maybe she absentmindedly puts it on a shelf in the grocery store and it gets stolen, or she forgets to close her backpack and the book falls into an open manhole along the way. Who pays the library for the lost book?
At its heart, this is a question about just what responsibilities one takes on when one volunteers to assist someone.
In this particular case, when…
jstemwedel | March 31, 2009In a pair of earlier posts, I looked at the ethical principles Matthew C. Nisbet says should be guiding the framing of science and at examples Nisbet discusses of ethical and unethical framing. Here, consider some lessons we might learn from the framing wars. I'm hopeful that we can gain insight about the folks interested in communicating science, about the various people with whom they're trying to communicate, and perhaps even about the approaches that might be useful (or counterproductive) in trying to sell scientists on the utility of the framing strategy.
This post is not so much a…
jstemwedel | March 30, 2009In my last post, I looked at a set of ethical principles Matt Nisbet asserts should be guiding the framing of science. In this post, I consider the examples Matt provides as the "DO" and "DON'T" pictures for the application of these guiding ethical principles.
First, Matt examines an example of framing done well:
In January 2008, the National Academies issued a revised edition of Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a report intentionally framed in a manner that would more effectively engage audiences who remain uncertain about evolution and its place in the public school curriculum. To…
jstemwedel | March 30, 2009If it's spring, it must be time for another round of posts trying to get clear on the framing strategies advocated by Matthew C. Nisbet, and on why these communications seem to be so controversial among scientists and science bloggers.
My past attempts to figure out what's up with framing can be found here:
Movie screening expulsion: whose hearts and minds are up for grabs?
Trying to understand framing.
Trying to understand framing (II): draw me a picture.
Trying to understand framing (III): the example of stem cell research.
Minor epiphany about framing.
The present post has been prompted…
jstemwedel | March 27, 2009When, speaking to journalists about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, you make a claim that the epidemic is:
a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem
those listening who assume you are committed to honesty (because of that commandment about not bearing false witness) and that you are well-informed about the current state of our epidemiological knowledge (because, as the Pope, you have many advisors, and owing to your importance as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, leading scientists…
jstemwedel | March 23, 2009Some commenters on my last post seem to be of the view that it is perfectly fine for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air to bolster their claims, at least under some circumstances.
I think it's a fair question to ask: In which circumstances are you comfortable giving scientists the go-ahead to make up their numbers?
One suggestion was that scientists ought to be "permitted to use ordinary language meanings of words and colloquialisms in their non-peer reviewed discourse" -- or at least, to do so in discussions on blogs. I take it this assumes that "ordinary language meanings of words…
jstemwedel | March 21, 2009When scientists make claims with numbers they have clearly pulled out of thin air. For example:
Ultimately, success is only about 0.01% based on 'strategies' like those espoused on this blog, and 99.99% on simply doing good science and explaining a good plan well.
Is commenter Dave making a subtle joke here? Or what?
Because the way science is supposed to be played, making up frequencies (or probabilities, for that matter) is Just Not Done.
jstemwedel | February 24, 2009I've been watching an interesting discussion unfolding at DrugMonkey, prompted by a post at Science Bear's Cave, about whether not irritating your lab group's principal investigator ought to be your highest priority. As DrugMonkey notes, such a strategy can have bad consequences:
If there is a scientific trainee who fears to mention to the Boss that the printers aren't working, this trainee sure as hell isn't going to mention "Oh gee, I think that figure you are so amped about from that other postdoc is totally faked". And who knows how far this PI-pleasing attitude might carry one.
Is the…