I think that's a pretty unreasonable comparison. There's a difference between religious dogma which makes claims about reality, and norms or ethics. Discrimination and harm as discussed in this document isn't about factual findings, but is about "superiority or inferiority of one human group over another" (i.e. a value judgement), "the rights and dignities of an individual or human group" (i.e. social norms and conventions), "text or images that ... disparage" (again, value judgement), "embody singular, privileged perspectives" (an issue of viewpoint, not disagreement about facts in reality).
None of these prevent researchers from sharing their evidence-based conclusions, only the projection of value, status, dignity, or privilege onto those findings. As a society, we can agree to be civil, respectful and uphold particular values while we investigate objective reality.
Trying to claim that an ethical stance for non-discrimination is equivalent to creationism or geocentrism is making type error; one makes claims about norms and how we should behave, and one makes claims about how the world works whether irrespective of our beliefs or behavior.
But that’s not what the quoted text is saying. It’s saying research whose outcomes could be “harmful” (where the definition of “harmful” is very broad) may have harms that “outweigh” the benefits… implying it shouldn’t be done.
And now you’ve attached a high leverage handle to research allocation/gatekeeping and put it in deeply politicized hands that don’t care about the research.
> And now you’ve attached a high leverage handle to research allocation/gatekeeping and put it in deeply politicized hands that don’t care about the research.
It's the editorial board of a journal. Gatekeeping published research is literally their job, always has been. And I think it's fair to conclude from their vocation that they care more about the research and less about the politics than all the non-scientists who've chimed in to express disagreement with the politics of their decision...
Comparing an article outlining bunch of guidelines about language and requests to be careful and clear about sampling to the medieval Catholic Church is no more reasonable than comparing everyone decrying the concept of ethical barriers to research to Dr Mengele.
> And I think it's fair to conclude from their vocation that they care more about the research and less about the politics than all the non-scientists who've chimed in to express disagreement with the politics of their decision...
No, it's not fair to conclude.
A lot of us as practitioners in the field (engineers, data scientists, etc) must daily confront the conflict between social expectation (from managers, customers, etc.) and reality. On the other hand, an academic occupying a largely bureaucratic role within institutions that suffer from severe political monoculture might very well care more about their social standing than truth.
Anyone who has been paying attention will know the subtext of these guides. It is not an unreasonable assumption to see this as targeting legitimate scientific research that undermines the present political zeitgeist.
The question isn't whether abeppu's stance is valid, the question is: does their stance fully encompass the argument.
elefanten appears to be suggesting abeppu's stance is a Motte - that they're arguing a more defensible position (you shouldn't be able to publish research claiming one race is superior to another) rather than the real Bailey (anything deemed "harmful" can be filtered from scientific literature). The difference between these two arguments is pretty significant.
I think that specific quote is actually ambiguous, as 'research' doesn't make a clear separation between the actual investigation and evidence vs the researcher's presentation of them. I think your characterization (about advocating that some research itself should not be done) is not actually what the document says.
So far as I can see, it's focused on _publication_ of particular _content_ (read: text) describing research.
> In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication.
> editors reserve the right to request modifications to (or correct or otherwise amend post-publication), and in severe cases refuse publication of (or retract post-publication)
So far as I can see, they're not advocating for new restrictions on what research ethically can be done, but they're saying that publication can on its own cause harms. And they seem to be focused on how findings are framed and communicated, rather than the objective content of the findings, with the implication that a suitably written article using respectful language would be considered publishable.
> authors should use inclusive, respectful, non-stigmatizing language in their submitted manuscripts.
> Biomedical studies should not conflate genetic ancestry (a biological construct) and race/ethnicity (sociopolitical constructs)
> Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms.
So far as I can tell, e.g. one could study sex-linked difference in brain development, and find that one group is faster/more accurate/whatever on some task with subjects in an lab conditions, and so long as one (a) consistently distinguishes whether one is referring to sex or gender and (b) uses respectful and non-stigmatizing language, it would not be found to be unpublishable on these ethical grounds. But if in a conclusion section after having looked at sex differences, one throws out a broad gender stereotype "..and this validates the common belief that women are terrible at X", editors are entirely within their rights to insist on a modification.
This seems entirely reasonable, and is a kind of natural cover-your-ass stance for the modern era, where if they let through some great, ground-breaking research with a single racist or misogynist or homophobic statement tacked in somewhere, inevitably that part will be trotted out by trolls and politicians insisting that their weird stance is backed by science because of one line in a Nature article they didn't actually read.
None of these prevent researchers from sharing their evidence-based conclusions, only the projection of value, status, dignity, or privilege onto those findings. As a society, we can agree to be civil, respectful and uphold particular values while we investigate objective reality.
Trying to claim that an ethical stance for non-discrimination is equivalent to creationism or geocentrism is making type error; one makes claims about norms and how we should behave, and one makes claims about how the world works whether irrespective of our beliefs or behavior.