tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post581906280883596321..comments2021-02-19T20:57:34.578-08:00Comments on Skepsis: Did Josef Mengele act in the name of science?Yorgohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-1499088549487013192015-01-29T19:39:50.631-08:002015-01-29T19:39:50.631-08:00A friend of mine had this to say over at Facebook ...A friend of mine had this to say over at Facebook where I shared this post:<br /><br />This is a pretty good article, but I'm a little uncertain or unconvinced about some of the points you've made, particularly the claim that scientists can't do bad things in the name of science.<br /><br />Part of the issue might be focusing on Mengele as the only example to formulate the problem. There was a broad, Nazi scientific endeavour which encompassed a very broad range of areas of medical research and more than just a couple of doctors/scientists (we can have a whole debate about whether medical doctors = scientists too, but let's leave that). Some of it, like work on sterilization, twins and artificial insemination, was driven by the lunatic Nazi racial project--psedoscience even by the standards of the time. Other parts, such as research on high altitude, saltwater, freezing, etc. were part of a medical research program tied directly to the Luftwaffe's efforts to increase the odds of survival of fighter pilots. (this article provides a pretty good overview, http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html).<br /><br />The latter research program begins to look much more like legitimate science done as science even though the suffering and cruelty inflicted on test subjects was every bit as bad. <br /><br />Two interesting things seem to come out of the Nazi experimentation program. First, there has been a protracted ethical debate about subsequent proposals to use the apparently valid data resulting from some of these experiments in legitimate post-war science. Some of the data was written off as either bad or irrelevant, but some of it remained viable, suggesting that despite the phenomenal evil committed to obtain the data, it was in practical terms usable by science.<br /><br />The other interesting result is that some of the ethical principles that we consider fundamental to medical research actually came out of what the Nuremberg trials had to say about the Nazi research program, e.g., informed patient consent is an example. This suggests at least on the surface that people other than the Nazis took their science as horribly misguided "science".<br /><br />It also reminds us that some of the things we now consider absolutely fundamental to any practice we call scientific did not exist prior to the latter half of the 20th century (or even later). This raises the question at what point in time did "science" become science in its current guise (I'm sure there are pretty definite answers to that, I just don't know what they are). I raise this because we should be careful about dismissing as unscientific any science-like activity that predates our current conception of scientific method. I'm not sure whether you're implicitly doing this or not.<br /><br />Perhaps this is all beside the point and I'm missing your point about what it means to do science "in the name of" science. I'm just not sure that there is any real difference between doing things in the name of science and doing things in the belief that one's doing science.<br /><br />I think your problem might be better served by looking at more ambiguous cases where people did bad things in the interests of conducting a scientific endeavour, e.g., scientists involved in developing insights that they know will lead to technologies that can only harm people (e.g., the manhattan project), some early experimentation in the field of psychiatry. In these cases you have scientists committing unethical acts in the name of science, or engaging in research that can have applications that they know are evil.Yorgohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-47248885388931369642015-01-29T14:32:43.007-08:002015-01-29T14:32:43.007-08:00This is a pretty good article, but I'm a littl...This is a pretty good article, but I'm a little uncertain or unconvinced about some of the points you've made, particularly the claim that scientists can't do bad things in the name of science.<br /><br />Part of the issue might be focusing on Mengele as the only example to formulate the problem. There was a broad, Nazi scientific endeavour which encompassed a very broad range of areas of medical research and more than just a couple of doctors/scientists (we can have a whole debate about whether medical doctors = scientists too, but let's leave that). Some of it, like work on sterilization, twins and artificial insemination, was driven by the lunatic Nazi racial project--psedoscience even by the standards of the time. Other parts, such as research on high altitude, saltwater, freezing, etc. were part of a medical research program tied directly to the Luftwaffe's efforts to increase the odds of survival of fighter pilots. (this article provides a pretty good overview, http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html).<br /><br />The latter research program begins to look much more like legitimate science done as science even though the suffering and cruelty inflicted on test subjects was every bit as bad. <br /><br />Two interesting things seem to come out of the Nazi experimentation program. First, there has been a protracted ethical debate about subsequent proposals to use the apparently valid data resulting from some of these experiments in legitimate post-war science. Some of the data was written off as either bad or irrelevant, but some of it remained viable, suggesting that despite the phenomenal evil committed to obtain the data, it was in practical terms usable by science.<br /><br />The other interesting result is that some of the ethical principles that we consider fundamental to medical research actually came out of what the Nuremberg trials had to say about the Nazi research program, e.g., informed patient consent is an example. This suggests at least on the surface that people other than the Nazis took their science as horribly misguided "science".<br /><br />It also reminds us that some of the things we now consider absolutely fundamental to any practice we call scientific did not exist prior to the latter half of the 20th century (or even later). This raises the question at what point in time did "science" become science in its current guise (I'm sure there are pretty definite answers to that, I just don't know what they are). I raise this because we should be careful about dismissing as unscientific any science-like activity that predates our current conception of scientific method. I'm not sure whether you're implicitly doing this or not.<br /><br />Perhaps this is all beside the point and I'm missing your point about what it means to do science "in the name of" science. I'm just not sure that there is any real difference between doing things in the name of science and doing things in the belief that one's doing science.<br /><br />I think your problem might be better served by looking at more ambiguous cases where people did bad things in the interests of conducting a scientific endeavour, e.g., scientists involved in developing insights that they know will lead to technologies that can only harm people (e.g., the manhattan project), some early experimentation in the field of psychiatry. In these cases you have scientists committing unethical acts in the name of science, or engaging in research that can have applications that they know are evil.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-81611140382902416232015-01-29T12:20:13.006-08:002015-01-29T12:20:13.006-08:00This is a pretty good article, but I'm a littl...This is a pretty good article, but I'm a little uncertain or unconvinced about some of the points you've made, particularly the claim that scientists can't do bad things in the name of science.<br /><br />Part of the issue might be focusing on Mengele as the only example to formulate the problem. There was a broad, Nazi scientific endeavour which encompassed a very broad range of areas of medical research and more than just a couple of doctors/scientists (we can have a whole debate about whether medical doctors = scientists too, but let's leave that). Some of it, like work on sterilization, twins and artificial insemination, was driven by the lunatic Nazi racial project--psedoscience even by the standards of the time. Other parts, such as research on high altitude, saltwater, freezing, etc. were part of a medical research program tied directly to the Luftwaffe's efforts to increase the odds of survival of fighter pilots. (this article provides a pretty good overview, http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html).<br /><br />The latter research program begins to look much more like legitimate science done as science even though the suffering and cruelty inflicted on test subjects was every bit as bad. <br /><br />Two interesting things seem to come out of the Nazi experimentation program. First, there has been a protracted ethical debate about subsequent proposals to use the apparently valid data resulting from some of these experiments in legitimate post-war science. Some of the data was written off as either bad or irrelevant, but some of it remained viable, suggesting that despite the phenomenal evil committed to obtain the data, it was in practical terms usable by science.<br /><br />The other interesting result is that some of the ethical principles that we consider fundamental to medical research actually came out of what the Nuremberg trials had to say about the Nazi research program, e.g., informed patient consent is an example. This suggests at least on the surface that people other than the Nazis took their science as horribly misguided "science".<br /><br />It also reminds us that some of the things we now consider absolutely fundamental to any practice we call scientific did not exist prior to the latter half of the 20th century (or even later). This raises the question at what point in time did "science" become science in its current guise (I'm sure there are pretty definite answers to that, I just don't know what they are). I raise this because we should be careful about dismissing as unscientific any science-like activity that predates our current conception of scientific method. I'm not sure whether you're implicitly doing this or not.<br /><br />Perhaps this is all beside the point and I'm missing your point about what it means to do science "in the name of" science. I'm just not sure that there is any real difference between doing things in the name of science and doing things in the belief that one's doing science.<br /><br />I think your problem might be better served by looking at more ambiguous cases where people did bad things in the interests of conducting a scientific endeavour, e.g., scientists involved in developing insights that they know will lead to technologies that can only harm people (e.g., the manhattan project), some early experimentation in the field of psychiatry. In these cases you have scientists committing unethical acts in the name of science, or engaging in research that can have applications that they know are evil.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com