Science Memes

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Least extreme biophysics phd (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Ironic thing, we already tried this approach multiple times before, specially on war times. And each time humanity concluded that some knowledge has too high a price and we're better off not finding out some things.

Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, especially with a heavy blood cost, isn't the way to progress as a species.

And I should know, as a person greatly defined by curiosity about everything and more limited emotional capacity than other people due to mental limitations.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

If you're talking about unit 731 and the nazis then there was very little, if anything, scientifically valuable there.

They had terrible research methodology that rendered what data they gathered mostly useless, and even if it wasn't, most of the information could have been surmised by other methods. Some of the things they did served no conceivable practical or scientific purpose whatsoever.

It was pretty much just sadism with a thin veneer of justification to buy them the small amount of legitimacy they needed to operate within their fascist governments.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

From what I read, a tiny bit of radiation and frostbite research was useful. Huge cost, of course, but minimally useful.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Exactly. Society should never conflate knowledge driven by curiosity and knowledge as an excuse for sadism.

There's a difference between experimenting by following rules, and then observing the results vs giving in to base forbidden desires just to see what happens or trying to bend reality to confirm one's bias - I mean, just look at how people tried to justify until decades ago a black person's 'inferiority' and their discrimination by coming up with all sorts of anatomical observations. That's the danger.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

Also the motivation of such research is usually not purely scientific, if at all, so the data gathered is often useless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Everyone keeps leaning on Unit 731 and the Nazis here.

What about Tuskegee and syphillis? What about the way that Huvasupai Indians blood was tested without their consent?

“Fun” fact - the chainsaw was developed to help with child birth. Lots of early US gynecology research was done on enslaved women without pain control.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Also people like him tend to be shit at getting useful data.