this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 2 points 6 minutes ago

Ethics are supposed to throttle human activity. That's their fucking job. That guy is a goddamn sociopath.

[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

wait he's not a fucking parody account?? i thought he was like. larping as an umbrella corp researcher

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 4 points 40 minutes ago

Nah, I'm pretty sure that's the dude that used crispr on some babies years ago in an attempt to make them immune to HIV or something.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 6 points 59 minutes ago (3 children)

Is nobody concerned that illegal experiments on babies only gets you 3 years?

Maybe they were Uyghurs so it was classified as "property damage" in Chinese law.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 4 points 17 minutes ago

Be careful, you might get banned from lemmy dot ml for hatespeech against dictatorships.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 minutes ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair

Laws were changed after this incident:

In 2020, the National People's Congress of China passed Civil Code and an amendment to Criminal Law that prohibit human gene editing and cloning with no exceptions

So, in case you actually meant that weird ignorant remark you made about Uyghurs, the answer is no and no.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml -2 points 31 minutes ago (1 children)

Dang, you can really just pull shit straight out of your ass and people will believe it.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 4 points 15 minutes ago

lemmy dot ml

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 90 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

If a person's criticism is of "ethics" in general, that individual should not be allowed in a position of authority or trust. If you have a specific constraint for which you can make a case that it goes too far and hinders responsible science and growth (and would have repeatable, reliable results), then state the specific point clearly and the arguments in your favor.

[–] neatobuilds@lemmy.today 27 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

So if we put these extra pair of legs on babies then they can stand in more extreme angles making them better at construction at a time when there is a housing shortage

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 points 3 minutes ago

For acceptance in the US we will also add more hands so the baby can hold an AR 15 while doing construction work.

[–] Comment105@lemm.ee 11 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I am convinced, I vote to allow it.

[–] spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I am in agreement, but a point of contention: only ONE extra pair of legs? Or is this negotiable?

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 hours ago

Spiderbaby, spiderbaby, does whatever a spider can, spiderbaby, spiderbaby, it's mother refused to nurse it!

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 13 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

And we already have a safety valve for when conventional ethics is standing in the way of vital research: the researchers test on themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine

If it's that vital, surely you would do it to yourself?

It's not terribly common because most useful research is perfectly ethical, but we have a good number of cases of researchers deciding that there's no way for someone to ethically volunteer for what they need to do, so they do it to themselves. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they make very valuable discoveries. Sometimes both.

So the next time someone wantz to strap someone to a rocket engine and fire it into a wall, all they have to do is go first and be part of the testing pool.

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 24 minutes ago

If it's that vital, surely you would do it to yourself?

You can't really do the kind of experiments being done genetically modifying growing infants on yourself, I imagine. Not that that should be an excuse, of course.

[–] hikuro93@lemmy.ca 45 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 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.

[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 16 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Holy shit, this guy managed to have 3 of the first 10 papers listed on google scholar about his shenanigans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4337

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 17 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Do you want BioShock? Cuz this is how you get BioShock

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee 5 points 4 hours ago

That shit still makes me angry and it’s fiction

[–] spinne@sh.itjust.works 16 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Protogen has entered the chat

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That's actually pretty the whole premise of The Vital Abyss short story. Cortazar explains how he signed up with Protogen and how glad he was to get the nerve staple that removed all empathy from him. Ot, and all the other short stories are worth reading if you liked The Expanse

[–] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 hours ago

Made the Eros comparison just a few comments above!

They were dead anyways (thanks to Protogen releasing the protomolecule), the real tragedy would be to let their deaths be in vain…

[–] match@pawb.social 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

not that protogen unfortunately

[–] match@pawb.social 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 18 minutes ago

👁️👄👁️

[–] frezik@midwest.social 24 points 7 hours ago (6 children)

Ethics mean we don't know what the average human male erect penis size is.

No, really. The ethics of the studies say that a researcher can't be in the presence of a sexually aroused erect penis. Having the testee measure their own penis is prone to error. There are ways to induce an erection with an injection, so they use that.

Is the size of an induced erection the same as a sexually aroused erection? Probably in the same ballpark, but we don't really know.

Source: Dr Nicole Prause, neurologist specializing in sexuality, on Holly Randall's podcast.

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

A quick trip on Google scholar turns up a lot of studies on the size of male erections.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/553598c1e4b0a7f854584291/t/55ee4a5ee4b025d99f73150e/1441679966732/Penis+Size+Study+-+Veale+et+al+2015+BJUI.pdf

It is acknowledged that some of the volunteers across different studies may have taken part in a study because they were more confident with their penis size than the general male population.

Ha, poisoned data tho

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

Of course it was biased, those numbers are huge on there, it was men confident in their size skewing the data, at least that's what I will tell myself

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 42 points 7 hours ago

Having the testee measure their own penis is prone to error.

To be fair, testicles aren't designed for that task.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 13 points 6 hours ago

a researcher can’t be in the presence of a sexually aroused erect penis

Is this some puritan rule? Plenty don't care to flap their erect penis in the faces of some researchers if they asked nicely. What got ethics to do with it when there is consent?

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 8 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

So wait

Who is telling the truth. My ex said it was too big. The bell curves I've found have said "uh what lmfao no way are you that big" but every self reported study says I'm small

How the fuck am I going to ever find a toilet that is comfortable to use in my own home

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

How the fuck am I going to ever find a toilet that is comfortable to use in my own home

That was an odd segue

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

It's a problem for men with penises that are long when flaccid. Their penises can touch the inside of the bowl when they're seated unless they hold their penis up.

[–] TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 6 points 5 hours ago

Never taken an unexpected dip I see?

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Switch from a siphonic toilet bowl to a wash down bowl. You'll get more skid marks, but less dips, splashes and clogging.

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[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 25 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Not that I support it in any way of course, but he's not wrong. There's probably a lot of medical knowledge to be gained by seeing how the babies he experimented on develop in the future. It's just that the ends don't justify the means.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago

Eh, usually less than you would expect. We're really good at math and are quite capable of making synthetic experiments where we find people who either require the procedure, or where it's been done incidentally and then inferring the results as though deliberate.

We can also develop a framework for showing benefit from the intervention, perform the intervention ethically, and then compare that to people who didn't get the intervention after the fact. With proper math you can construct the same confidence as a proper study without denying treatment or intentionally inflicting harm.

It's how we have evidence that tooth brushing is good for you. It would be unethical to do a study where we believe we're intentionally inflicting permeant dental damage to people by telling them not to brush for an extended period, but we can find people who don't and look at them.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 33 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

It depends on the specifics of the experiment. Throughout the 20th century, the people most keen on unethical medical experiments seemed the least able to design useful experiments. Sometimes people claim that we learned lots from the horrific medical experiments taking place at Nazi concentration camps or Japanese facilities under Unit 731, but at best, it's stuff like how long does it take a horribly malnourished person to die if their organs are removed without anaesthesia or how long does it take a horribly malnourished person who's been beaten for weeks to freeze to death, which aren't much use.

[–] Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

“People die if you kill them”

[–] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 hours ago

I'm pretty sure that 80% if what we learned from the Nazi/Imperial Japan super unethical experiments was "what can a psychotic doctor justify in order to have an excuse to torture people to death."

Maybe 20% was arguably useful, and most of that could have been researched ethically with other methods.

[–] Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 hours ago

The potential value to the Americans of Japanese-provided data, encompassing human research subjects, delivery system theories, and successful field trials, was immense. However, historian Sheldon H. Harris concluded that the Japanese data failed to meet American standards, suggesting instead that the findings from the unit were of minor importance at best. Harris characterized the research results from the Japanese camp as disappointing, concurring with the assessment of Murray Sanders, who characterized the experiments as "crude" and "ineffective."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

To back up your point that the research gained by unit 731 was useless.

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