Science

Persons of the Sea?

by Lena Groeger
February 2, 2010

You’ve stumbled upon a group of beings. For all you can tell, these beings are self-aware, intelligent, have emotions, solve complex problems, and call each other by name. They have thoughts and feelings and probably experience life in a way that is very similar to your own. Are they persons? And do you have moral obligations towards them?

Thomas White, Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, has made news claiming that we have found such a group of beings. In fact, we’ve been living alongside them for a while now. They’re dolphins, and they’re people too. At an upcoming AAAS conference in San Diego, White will be arguing that dolphins deserve the status of “nonhuman persons”. The research in marine science now overwhelmingly shows that dolphins have a highly sophisticated type of consciousness and inner world – and their cognitive capacity is second only to humans (yes, they beat chimps). With such high intellectual and emotional abilities, White claims they are entitled to special moral status and protections. The implications for current practices involving dolphins (in the context of fishing, entertainment, research and the military) are serious, since they would be considered chillingly unethical if they involved human persons.

Science, drugs, policy and Hume

by Dominic Wilkinson
November 9, 2009

In this blog last week Anders Sandberg discussed the widely criticised sacking of Professor David Nutt from the government’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs. Professor Nutt had openly criticised government policy, in particular the decision by government to change the classification of cannabis and ecstasy against the advice of the government’s scientific experts. The government claimed that it was not his job to enter the political fray.

In defence of the government, some commentators have sought to distinguish the role of scientists and the role of the politicians. Expert scientists are there to synthesise analyse and present evidence. But politicians have to ultimately decide policy on the basis of values and ethical judgements. Ben Goldacre, writing in the Guardian this weekend replies to this argument by presenting further empirical evidence that is open to scientific enquiry – evidence about the effects of different drug policies on drug use, for example. Goldacre’s argument is that policy questions, as well as medical questions can be assessed scientifically. On this basis, then, perhaps the correct drugs policy can be determined by scientists?

If God hates the Higgs boson, we can build paradise on Earth

by Anders Sandberg
October 15, 2009

The Large Hadron Collider is an amazing scientific tool. And although it is still not up and running it produces a steady stream of exciting news – because when the experimentalists are busy with repairs the theorists are at play. New York Times brings us the story about a theory that suggests that the accelerator is being sabotaged from the future.

The idea, presented by Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya in two papers (paper 1, paper 2) is that (based on some very speculative physics) there could be a form of future-to-past signal that conspires to keep futures with much Higgs production unlikely. Things will seemingly randomly arrange themselves so that the LHC doesn't get turned on, and there are no Higgs particles. The authors even suggest that one can use this influence to check the theory: make a binding agreement that the LHC will not be turned on if eleven thrown dice all come up ones (a one in 3 billion chance). If the dice do come up all ones when the CERN director throws them, that is actually evidence for the theory. This might be evidence that theoretical physics still has the edge on philosophy in strangeness.

Academic freedom isn’t free

by Anders Sandberg
September 16, 2009

Should scientists be allowed to publish anything, even when it is wrong? And should there be journals willing to accept everything, as long as it seems interesting enough? That is the core of a debate that has blossomed since the journal Medical Hypotheses published two aids-denialist papers. Medical Hypotheses is a deliberately non-peer reviewed journal: the editor decides whether to publish not based on whether papers are true but whether they are bold, potentially interesting, or able to provoke useful discussion. HIV researchers strongly objected to the two papers, making the publisher Elsevier withdraw them. Now there are arguments for removing Medical Hypotheses from PubMed, the index of medical literature. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and Bruce G Charlton, editor of Medical Hypotheses, debate the affair on Goldacre's blog. Are there scientific papers that are so bad that there should not be any journal outlet for them?

Read More »Academic freedom isn’t free

Does self-help make you feel worse?

by Alexandre Erler
July 14, 2009

A study
by Canadian researchers published in the latest issue of the journal Psychological
Science (20:7, July
2009, 860-66), as recently reported by BBC news,
discovered that people with low self-esteem paradoxically happened to feel
worse after repeating a series of positive statements about themselves. The
conclusions of this study are interesting, yet one might regret that the BBC
News headline, “Self-help ‘makes you feel worse’”, though certainly
attention-grabbing, is also rather misleading.

Hunger for long life: the ethics of caloric restriction experiments

by Anders Sandberg
July 11, 2009

This has been a good week for life extension research, with the Nature paper Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice by Harrison et al. (free News and Views) showing that the drug boosts lifespan in middle aged mice, and Science countering with Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys by Colman et al. showing that in a 20-year longitudinal study rhesus monkeys do seem to benefit from caloric restriction (CR). CR involves keeping the energy intake low, but not so low that it induces starvation.

Not everybody seems to like the experiment. The Swedish major newspaper Dagens Nyheter had an article by Per Snaprud
that appeared to criticise the monkey experiment on ethical grounds. He
quotes Mats Spångberg, chief veterinarian at the Swedish Institute for
Infectious Disease Control, who doubts the experiment would have been
approved in Sweden. The only use of monkeys in Swedish research is AIDS
vaccine research. The article concludes by stating that the virus kills
2 million people every year, 270,000 of whose are children.

But ageing kills 100,000 people worldwide each day directly or indirectly. 100% of humans and monkeys are "infected".

Not better than the alternative: an informal experimentation tragedy

by Anders Sandberg
June 15, 2009

Police are reinvestigating the 2007 death of Yolanda Cox, a woman who collapsed in anaphylactic shock after being injected with an experimental drug by her sister, a GP. The drug was developed by their mother, originally intended to treat diabetes but apparently believed to extend lifespan. After testing on diabetic patients and apparently themselves without any apparent side effects the mother and sister gave it to the woman three times, with tragic consequences the third time. Was it a failure of medical ethics, research ethics – or plain psychological bias?

Shining monkey, sadistic conclusion?

by Anders Sandberg
May 28, 2009

Japanese researchers have genetically modified marmoset monkeys, and demonstrated that the modification can be inherited by their offspring. The modification was the standard green fluorescent protein making the monkey's glow green under UV light, a marker to demonstrate that the modification worked (BBC shows a picture of their feet glowing "an eerie green", while the picture in Nature's News and Views shows the cute monkeys in normal light and the original paper shows both). The long-term aim is to be able to produce transgenic primates that could act as disease models for humans – many conditions do not map well onto mice and rats. But is it acceptable to introduce heritable illness conditions into animals?

Am I allowed to throw away my memories: does memory editing threaten human identity?

by Anders Sandberg
February 17, 2009

A paper has recently been published demonstrating that a previously learned fearful reaction can be weakened using a drug. The aim of the research is to ameliorate PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, where traumatic experiences cause an ongoing state of anxiety and stress reactions. In the media it of course became "drug can erase bad memories" and "Pill to erase bad memories: Ethical furore over drugs 'that threaten human identity'". Are we getting close to a memory eraser pill, and would it pose any ethical challenges?

Born believers?

by Pablo Stafforini
February 10, 2009

The latest issue of New Scientist features an article by Michael Brooks on the evolutionary origins of religious belief. Brookes spends most of the article considering the relative merits of the two main contending hypotheses. On one view, religion is an adaptation selected for its role in promoting cooperation; on the other, it is a by-product of other mental modules which are themselves evolutionarily advantageous. Towards the end of his piece, however, Brookes briefly addresses the implications of this research for the epistemic status of theism. As Brookes writes,

if religion is a natural consequence of how our brains work, where does that leave god? All the researchers involved stress that none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods: as Barratt points out, whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it.

Barring non-realist interpretations of religious discourse, it is undoubtedly the case that these studies do not impinge on the truth of religious claims. (It is not clear to me what would non-realist theologians, such as like Don Culpitt, say about this research.) Yet the interesting question concerns, not the truth, but the warrant of theism in light of scientific findings about why people believe in God.

Such findings can, I believe, undermine theism, in at least two different ways. First, they may provide a rival, superior explanation for a belief which was previously thought to be best explained by a supernatural hypothesis. Secondly, they may show that belief in God arises not as a result of attention to arguments or evidence, but as a contingent accident of our evolutionary past. Let us consider these in turn.