Scientists have mutated a bird flu virus–which I call the Armageddon flu because it has a 50% lethality rate in humans and would be highly infectious through airborne transmission. Reckless, to say the least–as we have discussed here. But the scientists also want to publish their work, which could result in terrorists learning how to create a worldwide pandemic. Idiotic! Now the WHO has weighed in for tight controls on the information. From the Reuters story:
The World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled. The United Nations health body said it was “deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences” of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.
The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon. The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked two journals that want to publish the work to make only redacted versions of studies available, a request to which the journal editors and many leading scientists object.
What a toxic mixture of hubris and complacency. How can such smart people be so lacking in basic common sense?
We already have a framework in nuclear science. From the CBS story:
Scientists who work in nuclear physics are often unable to publish their work, for security reasons. But in most areas of science, the paradigm is that if researchers find something or achieve a goal, they must publish how they did the work so that others can try to replicate it and build on it, deterring fraud and ensuring advancement.
But this isn’t “most situations.” The knowledge of how to mutate the bird flu virus so that it became highly contagious is as dangerous as publicly discussing the details of making a nuclear bomb or other weapon.
So, censor the work in public, just as we already do in nuclear physics, and continue any further experiments and knowledge sharing under conditions where all are legally bound to secrecy. That isn’t anti science. It is pro public safety. The last thing we need is for a crazy anti humanist, or Jihadists to learn the how to mutate bird flu into a virulent human killer.
January 1st, 2012 | 12:34 pm
I can shed some light on your irrational fears:
According to a 2011 study by cognitive neuroscientist Ryota Kanai’s group at University College London published in Current Biology, people with different political views have different brain structures.
The scientists performed MRI scans on 90 volunteer young adult people’s brains.
According to ABC, “Scans revealed that the liberal students tended to have a larger region of the brain that processes conflicting information.
That, say the authors, might make for tolerance to uncertainty in more liberal views.
The conservatives tended to have a larger part of the brain that processes fear and identifies threats.
They might be more inclined to integrate conservative views into their politics.”
The results of the study showed that conservatives had a larger amygdala, an almond-shaped structure of brain involved in processing memory of emotional reactions.
Liberals had increased grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, a comma-shaped structure of the brain that plays a role in a wide variety of autonomic functions, such as regulating blood pressure and heart rate, as well as rational cognitive functions, such as reward anticipation, decision-making, empathy and emotion.
According to the ASA, IQ data from the “Add Health” survey averaged 106 for adolescents identifying as “very liberal”, versus 95 for those calling themselves “very conservative”.
An unrelated study in 2009 found that among students applying to U.S. universities, conservatism correlated negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores though there was a greater correlation with economic differences.
In a survey of the perceived severity of moral transgressions, conservatives were more affected by the taste of a bitter drink than liberals.
“…taste perception significantly affected moral judgments, such that physical disgust (induced via a bitter taste) elicited feelings of moral disgust.
Further, this effect was more pronounced in participants with politically conservative views”.
Learn about yourself Mr. Smith.
Peter S Reply:
January 2nd, 2012 at 9:11 am
@Harryhammer, What a truly odd ad hominem, or should I say ad cerebrum?, attack consisting of unscientific extrapolations from a scientific study.
January 2nd, 2012 | 12:09 pm
People think science is values-neutral, but it is not.
The scientific method (or more specifically the assumptions it is based on) lead inevitably toward valuing the acquisition of knowledge as the first and most important good – more important than individual lives or national security.
If you don’t want that outcome, you’ve got to challenge the assumptions.
Harryhammer Reply:
January 2nd, 2012 at 12:23 pm
@Blake,
You are hopelessly biased by our personal and political motivations.
Peter S Reply:
January 2nd, 2012 at 6:02 pm
@Harryhammer, Alas, I too am hopelessly biased by “our” personal and political motivations; or should “I” (assuming the existence of an “I”) say “your” or “their”?
koo, koo, ka choo
January 2nd, 2012 | 5:28 pm
You are hopelessly biased by our personal and political motivations.
If you list the various assumptions inherent in the scientific method (and I invite you to do this yourself, since anything I write will be perceived as biased), you will eventually find yourself writing statements affirming the importance, value, and goodness of acquiring knowledge.
Do you dispute this?
You cannot be values-neutral if you in fact do posit some values as good. The good values are elevated above the neutral values. The scientific method requires that we take it as a given that acquiring knowledge is good – but it does not make any statement at all about other values.
Someone has biased values, but it’s not clear that I’m the problem.
What other field of study has an entire literary genre devoted to exploring the anxieties provoked by its inherent ethical conflict?
Harryhammer Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 10:17 am
@Blake,
Your words:
“What other field of study has an entire literary genre devoted to exploring the anxieties provoked by its inherent ethical conflict?”
Do you reject the theory of evolution?
Creation scientists assert that the field of evolutionary biology is itself pseudoscientific or even a religion.
The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that Creation Science is a religious, not a scientific view, and that Creation science does not qualify as science because it lacks empirical support, supplies no tentative hypotheses, and resolves to describe natural history in terms of scientifically un-testable supernatural causes.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/
Be honest, are you a young-earth creationist?
50% of Republicans in the United States are strict young-earth creationists.
January 4th, 2012 | 3:58 pm
“What other field of study has an entire literary genre devoted to exploring the anxieties provoked by its inherent ethical conflict?”
Do you reject the theory of evolution?
No, but so what?
As it happens, evolution is not incompatible with my beliefs, so it’s not a fair test.
As it happens, I believe that evolution – that self-organizing behavior in general – suggests rather than disproves the existence of a non-material force. But if I sincerely held the beliefs of an evangelical Biblical literalist, I would not have much problem getting around evolution, for two reasons:
1. the history of science shows that it is not equally reliable on all types of problems. It is more reliable on small problems than large ones, and more reliable on problems that are close in time and space than on ones that are distant. The obvious reason is that science is only accurate when it has all the relevant variables accounted for, and the larger and more distant the project, the greater the probability of having not accounted for all the variables.
2. The theory of evolution falls into the category of being not directly provable. You can prove small-scale assertions, and you can use logic to try to prove large-scale assertions, but you don’t – and can’t – actually have definitive proof. So, therefore, the most you will ever be able to say is, if it is true that X, then it is true that Y (where X equals the assumptions of science upon which the theory rests, and Y equals the theory of evolution). That is, if there is no God, then the most logical explanation for this phenomenon is the theory of evolution – which is hardly the same thing as disproving the existence of God.
So I’m not sure what your point is. I have nothing against science, as long as it’s not being used to make false, misleading, or outright dishonest claims. In its place, science is one of many useful ways of gaining knowledge.
It is when people try to elevate it into more than that – into “the only” way to gain knowledge, or into a religion, or into a thing that should be exempt from ethical, legal, or political restrictions, that it becomes problematic.
There are unfortunately some people who are so enamored of “science” that they would throw away America’s Constitution and create an oligarchy – a small ruling class of Enlightenment “experts” who will have sole authority over everyone.
And that is why we have an entire literary genre (two, if one counts dystopian fiction as a separate genre) devoted to people speculating on and working through what will happen, might happen, could happen, probably will happen, or should not be permitted to happen (etc.) if the high priests of the Enlightenment are allowed to enact their grandiose plans.
January 4th, 2012 | 4:01 pm
Be honest, are you a young-earth creationist?
50% of Republicans in the United States are strict young-earth creationists.
I read that book! It also said that 82% of non-Republicans make up statistics!
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