Ask HN: Should a scientist be highly moral and give an oath to serve for good

[isu]

I've been just shocked about accusations of 77 y.o. Marvin Minsky in sex with an underage girl and having "deep ties" with Epstein and participating in AI conferences at the finencier's private island. Now I can imagine an after-party very well.

And the whole John Brockman's Edge scientific community which is probably benefited from Epstein's activity terrifies with thoughts "who else".

I could imagine also myself being a scientist at age 30 and willing to hang out with a millionaire-billionaire. But I'm expecting that with age my priorities would shift from being famous and rich to being less ambitious, more careful and being a caretaker or at least an advisor to teenagers.

A scene of 77 y.o. Minsky, whose lectures I've been watching and whose ideas I tried to adapt and understand, forcefully fucking a teenage girl:

* scaries me: would I do the same being in his shoes?

* raises questions about intentions behind Minsky's intelluctual work: should I listen to his (and others', who did amoral acts) ideas, believe him when it's not very pleasant to even look at videos with him now?

* forces me to think about the need for a scientist, an engineer, a programmer, a journalist, a finencier or any professional to give an oath like doctors do to do no harm to other living beeing, a human, animal, plant for fun, for pleasure, money, satisfaction.

I see how technologies are advancing but I hardly can observe like the humanity is able to progress and not to degrade morally, spiritualy or how you call it.

Should I follow disgraced scientists? How I can avoid to be ashamed in the same manner?

[gus_massa]

Dos the oath include not creating nuclear weapons?

Can a farmer work after s/he made the oath?

Can a doctor test drugs in mouses? (Why you excluded bacteria from your list?)

Is the oath pro-life or pro-choice? (Notice that there are more than two option in that debate.)

Who is going to make the rules about what is fine? You? The Pope? The Tweeter mob?

[isu]

> Can a doctor test drugs in mouses? (Why you excluded bacteria from your list?)

Bacteria is included into a "living being", but anyway. I definitely do not pretend to present a well thought oath in the comment yet. But seems The Hippocratic Oath is a good precedent. Probably, it's better to compose such ethical principles for each activity, because there are different fallacies and temptations for different professions. And there is a separate set of temptations for a common human. We teach and study natural sciences, but we don't teach ethics and philosophy in popular nowadays STEM curricula.

[anigbrowl]

Yes, but that's a good thing to commit to as a human being. From a professional standpoint, it's an acknowledgement of having access to moral/ethical as well as practical education.

[ggm]

If you want to look for a moral scientist, Read up on Norbert Weiner.

[isu]

thanks for the reference

[GrumpyNl]

Dont fall for the money.

[luckylion]

> * raises questions about intentions behind Minsky's intelluctual work: should I listen to his (and others', who did amoral acts) ideas, believe him when it's not very pleasant to even look at videos with him now?

What's the alternative? The Nazis did medical experiments. Do we now just throw away the knowledge that was gained?

> * forces me to think about the need for a scientist, an engineer, a programmer, a journalist, a finencier or any professional to give an oath like doctors do to do no harm to other living beeing, a human, animal, plant for fun, for pleasure, money, satisfaction.

That's unreasonable, and not at all what physicians swear to do.

> Should I follow disgraced scientists?

You should follow (and question) their results, not them.

[NeedMoreTea]

> Do we now just throw away the knowledge that was gained?

Simply? Yes. Most of it was scientifically poor research, of no value, anyway. Only the Luftwaffe hypothermia experiments had any value.

Following the doctor's trial at the Nuremburg Military Tribunals the Nuremburg Code[1] established a minimum set of ethics for human experimentation. It's subsequently shaped many international and national laws and treaties.

Whilst some of that research has been used and cited, there's been many times when referencing it was explicitly ruled out[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Mod...

[luckylion]

> Simply? Yes. Most of it was scientifically poor research, of no value, anyway.

That's a different reasoning though, one where nobody would disagree, I'm pretty sure. If they have value, what then?

[NeedMoreTea]

The scientifically invalid point was in addition to the straight no. :)

To expand: I still think it should not be used or even acknowledged. You're on untenably thin ice, ethically speaking. "people were forcibly experimented on or killed, but we got some great data" doesn't pass the most basic ethical sniff test.

The results should be case for the prosecution, not for citation. Citation should have you hauled before an ethics panel. Find a way to conduct the research that's achieved safely with willing consent, find an alternative methodology, or find an alternative career.

It gets greyer if you go back far enough into history that we hadn't established those ethical and human rights standards. You can't really hold standards and laws against someone in a time they didn't yet exist. Given world history, that probably means pre-Nazi and eugenics eras.

[luckylion]

I didn't mean to get into the Nazis too much, just pointing to them as an extreme example. Certainly, they did research that wasn't unethical (think climate research, material science, architecture etc), but it was still done by Nazis.

The OP talked about Minsky, and I assume nobody thinks that whatever he did in connection to Epstein has anything to do with his scientific work.

I think there's a somewhat good argument to sever ties with a scientist that behaves unethically outside of science (but then again: do you -hypothetically- disregard a cure for cancer because the researcher is racist?), but to reject the results afterwards? Should we throw out everything that Tim Hunt ever worked on (and everything that cites/is based on his work) because some people perceived remarks he made to be sexist?

[NeedMoreTea]

To the wider example, it gets much, much more difficult.

There is certainly a need for some separation between work and personal life, but it can never be totally distinct. I'd find it very difficult to codify where the line should be. Context, extent and motivation becomes hugely relevant. That makes it far more suited to an ethics panel or court of law, and completely unsuited for the Twitter court of outrage.

We could paint different shades of grey all day, but for a flavour:

A racist researcher discovering a major cancer breakthrough has reprehensible beliefs, as does Minsky - if allegations are proven, but it need not impact on their previous work's ability or validity. I'd accept the previous work - if that were conducted ethically, just as I take the lunchtime sandwich from the guy I never spoke to about politics, race or what have you. But...

It starts to matter if it goes to law - was it a $50 fine or a 25 years conviction? A drunk weekend party with a one off incident of incredibly poor judgement is very different to a sustained predatory history over a decade. Employing them in the next job, even continuing to employ them, or placing in a position of visibility or policy, could indeed be a different matter. If they crossed the line to illegality, how often and how far, might they bring the organisation into disrepute? If it gets so heinous they are convicted and/or struck off, e.g. Andrew Wakefield with the MMR autism fraud, perhaps everything they researched is taitned too and should be struck.

Hence it should be for an independent and hopefully considered judgement, with proportionate penalty, not a headline and outrage fest on twitter.

Tim Hunt seems easier - he made a bad call on what I think was intended to be simply a joke. Poor choice for a specialist conference, but the outrage afterwards seemed way over the top for the offence. More a case of needing a quiet word with HR or management to engage brain before mouth, rather than discounting all his work or firing.

[isu]

> Do we now just throw away the knowledge that was gained?

Probably, yes. Would you forcibly kill another innocent person to save your life or your child's one? China does this with Uighurs (they are prisoned in camps, their health is checked and organs are extracted on demand, people are trashed then) for science and profit because they are muslims and weaker as a nation.

Seems that knowledge isn't so valuable by itself. If so, why not to trash it when it's done in a violent and shameful way.

[luckylion]

So if China, by those methods, cured cancer, you'd go "fruit of the poisonous tree" on that knowledge? I believe it's one thing to condone unethical experiments, and quite another to reject its findings alltogether.

Btw, China does so not only with Uighurs, but also with Han-Chinese, regular prisoners, political prisoners etc. The Chinese aren't ethical, but it's not a religion/race thing.