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by Suppafly 690 days ago
That's awesome. Here a group of nomadic plains Indians shut down research into ancient mounds built by totally different prehistoric people. I get that some of these issues need to have some sensitivity around them, and research in the past wasn't always done with the appropriate level of reverence, but the pendulum has swung the other way now where we give too much credence towards avoiding hurt feelings that have no basis in reality.
1 comments

Wouldn't you want informed consent if a scientist wanted to dig up your relatives' graves for research? It's just a scientific ethics question, combined with sovereignty issues. You want to do research on someone else's land in a different jurisdiction, it makes sense to know their laws and ask them for permission first.

Without safeguards like that you end up with HeLa and such.

Sure if it was my actual relatives, I'm not worried about people I'm definitely not descended from that lives several thousands of years ago though. The pendulum has swung too far in favor of people claiming ownership to graves that have no relationship to them.