Following up on an excellent post she wrote earlier this month, Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera brings us an update on the lawsuit against Jared Diamond and The New Yorker. You may recall that this lawsuit alleges that a story written by Diamond and published in The New Yorker defamed its subject (and Diamond’s source) New Guinean driver Daniel Wemp, as well as Henep Isum, another man featured in the story but never interviewed by Diamond nor contacted by fact-checkers from The New Yorker. As described in the earlier post at Bioephemera:
Category Archives: Scientist/layperson relations
Proposed guidelines for embryonic stem cells: applying new ethical rules to old research.
You may have heard that the Obama administration has proposed new rules for federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. (The proposed rules are available in draft form through the end of the public comment period; the NIH expects to finalize the rules in July).
While researchers are enthusiastic at the prospect under this administration of more funding for ESC research, not everyone is happy about the details of the proposed rules. Indeed, in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell [1], Patrick L. Taylor argues that there is something fundamentally misguided about the way the new rules would be applied to old research:
Researchers talking to journalists should assume the public might be listening.
In the wake of some recent deaths in Edmonton of teenagers who took Ecstasy, DrugMonkey gets irritated with a doctor who made some proclamation to the press:
Another conundrum: whether to engage with the Huffington Post.
It occurs to me that there might be an interesting parallel to the conundrum we discussed about whether it’s better to engage with a scientist giving off a shady vibe or to back away with all due haste. It’s not a perfect parallel, but there are some similar issues at work.
Should scientists and physicians engage with the Huffington Post?
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 8).
After considering the many different roadblocks that seems to appear when people try to discuss research with animals (as we did in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this series), it might be tempting to throw up your hands and say, “Well, I guess there’s no point in doing that, then!”
Resist this temptation!
As we noted in part 7, there are good reasons that we (by which I mean scientists and the public) ought to be engaging in dialogue about issues like research with animals. Avoiding dialogue altogether would mean cutting off the flow of information about what actually happens in animal research and about how animals actually matter to scientists and non-scientists alike. Given that what the public knows and cares about has some influence on how much public money is allocated to support scientific research and on what kinds of laws and regulations govern the treatment of animals (including the treatment of animals in scientific research), opting out of dialogue altogether is a risky move.
Therefore, in this post, I offer suggestions for how to have a productive dialogue about animal research.
Framing poll questions.
Remember earlier this week when we were discussing some of the positions people might hold with respect to the use of animals in research?
These included animal rights positions, which held that animals have inherent rights not to have their bodies transgressed (or that, by virtue of their capacity to suffer, they have rights not to be used in ways that might lead to their suffering), and animal welfare positions, which hold that animal suffering matters — that it is something to be avoided or minimized — but do not ground the ethical importance of animal suffering in animals’ status as right-bearers. And, I wrote:
Besides the animal rights and animal welfare positions, there is also the possibility of staking out a position that holds that animals and animal suffering have no moral significance, that animals are not deserving of any special regard.
Today, DrugMonkey notes that the Los Angeles Times blog’s write-up of yesterday’s Pro-Test rally at UCLA is accompanied by a poll. The poll asks readers for their opinions of the use of animals in medical research, presenting these three choices:
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 7).
In this post, it’s time to pull back from the specific kinds of dialogue blockers we’ve been examining (here, here, here, here, here, and here) to start to consider other ways we might get around them. Here, I want to start with some insightful remarks from a friend of mine, philosopher Vance Ricks:
When you describe “dialogue” in that post, it sounds as though you’re mostly focusing on communication between A and B. One wrinkle in the animal research case (and many ethical cases generally) is that A and B aren’t just (not) talking to each other; they’re talking to each other AND to an indeterminate audience they’re hoping to reach.
I know (from my own experience) that there are plenty of times when I have not trusted my actual dialogue “partner” in the ways that you mention, but where at the same time I knew that behind/beside/near that person, there were other people who I did trust slightly more — and so, I wasn’t really addressing my ostensible partner so much as I was addressing a range of people including that person.
Do you think that that makes a difference to what we count either as “dialogue” or as impediments?
I think Vance raises a really important point.
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 6).
So far in this series, we’ve talked about ways that attempts to have a dialogue about animal research can be frustrated by inability to agree on a shared set of facts as a staring point or by unclarity about the positions people are trying to put forward. Today’s featured impediment to dialogue has less to do with the mechanics of laying out and engaging with a clear argument and more to do with reasons people might be fearful even to voice their positions:
Ignoring the impact of the tactics used to advance a position.
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 5).
Today we discuss an impediment to dialogue about animals in research that seems to have a special power to get people talking past each other rather than actually engaging with each other:
Imprecision about the positions being staked out.
Specifically, here, the issue is whether the people trying to have a dialogue are being precise in laying out the relevant philosophical positions about animals — the position they hold, the position they’re arguing against, the other positions that might be viable options.
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 4).
As we continue our look at ways that attempted dialogues about the use of animals in research run off the rails, let’s take up one more kind of substantial disagreement about the facts. Today’s featured impediment:
Disagreement about whether animals used in research experience discomfort, distress, pain, or torture.
This disagreement at least points to a patch of common ground shared by the people disagreeing: that it would be a bad thing for animals to suffer. If one party to the discussion accepts the premise that animal suffering is of no consequence, that party won’t waste time haggling over how much suffering animal research actually produces.