As with yesterday’s dialogue blocker (the question of whether animal research is necessary for scientific and medical advancement), today’s impediment is another substantial disagreement about the facts. A productive dialogue requires some kind of common ground between its participants, including some shared premises about the current state of affairs. One feature of the current state of affairs is the set of laws and regulations that cover animal use — but these laws and regulations are a regular source of disagreement:
Current animal welfare regulations are not restrictive enough/are too restrictive.
Category Archives: Scientist/layperson relations
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 2).
Today we continue our look at the reasons that attempts to have a dialogue about the use of animals in scientific research routinely run aground.
Dialogue, you’ll remember, involves the participants in the dialogue offering not just their views but also something like their reasons for holding those views. In addition, in a real dialogue, participants engage seriously with each other’s positions. Serious engagement doesn’t necessitate that one of the positions on offer ends up persuading everyone in the dialogue, but everyone is supposed to be open to considering each view — and open to critically examining one’s own view. A dialogue is not a high school debate where the point is for your side to win. Instead, “winning” here is really understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competing view, and ideally, all of the dialogue’s participants can achieve this sort of win.
Research with animals seems to be a topic of discussion especially well-suited to shouting matches and disengagement. Understanding the reasons this is so might clear a path to make dialogue possible. Yesterday, we discussed problems that arise when people in a discussion start with the assumption that the other guy is arguing in bad faith. If we can get past this presumptive mistrust of the other parties in the discussion, another significant impediment rears its head pretty quickly:
Substantial disagreement about the facts.
Trying to get people to accept (or even seriously consider) your conclusion, no matter what that conclusion might be, is a lot harder if those people do not accept your premises. In discussions (or shouting matches) around animal rights, animal welfare, and the use of animals in research, there are plenty of premises that are hotly disputed by participants. Thus, I’m going to focus on three types of facts that are usually points of contention and give them each a post of their own. In the next post, I’ll discuss contention about what animal welfare regulations allow or require. In the post after that (part 4 of the series), I’ll take up disagreements around the facts as far as animal discomfort, distress, pain, or torture when animals are used in scientific research. We will start, though, by considering a pretty basic clump of claims over which various sides have trouble agreeing to the same facts:
Is animal research necessary or unnecessary for scientific and medical advancement?
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 1).
In a post last month about an animal rights group targeting a researcher’s car with an incendiary device, I closed by expressing my profound pessimism at the prospects of having a serious dialogue about animal rights:
Framing and ethics (part 3).
In a pair of earlier posts, I looked at the ethical principles Matthew C. Nisbet says should be guiding the framing of science and at examples Nisbet discusses of ethical and unethical framing. Here, consider some lessons we might learn from the framing wars. I’m hopeful that we can gain insight about the folks interested in communicating science, about the various people with whom they’re trying to communicate, and perhaps even about the approaches that might be useful (or counterproductive) in trying to sell scientists on the utility of the framing strategy.
This post is not so much a response to Matt’s recent post on the ethics of framing as it is to the multi-year brouhaha over framing and its discontents in the science blogosphere.
The lessons I’m taking away from all of this are more along the lines of bite-sized nuggets than a Grand Unified Moral of the Story (although it’s quite possible that someone with more patience or insight than I can muster could find the grand unifying thread in these nuggets):
Framing and ethics (part 2).
In my last post, I looked at a set of ethical principles Matt Nisbet asserts should be guiding the framing of science. In this post, I consider the examples Matt provides as the “DO” and “DON’T” pictures for the application of these guiding ethical principles.
First, Matt examines an example of framing done well:
Framing and ethics (part 1).
If it’s spring, it must be time for another round of posts trying to get clear on the framing strategies advocated by Matthew C. Nisbet, and on why these communications seem to be so controversial among scientists and science bloggers.
My past attempts to figure out what’s up with framing can be found here:
- Movie screening expulsion: whose hearts and minds are up for grabs?
- Trying to understand framing.
- Trying to understand framing (II): draw me a picture.
- Trying to understand framing (III): the example of stem cell research.
- Minor epiphany about framing.
The present post has been prompted by Matt’s recent post on the ethics of framing science.
If you haven’t the stomach for another round of the framing wars (or the attempt at analysis from here on the sidelines), come back later for tasty framing-free content: This afternoon I’ll be posting an illustration by the elder Free-Ride offspring, and this evening I’ll be revealing the identities of the mystery crops in my garden.
For those still reading, here’s my plan: First, in this post, I’ll consider the four ethical principles Matt says ought to be guiding scientists, journalists, and other communicators who are framing science. In the next post, I’ll say something about what seems to be going on when proponents of the framing strategy object that scientists are not applying it correctly. Finally, I’ll try to draw some broader lessons about the folks interested in communicating science – and about the strategies that might be useful (or counterproductive) in trying to sell scientists on the utility of the framing strategy.
Is drug research on humans who are addicted to drugs ethical?
DrugMonkey responds to the outgoing Drug Czar’s deep concerns about research with illegal drugs conducted with subjects who are addicted to those drugs, those concerns reported in an article in the Washington Examiner. From that article:
The federal government is giving crack and powder cocaine, morphine, and other hard-core drugs to taxpayer-funded researchers for testing on addicts, The Examiner has learned.
For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal. …
John Walters, drug czar during both terms of George W. Bush’s administration, said he learned about the studies near the end of Bush’s term. “It’s not only questionable ethically, but probably — given the science — it may not be able to be defended at all,” Walters told The Examiner recently. …
“Most people see the things that people will do to themselves when they’re addicted — what they’ll do to themselves, to their families, to their loved ones,” Walters told The Examiner. “I think that when you bring someone in and say, ‘Well, they’re not seeking treatment yet and therefore it’s OK to use them as an experimental subject’ — that’s not the understanding that the current science gives us about this disease.” …
“The question is whether the results justify using these individuals as disposable subjects,” Walters said.
Walters seems to be saying that the use of people who are addicted to drug in research on those drugs cannot be ethical under any circumstances. (His claim that “it may not be able to be defended at all” at least strongly suggests that this is his position.) Is he right?
Circumstances under which it is OK for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air?
Some commenters on my last post seem to be of the view that it is perfectly fine for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air to bolster their claims, at least under some circumstances.
I think it’s a fair question to ask: In which circumstances are you comfortable giving scientists the go-ahead to make up their numbers?
Science Saturday: Alternative Medicine Edition at Bloggingheads.
This week at Bloggingheads.tv, PalMD and I have a chat about science, ethics, and alternative medicine. Plus, we have a little disagreement about what constitutes paternalism.
Go watch!
Book review: Everyday Practice of Science.
Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic.
by Frederick Grinnell
Oxford University Press
2009
Scientists are not usually shy when it comes to voicing their frustration about the public’s understanding of how science works, or about the deficits in that understanding. Some lay this at the feet of an educational system that makes it too easy for students to opt out of science coursework, while others blame the dearth of science coverage in our mass media.
Rather than casting about for a villain, cell biologist Frederick Grinnell has written a book that aims to help the non-scientist understand what scientific practice looks — and feels — like to the scientists. This description of scientific activity connects the dry textbook accounts of scientific method to the vibrant, messy, frustrating yet invigorating terrain scientists inhabit as they try to build new knowledge. Grinnell’s book also connects the scientists’ world to the vibrant, messy, frustrating yet invigorating world they share with non-scientists as he considers ethical and societal dimensions of scientific practice.