For most researchers it takes a long time to develop ideas, run experiments, do the analysis and write up the results to the standard that journals expect. By the time that you get the reviews back for a piece of work it is likely that you are coming towards the end of your funding, or even that your funding has long since run out. If a reviewer points out a likely problem and the author recognises it as such, they are often left with the thought that they don't have the time to go back to the drawing board. Developing a better idea can happen the next day, but it could also require several months of intense work and those months may not be available.
As a researcher you are not only emotionally invested in your hypothesis (with all the inadvertent biases you may then apply to your study) but you are literally invested with a lot of your time and money.
I wonder if the state of science publishing could be vastly improved if we started with something similar to what physicists do and expand further.
‘Physics’ has theoretical physicists who develop hypotheses, and experimental physicists then design experiments to test those hypotheses.
This could be taken a step further, in all scientific fields, for example with a further division in responsibility.
Honest mistakes happen, and journals need to be accessible and on the record about their behaviors. Issuing carefully worded statements and "no comment" has no place in a generative culture. Mean-while, although there have been good recent discussions about universities and journals working together to accelerate corrections and retractions, the universities need to realize thatt hreats of litigation may not be the major consideration when so many within and outside the scientific community are losing trust in science.
Media and public interest in research integrity cases – spurred by online platforms likeX, Bluesky, and PubPeer that give a front row seat to potential disputes in real time – is increasing …A university is likely to opt for silence because of fear of litigation and damage to the institution's reputation. However ,authors should ask themselves whether silence could be interpreted by the media and public as an admission of guilt. So, in addition to consulting with institutional professionals, authors should think about talking to the media directly. This can be an opportunity to provide the unvarnished truth in response to tough questions.
I wrote about this about this basically 15 years ago
Confidentiality has been seen in the past as a fundamental ethical principle in health care and breaching confidentiality is usually a reason for disciplinary action. It has been assigned such a great value because it directly originates from the patient’s autonomy to control his or her own life […] Two types of re-identification are possible: the “Netflix” type and the “profiling” type.
There is a new Cell paper that builds a “profiling” attack using even single-cell gene expression data only
we demonstrate that individuals in single-cell gene expression datasets are vulnerable to linking attacks, where attackers can infer their sensitive phenotypic information using publicly available tissue or cell-type-specific expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) information.
So this should be included in informed consent forms also.
Many PubPeer records highlight papers that are never corrected. Unfortunately there are many authors who never respond to comments in the hope that everything will be forgotten a few days later. Also Stanford's Tessier-Lavigne hoped that time will let the dust settle while the Kirkland & Ellis Report by July 17,2023 clearly states
But what is ethical? A paper already 22 years back proposed 7 requirements that make a coherent framework.
value- enhancements of health or knowledge must be derived from the research;
scientific validity-the research must be methodologically rigorous;
fair subject selection-scientific objectives, not vulnerability or privilege, and the potential for and distribution of risks and benefits, should determine communities selected as study sites and the inclusion criteria for individual subjects;
favorable risk-benefit ratio-within the context of standard clinical practice and the research protocol, risks must be minimized, potential benefits enhanced, and the potential benefits to individuals and knowledge gained for society must outweigh the risks;
independent review- unaffiliated individuals must review the research and approve, amend, or terminate it;
informed consent-individuals should be informed about the research and provide their voluntary consent; and
respect for enrolled subjects-subjects should have their privacy protected, the opportunity to withdraw, and their well-being monitored.
Fulfilling all 7 requirements is necessary and sufficient to make clinical research ethical.
As a part time ethicist I am quite happy if an earlier article gets some recognition. Recognition is something different to the craziness of summing up impact factors, it is some kind of payback by longterm influence.
Scientific startups are en vogue. I have been asked several times and also showed interest in some companies but at the end it was either too risky, too time consuming or even unethical.
The startup world’s dirty not-so-secret is that most startups fail. Startups are risky ventures and their investors know it, so they cast a wide net, placing lots of bets on lots of startups and folding the ones that don’t show promise, which sucks for the company employees, but also for the users who depend on the company’s products.
Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004 and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. "[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman," he remembers.
Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn't know how long that will be the case. "As long as nothing goes wrong, I'm fine," he says. "But if something does go wrong with it, well, I'm screwed. Because there's no way of getting it fixed."
67 authors, 83 pages, 5408 parameters in a model, the internals of which no one can say they comprehend with a straight face, 6144 TPUs in a commercial lab that no one has access to, on a rig that no one can afford, trained on a volume of data that a human couldn't process in a lifetime, 1 page on ethics with the same ideas that have been rehashed over and over elsewhere with no attempt at a solution - bias, racism, malicious use, etc. - for purposes that who asked for?
Nature schreibt in einem neuen Artikel über die 1964 Ethik Konvention von Helsinki und den 1979 Belmont Report
But these are generally silent about the benefits and harms of academic research whose conclusions could affect groups of people that haven't directly participated. Examples include research that could lead to people being stigmatized, discriminated against or subjected to racism, sexism or homophobia, among other things. Such work might be used to justify undermining the rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics. Guidance developed by Springer Nature editors aims to fill this gap in the frameworks.
Die Kommentare zu diesem Vorschlag sind nicht sonderlich positiv. Denn letztendlich sind die @Nature Argumente nur vordergründig ethisch — sie ideologisieren vor allem Wissenschaft als “woke”.
Was ist denn schon “potentieller” Schaden und wer definiert ihn? Letztlich ist doch jedes wissenschaftliche Ergebnis dual use: Kernspaltung, Gene Editing und natürlich auch Epidemiologie und AI.
Excellent paper at towardsdatascience.com about the responsibility for algorithms including a
broad framework for involving citizens to enable the responsible design, development, and deployment of algorithmic decision-making systems. This framework aims to challenge the current status quo where civil society is in the dark about risky ADS.
I think that the responsiblity is not primarily with the developer but with the user and the social and political framework ( SPON has a warning about the numerous crazy errors when letting AI decide about human behaviour while I can also recommend here the “Weapons of Math Destruction” ).
Being now in the 3rd wave of machine learning, the question is now already discussed (Economist & Washington Post) if AI has an own personality.
This discussion between a Google engineer and their conversational AI model helped cause the engineer to believe the AI is becoming sentient, kick up an internal shitstorm and get suspended from his job. And it is absolutely insane. https://t.co/hGdwXMzQpXpic.twitter.com/6WXo0Tpvwp
Rechtzeitig vor Weihnachten greift der SPIEGEL das Thema “effektiver Altruismus” auf wobei es hier schwer ist, den exzellenten Wikipedia Eintrag noch zu toppen.
Ich bin nicht von dem Ansatz überzeugt. Pervers erscheint mir die earning to give Idee, “eine Hochertrags-Karriere in einer potenziell unethischen Industrie zu verfolgen” etwa in der Hochfinanz oder bei Meta, um danach mehr Geld zu spenden. Es spricht allerdings nichts dagegen, Spenden rational und mit Risikodiversifikation in politisch und sozial verträgliche Bereichen zu investieren.
Der effektive Altruismus ist kaltherzig, wurde nicht umsonst von Pokerspielern erfunden und auch nur von Ethikern wie Singer propagiert. Ich vermute er wird nicht deshalb scheitern, weil er elitär abgehoben ist und letztendlich Konkurrenz der Chatities befeuert, sondern weil der kalte Altruismus durch die persönliche Distanz keine positiven Feedbackschleifen entwickeln kann.
Böse Zungen lästern schon lange über den Ethikrat, er würde nur als PR Büro für den/die jeweilige Vorsitzende dienen.
Der Staatsrechtler Möllers kommentierte die Stellungnahmen des Ethikrates vor kurzem in einem Dlf Interview
Er muss irgendwas sagen, was alle sowieso schon wissen, was sich auch nicht in den rechtlichen Argumenten auflöst und was irgendwie einen Gehalt hat, der aber auch nicht zu umstritten sein darf, weil sonst begibt sich der Ethikrat gleich wieder in einen politischen Konflikt. Da bleiben oft doch nur ein bisschen einerseits Gemeinplätze übrig und andererseits auch mal Aufforderungen zur Solidarität, von denen ich meine, dass sie politisch wahrscheinlich richtig ist - es ist richtig zu sagen, wir müssen noch ein bisschen durchhalten und es geht nicht so schnell - aber die vielleicht dann auch keine richtig ethischen Argumente sind, sondern eher politische Argumente, die den Laden ein bisschen zusammenhalten in einem Moment, in dem sich alles etwas aufzulösen droht… Auch dazu kleben die Ausführungen doch sehr am positiven Recht und verhalten sich gar nicht dazu, dass man das ja auch gestalten kann.
So die Vorsitzende des Ethikrates Buyx mit “Lockdown ist nicht verhältnismässig” kurz vor Beginn der zweiten Welle.
Ethik als alternative Wissenschaft?
Impfpriorisierung – erst Empfehlung, dann Bauchschmerzen, dann Auslaufmodell.
When Bohr bemoaned to Ernest Rutherford, "Dirac never says anything," Rutherford replied with a story about a shop owner assuaging a dissatisfied customer who had purchased a parrot that would not speak. "Please forgive me. You wanted a parrot that talks, and I gave you the parrot that thinks."
