The problem is that “race” doesn’t work here, especially since the most clear sign we use for “race” is skin color. If a doctor has 4 patients, one Greek-American, one Indian immigrant, one Somali immigrant, and one Black South African, which would make sense to screen for sickle cell trait? If you are basing it on race, you will probably be wrong. The two Africans are Black by any racial definition commonly used, but both would be at lower risk then the people of European and Southeast Asian origin.
And that is because the science is clear, but the use is muddled. Science says that sickle cell trait is more common in areas with endemic malaria. History says that many slaves brought to U.S. come from such an area. Social convention says that dark skin means Black and that Black is one homogeneous group. It takes two steps away from science to get to the conclusion that sickle cell trait is linked to race, but if you polled most people who are aware of sickle cell screening they would say it should be linked to race.
Modnote: Its OK to comment about the posters posts but not to speculate about his conclusions. Please do not repeat.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
It would drastically reduce efforts to reduce racial disparities in income, wealth, education, etc. overnight.
You mean in a “three generations of imbeciles is enough” sort of way or regulating procreation in a Ender’s Game sort of way?
What is the point of this quibble? Is Eugenics (if proven to be effective) so harnful that it should be suppressed?
I know a few biologists who take a less literalist view of the bible and seem to be able to reconcile their faith with their science pretty easily.
Kinda sounds like the jedi
And yet there is pretty broad consensus among psychologists that study IQ. Of course there is some disagreement as there is with anything else. But IQ tests are considered reliable by almost everyone (in that they measure something and does so consistently from test to test) and that the thing they measure correlates with intelligence and predicted achievement, even if it is not a perfect measure of these things. Most of the criticisms of IQ is that it’s not a perfect measure or that there are exceptions and outliers. This is true for a lot of things and is not unique to IQ.
In a “things man was not meant to know” Cthulhu sort of way?
This is the problem with a lot of the public discourse. The democratization of speech through social media has led some to believe that silencing an opinion is the same as winning an argument but isn’t. It doesn’t change very many minds, if you can’t confront and address the opinions you disagree with then those opinions only fester. We see this in the two most recent elections. We silenced those who had white grievance and told them to sit their privileged butts down and they did. Then they went out and voted for trump.
So you’re afraid that claims made today about intelligence would lead to slavery and genocide?
One purpose of this theory would be that it would explain some of the racial disparities we see and we might stop trying to achieve equality of results along racial lines on the premise that all groups are the same.
They prefer to be called nietchzean ubermensch or “m’lord”
I think it more likely that we would develop an anti-intellectual culture that emphasized some area where whites excelled. The go to characteristic has been “leadership” and “character” Black quarterbacks became half backs and wide receivers because they didn’t have the leadership qualities. Same for black coaches staying in their role as asst coaches. Same for asians getting into selective colleges.
I might fall into that fringe. I am not an anti-vaxxer but I know enough about vaccines to know that there were a lot of short cuts taken here.
I think there are restrictions on cloning research.
I don’t know if this is stepping over the line but I don’t think this one has been proven to be incorrect the way geocentrism has been disproven, has it?
Which shortcuts were those? My understanding is that of the three western developed vaccines, the trials have been above board. Now the Russian one on the other hand…
We don’t understand the long term side effects of the vaccines. Vaccines usually take 10 or more years to develop. We skipped some steps that do not affect the safety of the vaccine (animal testing was largely skipped and accelerated to human testing) but we short circuited human testing as well. Human testing usually goes on for years to make sure we don’t have long term side effects.
I am likely to get the vaccine for myself as soon as the doctors in our family give us an all clear but they have already indicated they probably would not vaccinate their children until the vaccine has been beta tested by the rest of the country (next september at the earliest).
We’ll have to ask the OP what he meant; it wasn’t my idea. Putting back the rest of the context of my comment:
Now the “true but horrific” line was first given by @Velocity in post 57 as a gloss of the OP:
What the OP actually said in the OP was:
Putting that all together I was saying something about like this:
@DemonTree: Are there theories like this where the consequences of people believing in them cause so much harm, that even if shown to be true , they should be suppressed, whether by law or by social pressure, deplatforming etc? Should we ban research into them just in case?
@LSLGuy: You aren’t suppressing / banning the what. Whatever “so much harm” there may be is already out there in Nature and the presence or absence of the theory changes that not a jot.
Nothing about that seems to support your
In a “things man was not meant to know” Cthulhu sort of way?
take on it.
You apparently don’t think I am as funny as I do.
The hypothesis they are possibly-suppressing is that there was Indo-European immigration to India. The evidence of the study tends to confirm it, so they are ignoring that evidence. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. Will be interesting to see if the government does put obstacles in the way of future research.
Probably you are right that the people suppressing theories/hypotheses (eg creationists) have convinced themselves that they are false, so they are not consciously hiding the truth to avoid harm. But any are, they’d hardly admit it.
I was referring to the “three generations of imbeciles” thing when I said it had harmed people in the past. And that version wouldn’t have worked anyway. But humans are animals, so it must be theoretically possible to get the same results with selective breeding. It would just be various combinations of impractical and unethical. Genetic engineering is a much more reasonable plan, although it has its own issues.
All good. The rest of your post was substantive, so I thought that part was too. My error. 
Say more words.
I sort of did in a later post but the tldr version is that we haven’t had enough time to suss out longer term side effects.
I’m afraid that they make them more likely, sure. As should all people of goodwill. One of the primary goals of decent humans should be making sure that slavery and genocide don’t happen again – and this requires acknowledging that they might.
All people of goodwill should be keen to avoid the occurance of more slavery and genocide. They do not need to agree with you on what makes those things more likely.
Wait (you think that absent a collapse of civilization) the United States of America might revert to slavery and genocide? I don’t think guarding against the rise of slavery and genocide in america is something we should worry about. It seems kind of alarmist.
It’s not just about the US. There’s a big world out there. But I believe bad things could still happen in the US. We’re not special. I don’t think slavery and genocide could happen tomorrow, but things could still go pretty bad, in the short and medium term, especially if we assume everything will be just fine. And pseudoscience about race and intelligence could well be a part of those bad things happening.
It’s my understanding that the reason this vaccine was developed so quickly is because the NIH has been anticipating and working on solutions for the Corona-type virus for nearly 10 years now. They have been testing the substrates for the RNA therapies and have worked on animal test studies in prep for something they knew was coming. When china published the COVID-19 genetic sequence, scientists recognized it and got to work almost immediately.
Which is not to say there is no risk, but it sounds like a pretty low risk with relatively few serious unknowns. The length of efficacy of this vaccine being one of those. It sounds like the need for super-cold storage in the case of the Pfizer vaccine is another factor they may have been able to work around given more time.
Are there other specifics you’re aware of that are worth consideration?
You don’t believe pseudoscience about race and intelligence could increase the chances of genocide, or the things that can lead to genocide (ethnic violence, etc.)?
It’s not in my top ten reasons to worry, no.
Yes. The abbreviated period of human testing.
If you get lucky and strike gold on the vaccine, you would normally still do animal testing before moving on to human testing. We more or less skipped that part and went straight to human testing, which is fine as long as you don’t also truncate the period of human testing. No amount of lab work is going to replace lengthy human testing to ensure safety.