Well, yes, the question is about scientific theories, not shit pull from asses.
And how long do they usually live?
If a baby with anencephaly could be used to save the life of another baby (or babies) that is otherwise healthy, would you say that it should not be used as an organ transplant donor?
I don’t know if the theories themselves are harmful, or the people citing them. I pay attention to who is speaking because if a monster-troll cites a theory, why? They must be up to something.
There are also “facts” and then not-so-facts. An IQ test doesn’t actually measure IQ. It measures the test taker’s responses to the questions on the test. We use IQ itself as a stand-in metric, because “intelligence” itself is so hard to quantify. We can’t even agree on what it means.
After the baby has died, and if the parents agree, then sure. />~
Isn’t IQ defined as the thing an IQ test measures? What else would it be?
If the parents agree, of course.
But it actually generally happens before the baby is dead, as at that point, the organs are no longer viable.
In any case, to my point, I would feel no different in having a brainless clone made from my DNA to serve as spare parts than I would accepting a heart from someone who had their head caved in in a motorcycle accident. Better, actually, as the motorcycle rider probably had friends and family who will miss them. And something made from my DNA is going to be accepted better by my body.
Certainly some ethical considerations to be made, to ensure that the clones do not develop any sort of brain function, but as long as that can be handled adequately, I think that it would be a great advance in medical science.
Alternatively, if we gave pigs just enough human DNA that they had organs that were compatible, I’d be down for that too.
Well said. Working forward from your gloss on the OP which has, I think, the benefit of being value-neutral.
A “theory” is a functional explanation for how or why something happens. It therefore can make predictions. In some sense all theories are tentative in that they remain useful until we have enough evidence that contradicts their predictions. The theory that
Here on Earth the Sun rises in the East every roughly 24 hours because blah blah blah …
is vanishly unlikely to be disproven later. But “vanishly unlikely” is not impossible. Which tiny crack is the place the CTer’s foolishly hang their pointy hats.
Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the value of a theory is in the predictions.
Now the premise:
if a scientific theory is true but horrific, should we squash it?
You aren’t squashing the what. Whatever horrificness (Horrifnicity? Horrificality?)* there may be is already out there in Nature and the theory changes that not a jot.
You’re (trying to) squash the understanding of the how or why. Unless getting to that understanding takes gargantuan tools like a supercomputer cluster or a CERN, soon enough somebody else will figure out the same thing. So at best you’re delaying the inevitable. Which might be slightly useful but is ultimately futile.
Further, if the thing is horrific and through the theory we understand the causality, we open the opportunity to intervene in the causal chain to repair the horror in the world. The results, the what, of the consequences of lead in gasoline and R-22 refrigerant in widespread use were horrific. But were unnoticed or unattributed until theory caught up. And once we had the theory = understood the causation, we could and did fix it.
To be sure changing anything in society or economics makes somebody unhappy. The car makers, oil companies, HVAC makers, and chemical industry were none too happy about the consequences of these theories.
* Yes, I know the correct word is "horror". I'm having fun.
Some people think that it measures intelligence.
Has it ever been done in the past?
First show me the scientific theory that “is true” (or stands up to scrutiny) but is, should be, or has been suppressed, and we might have something to discuss. As it stands, this all just seems too speculative.
Nuclear fission and atomic theory, for instance. That’s scientific, stands up to scrutiny, and has potentially terrible implications.
It explains the apparent complex design found in nature without requiring a designer.
So, by reasonable extension, all science is too harmful to allow into the public sphere.
You’re saying most organ donors are not yet dead when their organs are removed?
@crowmanyclouds, I can’t help but feel like there is some well poisoning in the OP. Because it goes from science to pseudoscience as if there is no distinction.
That would be because the OP has conclusions that they want to be ‘true’, science or no.
The OP question, rephrased, is essentially, “Is appeal-to-consequences ever a legit approach?”
The words are right there to be read, so try again.
It is…if you leave out the inaccurate terminology and the bad examples.
Not really. It’s well understood and uncontroversial that there is a significant correlation in cognitive performance across widely varying cognitive tasks. The general intelligence factor explains about half of the performance differences between individuals on a given cognitive challenge. That’s what IQ tests are seeking to measure.
There are certainly major issues with the implementation of IQ tests, about how well they measure general intelligence, but it’s clear what they are trying to measure.
Yeah, that’s about right. The examples were ones which came up on this board recently, except evolution which has been debated to death with creationists already.
As previous experiences have shown me, many do think that, the good news is that most people do not agree with that. Unfortunately many of the few that want to suppress things like evolution are powerful and are constantly making efforts to suppress the teaching of science that is inconvenient to them. The pressure from those groups to teachers in the US is unrelenting.
National surveys show that 40% to 60% of U.S. public school science teachers hedge, equivocate, or send a mixed message when they teach evolution or climate change.