Scrutinizing The Current Ethical Standards In Science From A Long-Term Perspective

Note: All the ideas presented in this post are not ideas I strongly believe in or endorse, because I am currently not knowledgeable enough to say anything with confidence, nor have I consulted anyone who is an expert on these topics, so please do not adopt any of these ideas as your own, because they are almost certainly incorrect. Read them just as a starting point for further enquiry, perhaps as an introduction that could make you more curious or interested in it, and always keep in mind the principles of Rationality, Scientific Skepticism, Critical Thinking and Open-Mindedness. Or just read it for fun, because I'm just playing with ideas here, everyone is most welcome to correct me wherever they think I'm wrong, and I'd be more than happy to change my mind in light of convincing logical reasons or empirical evidence.

In brief: Could it be possible that what is thought to be unethical by the scientific community today could actually be unethical over the longer term, by not allowing researchers to run experiments that could cause some suffering at first, but prevent much greater suffering in the future over the long-term, especially if the volunteers are willing to participate in the experiments and compensated?

This is one of my more important posts, but unlike other important posts, something that I indicate in the beginning of every post, this one is skippable. Not because the ideas are not important, but because I believe that I have not done a great job of explaining my ideas in great detail, which is why it's an important post that is also very short and less in terms of information density, something that's not the case with most of my important posts.

Feel free to skip, because I might create a more detailed post in the near future to expand on these ideas in greater detail, or maybe edit this one, but most likely not as people don't usually re-check the same posts after reading them once.

Do read it if you're someone who is interested in the philosophy of science or bioethics, and concerned with issues such as animal rights in lab experiments and inhumane treatment conditions that cause suffering, and important topic that deserves a more rigorous and in-depth treatment than I have given in this post, which doesn't quite do it justice, but is still at least a start which could spark some discussion and force people to think, discuss and debate such ideas in their communities and society.

Longer version: I feel that the harm we are doing with such restrictive ethics is more evil than the harm the occasional dictator dashes out on certain populations. Emphasis on feel, not think, that means I haven’t rigorously tested my intuitions yet and am open to change my mind in light of convincing reasonable logical arguments or evidence to the contrary, and so I want to know what you all think about it.

Why do I think so? Because we forget that if we take some bold steps and allow a willing researchers and a willing volunteer to participate in experiments designed to test stuff we deem unethical at the time, and allow the experiments to continue without any backlash from morally and emotionally motivated members of the general public who oppose it, by convincing them how it is logically and scientifically the most rational course of action, we could come up with discoveries and innovative cures that could prevent a lot of future suffering.

If we continue with our current state of knowledge, we would stay ignorant forever unless another sociopathic dictator rises in the future and does it themself, but if we don’t understand these things that require us to extend the acceptable and ethical moral grey area, we would never be able to understand it and even worse prevent suffering that would take place as a result of our ignorance.

If we conduct some experiments at once, which would have very less amount of individuals suffer (in the grand scheme of things, taking a long-term view) that too if they’re willing to volunteer and compensated for their contribution to Science, then we could prevent a large amount of individuals in the future who could be cured by our new discoveries.

Food for thought. This may also be some sort of general principle that we get to see in theories like how initial suffering pushes some people to give it some sort of meaning by pushing themselves to work for something that is greater than them, as in Frankl’s Logotherapy, and how from my own personal experiences I find that some unfortunate circumstances teach me valuable lessons that prevent many potential future failures and mishaps that would have occurred had I not learned the lesson from my initial mistakes.

This is also how I came up with the rule to extract general principles from my failures and not just turn it into a learning opportunity but leverage it to achieve my future goals, because everything has pros and cons, and what you consider your misfortune may have some hidden upsides or a silver lining you have failed to detect but might discover if you try to.

Both these things obey the same sort of vague principle- some initial undesirable or unfortunate event resulted in net positive outcome for the agent going forward in the future, and had the initial unfortunate or undesirable event not taken place, the agent would have suffered much greater loss by not learning the lessons that the event had to teach.

This might hold true in the case of unethical scientific experiments too, and we’d never know until we try it, and in my opinion the potential risks are much greater than the potential benefits, and the worst case scenario definitely seems to be more undesirable than the best case scenario, so the pros of conducting such experiments overall seem to weight more than the cons, even when compare to the alternatives, and the opportunity cost of not doing so seems to high to be neglected.

I also sometimes think what in our current society is something that the future generations would consider unethical or immoral, and nowadays as I’m realizing the importance of Rationality, I’m thinking what the future generations with much more sophisticated scientific knowledge and tools would consider irrational, and I think what I just discussed could be one of those things.

I can't give you any new ideas for such experiments at the moment, though I have thought of something that I described in my earlier posts, something involving finding out what kinds of environments would maximize for traits like intelligence or resistance to pain that could help us pin down the exact genes involved and come up with cures for people with deficits in such traits.

There have also been some horrific experiments in the past involving dealing trauma to unwilling patients or prisoners or war, like Communist China having their captured enemies write down why they dislike Capitalism even when they didn't and later on to avoid cognitive dissonance it produced such a long lasting effect that their shift in perspective on capitalism persisted even after the downfall of Communist China.

There's the Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison experiment, cover mind control experiments like MK-ULTRA, and even hypothetically I'm in no way suggesting it could be beneficial to kidnap people, capture them and conduct experiments on them against their will that make them suffer without their consent, but I'm talking about trying to minimize the suffering as much as possible and only conducting such experiments with volunteers who could be later compensated.

I'm not sure but I think such experiments also took place in Nazi German, and more recently there was the He Jiankui affair, the Chinese doctor who did some genetic engineering experiments with babies and was punished for it. I'm not saying he did the right thing or not; I'm not knowledgeable enough yet to comment on that.

All I'm saying is that if such experiments are approved and allowed, then doctors and researchers could enjoy greater freedom and autonomy to conduct such experiments without indulging in shady activities and harmful practices, and only experiments in which we are sure that the suffering can be minimized through anesthesia or the participants could be compensated with an amount commensurate with their suffering, and the potential benefits of the discoveries and insights it could result in could help prevent potential greater future suffering, then I see no reason to not permit such experiments.

There are dictators and dictatorial regimes that have committed such crimes in the past, but yet we later find out natural experiments that help us advance our knowledge greatly, and help us come up with insights, discoveries and cures, either directly or indirectly, through the discoveries that could be made because of the experiments that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

My argument could also be extended to non-human animals, thought they can be tricky because we can't get their consent and can never be sure how much they are suffering, and whether or not they are even capable of suffering, but we can't take such a risk because the worst case scenario is too nightmarish to take such a chance, so I'll refrain from talking about non-human animals here.

I'd like to know what you think about this, and if I am mistaken or misunderstood or overlooked some important part of the philosophy of science and ethics, because I admit that I have not studied these subjects too deeply yet, but I'm curious about this and would greatly appreciate if anyone who is knowledgeable in this field could guide me in the right direction. Thank you.