You raise a bunch of good points and you’re 100% right that when I write “bioethicists” on twitter I should really write “institutionalized research ethics”. Not doing do so is sloppy of me. I think I do a better job showing the institutional dynamics bioethicists work under in my blogposts, so I think those hold up okay. But I’ll look at those posts again and see if I think they need some edits.
Mostly agree with: “worth some eyebrow-raising if it turns out that the ingroup defense is something along the lines of “well, by bioethicists, we mean research ethicists, and by research ethicists we mean research bureaucrats, and by research bureaucrats, we mean research bureaucracy.”
Your survey data on actual bioethicists’ opinions was slightly surprising to me, so I should update on that.
My criticism of bioethics is aimed at bioethics-as-practiced-by-institutions, which does seem bad and deserve criticism, but you’re right that the causal story here is definitely not [bioethicists are the sole reason big institutions are risk-averse] and so blaming only them doesn’t make sense. My own posts basically argue that institutions use IRB’s as a means of reputation/PR control, so in some sense I should exonerate bioethicists per se and focus on the institutional dynamics and laws that led to that equilibrium.
Incidentally, this does lead me to two points of possible (not sure of your views) disagreement:
I think you’re right that practically speaking, engagement with bioethicists is good. But if we take your point that institutionalized research ethics per se is the problem, not bad bioethicists, that suggests we should pay a lot of attention towards changing institutional dynamics, instead of just the opinions of the people inside them. In the case of institutional research ethics, that would look like advocating for specific changes in legislation or federal directives, so that institutional incentives change. In other words, arguing/discussing with bioethicists is good, but we should also try to change the law that leads to bad research ethics. It might be the case that institutional caution is the inevitable consequence of societal risk-tolerance declining and/or older institutions being cautious, but there still might be changes we can make at the margin.
I’m not sure that some vaguely EA-ish/ EA-curious people criticizing bioethics is properly characterized as a “war”. Even if it is, my really vague historical sense of political change is that reforming entrenched institutions (like research ethics) often requires relatively strong public disagreement and criticism. So I’m personally really unsure if your instrumental argument holds up. But this is pretty subjective, so I’m happy to mostly drop this because your other points on more accurate terminology and institutional dynamics are spot-on.
I really appreciate you replying to this, and I read (I think) all of your blog posts on IRBs, and they are all to the best of my knowledge informative and accurate. My point is much more just that “bioethicists” seem to be a bad way of framing a bunch of these issues. As for:
I think this is correct, but I still think it can be useful to try to get along, all else equal. As I briefly mentioned, it is possible that if bioethicists had better priorities they could make some indirect difference at least, and this is probably the best criticism of the field as it is now. Aside from this, I guess I just also don’t like it when a group gets what I see as unfair criticism, even if it doesn’t backfire. I focused more on that issue in the first draft, but wound up cutting it for brevity.
War is maybe a bit of a dramatic word for it, but I guess what I more mean is if it comes down to a very public “it’s us or them” between EAs and bioethicists on important issues, I see the EAs losing. If the public largely agreed about the foibles of bioethicists it would be another story, but our group is weird in both our priorities, and our apparent vitriol against “bioethicists”.
Glad you didn’t see any factual error in the posts!
#1, Yeah, you’re totally right that “bioethicists” is the wrong target. Will try to use “institutionalized research ethics” going forward. It is much more explicit about what the problem is and more fair to bioethicists.
re #2, sort of agreed. I tend to think the public doesn’t like weird ideas in general, but there was a recent paper showing higher public support for challenge trials than traditional trials. So I’m not sure what counts as weird to the public as a whole. It might be the case that the public has surprisingly EA-ish ideas on medical ethics, at least on this specific issue. Not sure.
I hope the public is generally receptive to EA-style thinking, and there is some indication of it at least. I do still worry that when it comes to appeal-to-authority type reasoning, the public will find “bioethicists” more trustworthy, even if they are relatively disposed to agreeing with our ideas. I could be wrong on that, it is a fairly speculative harm.
You raise a bunch of good points and you’re 100% right that when I write “bioethicists” on twitter I should really write “institutionalized research ethics”. Not doing do so is sloppy of me. I think I do a better job showing the institutional dynamics bioethicists work under in my blogposts, so I think those hold up okay. But I’ll look at those posts again and see if I think they need some edits.
Mostly agree with: “worth some eyebrow-raising if it turns out that the ingroup defense is something along the lines of “well, by bioethicists, we mean research ethicists, and by research ethicists we mean research bureaucrats, and by research bureaucrats, we mean research bureaucracy.”
Your survey data on actual bioethicists’ opinions was slightly surprising to me, so I should update on that.
My criticism of bioethics is aimed at bioethics-as-practiced-by-institutions, which does seem bad and deserve criticism, but you’re right that the causal story here is definitely not [bioethicists are the sole reason big institutions are risk-averse] and so blaming only them doesn’t make sense. My own posts basically argue that institutions use IRB’s as a means of reputation/PR control, so in some sense I should exonerate bioethicists per se and focus on the institutional dynamics and laws that led to that equilibrium.
Incidentally, this does lead me to two points of possible (not sure of your views) disagreement:
I think you’re right that practically speaking, engagement with bioethicists is good. But if we take your point that institutionalized research ethics per se is the problem, not bad bioethicists, that suggests we should pay a lot of attention towards changing institutional dynamics, instead of just the opinions of the people inside them. In the case of institutional research ethics, that would look like advocating for specific changes in legislation or federal directives, so that institutional incentives change. In other words, arguing/discussing with bioethicists is good, but we should also try to change the law that leads to bad research ethics. It might be the case that institutional caution is the inevitable consequence of societal risk-tolerance declining and/or older institutions being cautious, but there still might be changes we can make at the margin.
I’m not sure that some vaguely EA-ish/ EA-curious people criticizing bioethics is properly characterized as a “war”. Even if it is, my really vague historical sense of political change is that reforming entrenched institutions (like research ethics) often requires relatively strong public disagreement and criticism. So I’m personally really unsure if your instrumental argument holds up. But this is pretty subjective, so I’m happy to mostly drop this because your other points on more accurate terminology and institutional dynamics are spot-on.
I really appreciate you replying to this, and I read (I think) all of your blog posts on IRBs, and they are all to the best of my knowledge informative and accurate. My point is much more just that “bioethicists” seem to be a bad way of framing a bunch of these issues. As for:
I think this is correct, but I still think it can be useful to try to get along, all else equal. As I briefly mentioned, it is possible that if bioethicists had better priorities they could make some indirect difference at least, and this is probably the best criticism of the field as it is now. Aside from this, I guess I just also don’t like it when a group gets what I see as unfair criticism, even if it doesn’t backfire. I focused more on that issue in the first draft, but wound up cutting it for brevity.
War is maybe a bit of a dramatic word for it, but I guess what I more mean is if it comes down to a very public “it’s us or them” between EAs and bioethicists on important issues, I see the EAs losing. If the public largely agreed about the foibles of bioethicists it would be another story, but our group is weird in both our priorities, and our apparent vitriol against “bioethicists”.
Glad you didn’t see any factual error in the posts!
#1, Yeah, you’re totally right that “bioethicists” is the wrong target. Will try to use “institutionalized research ethics” going forward. It is much more explicit about what the problem is and more fair to bioethicists.
re #2, sort of agreed. I tend to think the public doesn’t like weird ideas in general, but there was a recent paper showing higher public support for challenge trials than traditional trials. So I’m not sure what counts as weird to the public as a whole. It might be the case that the public has surprisingly EA-ish ideas on medical ethics, at least on this specific issue. Not sure.
I appreciate it!
I hope the public is generally receptive to EA-style thinking, and there is some indication of it at least. I do still worry that when it comes to appeal-to-authority type reasoning, the public will find “bioethicists” more trustworthy, even if they are relatively disposed to agreeing with our ideas. I could be wrong on that, it is a fairly speculative harm.