Fair enough, I’m happy to talk less about bioethicists and talk more about institutional review of research ethics.
For what it’s worth I and other critics do regularly/constantly refer people to the classic dissection of the problem caused by IRBs (The Censor’s Hand).
We also talk about the misaligned incentives faced by bureaucrats about as ad nauseam as we talk about bioethics.
And when I’ve seen IRBs in action they have worked to keep their decisions and the reasons for them secret and intimidate researchers into not speaking out, while philosophers publish their ideas in journals you can read (and their arguments can then be used as cover for IRB decisions). So as a practical matter it has been easier for folks to scrutinise bad thinking from philosophers than IRBs even if the average quality of the latter is much worse.
This is all fair, and I appreciate the response. I don’t mean to say that you and other critics overall have bad takes on the issue of research oversight, I agree with most of the criticisms, and think they are important. It’s just on the topic of bioethicists specifically that I find a good deal of the discourse weird (I should also add that there are plenty of particular bioethicists, like Leon Kass, who are worthy of the criticisms, I just don’t think they are representative, or the root of the problem).
Cool yeah. I just want to provide another more boring reason a lot of us have piled on to bioethics that doesn’t even require ingroup-outgroup dynamics.
Basically all of the people you’re citing (like me) have an amateur interest in bioethics as it affects legal policy or medical practice or pandemic control (the thing we actually follow closely).
You and I agree that harmful decisions are regularly being made by IRBs (and politicians), often on the basis of supposed ‘bioethics’. We also both agree there are at least a handful of poor thinkers in the field who do offer up low quality moral philosophy to support these bad decisions. It’s only natural then for me and my fellow travelers to see these bad decisions, and these writings classified as bioethics justifying them, and suppose that the latter are an important cause of the former.
And these decisions come week after week for years, progressively infuriating me more and more.
I could see I’m making a mistake to judge bioethics as a field by sampling a representative bunch of papers (weighted by citations maybe), reading them, and deciding how reasonable they typically seem. Unfortunately that’s an involved process that few people with an amateur interest are going to have time for. Each person can only go down a few rabbit holes like that each year in between our normal work, personal commitments, staying healthy, and so on.
So I appreciate you and other people doing that heavy lifting and then sharing the results — it’s the only way it’s practical for our mistake to be corrected!
Fair enough, I’m happy to talk less about bioethicists and talk more about institutional review of research ethics.
For what it’s worth I and other critics do regularly/constantly refer people to the classic dissection of the problem caused by IRBs (The Censor’s Hand).
We also talk about the misaligned incentives faced by bureaucrats about as ad nauseam as we talk about bioethics.
And when I’ve seen IRBs in action they have worked to keep their decisions and the reasons for them secret and intimidate researchers into not speaking out, while philosophers publish their ideas in journals you can read (and their arguments can then be used as cover for IRB decisions). So as a practical matter it has been easier for folks to scrutinise bad thinking from philosophers than IRBs even if the average quality of the latter is much worse.
This is all fair, and I appreciate the response. I don’t mean to say that you and other critics overall have bad takes on the issue of research oversight, I agree with most of the criticisms, and think they are important. It’s just on the topic of bioethicists specifically that I find a good deal of the discourse weird (I should also add that there are plenty of particular bioethicists, like Leon Kass, who are worthy of the criticisms, I just don’t think they are representative, or the root of the problem).
Cool yeah. I just want to provide another more boring reason a lot of us have piled on to bioethics that doesn’t even require ingroup-outgroup dynamics.
Basically all of the people you’re citing (like me) have an amateur interest in bioethics as it affects legal policy or medical practice or pandemic control (the thing we actually follow closely).
You and I agree that harmful decisions are regularly being made by IRBs (and politicians), often on the basis of supposed ‘bioethics’. We also both agree there are at least a handful of poor thinkers in the field who do offer up low quality moral philosophy to support these bad decisions. It’s only natural then for me and my fellow travelers to see these bad decisions, and these writings classified as bioethics justifying them, and suppose that the latter are an important cause of the former.
And these decisions come week after week for years, progressively infuriating me more and more.
I could see I’m making a mistake to judge bioethics as a field by sampling a representative bunch of papers (weighted by citations maybe), reading them, and deciding how reasonable they typically seem. Unfortunately that’s an involved process that few people with an amateur interest are going to have time for. Each person can only go down a few rabbit holes like that each year in between our normal work, personal commitments, staying healthy, and so on.
So I appreciate you and other people doing that heavy lifting and then sharing the results — it’s the only way it’s practical for our mistake to be corrected!
Thanks! I’m glad you found it useful.