Hacker News Reader

Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

>why is it any different when science does it?

a few reasons.

1) the benefit to humanity is a fair bit greater than the benefit of someone somewhere downing a six-pack.

2) alternative packaging methods exist aside from ones that entrap animals, but there are few alternative ways to track an animal over long distances

>Should this behaviour be proof of how annoying they find these devices.

as much as I sympathize with the animals, this is no different than almost any animal based research across all sciences. It's fairly well understood that there is a cost.

View on HN

I disagree. We go deep sea diving and shine over 100k lumens in the face under the guise of science. And we dress up tons of birds with archaic trackers. That are heavy and irritating and downright detrimental to the individual. We have a ton of counting devices and measures and it is only gaining more and more traction. We should keep on expanding that now the means are available and stop invading birds and other animals lives with invasive tools.

Or another thing the university here close by holds roughly 20 grey parrots in an enclosure that is downright hostile for the animals yet it does research towards the well being of said animals. It’s beyond comprehension that we ended up in this place. I don’t even understand how one can perceive such science in such environments as reliable. We don’t consider testimonies from tortured inmates trustworthy yet research on these entrapped we somehow do because some rigor has been applied.

There are a lot of good scientists and almost all with good intentions but academia has a lot of shortcomings as well.

I just find this strange, someone who liters the environment is clearly an ignorant person, but if scientists come together and are harmful it is ok because it was reviewed by a bio-ethics comity that did some cost benefit analysis and was like yea I guess this is alright otherwise we're out of a job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com