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Comment by glofish | Hacker News Reader

Because the word "stigmatize" is a loose word that can be applied to anything

If tomorrow you were to find in a reproducible experiment that people with samoans origins are not good at abstract math you would be "stigmatizing" the population and your research would be banned.

The problem with the word "stigmatize" is that it is a code word that draws a line of what may be studied and published.

It is basically a warning to steer clear of anything "controversial" because at any time it could be declared at "stigmatizing" and there would be no recourse.

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If you found that AND you had no Samoans on your research team.

You don't think that maybe we should make sure there's one person on the research team who can be like, "so, you aren't accounting for this variable, which is cultural but also probably hidden from those who don't come from the culture"?

that is the problem exactly with the "stigmatizing" thing

any research that finds that X is worse at Y must be wrong somehow because we know it cannot possibly be like that - so we are not publishing it at all - no discourse is allowed on the matter

one censor decides what is "stigmatizing"

No one is saying that. The idea that discourse is forbidden is a strawman.

You are saying it's unreasonable to check in with a member of a culture you are about to publish something negative about.

What if you check in and there is no hidden cultural element that explains the result? You seem to assume that of course there must be and therefore any research that reaches a conclusion people don't like must necessarily be wrong if only they consult with a person of the appropriate background to tell them so.

The only thing that's important is whether the research was conducted honestly and whether the data is accurate or not.

Stigmatizing is something other people can do or not do with that information, and the people doing the stigmatizing are the ones who should be held responsible for it. Suppressing research because you're afraid someone else might misinterpret it or use it as a justification to do something wrong is not a way to make scientific progress.

Whatever truth about the world the research reveals will still be there and we will be less equipped to deal with it by hiding in ignorance out of fear.

> What if you check in and there is no hidden cultural element that explains the result?

If you've got someone who is a part of that group who participated in the research, you go ahead and publish it.

Except the journal won’t publish it, because it might stigmatize someone.

That's not what their ethics statement says.

You are putting words in their mouths and then condemning them for it. You want to keep beating up a strawman, go ahead.

Well, I hope you’re right. Sure, every other instance where over-educated white people who’ve never worked outside academia decide on behalf of minorities that something “causes harm” to them has been universally stupid, but maybe this time it will be different.

I can't tell if you're lying to yourself or to all of us, but it doesn't matter.

The lack of integrity you're displaying is the important part.

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