From Halo to the Simpsons, Would Fictional Mad Scientists Pass Ethical Review? (science.org) 46
From Science magazine:
Cave Johnson is almost ready to start a new study in his secret underground facility. The founder of the Michigan-based technology company Aperture Science, he's invented a portal gun that allows people to teleport to various locations. Now, he and his colleagues want to see whether they can make portals appear on previously unfit surfaces with a new "conversion gel" containing moon dust. "It may be toxic. We are unsure," he wrote in a recent research proposal.
To test the gel, Johnson plans to recruit orphans, homeless people, and the elderly. They'll get 60 bucks — compensation he feels is well worth the risk of their skin potentially peeling off, death due to an artificial intelligence guide becoming sentient, or worse.
None of this is real, of course — Johnson is the villain of the popular video game Portal — but the makeshift ethical review board that evaluated his study was. At a Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research conference conducted online last month, attendees of the session "Mad Science on Trial: The Real Ethical Problems With Fictional Scientists" had some serious concerns with Johnson's research. Would the participants' data be secure and anonymized? Would the team of henchmen include some henchwomen as well? And, most importantly, would there be cake?
The moderators of the session didn't just target Johnson. They asked their audience of 450 virtual attendees to evaluate other fictional mad scientists as well, voting on whether an institutional review board (IRB) — a body of experts that a research institution uses to evaluate whether proposals are ethically sound — should approve their protocols.
Another example used was the scientist in the first-person shooter game Halo who proposed surgically enhancing 6-year-old children with armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack.
Science interviewed two of the panelists, one noting "this format is good for making the Instituational Review Board ethics world fun and doing it in a way that kind of stretches people's minds."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for submitting the article.
To test the gel, Johnson plans to recruit orphans, homeless people, and the elderly. They'll get 60 bucks — compensation he feels is well worth the risk of their skin potentially peeling off, death due to an artificial intelligence guide becoming sentient, or worse.
None of this is real, of course — Johnson is the villain of the popular video game Portal — but the makeshift ethical review board that evaluated his study was. At a Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research conference conducted online last month, attendees of the session "Mad Science on Trial: The Real Ethical Problems With Fictional Scientists" had some serious concerns with Johnson's research. Would the participants' data be secure and anonymized? Would the team of henchmen include some henchwomen as well? And, most importantly, would there be cake?
The moderators of the session didn't just target Johnson. They asked their audience of 450 virtual attendees to evaluate other fictional mad scientists as well, voting on whether an institutional review board (IRB) — a body of experts that a research institution uses to evaluate whether proposals are ethically sound — should approve their protocols.
Another example used was the scientist in the first-person shooter game Halo who proposed surgically enhancing 6-year-old children with armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack.
Science interviewed two of the panelists, one noting "this format is good for making the Instituational Review Board ethics world fun and doing it in a way that kind of stretches people's minds."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for submitting the article.
Examples... (Score:2)
"Another example used was the scientist in the first-person shooter game Halo who proposed surgically enhancing 6-year-old children with armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack."
What's so different between that and scientists that are using CRISPR tech to selectively flip bits on human embryos?
Time to start construction of the Botany Bay.
Re: Examples... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Another example used was the scientist in the first-person shooter game Halo who proposed surgically enhancing 6-year-old children with armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack."
What's so different between that and scientists that are using CRISPR tech to selectively flip bits on human embryos?
What's so different you ask? Well, armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack for starters.
We hardly question ethical behavior anymore in the real world. Perhaps more focus on the harm going on in the non-fiction section of the universe instead. It's a fuck of a lot more relevant than the imaginations of a 6-year old and their cartoon villains.
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What's so different between that and scientists that are using CRISPR tech to selectively flip bits on human embryos?
Intention. Using CRISPR to cure genetic diseases is a perfectly OK use.
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Isn't that sort of the definnition of "mad" (Score:3)
Of course the classic mad scientists are no where near as dangers as some "serious" scientists portrayed in movies. One popular movie shows scientists using a just-constructed time machine to prevent a crime
Bollocks. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Arguably, anyone who matched the "mad scientist" trope wouldn't be a "scientist". At least what they'd be doing isn't science, in that the aim isn't to publish findings so they can be critiqued, replicated, refuted or even be *used* by others.
This is more than a niggling point; it gets to the fundamental public misunderstanding of how science works and what scientists actually do.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying the scientists at the Manhattan Project weren't scientists?
Perhaps you need to broaden your definition.
Re: (Score:3)
Also the scientists working at the Manhattan Project weren't mad. They knew what they tried to achieve was very dangerous. And they didn't do it for a lack of morals and curiosity, but because circumstances like fear of the Nazis had the people behind them provide encouragement.
Re: (Score:2)
There were literally hundreds, if not thousands of scientific staff on the Manhattan project. They generated classified technical reports which were challenged within the project, so the key element of science where you expose your ideas and results to withering scrutiny was there.
Re: (Score:2)
Science is simply studying nature by apply certain techniques, specifically the scientific method. Yes real scientists publish their findings because otherwise there isn't much point, but that doesn't mean unpublished results can't be science.
The character of Cave Johnson is never portrayed as doing research himself. He's a businessman -- an entrepreneur who founded a high-tech company that employs scientists and engineers. He may have had a background in science (in the real world such people often do),
Re: (Score:2)
The publication is a key part of the process though. Most promising new results turn out to be wrong, at least in many particulars; it's the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" principle. If you don't exposure your findings to expert and adversarial critique you're heading down a dead end.
Such a powerful concept, the "mad scientist." (Score:3)
Whatâ(TM)s the law? (Score:2)
Re: What is the law? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
betteridge's law of headlines
Re: (Score:1)
What is the name of the law that says if a headline asks a question the answer is almost always [no]?
No.
let's talk about the real ones (Score:4, Informative)
Thomas Midgley, inventor of tetraethylead additive for leaded gasoline, has higher body count than the nazis plus brain damaging tens of millions more.
Radium watch dials that poisoned the women painting them? X-ray machines for shoe sizing that gave 10 - 25 REM (not milli rem) exposure? Above ground nuclear testing in USA, sending in solders to ground zero? Radium capsules put up nose for sinus problems? Castle Bravo nuke test with surprise reaction that jacked yield to 15 MT and killed and maimed?
w0h00 the list is long, plenty more if anyone wants to hear
- What doesn't kill ya - (Score:3)
Makes ya stronger!
I wore a radium watch ~1950; loved it. I put my feet into those shoe store massive dose fluoroscopes and was amazed to see my bones wiggling inside my shoes and the scores of nails that held the shoes together. I played with lead and mercury and chemistry sets that are outlawed today. I siphoned leaded gasoline for my Indian motorcycles which I rode without helmet or speed concerns. Today I'm old and get ~10 x-rays or CT scans per year. I go for a run every Sunday morning knowing that a fa
Re: (Score:2)
And given all we've mentioned, it was a much freer time and by and large everyone was a much stronger person compared to today.
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Ironically, our sterile environment will probably weaken our immune systems. Exposure to hazards can be dangerous to individuals, yet help the human race to adapt to future environmental conditions and thrive.
This is interesting, as I was just at the doctor for a sinus infection that seems to be taking forever to go away--forever as in 6 weeks. He says 80% of the cases he's seeing now are similar, and blames it on our masking up for a few years which has kept us protected from various "normal" things, such as allergens. He believes it will go down once we all get sick a bit.
Re: (Score:1)
Radium watch won't hurt you, just did in the people that used to paint them.
Leaded gasoline won't make you stronger, maybe only a drop in IQ if lucky... many people weren't though
https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com].
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Midgley also developed many early CFCs, including Freon.
Politicians Do (Score:2)
I say why not?
The real danger (Score:3)
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Many people with training in science, particularly in academia, seem to have no filter when it comes to "I wonder what would happen if I did this".
Such as crossing ebola with the common cold [youtube.com]?
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Re: (Score:2)
But that attitude there with the "many people" is quite common partially thanks to the mad scientist cliche that Hollywood loves so much (if I had to guess then that would be likely because fine arts appears to harbor some deep seated grudges against STEM fields).
Real scientists are usually trained to be cautious. Ethic boards have to be consulted and convinced. But finally, yes, greed plays a huge role there. Like for example another commenter mentioned Thomas Midgl
Isn't that the whole point? (Score:3)
The mad scientists were portrayed that way because the creators knew that it would be extremely difficult to pass through any sort of ethical review board.
After all, these storylines exist because someone decided to not be ethical and created some fantasy world which is why they exist in fictional worlds. I mean, how can you have Portal set the way it was without Cave Johnson and all that? And let's not forget, Aperture Science originally used athletes, astronauts and other highly scientific people for testing before they started running out of money and testing using homeless people, orphans, etc for a chance to earn $50. Without it, there would be no Portal game itself and the entire fictional world wouldn't exist. It exists purely to serve as a backdrop for a game that's extremely fun and enjoyable.
Likewise, same goes for Halo. After all, Master Chief came about as super secret project to find gifted 5 year olds, replace them with flash clones that would die in a couple of years and then train and augment those 5 year olds to be super soldiers who can command well, the armored battle suit because that was beyond normal human ability. This was in order to combat rising discontent in the "outer colonies" which were rebelling against the terran government. Then the Covenant come in and then the whole Halo story starts. But again, the backstory of Master Chief and such exists to serve as a world to which you can hang the Halo series on - without which it'll just be another shooter.
Likewise, the Simpsons etc., they're all done to set up situations where suddenly something needs rescuing or saving or solving or whatever.
None of the scientists would ever pass a review board - and that's the entire point. It's a plot device we use so we can launch the fictional world that's about to be presented to the audience. I mean, you can't hang a game off "oh we didn't have super-soldiers so the outer colonies battled the inner colonies then aliens came and wiped us out" (well, you could make a survival game out of it, but it doesn't really lend itself to much of a shooter). Or "we have a weird gun we couldn't do research with so we don't know what it does or why you're even trapped here".
That's why video games, TV and movies are works of fiction. They let us explore "what if" or other things without having to involve real life. Star Trek would be far less fun to watch if we had to deal with relativity, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the speed of light, etc.
Even hard science fiction has to bend a few rules too - The Martian has us believing we got to Mars in the first place and set up a base station - sure, it's stuff that's plausible, but is still fictional when this post is written. But it too is fiction and there to explore questions on what would happen.
That's why all this stuff is called fiction.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, well what about, say Dr. Zarkov from Flash Gordon, who would create new devices and theories and NOT test them before using them?
(FWIW, there was a cosmetic that was "not tested on animals" that had to be pulled from the market because it was damaging people's eyes. So that's not totally off the point.)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I presume that would be the charm of Flash Gordon - I mean, I would expect (I haven't actually read the comic, mind you) that the side effects from not having tested those gadgets forms several plot
Remember kids (Score:2)
Mad scientists don't build weapons of mass destruction, mad engineers do! TMYK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What kind of a stupid question is this? (Score:2)
Of course not. Mad scientists do not care about ethics review boards and other such crap that keeps them from doing science!
I Hope They Also Evaluated (Score:2)
Damn straight! (Score:2)
Was there a retcon for Halo I'm unaware of? (Score:2)
SPARTAN II and III were kicked off to help keep a bunch of uppity colonists in line, not to fight aliens.
Fun experiment and touches on a real problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
In some cases ethics review may be skewing our data. An example of this came up in our world just last night.
What we have discovered is that most highly effective dog trainers indicate that positive reinforcement training alone is ineffective, particularly with regard to correcting behavior problems. At least for the vast majority of dogs, perhaps 1% are correctable through positive reinforcement alone whereas virtually all are correctable with a blend of positive and negative tools. This isn't surprising because the most common negative reinforcement techniques parallel the way a bitch teaches and corrects her own pups.
But if one looks to modern science they'll find no indication of success with negative reinforcement, the only successes are with positive reinforcement. One well known trainer on social media revealed why in a personal anecdote. He couldn't get a single study past ethics review or to publication involving the use of commonly accepted and used training tools.
The real question... (Score:1)