Comment by tptacek
18 days ago
So the problem isn't that the science is being done, it's that the results are challenging conclusions you've already drawn? At least we're clear on what the issue is. The work I'm talking about has nothing about "decolonization" in it, but lots on GWAS and population stratification statistics.
On the contrary, I think the one and only thing that really enabled such widespread advances in science over the past few centuries was the same thing that initially enabled such for the Greeks - people were able to pursue things with near to no limitations, no taboo, no dogma. And it seems that perhaps such things are inherently liminal in nature. The Greeks would then go to on to execute perhaps the greatest thinker in humanity's history for wrongthink, and we ourselves are already well into the times of where not only is there taboo and dogma, but it's even overtly stated.
When you get into population stratification issues you're already again flirting with taboo depending on what is being studied. So yeah - low sample sized, poorly controlled, correlation exclusive GWAS studies are the gold standard in genetics publications. I'm so completely surprised that such, alongside the rusty hacksaw that's CRISPR, failed to live up to even a zillionth of their 'potential'.
Explain the point you just tried to make re: stratification.
Any characteristic being studied whose presence or absence would be seen as socially negative sense is going to be walking a very fine line if it turns out to be associated (or not) with certain subgroups because then you're right back to, in Nature's terms "[being] complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society."