I don't really agree with that. I don't have any real love for HBD, but IMO science is about the pursuit of truth. People should be free to advance theories, no matter how implausible or distasteful I may find them, if they can provide the proof to back them up. If it turns out they're right, then we need to face that with our eyes open rather than trying to shut them down by saying "ha you can't have the data, sucks to suck".
On top of that, as @Conservautism pointed out the NIH is a branch of the federal government. As a taxpayer, I don't want them to have any ability to deny access to their datasets. I paid for that, and I expect it to be publicly available.
Persuit of truth is important, but so is keeping a lid on data which can be misused. As far as I know, there's data that Joe Public just can't get about nuclear weapon internals, for example. I suppose they're treating 'which genes make you smart anyway' as similarly hazardous research. I can't blame them.
How is denying people the data they need to conclusively bury the conspiracy theory that whites are keeping black people down because of their unconscious racism helpful ?
The assumption promoted at US taxpayer's expense is that whites are subconsciously evil and oppressing blacks. The rhetoric allowed is .. worrying.
But allowing the claims that whites are conspiring or unconsciously cooperating in keeping blacks down - that is not supposed to lead to any problems ?
This is a wild supposition. What they're preventing is embryo selection for intelligence, or worse, people monkeying around with CRISPR. If it prevents HBD studies that's just icing.
They aren't preventing embryo selection for intelligence, though. CRISPR is of no use for anything serious, you can remove point defects with it but the error rate is abysmal so doing anything affecting many genes is impossible.
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Notes -
I don't think that NIH wants to be in the Eugenics business, so they're taking steps to avoid it.
Indeed, and in complaining about it I think people are revealing more about themselves than they they are their opposition.
I don't really agree with that. I don't have any real love for HBD, but IMO science is about the pursuit of truth. People should be free to advance theories, no matter how implausible or distasteful I may find them, if they can provide the proof to back them up. If it turns out they're right, then we need to face that with our eyes open rather than trying to shut them down by saying "ha you can't have the data, sucks to suck".
On top of that, as @Conservautism pointed out the NIH is a branch of the federal government. As a taxpayer, I don't want them to have any ability to deny access to their datasets. I paid for that, and I expect it to be publicly available.
Persuit of truth is important, but so is keeping a lid on data which can be misused. As far as I know, there's data that Joe Public just can't get about nuclear weapon internals, for example. I suppose they're treating 'which genes make you smart anyway' as similarly hazardous research. I can't blame them.
How is denying people the data they need to conclusively bury the conspiracy theory that whites are keeping black people down because of their unconscious racism helpful ?
The assumption promoted at US taxpayer's expense is that whites are subconsciously evil and oppressing blacks. The rhetoric allowed is .. worrying.
But allowing the claims that whites are conspiring or unconsciously cooperating in keeping blacks down - that is not supposed to lead to any problems ?
This is a wild supposition. What they're preventing is embryo selection for intelligence, or worse, people monkeying around with CRISPR. If it prevents HBD studies that's just icing.
They aren't preventing embryo selection for intelligence, though. CRISPR is of no use for anything serious, you can remove point defects with it but the error rate is abysmal so doing anything affecting many genes is impossible.
None of what you said will stop folks from trying, and some poor mutants who had no say in the matter will live with the consequences.
They'd not even be born, dude.
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