Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:58:54
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:44:45
there's a centre for bioethics here.
i was never much into applied philosophy or bioethics because the quality of the debate was so low. people were encouraged to write about whether they thought abortion was good or bad, whether euthanasia was good or bad, people were encouraged to engage in classroom discussions where people take sides and argue for it with as many different points as they could think of...
there was no effort to teach people to accurately summarise the best case they could for each side of the debate.
sometimes people lacked the capacity to do this. they will be picked out as future leaders for that field.
because... who wants to engage with the religious folk about abortion or euthanasia? the rapist guys who think that abortion is never justified... the people with no moral conscience... with no empathy... the people who want to get their way by bulling other people who think philosophy might teach them oratory skills to pursuade the world to do what it is that they want.
all the seminars are filmed. and i sometimes get the sense that people are talking in code. often what people say they are studying and what they are actually studying are two very differnet things. i went to this talk in psychology by this girl from sweden who was sponsored by a european legal society. her thing was to set people (undergraduates) up so she could accuse them of stealing something. to say that they had to stay in the room and she would question them later in detail. to leave them in the room for a bit (locked). to come back and question them in detail. to get them to commit to things that were false (about their own behavior).
she said it was research into how police can pursuade people to make false reports on their own behavior if they aren't more careful about how they ask questions.
i pointed out that :
'one has the right to remain silent. anything you say might be used in evidence against you in a court of law. one has the right to an attourney...'
we know the way police ask questions can make people likely to make false confessions. that's why police are required to read people their rights. that is why lawyers are supposed to be there during questioning and why lawyers speak with tehir clients (asking them questions) before the police get to ask questions of them...
she was training undergraduates to think that they should cooperate with the police (waive their rights) and this was okay because there was research going into making sure the police would ask appropriate questions...
her research was ethics board approved.
what a joke.
there was a girl studying the effects of exercise on muscle mass. her research involved her keeping rats in a special cage with padded walls to prevent their climbing the walls. cages that were too small for them to move around in. cages with no wheel. to prevent them exercisnig. so she could watch their muscle mass waste away (failure to thrive) and take tissue sample biopsys. then the 'normal rat' who weren't kept in such deprived conditions (the rats that had cage access to a running wheel) were the exercised rats.
she got paid to do that. she did that. she stood up in a seminar room and pronounced what she had done in the name of research that would help people.
for the cameras.
what happened to the university?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1098754
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20140225/msgs/1098766.html