Is some scientific knowledge not worth having?

[Meadmaker]

I think there is no such thing as a bad scientific result, or one that is "not worth having". However, there are some scientific results that are easily misused, and there are some that are not very important.

The OP gave an example that fits both criteria, at least as regards race inequity. The existence of a "smart gene" may be worth knowing about. However, of what value is it to know that some races are more likely to have it than others. It doesn't tell you much. On the other hand, people will try to insist it does tell you something, such as "That proves we're better than you."

So, while there is no such thing, in my opinion, as knowledge that is not worth having, I think there is such a thing as knowledge that is not worth pursuing. Why spend time searching for something that isn't very important, and might be misused?

 

[Meffy]

People will all be running around with gorgeous faces, magnificent bodies that stay muscular and don't gain weight, with minds like a steel trap, eidetic, and bristling with confidence and more "people skills" than the average US president.

... and the ability to pilot a small aircraft.

 

[fishbob]

So, if scientific knowledge bothers the warm fuzzy feelings of the politically correct majority, it's not worth having?

What a load of bollocks.

You really think the 'majority' feels that way? Scary thought.

Learning how to set off a nuclear reaction is not that different than learning how to tie a pointy rock to the end of a stick. You certainly won't know how that knowledge will be used until some time afterwards.

 

[Skeptic]

The problem here is not the research, it's what people would do with it.

Knowing scientists, what he said was something like "the theroid-ribozome creating gene had undergone mutation XT-12 in the WWE lineage, but not in the TZ% lienage". This would be made in the media into "he is saying blacks are stupid because they haven't evolved" (as if, incidentally, "Evolved" is synomymous with "improved" or "gotten more intelligent", a layman's mistake the scientist in question surely didn't make.)

I certainly don't think we should limit this research in any way. What I think we should limit is our own hysterics ABOUT the research--not because of political correctness, but because of a long and bitter experience with the tenuous, at best, relation between most "shocking scientific discoveries" reported in the mainstream media and what scientists actually say.

I simply don't find, at the moment, any reason to take the "blacks are a lower stage in evolution" the media will make out of this any more seriously than the "Sugar: the deadly poison" claims from 20 years ago or the "They found the gay / agression / infidelity / cancer / immortality gene" front-page headlines we get every so often.

 

[ceo_esq]

Isn't this the same thing the Church told Galileo, the father of modern astronomy, when he suggested that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around?

What, that some knowledge might not be worth having? No.

 

[Skeptic]

Of course some knowledge might not be worth having in THEORY. If I discovered a cheaply-produced deadly poison which, if put into the ocean, would poison the world's oceans, I'd burn that discovery since otherwise it's a matter of time until somebody kills off everybody out of spite.

The question is, do we really discover similar things in practice?

 

[BPSCG]

If I ever see a man on a plane with a formula for making ice-9, I'll kill him.

 

[fuelair]

Ice-9

If I ever see a man on a plane with a formula for making ice-9, I'll kill him.

and destroy the formula!!!

 

[Soapy Sam]

By "not worth having" I was thinking more of people with 4 year Ph.D. s on "Some observations of the effects of watching paint dry on goats".

But then I thought- why would someone paint a goat?

Nothing is utterly devoid of interest.

 

[CFLarsen]

Any science that is used specifically to kill people is probably not wise to have. Abombs come to mind.

Are you going to ban nuclear science?

 

[Skeptic]

By "not worth having" I was thinking more of people with 4 year Ph.D. s on "Some observations of the effects of watching paint dry on goats".

But then I thought- why would someone paint a goat?

Nothing is utterly devoid of interest.

I think I know which direction this thought of yours is going.

 

[Skeptic]

The problem with "let's ban research on weapons!" is that--on the off-chance that the bad guys bother for a minute to comply--it tends to simply shift the balance of power in favor of those with the larger battalions, to the detriment of smaller nations, hence in effect making agression more, not less, likely.

Think about it: during the cold war, it was nuclear research and the bomb--and only that--which saved Western Europe from simply being gobbled up by the USSR. No wonder the USSR was always for all kinds of "disarmament" programs of nuclear weapons, since cancelling the nuclear side of the equation would have made its overwhelming convention forces superiority unstoppable.