Vibe check for Sep 01

Responses by PHIL 006 students, clustered using gemma3:12b

id	quote	question	answer
Ethical Implications
9	In particular, her book Our Stolen Future was criticized for being too aggressive about drawing the conclusion that humans were being harmed by the levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals currently present in the environment. The critics worried that it was irresponsible to arouse public concerns while the evidence was still highly uncertain.	why were the critics so concerned about revealing the research without enough evidence to support the claim?	i believe that is was becasue they probily didnt want a new scare where people were more distrust full of that is happening in the world and also many people did not believe in climate change and polution like they do now. if there was not enough evidence the critics didn’t want to take the risk of the public going crazy
11	Vavilov’s story illustrates the problems that values can cause in science. Despite his work on behalf of the Russian people, he was ultimately sent to prison because Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, became convinced that the genetic theory that undergirded Vavilov’s work ran counter to the values of the Soviet leadership.	While Vavilov’s story does highlight an instance where one’s values caused a problem, I wouldn’t say the consequence was within the scientific field or influenced science. In that regard, is this book about how values within science are impactful to cases outside of science, or about how values can influence science positively and negatively?	I still believe the book will develop towards how values impact the field of science, but perhaps it will also branch out into how values people hold about science can impact life outside of the field.
Objectivity Debate
1	If science is not kept pure of political, religious, and ethical values, so the worry goes, it runs the risk of being hijacked by ideologies that prevent scientists from arriving at the truth.	Would the start of a scientist’s bias allow or restrict their arrival of the truth?	Bias restricts ideas because it influences a scientist to look at counter arguments through a rose colored lensed, which prevents them from seeing the full picture. However, following the Boston marathon analogy it could add on to the arrival of the truth because it aids a good first draft of research.
2	“These were debates at the end of the twentieth century in which a variety of scientists worried that scholars in the social sciences and humanities were abandoning the notion that scientists could or should strive to arrive at objective, value-free truths” (Elliott 8).	Why couldn’t or shouldn’t scientists strive for “objective, value-free truths”? Wouldn’t we be able to apply any important values to the truth after we find it?	Perhaps scientists can’t be objective because they always have some sort of bias that inhibits them from being purely objective. I guess a reason why it shouldn’t be value-free is because part of our values decides what to study . Accordingly, values can’t be put in afterwards because they are built in to what is being studied and how it is studied.
Responsible Communication
4	Nevertheless, she could not find compelling evidence that people living in the Great Lakes region were suffering from abnormally high rates of cancer. She did find, however, that the animals living in the region were experiencing a wide range of surprising abnormalities. For example, in some herring gull colonies, scientists were finding two females in a nest rather than a male and a female, apparently because of a shortage of males.”	Why do only the animals exhibit abnormal behaviors and humans don’t?	There may be a possibility that unlike humans, animals are ,ore sensitive to their environments whereas humans are easily adaptable.
6	Some scientists worry that humans are already experiencing harmful effects from exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.	What steps or technology can scientists use to better detect the harmful effects endocrine disruption exposure, and how can it be prevented?	Scientists can use small, common rodents like rats or mice to study the stages of endocrine disruption exposure to mimic what a human might experience, or use technology to monitor and predict the exposures forms or future stages.
10	Critics have complained that she sometimes leaped ahead of scientific evidence and drew stronger conclusions than they thought the evidence warranted.	While Colborn sometimes leaped ahead of scientific evidence and drew stronger conclusions, wouldn’t drawing stronger conclusions be more beneficial in narrowing down which conclusions that weren’t considered for the warranted evidence, would apply to other conclusions?	When Colborn would leap ahead of scientific evidence, and drawing stronger conclusions it would be beneficial because it would allow for a more outside-the-box approach and it would be able to represent new approaches as well as a more diverse selection in the number of conclusions that could fit the warranted evidence and therefore would create conclusions that would be applicable to more situations with similar warranted evidence.
Values & Bias
3	[…] a value is something that is desirable or worthy of pursuit.” (11)	If values shape what scientists see as worth pursuing, how do we know when they are helping science instead of making it biased?	Maybe values help point research in new directions, but they can also risk distorting results. That’s why being open about which values are involved might matter.
5	“Over the course of chapters 2 through 6 we will find that these three conditions appear to be particularly important for bringing values into science in an appropriate fashion…. (2) They should be representative of our major social and ethical priorities” (10)	Wouldn’t social and ethical priorities be affected by values (such as in eugenics)?	If the values are made transparent and the ideas behind the research discussed by varieties of people, maybe these ideas may be pushed aside & make way for new priorities.
7	Attempting to exclude values is a bit like claiming that knives should no longer be allowed in kitchens because people could be injured by them.	Where do we, the readers, draw the line for what values should and shouldn’t be allowed to impact scientific reasoning?	As readers, it may never be justified to exclude someone’s values over another’s because it may challenge what they stand for as a person.
8	“Valvilov’s story illustrates the problems that values can cause in science. Despite his work on behalf of Russian people, he was ultimately sent to prison because Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, became convinced that the genetic theory undergirded Valviov’s work ran counter to the values of the Soviet leadership.”(1)	Why would Josef Stalin be against Valavilov’s values in science if his values were on behalf of the Russian people? Wouldn’t his contributions benefit the Soviet Union if his values would have seen as a counter to the Soviet Union	What if Stalin would’ve taken Valavilov’s values as a contribution to the Soviet Union, how would that have impacted the course of history?