After an enjoyable argument with my friends Cham and Mecha, I'm revising and extending my previous post.
I don't think the scientific method, in and of itself, can really be used to make many ethical decisions. They turn on too many variables that are resistant to experimentation. What the scientific method can do is inform these decisions by providing data about how well our policies align with stated values.
The scientific community is aware of this and in cooperation with society at large has established institutional review boards and the like to handle ethical questions relating experiments. These organizations and processes do incorporate ethical argumentation, public opinion, and politics, but try to do so in such a way to ensure reasoned outcomes.
To the degree that Obama just leaves the decision to the scientific community, specifically the institutions at NIH that deal with this sort of thing, I'm okay with that. The system is there, to a certain extent, to allow members of the public to interfere with the use of the scientific method. The worst excesses of experimentation on minorities and such are in the past, but not nearly so far past as I'd like.
So, in essence, I do believe in public interference with the scientific method. I also believe in the existing tools within the federal research community to channel that public response in a productive manner. I'd just like us to actively cite and stand behind these institutions when dealing with controversial research. That said, I do sometimes grouse about them or at least I did when I went to grad school.
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