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2 votes
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Deepwater Horizon disaster altered building blocks of ocean life
11 votes -
Bogong moths use the Earth's magnetic field to get their bearings on long distance migrations
4 votes -
Big fish are found deep not because of age, climate, or prey, but because of us
11 votes -
New technique could help scientists creat custom genes in twenty-four hours
11 votes -
Mammals are becoming more nocturnal to avoid humans, study finds
29 votes -
Bacteria that survive in dim, red light 'could help us colonise Mars'
4 votes -
Moderate exposure to sunlight improves motor learning and long-term memory in mice
5 votes -
How quantum biology might explain life's biggest questions
5 votes -
Organic matter found on Mars in 'significant breakthrough'
15 votes -
Dance of the Honeybees: By pairing the sun’s direction with the flow of gravity, honeybees explain the distant locations of food by dancing, essentially using 2D representations of 6D shapes as guides
7 votes -
How the brain performs flexible computations: New neural model reveals how the brain adapts to new information.
7 votes -
Columbia scientists identify the distinct mechanisms by which mammals discriminate a taste and assign a positive or negative valence
6 votes -
A better way to trace neuronal pathways: Moving forward by moving backward more effectively
8 votes -
Open scientific research is a foundation of our age, but do you think that we may be coming to a time where it may become an existential threat to humanity?
Openly published research makes science advance at a wonderful rate. In my experience scientists and researchers support open research in a nearly dogmatic fashion. Personally I am generally for...
Openly published research makes science advance at a wonderful rate. In my experience scientists and researchers support open research in a nearly dogmatic fashion. Personally I am generally for it. However here is my concern.
I believe that humanity is in a terrible race. One of the competitors is the advancement of science, which of course can sometimes be used in a dangerous ways. The other competitor is our society moving towards murder and war becoming obsolete. The science is obvious and needs no examples. Societies move towards the sanctity of life is shown here.
"Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."
Now to get to my point. In the past scientific advancement has created some really scary things. Atomic weapons, bio and chemical warefare, etc. However, those weapons took a lot of people and capital to produce, and had relatively un-scalable effects. Now with open research on advancements like CRISPR, we are nearing a time where in the near future a smart high school biology student with a few thousand dollars and an internet connection will be able to create self-replicating custom viruses that could kill millions. The asymmetric threat has never been greater.
Do you agree with my assessment and concerns?
If so, do you believe that there should be limits on publication of research in certain areas?
Edit: I should have said CRISPR and gene drives. Here is a TED talk on how gene drives can change and entire species, forever.
7 votes -
How gut microbes are joining the fight against cancer
10 votes -
Apparently snow lepoards bite their tails more than you'd think
@payoletter: snow leopards biting their tails: a thread
20 votes -
Valley of the Ragdolls - They're floppy, relaxed, and they come when you call them. Is the Ragdoll a genetic miracle, or just one very cool cat?
6 votes -
3D scans reveal deep-sea anglerfish's huge final meal
7 votes -
So ... Sometimes fireflies eat other fireflies
5 votes -
They didn't flip: Ukraine claims dolphin army captured by Russia went on hunger strike
6 votes -
Rare goose makes 6,000 mile trip from Russian Artic back to Arkansas
4 votes -
The deadliest being on planet Earth – The bacteriophage
7 votes -
Exploring ethical implications of Yale experiment to reanimate dead brain cells
5 votes