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Timestamps​

  • 00:00 - Introduction

  • 01:13 - Segment 1: Rorschach the Rotten (Short Story)

  • 14:50 - Segment 2: The Origin of "Turn A Blind Eye" (Metaphor History)

  • 28:58 - Segment 3: Ethics in Science (Communication Topic)

  • 40:52 - Segment 4: Talk With TJ Mathuloe (Guest Interview)

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References

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Theme Music​

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Transcript

 

To my morally righteous family and friends. Near and far. Old and new. This is Kevin Mercurio on the mic. And welcome to the 47th episode of the Metaphorigins Podcast.

 

To show support if you find yourself enjoying wordy scicomm content, please take a few seconds to rate and subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify or whatever platform you are listening to this on, as it truly does help independent podcasts reach new people, through essentially minimal effort. You can always leave a lengthy review as well, and follow @metaphorigins on Instagram, that’s @metaphorigins, where I will be posting all updates, as well as on my personal website: kjbmercurio.com/metaphorigins. There is now a Metaphorigins LinkedIn Page as well, so check it out and give it a follow if you like passionate scicomm initiatives. Like every season, I will hold a  prize draw on my 50th episode for… the bounty of all podcast treasure troves. Have a listen in later episodes for more information about this, unidentified forthcoming object, or UFO, whatever it ends up being.

 

Okay. For today’s episode, I’ll be talking about an expression that is used in moments of peril, when a person needs to decide between right and wrong, blue or yellow, Yanny or laurel, concluding in becoming a new person completely changed from the entity they were once before.

 

Annnnnd, commence! Welcome, one and all, to this very important gathering of the most elite of dwellers from the Lands Far Between. We’ve called upon greatest melee warriors, vagabonds and samurais, the magic-practicing astrologers, prophets and confessors, along with the dangerous but effective bandits, prisoners, and wretches of the banished regions. Something is a miss, and this comes to affect all of us, and our families, and the creatures who prosper these lands.

 

Since the Ancient Ring was shattered, our queen, Margery the Eternal, is no where to be found. After the Night of the Dark Knives, Margery’s offspring, demigods of all, claimed shards of the Ancient Ring for themselves. Their madness triggered the event we have come to call the Shattering, a war in which no demigod lord arose from. A war whose consequences streaked blood on every house, every rock and every tree. Order was lost, and eldritch chaos flowed across our world.

 

Arise now, ye Tarnished, ye dead, who yet to live, the call for long lost grace speaks to us all. Arise Horah Loux — Chieftain of the crosslands, arise the ever-luminous Goldmask, arise Deathbed Follower Fia, arise repulsive Dung-Eater, arise omniscient Sir Gideon, and arise you, a tarnished of no renown. Cross the fog to the lands between, to stand before the Ancient Ring and bring peace to these lands once more.

 

You interrupt the dungeon-master, “Wait, isn’t this just the storyline to the game Elden Ring? Like it’s literally a cut and paste of the game’s introduction, you’ve just changed it from Elden to Ancient. You’ve even kept the Tarnished plot line and some of the main characters names.”

 

“Ye tarnished who interrupts the narrator shall not get their two wishes at the start of the campaign,” the dungeon-master replies, “Don’t you want your two wishes to face the enemies within the many dungeons and dragons within the many skies of the lands far between?”

 

You sigh, “I guess so, that’s at least a new plot device.”

 

The dungeon-master continues, “At the start of the campaign, ye tarnished, even the mouthy ones, get two wishes, each to help you traverse these horrid lands across the fog. These two wishes are granted by the Greater Will, errrrrr, I mean, the Free-er Will, yeah, and can increase any of your character’s starting attributes or skills. For example, you can request the ability to fly for better travel, or impeccable strength for better combat ability. However, there is a cost.”

 

“A cost?” You interrupt again. “What sort of cost?”

 

“Ahhh, it was as if I was just about to say. It comes with a physiological cost, a body disfigurement if you will. So if you decide you want your character to fly, then the cost will be that they will sprout wings from their shoulder blades, transforming them into completely new visual models.”

 

“Ohhhhhhh shit! Okay this is getting good.” You smile with excitement.

 

“Now, ye, ye Tarnished, the one with the repulsive mouth. What say you? What is your name and what are your two wishes?”

 

You think for a moment. Prior to this holographic Dungeons and Dragons campaign, you had designed a stoic warrior of the vagabond class. From humble beginnings, you grew up in the desolate putrid zone of Caelid, where the sky is a scorching red, creatures are half-dead reminents of their former selves, and everything gives you Scarlet Rot, a plague that depletes your health over a short period of time. You only survived after eating a rare mushroom that granted immunity to you when you were small, passed on within your family over generations. As you matured, you learned the ability to melee enemies with swordmanship admired across the Lands Far Between, and given armour that was bestowed upon thee from the Chieftain of the Crosslands himself. Though, because of this combat knowledge, you had to sacrifice some of your strength attribute skills, making you slightly weaker than the rest of your group, and this makes your character somewhat self-conscience and shy.

 

You finally respond, “My name is Rorshach the Rotten, and as my first wish, I would like to be so strong that I could pick up whatever maiden I desire.”

 

“Let thee wish be granted, Rorshach the Rotten” says the dungeon master. 

 

Suddenly your holographic D&D character begins to shake uncontrollably. In front of you, on the table, Rorschach Rotten’s arms begin to grow immensely. They grow and grow until they become almost 50% of the character’s build, with features that reflect the entire musculature of the arm in every angle of light. Once the growth ceased, the character used these new arms to slam themself back into a standing position, and looked at their new arms with wonder and awe.

 

“You can now pick up any maiden you desire in the Lands Far Between, even the biggest of them,” the Dungeon Master says with a grin.

 

“Ahhh c’mon I didn’t mean literally,” You say.

 

“Now, what is your final wish, Rorshach the Rotten.”

 

You again think hard for a moment. Realizing your mistake, you now understand that the literal meaning plays into the physiological change your character will undergo. What more does Rorschach Rot require for this campaign? The original naming with Rorschach, other than the sequential R. R. And lovely onomonopetia sound, was it’s meaning of psychoanalysis. The Rorschach test is a projective psychological assessment in which a subject is shown a series of 10 ambiguous inkblots and is then analyzed on what they observe. These insights help understand an individuals emotions, perceptual processes and thought patterns, leading to greater awareness of one’s self and better actions in the long run. This foresight ability seemed like something that could be extremely useful in restoring order to their fictional world.

 

You look to the Dungeon Master, “As my final wish, I want to be able to see the future.”

 

“Let thee wish be granted, Rorshach the Rotten” says the dungeon master.

 

Immediately, your holographic character falls to their knees, and they let out a roar of pain. Their head begins to grow, not as absurdly large as their arms, but enough to make you think of the Pokemon Geodude for a brief second. Still screaming in agony, their right eye’s complexion begins to fade to a cloudy mist, and the pupil becomes large and wide. After some time, the transformation ends, and the character stands up with some heavy breathing. You notice as Rorschach the Rotten looks from side to side, the right eye, with its large dilated black pupil, remains fixed forward.

 

“Wow! Their right eye has become fixed in its position!” You exclaim.

 

“The right eye is the key to Rorschach’s foresight. It is now blind to the present and must remain fixed in the direction of the future, always in the forward direction. It also represents your moral compass, leading straight and never deviating. Let this be the change necessary for you to bring peace back to the Lands of the Far Between.”

 

“It will my honour, and my duty!” You salute the Dungeon Master, like it was a realistic military campaign.

 

Over the course of the campaign, you and your group travel through the various regions of the world, starting in Limgrave gaining skills to level up your character, moving to Stormveil Castle to defeat Margit the Fell Omen, the campaign’s first major boss, soaring to the elevated plateau region of Mount Gelmir, even to your war-ravaged wasteland of Caelid and Dragonbarrow. Compared to the other members in your group, your two wishes granted you such a scaling that you begin to realize how truly OP it was to gain foresight. Every major battle allowed you and your team to defeat armies of enemies with such pinpoint strategy that most were a walk in the Weeping Peninsula.

 

Weeks of the campaign go by, and your power and greed, likely stemming from the proximity to the endgame and gathering of the Great Runes, exceeds a limit that you can no longer ignore. After the defeat of the third-last boss Maliketh, you pick up the fallen enemy’s infamous Black Blade with your magnificent arms and begin your reversal.

 

“I am the new Ancient Lord,” You state. All the members of the D&D campaign look at you from around the table, including the Dungeon Master.

 

“What? What do you mean, Rorschach the Rotten?” Says the Dungeon Master.

 

“I said, I am the new Ancient Lord, all must kneel before me.”

 

The dungeon master looks puzzled. “You really want to do that?”

 

“Yes.” You respond, and you let out an evil cruel cackle.

 

“Don’t you want to see how it will play out first?”

 

You think for a second. “Oh yeah, I have foresight, duh. Yes, let us see if my quest to conquer the Lands Far Between will be successful.”

 

You all wait for a moment, staring at the holographic board. Normally when you use this skill, a whirling cloud streams into view and slightly clears in the middle, providing the group a vision of what would happen after such an action takes place. This time nothing happened, and the holographic characters continue to surround Rorschach the Rotten ready to fight against this new traitor of the Free-er Will.

 

The dungeon master is also confused. “Hmmm…. It seems like because your ability is linked to your moral compass, it doesn’t seem like you are able to use foresight for this action.”

 

“What? They must. I don’t care about morality anymore. I’ve become so powerful that no one, not even ye Tarnished, can stop me. Rorschach the Rotten, I command you to use your ability of foresight!”

 

Rorschach suddenly does something they never had done before. Using their massive hands, they slowly reach into the right eye socket, and begin to physically turn a blind eye so that the pupil is facing the opposite direction. After this was completed, a dark cloud with lightning and thunder streams into view, clearing in the middle, bringing the vision to fruition.

 

You’re surprised to see pretty much the same thing as what was just happening now. Rorschach had shoved their hands into the socket of the right blind eye and turned it in the opposite direction. However, as they tried to remove their hands, it seemed like the hands became locked in position, unable to let go of the eye they had just turned. Muscles along the giant arms of Rorschach flexed to great exhaustion trying to free them to no avail. It was at this point that one of the group’s samaurai’s, walks up to Rorschach and, in one almost instantaneous swipe of their katana, slices the head off of Rorschach the Rotten’s body. He sheaths his weapon and the group walk away, and the vision disappears.

 

“You still want to commit this treasonous action?” Asks the Dungeon Master.

 

“Ehhhh, I’m okay. It was just a joke guys, nothing but a joke he he.” You cringe your teeth and shrug your shoulders, hoping to continue the campaign with your friends.

 

Yes! Elden ring fan fiction for the win! Haha that took so long to find a situation in which a character would have to literally do the metaphor and have it still work. Thankfully I had just started my own campaign in From Software’s Elden Ring, it only took me 4 years to have the time to play it. But anyway, I’m sure you caught today’s expression, and even a second one as well, around what it takes to reverse your ethical beliefs to take an action you wouldn’t take under normal circumstances.

 

What’s the origin to the expression, “Turn a blind eye”?

 

 

*Theme Music*

 

 

Most of this information was obtained from many articles discussing the uses and origins of this expression. All sources will be mentioned in the description.

 

The battle between good and evil, light and darkness, love and hate, is a tale as old as time. We’ve shared stories like this for generations, from the modern tales of the Jedi versus the Sith in a galaxy far far away, to the story of Job in Christianity’s Old Testament. The latter, a more complex plot line, is a devastating story of testing a man’s faith in God after losing everything. In the passage of the King James Version for Job 3:1-4, “After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spoke, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; Let not God regard it from above, Neither let the light shine upon it.”. Here, in a universe of justness and fairness governed by a good God, we are inclined to question the wisdom of a being so powerful that we couldn’t possibly comprehend it, that in a battle between good and evil, goodness prevails if you accept this notion despite the calamity that evil brought upon you. Sorry Job.

 

This dichotomy of two opposing forces in constant turmoil bringing about chaos to an otherwise stable configuration of reality has allowed humans throughout history to make sense of the world. The true complexity of how the world works and the happenings that seem to appear and disappear out of thin air is so mind-boggling that it took hundreds of thousands of years for human evolution to understand quantum theory, meteorology, infectious disease, thermodynamics and the fundamental laws of nature. Before, certain circumstances stemmed from privileges granted by eternal sky beings, by Mother Nature as a construct, by the presence of tireless souls stuck passing into the afterlife. These circumstances brought upon culture and traditions, rituals that humans to this day continue to carry out on the superstitious chance that its unproven possibility is enough evidence for its causality.

 

Of course, the idea of good versus evil leads us to question the existence of principles and values that can be categorized under these headings. Of this branch of philosophy is the study of morality and ethics, which is defined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as, “a code of conduct that would be endorsed by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent. However, merely showing that a certain code would be endorsed by any moral agent is not enough to show that the code is the moral code. […] So something else must be added; for example, that the code can be understood to involve a certain kind of impartiality, or that it can be understood as having the function of making it possible for people to live together in groups.”

 

From here, this everyday intentional conduct or behaviour that humans can take has been studied for their practice being rooted in objectivity. From the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle believed that the goal of human life was “eudaemonia” and that morality can be achieved by practicing virtue ethics. Within the section on Aristotle’s Peripatetic School, the internet encyclopedia for philosophy states, “All in all, one can distinguish four different lines of reasoning in Aristotle’s ethics: the virtue of the good person, the idea of action-oriented virtue ethics, the application of practical wisdom, and the idea of the intrinsic value of virtues.” 

 

It continues on the topic of action-oriented virtue ethics, “there are some actions that are always morally blameworthy under any circumstances, that is, some actions are intrinsically bad. The fine or the noble and the just require the virtuous person to do or refrain from doing certain things, for example, not to murder (in particular, not to kill one’s parents), not to commit adultery, and not to commit theft. This line of reasoning contains deontological limitations insofar as the virtuous person is no longer the overall standard of evaluation, but the virtuous person herself must meet some ethical criteria in order to fulfil the external demands of, for example, “the noble” and “the just” to act virtuously.” There is something known within certain actions that can be deemed as good or bad, and it is important that this itself be distinguished from the person producing said action.

 

We come to a more modern philosopher like Emmanuel Kant, whose writings describe several moral ideals that scholars continue to pronounce as the basis of our modern understanding for morality. Gone are the weighted notions of the known consequences or explosive emotions that are connected to our actions, but that morality is rooted in pure reason. He introduced the idea of the Categorical Imperative where he stated, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” He brought forth the idea of the Good Will, or motive, which, described by Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel in a 2009 lecture on Kantian Philosophy, “Only actions done for the sake of the moral law, for the sake of duty, only these actions have moral worth.”It is through pure practical reason that rational beings, not just humans, can exclude desires or any personal inclinations. That pure practical reason is the source and the field of universal norms to which actions can have moral worth.

 

Woof, that took some time, and an abstract head ache of sorts. But with this line of understanding, we’ve now at least established that there exists an intrinsic moral worth to actions we take, fixed upon the motivation behind an action, independent of one’s foresight of the consequences or their feelings on the matter. The former, foresight of the consequences, similar to our short story earlier, is a sort of visual interpretation of morality that we often don’t give form to enough. Actions sort of have this quality of looking good, or looking bad, almost like the night and day differences of sorcery in the adventures of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It’s a level of imaginative distinction that, I’m sure ,even the blind can see in some way. And here we come to today’s expression. Dictionary.com describes the expression as to, “deliberately overlook, ignore”. Though, modern interpretation has pushed this idiom further, expanding on the definition by Cambridge Dictionary as, “to ignore something that you know is wrong”. 

 

But when does the blind eye come in, and what’s its significance in the grander picture of morality and ethics?  Articles on HistoryExtra and AncientOrigins credit this to originate from a the Battle of Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars. Admiral Horatio Nelson, Legendary British naval officer and second-in-command just under British Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, engaged a joint navy of Danish and Norwegian ships on April 2, 1801. The battle still raged hours later, and Admiral Parker had thought that British fleet should retreat. Signalling through the use of flags, Admiral Parker had delivered the retreat signal. Famously, Nelson raised his telescope to his eye, previously blinded in a previous battle during the Siege of Calvi in 1794, and declared he saw no signal. He pushed on, securing a victory for Britain’s navy against the Danish and Norwegian combined fleet, and also securing the folk etymology of the phrase, seeing as losing this battle would prove devastating to the amount of soldiers lives lost in vain.

 

However, it is likely that the phrase, “to turn a blind eye” existed long before this battle between Britain and Napolean’s army. A 2022 article on Grunge.com further extends this to the first written account of the phrase to a gothic novel by British author Francis Lathom titled “Men and Manners”. Stated in the article, “In the novel, the phrase appears during an exchange between two gossips, Sir Harry and Lady Varny, discussing the recent marriage of Lady Gab and General Howitzer. Lady Gab grows smitten with the General after his glass eye accidentally falls out. As Sir Harry says, Lady Gab becomes "so charmed by its structure, that she immediately resolved on giving him her hand." Lady Varny replies, "It is lucky for the poor man he has a blind eye to turn to her." And with that jabbing pun at Lady Gab, Lady Varny is the first to use the phrase. Whether "horrid" writing or a tired attempt at pop fiction, Lathom's words leapt beyond the page and into our daily language.” Funnily enough, one of Lathom’s books made it onto a list of “horrid novels” by Jane Austin.

 

More credibly, the phrase has been suggested to have been adapted and shortened by a previous expression used by philosopher of the Church of England, clergyman John Norris. Worldhistories.net states that the original phrase, to turn the deaf ear and the blind eye, and all its variants henceforth was first recorded in Norris’ 1698 book A Discourse of Walking by Faith, in which, “To be Crucify’d to the World, and to have the World Crucify’d to us; to be dead to its Pleasures, and insensible of its Charms, to turn the deaf Ear, and the blind Eye to all those Pomps and Vanities of the World which we renounc’d at our Baptism; and to have it no longer in our Hearts, but under our Feet.” This particular starting phrase is still in use, mentioned in a Chicago Tribune article on January 21st 2016, where in commemorating the work done by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr at Glencoes’ St. Paul AME Church, St. Paul’s Rev. Norris Jackson, Jr. said people could not turn a “deaf ear or blind eye” to police brutality or unfair housing.

 

We tend to remember the intrinsic value of actions taken during moments of high stress. It is during these moments that our consequential actions are certainly judged, but more importantly, grounded in the reality of human existence, it is our individual characters that are judged. This character is not simply defined, or limited to, the constraints of conscience perceptions like seeing and hearing. It is what equalizes all reasoning beings on the same playing field governed by cause and effect relationships. Rather, it is the intention that guides whether our action is deliberately rational or irrational, whether we cast a blind eye or deaf ear, or in contrast, turn them away from the direction of action. Evidently, it’s a symbolic gesture, since the information that is missing or would have been obtained from these sense organs doesn’t impact the motive for the action in the first place. It’s to do good for the sake of doing good. Now someone go to tell Job the news, that whining silly faith questioner.

 

 

*Theme Music*

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For the communications segment, we jump straight in to talk about a concept I find extremely valuable to brung forth now, particularly with the latest advances in many scientific fields across the board, advances that are so hauntingly useful and practical that soon they will be incorporated into our lives and taken for granted. But before that happens, we as a community of critical thinkers need to pause for a moment and think about this immense topic, which is the ethics of science.

 

Back in the day, during a period in my life of uncertainty in my future and even my identity, I wrote a short story called Oblivion. It’s published on my website, in case you are interested in creative writing involving a bit of philosophy, crime, drama and suspense, mixed in with some indie horror elements and a pinch of Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The short story follows a detective named Winston, who for ease can be compared to the same Winston in 1984 (to whom I’ve mirrored the character), jumping from the present to the past that brought him to his unfortunate present circumstances. I will spoil the overall point of the story, which has a theme of an alternative plot to the infamous Trolly Problem moral dilemma.

 

Popularized by American Philosopher Judith Thomson, a doctor has, let’s say, 5 patients, all having organ failure (each of a different organ) and require transplants to survive. Now, a completely healthy person walks into the hospital, who, for some stroke of luck, is a match for all 5 patients. The doctor has a choice, albeit a rather disgusting one: Does the doctor kill the healthy patient in order to save the lives of the 5 patients? I’ll even sweeten the deal: Let’s say the healthy person is a criminal, someone who has committed major atrocities. Even more sweetener to your cup of tea: Let’s say the 5 patients are at the top of moral righteousness when it comes to living their lives, founders of charities and medical professionals themselves, people who brighten any room they find themselves in. Doesn’t it seem strangely, justified, to choose the answer that no one in their right mind would actually choose? The worst part is, not choosing anything at all and having life play its course is, indeed, also a choice.

 

How to live life through as precise a moral compass as possible has baffled some of the best and most intelligent of humanity’s minds over the course of our existence. Once humans agreed that living in communities was beneficial for survival, we no longer had the obligation to just focus on one’s own prosperity, but the growth and success of others around them as well. There needed to be fruitful discussion and collaboration for mutual benefit. Relationships needed to be forged, compromises needed to be brokered. Rules, or laws, needed to be implemented in such a way that boosted the overall “goodness” of the society. And, as discussed in the previous segment, a society filled with virtuous people doing moral actions can ultimately lead that society to a future where happiness was the endgame, judged of course on their deathbeds for whether this was indeed achieved, as Aristotle had suggested.

 

This morality, to ultimately lead people to achieve happiness insomuch that goodness was the motivation for that goal criss-crosses my mind as a scientist throughout my entire career. Hell, the ideals of science to investigate the truths of reality and the universe through collaborative, systematic methods is of course a force for good in the timespan of human existence. Science today in the way research is operated and studies are represented is more inclusive and diverse than it has ever been before, a statement I say with certainty that despite it being true, it is still not nearly enough. As described today in a 2025 NPJ comment piece titled “Importance of diversity and representation in science: benefits towards strengthening our response to global challenges”, “Historically, science has been stereotyped as the domain of white, non-disabled, affluent males—a narrative sadly still reinforced by the lack of diversity in leadership roles and public representations of scientists. […] Since their inception in the 1980s, Draw-A-Scientist studies have consistently shown that children’s perceptions of scientists are shaped by outdated biases. These stereotypes deter marginalised individuals from pursuing science and can influence public attitudes, including those of educators who may overlook student’s scientific love and potential if they do not fit preconceived notions of what a scientist looks like”.

 

Even data from health research has become more inclusive to better serve the general population. Clinical studies try to evaluate the efficacy and safety of pharmaceuticals and therapeutics that keep us alive and pushed the global average life expectancy in 2023 to more than double of what it was back in the year 1900, as the online resource Our World In Data suggests. Proper representation of individuals for these studies is paramount to ensure which of these drugs are safe to use for their intended patients, and which are not, and why that is the case. In a 2022 book titled, “Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups”, authors expand on why diverse representation in clinical research matters, summarizing 7 key ideas that should be discussed prior to any clinical study: 1) Lack of representation compromises generalizability of clinical research findings to the U.S. population, 2) Lack of representation costs hundreds of billions of dollars, 3) Lack of representation may hinder innovation, 4) Lack of representation may compound low accrual that causes many trials to fail, 5) Lack of representation may lead to lack of access to effective medical interventions, 6) Lack of representation may undermine trust, and 7) Lack of representation compounds health disparities in the populations currently underrepresented in clinical trials and clinical research.

 

In discussions about ethics in science, particularly in the life sciences, the Thalidomide scandal is often brought up. In the 1950s and 60s, the drug thalidomide was prescribed to pregnant women all around the world to relieve symptoms of anxiety and morning sickness, without ever having been tested on whether the drug can move through the placental barrier between a mother and a fetus. This led to the births of thousands of children who had developmental deformities such as limb differences, sight loss, hearing loss, facial paralysis, and impact to internal organs. As described in the Science Museum Article on the scandal, “Thalidomide forced governments and medical authorities to review their pharmaceutical licensing policies. As a result, changes were made to the way drugs were marketed, tested and approved both in the UK and across the world. One key change was that drugs intended for human use could no longer be approved purely on the basis of animal testing. And drug trials for substances marketed to pregnant people also had to provide evidence that they were safe for use in pregnancy.” These rules, so plainly obvious that it would be criminal negligence and consciously unfounded to not implement now, are a relic of the mistakes made in science that led to drastic consequences.

 

There are multiple examples of this, that left enough of a legacy to question the motivation of science as a practice rather than a systematic method to uncover the truth. You may think that, from the previous example, although there were drastic consequences due to unforeseen methodical errors, the intention to do something morally good still existed. Sometimes, science is done to lift the fog around our understanding of the universe with completely sound methodology, but for the sake of those who suffer. People have been used as an “end justifies the means”argument for scientific progress. There was the Tuskagee Study and Guatemala experiments around syphilis spread, Nazi experiments in concentration camps to test human adaptability to horrendous conditions, leading to the creation of the famous Nuremberg Code, the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment on power and authority… Even cruelty was done onto animals, a topic still contested today as to whether animals should be sacrificed for the benefit of human progress. Harry Harlow’s Pit of Despair with rhesus macaques, the Flowerpot sleep deprivation experiments done on cats, even Ivan Pavlov’s salivary studies using dogs to study behaviour and needs. We’ve gained such insight on unethical, or at the very least ethically-grey, data from all these experiments. Is it even morally right to use this data?

 

That question is something I used to ask students to debate about when I was a Teaching Assistant for the Science Communication module at Trinity College Dublin. I genuinely don’t know the correct answer to it, or if there even is a correct answer to it. But their responses encompass the dilemma that exists in science as a whole. On one hand, not using the data might mean these non-consensual participants (I know, animals will always be participating without consent), but not using the data would mean they suffered in vain. On the other hand, using the data may set a precedent for researchers to conduct unethical scientific work knowing that the data collected will still be accepted in the long run. These debates among undergraduates made me realize that science is ultimately about the motivation, the data to be subsequently interpreted, and how that data is collected. So the discussion on ethics surrounding science must fall along those key themes.

 

More importantly, can the motivation for science as a whole, be thought about in the realm of morality and ethics? If the reason for the existence of science is discovery, can science be used to determine whether actions are moral at all? In the 2010 book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, American Neuroscientist Sam Harris makes the claim that yes it can. If we assume that morality is about maximizing the well-being of conscience creatures, then we could use the scientific method to indeed test whether values and the actions that propagate those values lead to the discovery of an objective morality. In the context of his moral landscape, where there are valleys and peaks that signify more moral or less moral actions happening all the time, there will always be open definitions, subjective opinions to what is deemed moral but should not dissuade rational people that there is nothing measurable to be tested. He furthers this notion in his 2010 Ted Talk, comparing the concept of morality to human health, “Notice that the fact of the concept of health is open, genuinely open, for revision, does not make it vacuous.” Through advances in neuroscience, psychology and mental health, science may achieve something that only religious demagogues claim to have found the answers to in ancient texts passed on through generations. 

 

This resonates with me particularly because science in itself never guarantees that it has the answers to explain everything. In fact, all that science can provide are observations that are limited by the resources we use as researchers. These tools, as powerful as they are, from CRISPR gene editing to artificial intelligence, are restricted by the mechanisms of cellular biology and materials science, that will no doubt only get better over time, but still limited in those domains. And the moral questions that come from these powerful advances, of whether we should intervene in destined genetic disease or whether large language models can be trained on enormous internet repositories energized by ever larger data centres, all justifiably come with the package of science. They’re questions that science never sought to answer for, but needs to answer, in order for its fruits to be fully realized in the society it ultimately does work for.

 

 

*Theme Music*

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For my 7th guest of the season, I’ll be interviewing someone with a strong background in the ethics surrounding global implementation of AI, combined with a passion for science communication methods within educational systems.

 

He is an educator-researcher who is deeply fascinated by sociotechnical systems and how their designs often disproportionately impact the most vulnerable and marginalized.

 

In his role as a doctoral researcher, he uses participatory design methods and critical literacies to interrogate AI systems; exploring alternative designs with teenage girls toward a critical AI literacy responsive to the concerns and transformative agency of marginalized communities.

 

He bridges applied educational research, critical literacies and design thinking to turn critical AI literacy curricula into classroom-ready solutions.

 

Please welcome the superlative researcher, Taelo Jonathan Mathuloe.

 

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*INTERVIEW*

 

 

I really love discussions, especially abstract ones, about scientific topics interconnected with society and the passion heard from early career researchers when their work plays an important part in strengthening these connections. Science, despite the constant jaw dropping discoveries and theories that are put forth from methodological, predictable processes, is still very flawed from an institutional perspective and that awareness can only help it improve over time. With that, I hope you enjoyed learning about “Turn A Blind Eye” and Ethics in Science. These conversations, particularly when we are bombarded with advertisements claiming to revolutionize the way of working and enjoying life, are extremely important to boost that critical awareness to question whether these claims are true or false, dependent on our own circumstances at this moment in our lives. Anyway, there is one amazing update I want to share with you all. After months of interviews and job hunting, I have been offered a dream role at a company I highly respect. I will be working at BioRender, a company whose mission is to accelerate the world’s ability to learn, discover and communicate science, as a Customer Education Manager, developing resources for scientists around the world to support them in communicating their research to their audiences. This is a dream role because it’s exactly the type of work I want to do, helping scientists in my field to be more clear, more accessible and more engaging in presentations regarding their own work, particularly for early career researchers aiming to gain visibility and funding. I am still shocked that I was selected, and will do my utmost best to represent the company and my own values in science communication. But that’s it for this episode, thank you so much for listening. Do remember to follow the podcast Instagram page for all updates in cool visual format, along with the new LinkedIn page, and as always, anyone following will be placed into the draw to win some Metaphorigins swag, whatever that ends up being, on my 50th and Season 5 Finale! Rate, subscribe, share, message, megaphone this episode to your family and friends. Tune in for the next episode, but until then, stay skeptical but curious.

 

 

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