The Difference Between...

[africaone]

the problem is that sientists are the tools of the society and that we live in a scientific society !
It is the society that must decide wich moral / ethic and direction they want.

Today, science is able to product quite everything. many scientists doesn't know how they dicoveries or work will be used (usually by commercial purposes).
Ethic is in the society. A scientist must be also a citizen. It is is own reponsability to conciliate his work and ethic.
Laws, that can limit the scientist action, came directly from the society itself (unfortunetely manytimes guided by commercial puprposes)

[wingedwishes]

Nomi - You did not read or understnd what I wrote. If you want to save time then read more sloly so that you can understand what I wrote.

You much earlier wrote that you were not interested in posting any more on this subject but you continue to do so. You also misquote me and take things so out of context that you appear somewhat petulant.

Your second line is exactly my point and we agree there so why argue it?

I did not state that you cannot talk about morals and science together. Go back and read what was written. You made yet another incorrect assumption. Maybe English is not your first language. If you were such a moral person, you would not assume, misquote, insult, etc.

[nomihoudai]

I did reread your posts now 10 times and what you do is expressing 2 contrary ideas (let us call them A and B) one after the other

A: I am ok with you taking a moral decision.
... you said idea A in these sentences:
-Your second line is exactly my point and we agree there so why argue it?
-I have absolutely no problem with you making a moral decision and standing by it
-Are you sure you did not mean to say that morals exist in scientists? In that we agree

and then you have B which sounds to me like: Science has no base in common morals, so just screw it and do whatever you like.
posts by you:
-(though there is no science in morality that I know of)

I can turn that sentence around how I want it, I don't get how it would express idea A.

and then we have remarks getting incredibly off topic:
-You can use science to make a determination of right or wrong but if we sink to the level of using what is believed "right" to base science then we risk corrupting the scientific method.

This remark feels like each time that we want to talk about the flu or sneezing you turn the topic onto the "Hippocratic Oath" and this way of leading a discussion is just very exhausting, I don't need to go back onto the basis of all of natural sciences just for discussing the usefullness of a datalabel or not.

Finally, what do you want to express with the Bower birds example? That it is ok to kill a living being for the purpose of decorating a home? You try to base a right or wrong decision upon an animals behaviour?
Male Lions are known to kill the babies of rivals to make new babies to these females... Dolphins are known to engage in mass rape. Should we base any of our morals on these examples too? You can't just take out the examples that please your idea and leave the others out, if you base any moral decision on animals you must base all of them onto that.

And now I am out of the discussion because the sides have been stated, unless you raise another valid point where I might have misunderstood you or done injustice.

[wingedwishes]

I agree. You nearly completely misunderstood what was written and there is nothing new to add.

Let me try one more time sans examples:
point 1: I propose that there is a value to an insect without data. I accept there is no real value to one with respect to science other than for gross morphology.

point 2: It is not wrong for one species to use another deceased species to decorate or utilize it in some way.

Well - that's it. I hold a contrary position to it being rubbish or unethical. I could change my mind when presented with logic convincing me otherwise.

[starlightcriminal]

I'm a bit on the fence here, but without engaging anyone specifically I would just like to say that you would be very hard pressed to find any scientific institution that doesn't have a required ethics training associated with it, whether you are in psychology, entomology or medicine. Usually even tangent staff are required to take this training, even if they never touch anything related to the study but simply because they might be around it and might be exposed to the data. So yes, ethics and science are inextricably linked.

Killing something for decoration is something that treads the lines or morality? Maybe. Depends on what you kill. After all, everything in the modern life required killing something in some manner, either by habitat destruction or by direct exploitation of the organism or both and so on. I don't think there is any problem with trophy hunting as long as you are mindful of the ecology. Killing a deer to put on your wall, while very distasteful to me personally, is not going to cause any ecological disaster or loss of a species. It's really a case by case issue, as ethics inherently are. But because we are all obligatorily involved in industry it's hypocritical to claim "moral purity" towards nature just because we put a label on all of our specimens. It's just trying to soften the sting of having to kill something yourself- you are still killing something and no doubt there are other people who have killed the same exact butterfly a thousand times over for the same purpose- how many places really need to have hundreds of the same common butterflies? Yet we still collect them all so we have a complete set of our own before we die. Having in your head that somehow your intention of these specimens long term is being of scientific value doesn't absolve you from killing an organism. Nor does killing an organism necessarily make you immoral, those same common butterflies are still flying around and reproducing like mad for hundreds of years in many cases. It sounds to me like we would like to make a euphemism for what we are actually doing when we really don't have to justify it as long as we are respectful and don't over exploit, right?

Personally, I collect and kill, I keep data but nonetheless I do get a twinge of guilt almost every time I kill something even though the spirit of my collection is one of scientific documentation. I also like the aesthetic side of it and as such I go great lengths to have the most beautiful examples I can have. But there is a lot of decorative use of killed animals globally and it's a bit arrogant to think that adding data makes you morally superior to someone who kills a bird to use feathers in a social ceremony because the cultural mores are different. I think the important thing is to be mindful, of both the animal you are collecting and it's position in the ecological web as well as of the possibility that morals are fluid and defined by social climate. Judging someone's activities based on your own cultural baggage is not very productive, one way or the other. What may be moral to you may not be moral to 90% of the world by virtue of birth place and upbringing.

That's my two cents on the topic.

[wingedwishes]

Brilliant and very well posed. I appreciate your logic and patience.