For #TrekTuesday, I’ll share that I spend a LOT of time wondering why we don’t see social scientists as key crew members on the Enterprise-D and the ethics of Deanna Troi’s talking to people about their feelings in front of other crew members. #StarTrek 🖖📺
@kimberlyhirsh 1. I love the idea of #TrekTuesdays. 2. I always assumed they ferried the social scientists to where they were needed? They were explorers and support staff for cultural scientists?
@kimberlyhirsh This made me laugh. I've got medical people in my family who yell at fictional characters for all the scientific and ethical violations that nevertheless move the plot along.
@kimberlyhirsh They have all those records from before the war but not one on patient confidentiality or IRB.
@splinter I think of cultural scientists as a subset of social scientists. At first I thought yeah, they must take them where they're needed. But if your whole deal is seeking out new civilizations, feels like you should have a couple anthropologists and/or sociologists on board.
@lukemperez My husband pointed out that research ethics have changed significantly in just the past 50 - 100 years so of course they would be different in the 24th century.
@kimberlyhirsh True. We keep hearing about them getting in trouble. If they were attached to a starship, maybe they wouldn’t so much?
@kimberlyhirsh I always thought that version of the future had devolved in ethics. It’s a world technological superior to us in every way but many of the side characters and story lines seem devoid of even basic stuff. Even the Vulcans are basically just utilitarians and other, arguably superior, approaches to ethics are just gone.
And I suppose that’s more realistic, if likely unintended by the creators. We always assume everything progresses in the same way, but it isn’t always the case.
@lukemperez In "Encounter at Farpoint" there's some discussion of a devolution in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries. The Prime Directive is, in my opinion, about 50% ethically sound. Different cultures will have different ethical approaches. I think it's something the creators didn't think about. I only think about it because it's in my wheelhouse.
@splinter Yeah. I think postcritical ethnography is probably compatible with the Prime Directive, but I haven't really gone into this line of thought in depth.
@kimberlyhirsh I’d thought the Federation assumes species have their ducks in a row when they join the interstellar community, but the Kelpians are an example of that not happening, and what about the other powers, the Romulans and Klingons and Cardassians?
@kimberlyhirsh Right, right. I always thought "Measure of a Man" was the big tell—lot of folks in the future view everything as theirs to manipulate. Of course, the show is meant to be a mirror to our time. And though I love the franchise (just finished binging Picard and Discovery), I often think how poorly thought out those questions are and I think that is a function of the poor ethical training of many of our contemporaries. Science is the altar and there's a presumption that it can solves problems that are really about human nature, which doesn't change.
@annahavron Clearly. Of course, ethical and legal are related but not identical, so even if she's not bound by HIPAA, I would hope she would keep people's feelings confidential. And yet she's sometimes like "Hey Worf you're acting angry but I know you're really sad" in front of everyone else.
@lukemperez I think you're right. Speculative ethics is a whole thing and even people whose work interacts with it directly (like computer scientists) aren't always versed in it. It's probably too much to expect screenwriters to have thought through all these things.