Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Alex John London Profile picture
Alex John London
@AlexJohnLondon
Author For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics. K&L Gates Professor of Ethics & Computational Technologies at CMU.
May 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Extinction is such a strange framing. Should we care less about events that would leave small pockets of humanity alive but bereft of knowledge and infrastructure and consigned to a ruined earth? Extinction from pandemic is very unlikely but we should take care to avert… …pandemics because of the toll they take on people. If we care about the quality of the lives of people we have powerful reasons now to take credible steps to improve regulation, governance, the division of social labor, and the justice of our institutions in MANY sectors…
Nov 16, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1. Since act utilitarianism is in the air, I want to encourage people not to confuse this very specific ethical theory with what we can call the standard theory of rationality. These can seem like they are the same thing, but that’s a mistake: a 🧵 2. Why might you confuse them? Rational choice (RC) is often described as maximizing expected utility and act utilitarianism (AU) is often described in similar terms. But there are some important differences!
Jun 1, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
1. I recommend this piece, which I found fascinating, because I think the question it asks is both counterintuitive and fundamental. That question is: what does the culture of firearms do to those who adopt it as their culture? Some additional thoughts: 2. I submit that one effect is that it emboldens fantasies that violence can solve social problems and fosters an approach to social relationships in which practices that are the lifeblood of a Republic—deliberation, negotiation, forging a shared understanding & problem solving…
Mar 11, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1. Like many my initial reaction to “branding” was repugnance. But then I thought about the underlying point: it is helpful if you can tell a story about how your work fits together and why this larger ensemble of idea or methods or whatever is interesting. 2. Many years ago someone I know interviewed a stellar young scholar and asked them where they get their ideas from and what they see as their next project or projects. The candidate replied that they get topics from their advisor and pursue the ones that interest them. Now…
Mar 7, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1. For those interested, Chapter 2 of my book helps to put into context the ethos of research with humans prior to the work of the National Commission (global.oup.com/academic/produ…). Consider this line from noted researcher Walsh McDermott: 2. “When the needs of society come into headlong conflict with the rights of an individual someone has to play God.” This was how McDermott opened a meeting in 1967 on the “Changing Mores of Biomedical Research”. McDermott represented the medical mainstream…
Feb 10, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
1. This is such a lazy take. Maybe part of the reason why we feel stuck in a rut is that there is a proliferation of the same stale messages that recapitulate false dichotomies to harvest clicks without solving social problems. 🧵 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2. First, the tap-dance: lockdowns are bad but also we aren’t locked down anymore. So what’s the real problem? Well, vaccinated Americans who face a probability of death of .1 out of 100,000 aren’t resuming normal life with sufficient vim and vigor! Why not?
Jan 2, 2022 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
1. In this thread I want to first unpack the logic of this post and then say what I find odd about it. First, what’s the argument? 2. Here is the claim and the argument, excluding the application to kids for the moment.
Apr 20, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1. This piece exemplifies something that has always mystified me: who are the “elites” who “disdain the public?” The piece itself is written by two professors and the paper on elite disconnect appears in Harvard Business Review. If “elite” is a purely descriptive term... 2. ...referring to people with a college education or an advanced degree, or who wield political power, then this whole debate is taking place among the elites. @VPrasadMDMPH and @jflier (examples from the text) are hardly characters out of Hillbilly Elegy.
Dec 31, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1. I’m not persuaded by this. Some reasons are specific to this case others apply more generally to arguments of the form—if we deviate from practices that are supported by the best evidence we can save even more lives. 2. Right now we are struggling to get vaccine into people’s arms. If we adopt a policy of 1 shot only, we could easily be in a situation in which more vaccine sits unused rather than in a situation in which x doses go into 2x arms.
Dec 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Just out & open access, my new paper “Self-Defeating Codes of Medical Ethics and How to Fix Them: Failures in COVID-19 Response and Beyond.” From @bioethics_net #medicalEthics #bioethics #MedTwitter #epitwitter #researchEthics
tandfonline.com/eprint/DSWJTGJ… Image Chuffed to have comments from @johnlantos @riekevdgraaf Wouter van Dijk, Sara J. M. Laurijssen, Ewoud Schuit, Diederick E. Grobbe & Martine C. de Vries, Carla Saenz,
@mmcdadden @wrwveit Rebecca Brown @briandavidearp Hugh Desmond, Jerry Menikoff, Sabine Salloch, Ryan Essex
Dec 8, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I like to give my kids #philosophy problems. My son and I agree: if you were a person in the #StarTrek universe it would be a bad idea to use the teleported. Because once you are disintegrated, your existence ends. But from a second person standpoint, there is no difference. The version of you that walks off the transporter on the other side thinks they were transported, because they remember getting on the platform and waking up or whatever in the new place. So the version of you that survives has a consciousness contiguous with your past.
Dec 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1. I want to make one more point about #vaccine #RCTs and I’m open to being corrected here by someone like @nataliexdean who has worked on these trials. The point has to with being in a situation in which we have estimates of efficacy so early on in the planned 2 year trials. 2. When these trials were designed it wasn’t a sure thing that we would have efficacy estimates this early. During the #ebola vaccine trials in 2014-15 the outbreak was waning by the time the vaccine trial was underway. If we had a coordinated public health response to #COVID
Aug 2, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
When you make an argument like this, please show your work. Let’s think of the cases

1. So we deploy an investigational vaccine that doesn’t actually confer immunity or strong immunity. If people think it provides protection, & take more risks MORE people get sick and die. 2. Imagine vaccine provides some protection, but a subgroup of people who access it outside of an RCT have a serious adverse reaction. If people think the vaccine is harmful, fewer take it or enroll in trials and MORE people die.
Apr 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1. One of the best parts of my corner of twitter is watching incredibly smart people like @mlipsitch @nataliexdean @trvrb carry our peer review in real time. And as Marc says in this thread, it’s important to remember that spending time critiquing work is a mark of respect.... 2. But watching their work, and @CT_Bergstrom as well, has made me even more skeptical of the value of medical preprints. Yes, science often advances through the accumulation of many contributions in which few single studies are definitive. But in the current environment...
Apr 10, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1. I’m going to try to be a better twitter user. And that means bringing a little more charity to this platform than it tends to induce and avoiding snappy tweets that makes people feel like things are worse than they really are. So what to make of these two reports? 2. Here is the conclusion of the NAM report. There are no direct studies of the question at issue. We have to make inferences from the other data They suggest fabric masks might reduce transmission of larger particles but net benefits depend on make and use, so benefit uncertain.
Apr 2, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. I’m not going to lie, I’m still grappling with the fact that 1,049 people died in the US just today from #COVID19. At this rate it will be 2k per day by the weekend. Each one of those people was unique. They were someone’s lover or crush... 2. They were a bearer of someone’s secrets, a witness to someone’s failure and grief, to deep sorrow and merciful joy. They wore glasses and worried about tomorrow and in a drawer or a notebook they had a list of things to do tomorrow, places to go, vacations to take...
Mar 12, 2020 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
1. I want to share some thoughts about how I’ve been feeling lately, in part because I suspect that many of you are feeling the same way and, for me at least, there is comfort in solidarity. #COVID19 #academic #AcademicChatter #medicine #healthcare 2. This has been a tough week, and I’m afraid that it is only the beginning. We are on spring break and I had a long list of tasks I’ve needed to accomplish but it has been difficult with everything that has been going on.
Jan 18, 2020 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
Today is always a rough day for my family. I’ll probably delete this later, but for some reason I want to talk about a few things. Seven years ago I was in France for a WHO meeting. I was excited to be speaking and to be with some old friends and to meet some new folks. I had spent the day with @AnantBhan walking around a lake and taking photos. I was in bed and I was about to turn off the ringer on my phone when my wife texted. I had already said good night to her already half an hour before. But something was wrong.
Dec 13, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1. #disinformation is like a computer virus for humans. A #computervirus is a set of instructions that are run on a machine to perform procedures that advance the goals of someone other than the machine’s user. 2. Disinformation is a set of propositions that are introduced into the belief structure of a person in order to bring that person to advance the goals of someone other than that person.
Aug 15, 2019 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
“There is no greater threat to intellectual culture than the thought that when it really counts, when it actually matters to us, we philosophers give up on doing philosophy.” @AgnesCallard on petitions in #philosophy nytimes.com/2019/08/13/opi… For all x, I’m always the last to hear x, so I’m sure this is old news to both of you reading this. As someone who has signed petitions (some of which I later regretted) my heart is with @AgnesCallard in this respect...
Jul 15, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1. I used to work more actively in #moralpsychology. In particular, I thought that #Aristotle’s moral psychology was more sophisticated than a lot of contemporary models. Part of the reason was his view that emotions and beliefs can change one another. 2. I wrote about implications of this idea for #practicalethics here cmu.edu/dietrich/philo…. I still like this work. At some point, though, this work requires more than reflection on Aristotle, since it is based largely on empirical claims.