One of the classical studies in attitude and persuasion theory is that in which college students participated in a fairly traditional experiment. A group of subjects was shown a card with two lines, similar in length. They were asked to identify which line was the longest. Unbeknownst to the real subject, the other subjects were shils. They all identified the shorter line as the longer one. The real subject was then observed to see how the voicing of disagreement would influence his/her judgment on the length of the line. I'm retelling this experiment from memory. Be sure to check the facts in Jones and Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology.

Stem Cell Research and Pressuring the Outliers Will go up shortly. Sunday, July 22 headlines on the Global 8 pressuring Bush on Kyoto treaty and now the pressures on research. Conflicting validity claims. jeanne's planned entry. Nag her.

Pope Urges Bush to Reject Embryo Research New York Times, July 23, 2001

Washington Not Alone in Cell Debate By Sheryl Gay Stolberg. New York Times, July 23, 2001

Looking at the research on stem cells as a status characteristic differential theory problem. If abortion is bad, and if an embryo is like a fetus, and if embryos are prevented from life as a fetus in the process of obtaining stem cells, then stem cell research is bad. The adjective "bad" here is the status attached to the characteristic of not letting the fertilized egg become a fetus. But many fertilized eggs do not become fetuses. This is beginning to feel like a chicken and the egg problem, but you get the idea. Our thinking is colored by our normative expectations for the meaning of "kill" and "not live" and by sci fi nightmare in which every fertilized egg would be born.

There are some real important issues here: like the meaning of life and death and good health. There are some moral issues here, like whether or not the welfare of any human should be sacrificed for the sake of many other humans. Nozick would say no.

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