"Preventing a death is equally important irrespective of age" strikes me as a genuinely insane position, although I guess maybe the 63% agreeing with it have something saner in mind that is closer to it than giving an exact age. 

No one would be indifferent between extending someone's life by an hour, even a very valuable hour, and extending another person's ordinary life by 30 years. But it's just really strange to endorse that, but not apply the same logic to saving a 20-year old person over a 100-year old person. Does anyone know of any actual arguments people give in favor of it? 

First of all, thanks very much for gathering this great data.

It's really pretty shocking to me how badly this makes bioethicists look. To compare just two line items, and adding together the categories into just 'agree' and 'disagree' for simplicity:

• 41%+46%=87% believe that abortion is acceptable
• 34%+44%=78% think it is unacceptable to choose embryos based on non-medical traits.

I can understand saying 'allowed' for both cases, or saying 'disallowed' for both cases. But this combination seems very hard to justify. We are to believe that it is not acceptable to choose between ten embryos with ~60 cells each based on non-medical traits, even if we know they cannot all be implanted, so a choice must be made. And yet once the embryo has been implanted, grown into human form, with a brain and a heart, and perhaps the ability to survive on her own outside the womb - now we are somehow morally permitted to destroy it, even for the same reasons we were previously prohibited from entertaining, with no need to give any concern for her welfare whatsoever?

Above I aggregated the 'agrees' and 'disagrees' into two larger groups, but even broken down into the four smaller groups I struggle to find an interpretation which doesn't leave some significant fraction of respondents committed to what seems like a very problematic position. And this is hardly a niche gotcha; this seems like a very basic question that should occur almost immediately to someone thinking professionally about it.

This combination, and some of the other results other commenters have already pointed out, really makes me doubt the epistemic integrity of at least a significant fraction of the respondents. Normally I try to find charitable interpretations but here it really is hard to avoid the conclusion that these 'experts' are in favour of unlimited abortion because that is what their political/social tribe expects and then they have manufactured some post hoc justifications despite the clear contradiction with their other moral perspectives.

Thanks a lot for collecting this survey! I think it's valuable to solicit 'external' (to the EA community) views on important questions that affect our decision-making, especially from plausible expert groups.

I'm quite shocked at the vehemence and dismissiveness of many of the comments on this post responding to these results. Here are some quotes from other commenters:

1.

"Preventing a death is equally important irrespective of age" strikes me as a genuinely insane position... No one would be indifferent between extending someone's life by an hour, even a very valuable hour, and extending another person's ordinary life by 30 years. But it's just really strange to endorse that, but not apply the same logic to saving a 20-year old person over a 100-year old person.

2.

Yeah, it's just transparently stupid stuff like "Each life counts for one and that is why more count for more. For this reason we should give priority to saving as many lives as we can, not as many life-years." [Caveat, this quote is slightly out of context... it's actually responding to the comment above.]

3.

Results give some support to the notion that bioethicists are more like PR professionals, geared to reproducing common sentiments rather than a group that is OK with sometimes taking difficult stances. Questions 6 & 7 especially seem like vague left-wing truisms... I still can't get over 40% thinking being blind would be not disadvantaging if society was "justly designed".

4.

It's really pretty shocking to me how badly this makes bioethicists look.

Here are some possible explanations for the supposedly crazy results:

• There are reasons, logic, or evidence that are considered or known amongst (some? many?) bioethicists that you yourself are not familiar with.
• There are reasons, logic, or evidence that you are familiar with that (some? many?) bioethicists are not.
• There are multiple conflicting principles or heuristics that apply in a different case, and the respondents just weigh those differently to you. E.g. this strikes me as likely what's happening with the "It is most important to prevent someone from dying at which of the following ages" question.
• The respondents have different ethical systems and worldviews to you, e.g. placing more weight on virtue ethics relative to consequentialism. That doesn't make them insane or unthoughtful; ethics is really tough and probably depends on a lot of things like your upbringing. (Otherwise people would have similar ethical views across cultures, which clearly isn't true.)

I share the intuition that many of the results in the survey seem surprising, and very discrepant from my own views. But regardless of whether you understand the reasons, surely after seeing that a group of people holds substantially different views to your own, your all-things-considered belief should shift at least somewhat towards those views, even if your "independent impression" does not? Especially when that group has years of relevant thought or expertise; these facts make it more likely that there are valid reasons underpinning their beliefs. Where there are discrepancies, there's a chance that they are right and you/we are wrong. 

I'm worried that some of the quotes above represent something like cognitive dissonance or a boomerang effect. Or at least they seem more like "soldier mindset" than I'd expect here, although I note some exceptions where several commenters (including some of those I quoted above) ask others for input on helping to understand and steelman the bioethicists' views.

[Edit: the following paragraph felt true at the time of writing but I regret writing it as it seems pointlessly offensive/inflammatory itself in hindsight. I apologise to the people I quoted above.] Honestly, seeing the prevalence of these kinds of reactions in the comments makes me feel less confident in the epistemic health of this community and more worried about groupthink type effects. (Maybe some of these commenters have reasons for their vehemence and dismissiveness that I'm missing?)

Results give some support to the notion that bioethicists are more like PR professionals, geared to reproducing common sentiments rather than a group that is OK with sometimes taking difficult stances. Questions 6 & 7 especially seem like vague left-wing truisms.

On the other hand, there does seem to be a substantial (minority?) which isn't this way, so perhaps it's not fair to condemn all bioethicists, as some tend to. Or maybe much of actual research is OK and there's too much worrying about certain in-group signals. Maybe critics are doing a motte-and-bailey:

...it is worth some eyebrow-raising if it turns out that the ingroup defense is something along the lines of “well, by bioethicists, we mean research ethicists, and by research ethicists we mean research bureaucrats, and by research bureaucrats, we mean research bureaucracy.” It feels like blaming congressional gridlock on political philosophers at a certain point.

This seems plausible. But I still can't get over 40% thinking being blind would be not disadvantaging if society was "justly designed". Even if individual opinions aren't everything, surely it matters that the supposed experts, who are plausibly themselves in positions of influence, exhibit such poor reasoning?

Although I'm surprised by many of these, the 37% who believe "A being becomes a person at birth" surprises me quite a lot. I can see how this could be an instinctive position to much of the general population, but I am genuinely interested in what the arguments are for this position. I understand arguments for fertilisation, sentience and viability being important junctures but I don't understand birth.

Can anyone shed any light on this? 

I was quite surprised by bioethicists' views on paying organ donors. I'd be curious to see what the best argument against it is. I've been extremely unimpressed by the arguments I've seen so far.

Thanks for doing this research Leah! I've been hoping to see something like this for a while. Most of the results aren't that surprising to me (paid organ donation and non-medical embryo selection are a little surprising to me, I expected them to be controversial, not so one-sided). On my overall views on the field I reserve judgement - these look relatively normal for what I expect to see in the general public with a few exceptions, which is more or less what I expected. I unfortunately don't seem to have institutional access to the paper diving into this question more and I still don't know how to use sci-hub, so I'll have to figure that part out later. Again, thanks for running more formal research on this subject!

Thanks for gathering the data. Enough of these results are just batshit crazy that it further cements my view that bioethicists, as a group, should not be given any say in the questions they purport to be experts on. I'll point to two that I don't think anyone else has highlighted yet. 42% apparently believe that in a perfectly just society, blindness would not be a disadvantage. Not being able to drive a car isn't a disadvantage? Because no technology currently exists that would allow the blind to do that. And 66% think that a person's life being worth living is somehow not a reason to bring them into existence? If not that, then what would be a reason to bring someone into existence? That may not be a sufficient reason to bring someone into existence, but if you don't think it is a necessary one then there is something deeply wrong with your morals. I do not understand at all what would cause someone to give this answer.

Executive summary: A survey of 824 U.S. bioethicists reveals their views on a range of bioethical issues, including abortion, embryo selection, assisted dying, organ donation incentives, and resource allocation.

Key points:

1. Large majorities of bioethicists believe abortion (87%) and embryo selection for medical conditions (82%) are ethically permissible.
2. 59% think it's permissible for clinicians to assist patients in ending their lives, but only 15% approve of payment for organ donation.
3. Bioethicists are divided on when personhood begins, with 45% saying at birth and 38% saying after the first trimester.
4. Most (78%) believe policymakers should consider non-health benefits and harms when allocating medical resources.
5. If lifesaving resources are scarce, 48% prioritize saving the most lives, while 44% favor equal chances for all.
6. The survey results can inform the EA community's perception of bioethicists' views.

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