Research misconduct is an alarming concern worldwide, and especially in Italy, where there is no formal training of young researchers in responsible research practices. The main aim of this study was to map the perceptions and attitudes about RM in a sample of young researchers attending a one-week intensive course on methodology, ethics and integrity in biomedical research, held at the University of Insubria. To this end, we administered the Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire to all attendees at the beginning of the (...) course. Thereafter, SMQ-R was re-administered at the end, to assess the impact of the course on the responsiveness of study participants, which is intended as the frequency of responses other than “don’t know”. Results show that respondents rate as high their own understanding about rules and procedures related to scientific misconduct, as well as the effectiveness of their institution’s measures for reducing it. Most of them perceive as low the chances of getting caught for RM. Some respondents believe that cases of misconduct occur in their workplace and that the integrity of a research is not solely the responsibility of the principal investigator. Among the main factors contributing to research misconduct, the need for publications, unclear definition of what constitutes misconduct and pressure for external funding do stand out. Respondents are concerned about the amount of misconduct and express a pressing need for training on research ethics. Remarkably, the responsiveness of participants tends to increase with course attendance. This finding may be useful to support education programmes devoted to research methodology, ethics and integrity among young researchers. (shrink)

Targeted modifications of the human epigenome, epigenome editing (EE), are around the corner. For EE, techniques similar to genome editing (GE) techniques are used. While in GE the genetic information is changed by directly modifying DNA, intervening in the epigenome requires modifying the configuration of DNA, for example, how it is folded. This does not come with alterations in the base sequence (‘genetic code’). To date, there is almost no ethical debate about EE, whereas the discussions about GE are voluminous. (...) Our article introduces EE into bioethics by translating knowledge from science to ethics and by comparing the risks of EE with those of GE. We, first (I), make the case that a broader ethical debate on EE is due, provide scientific background on EE, compile potential use-cases and recap previous debates. We then (II) compare EE and GE and suggest that the severity of risks of novel gene technologies depends on three factors: (i) the choice of an ex vivo versus an in vivo editing approach, (ii) the time of intervention and intervention windows and (iii) the targeted diseases. Moreover, we show why germline EE is not effective and reject the position of strong epigenetic determinism. We conclude that EE is not always ethically preferable to GE in terms of risks, and end with suggestions for next steps in the current ethical debate on EE by briefly introducing ethical challenges of new areas of preventive applications of EE (III). (shrink)

These volumes will serve as useful resources for anyone interested in philosophy of color perception or color science.

Intersubjectivity refers to the variety of possible relations between perspectives. It is indispensable for understanding human social behaviour. While theoretical work on intersubjectivity is relatively sophisticated, methodological approaches to studying intersubjectivity lag behind. Most methodologies assume that individuals are the unit of analysis. In order to research intersubjectivity, however, methodologies are needed that take relationships as the unit of analysis. The first aim of this article is to review existing methodologies for studying intersubjectivity. Four methodological approaches are reviewed: comparative self-report, (...) observing behaviour, analysing talk and ethnographic engagement. The second aim of the article is to introduce and contribute to the development of a dialogical method of analysis. The dialogical approach enables the study of intersubjectivity at different levels, as both implicit and explicit, and both within and between individuals and groups. The article concludes with suggestions for using the proposed method for researching intersubjectivity both within individuals and between individuals and groups. (shrink)

Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...) and "epigenetic exceptionalism" are analyzed and critically discussed. The remarks on the ethical discourse on epigenetics show that the notion of "epigenetic determinism" can sometimes be discerned not only in popular scientific discourse but also in ethical discourse. Ethical debates on epigenetics, however, have distanced themselves from this deterministic understanding. As a result, the focus in the ethical discourse on epigenetics shifts from responsibility for one's own health and that of subsequent generations to justice. What is meant here is justice, for example, in terms of access to healthy environmental conditions, regardless of whether these contribute to health with or without epigenetic agency. An analysis of the discourse on genome editing reveals that it is primarily germline interventions that are being ethically examined, with a concentration on the aspect of inheritance. The question is whether this is accompanied by an implicit "genetic determinism" or even a "genetic essentialism": the determinism could lie in the centrality of the aspect of heritability, since only genetic information is inherited. Does the aspect of heritability and genome modification play a more decisive role in debates on genome editing than the safety issue? Is the problem of embryos and their potential offspring not being able to consent to germline intervention given such a high priority because it is a genetic intervention? Under such a premise of "strong genetic determinism" supplemented by "epigenetic determinism," not only genome editing but also epigenome editing would be ethically relevant precisely because it too would have an influence on the genome. How this influence of genome editing and epigenome editing is ethically evaluated in each case therefore depends initially on whether the assumptions of "genetic" and "epigenetic determinism" are advocated. These assumptions are increasingly viewed critically in ethical discourse because they cannot be confirmed from a scientific perspective. In popular scientific debates in particular, however, they seem to persist, which ultimately also influences the public discussion. Since a broad public discussion is required especially on genome editing, a reflective approach to the various "-isms" analyzed in this chapter is central. DOI: 10.5771/9783748927242. (shrink)

That biology provides explanations is not open to doubt. But how it does so must be a vexed question for those who deny that biology embodies laws or other generalizations with the sort of explanatory force that the philosophy of science recognizes. The most common response to this problem has involved redefining law so that those grammatically general statements which biologists invoke in explanations can be counted as laws. But this terminological innovation cannot identify the source of biology's explanatory power. (...) I argue that because biological science is historical, the problem of biological explanation can be assimilated to the parallel problem in the philosophy of history, and that the problem was solved by Carl Hempel. All we need to do is recognize that the only laws that biology—in all its compartments from the molecular onward—has or needs are the laws of natural selection. (shrink)

Saul Kripke’s much discussed Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language has, I believe, been widely misinterpreted. The purpose of this note is to offer a correction. As it happens, on my reading of Kripke’s text Kripke’s Wittgenstein begins to look recognisably like Wittgenstein himself. But I shall not be concerned here with the question of whether Kripke’s Wittgenstein is Wittgenstein. My only aim is to correct the misinterpretation.

The “fair benefits” approach to international research is designed to produce results that all can agree are fair without taking a stand on divisive questions of justice. But its appealing veneer of collaboration masks ambiguities at both a conceptual and an operational level. An attempt to put it into practice would look a lot like an auction, leaving little reason to think the outcomes will satisfy even minimal conditions of fairness.

To judge from the rash of recent law review articles, it is a miracle that research with human subjects in the U.S. continues to draw breath under the asphyxiating heel of the rent-seeking, creativity-stifling, jack-booted bureaucrethics that is the current system of research ethics oversight and review. Institutional Review Boards, sometimes called Research Ethics Committees, have been accused of perpetrating “probably the most widespread violation of the First Amendment in our nation's history,” resulting in a “disaster, not only for academics, (...) but for the whole nation.” One member of the President's Council on Bioethics went so far as to assert, “There has been no greater damage to academic freedom in the United States in my lifetime. And my lifetime encompasses McCarthy and it encompasses political correctness, both.” Locked in the bureaucratic “iron cage” of IRB oversight, critics charge that researchers have been transformed into a vulnerable, exposed population, subject to domination, that has been likened in one case to a kind of “Tuskegee in reverse.”. (shrink)

TheCatalogue of Scientific Papers, published by the Royal Society of London beginning in 1867, projected back to the beginning of the nineteenth century a novel vision of the history of science in which knowledge was built up out of discrete papers each connected to an author. Its construction was an act of canon formation that helped naturalize the idea that scientific publishing consisted of special kinds of texts and authors that were set apart from the wider landscape of publishing. By (...) recovering the decisions and struggles through which theCataloguewas assembled, this essay aims to contribute to current efforts to denaturalize the scientific paper as the dominant genre of scientific life. By privileging a specific representation of the course of a scientific life as a list of papers, theCataloguehelped shape underlying assumptions about the most valuable fruits of a scientific career. Its enumerated lists of authors’ periodical publications were quickly put to use as a means of measuring scientific productivity and reputation, as well as by writers of biography and history. Although it was first conceived as a search technology, this essay locates theCatalogue’s most consequential legacy in its uses as a technology of valuation. (shrink)

This paper presents methodological reflections on power sharing and shifts of power in various interview situations. Narratives are said to be shaped by our attempts to position ourselves within social and cultural circumstances. In an interview situation, power can be seen as something that is created and that shifts between the interviewer and the interviewed. Reflexivity is involved when we as interviewers attempt to look at a situation or a concept from various perspectives. A modified form of discourse analysis inspired (...) by subject positioning was used to reflect on power relations in four different interview situations. The analyses indicate that reflection on the power relations can lead to other forms of understanding of the interviewee. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that power relations are created within an interview situation and therefore it is important to be aware of dominant perspectives. Researchers and nurses face the challenge of constantly raising their level of consciousness about power relationships, and discursive reflexivity is one way of doing this. Thus, reflexivity is an important part of the qualitative research process. (shrink)

The revival of classical liberal thought has reignited a debate about economic freedom and social justice. Classical liberals claim to defend expansive economic freedom, while their critics wish to restrict this freedom for other values. However, there are two problems with the role ‘economic freedom’ plays in this debate: inconsistency in the use of the concept and indeterminacy with respect to its definition. Inconsistency in the use of the concept ‘freedom’ has mistakenly made a certain kind of ‘left-wing’ critique of (...) poverty, and of markets generally, appear to be a concern with inequality in means to enjoy freedom, not with freedom itself. Indeterminacy about which beings and doings the basic liberties protect misrepresents the left-wing position as about something other than economic freedom. Inconsistency and indeterminacy lead to artificial narrowness in current debates and to a failure to see that disagreement is based not just on moral differences but also on conceptual confusion. This confusion leads both classical liberals and their critics to claim more than they may legitimately do, and to ignore a position that accepts the standard of definition of freedom but arrives at different institutional conclusions about what secures that freedom. (shrink)

I argue here that the impairment principle requires clarification. It needs to explain what makes one impairment greater than another, otherwise we will be unable to make the comparisons it requires, the ones that enable us to determine whether b really is a greater impairment than a, and as a result, whether causing b is immoral because causing a is. I then develop two of what I think are the most natural accounts of what might make one impairment greater than (...) another. The quantitative understanding of greater impairment is problematic because it leaves the impairment principle vulnerable to counterexamples; just because impairment b impairs a larger number of abilities or the same number of abilities but for a longer period or to a higher degree does not mean that b is a greater impairment than a. The qualitative understanding of greater impairment is problematic because it does not explain examples of greater impairment used in the literature, means that an abortion is always a qualitatively more severe impairment than causing fetal alcohol syndrome regardless of how the organism is affected, and/or entails that lethal impairment is always greater than nonlethal impairment. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of equipoise in evaluating international research. It distinguishes two possible formulations of the equipoise requirement that license very different evaluations of international research proposals. The interpretation that adopts a narrow criterion of similarity between clinical contexts has played an important role in one recent controversy, but it suffers from a number of problems. An alternative interpretation that adopts a broader criterion of similarity does a better job of avoiding both exploitation of the brute fact of (...) social deprivation and the exploitation of needy populations for the benefit of more well-off populations. It also holds out the promise of reconciling the need to find interventions that can be employed in developing world contexts with the cluster of moral values that must constrain the way such research is carried out. (shrink)

Any view of equipoise faces perhaps the most radical and far-reaching objections from moral foundations. These objections hold that the equipoise requirement conflates the ethics of medical research and the ethics of clinical medicine. Once this conflation is recognized, this position holds, research can be given a new foundation on the imperative to avoid exploiting research participants. This article argues that what is novel in this critique is not as successful as its proponents claim and that the ultimate success of (...) this approach actually hinges on a version of the objection from utility. Nevertheless, this criticism highlights the limited scope of applicability of the equipoise requirement. The article concludes, therefore, by describing the outlines of what the article calls an ‘integrative approach’ to clinical trials. This approach represents one way in which the normative requirements of equipoise and the non-exploitation approach might be unified under a single, broad framework. (shrink)

An account of Aristotle's syllogistic (including a full square of opposition and allowing for empty nouns) as an integral part of first-order predicate logic is lacking. Some say it is not possible. It is not found in the tradition stemming from ukasiewicz's attempt nor in less formal approaches such as Strawson's. The ukasiewicz tradition leaves Aristotle's syllogistic as an autonomous axiomatized system. In this paper Aristotle's syllogistic is presented within first-order predicate logic with special restricted quantifiers. The theory is not (...) motivated primarily by historical considerations but as an accurate account of categorical sentences along lines suggested by recent work on natural language quantifiers and themes from supposition theory. It provides logical forms which conform to grammatical ones and is intended as a rival to accounts of quantifiers in natural language that appeal to binary quantifiers, for example, Wiggins or to restricted quantifiers, for example, Neale. (shrink)

To give substance to the rhetoric of ‘learning health systems’, a variety of novel trial designs are being explored to more seamlessly integrate research with medical practice, reduce study duration and reduce the number of participants allocated to ineffective interventions. Many of these designs rely on response adaptive randomisation. However, critics charge that RAR is unethical on the grounds that it violates the principle of equipoise. In this paper, I reconstruct critiques of RAR as holding that it is inconsistent with (...) five important ethical principles. I then argue that these criticisms rest on a faulty view of equipoise encouraged by the idea that a RAR study models the beliefs of a single rational agent about the relative merits of the interventions being studied. I outline a view in which RAR models an idealised health system in which diverse communities of fully informed experts shrink or grow as their constituent members update their expert opinions in light of reliable medical evidence. I show how a proper understanding of clinical equipoise can reconcile this conception of RAR with these five ethical principles. This analysis removes an in-principle objection to RAR and sheds important light on the relationship between clinical equipoise and transient diversity in the scientific community. (shrink)

I argue that we should rethink the nature and scope of Spinoza’s “one and the same” relation. Contrary to the standard reading, the nature of this relation is not identity but a union, and its scope includes all idea-object pairs, even God and the idea of God. A crucial reason we should adopt this dual picture is that the idea of God must be one and the same as something found when Nature is conceived under each of the other attributes. (...) If “one and the same” is interpreted as a relation of identity, this requirement cannot be met. However, maintaining that God and the idea of God are one and the same not only fulfills this requirement, but also is independently motivated. I also briefly consider how the thesis that God and the idea of God are one and the same affords us with positive insights concerning the nature of this relation. (shrink)

If there is any value in the idea that disease is something other than the mere absence of health then that value must lie in the way that diseases are classified. This paper offers further development of a view advanced previously, the 'contrastive model' of disease: it develops the account to handle asymptomatic disease ; and in doing so it relates the model to a broadly biostatistical view of health. The developments are prompted by considering cancers featuring viruses as prominent (...) causes, since these appear to amount to cases where the prescriptions of the contrastive model could be followed, but aren't. The resulting irrelevance objection claims that the contrastive model is irrelevant to medical science and practice. The paper seeks to rebut the irrelevance objection. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the dialogues between 'Protagoras', Theodorus and Socrates in "Theaetetus" 161-171 and emphasise the importance for this passage of a dilemma which refutation is shown to pose for relativism at 161e-162a. I argue that the two speeches delivered on Protagoras' behalf contain material that is deeply Socratic and suggest that this feature of the speeches should be interpreted as part of Plato's philosophical case against relativism, reflecting the relativist's own inability to defend his theory from attempts (...) to refute it. I then discuss Theodorus' role in the refutation of Protagoras and argue that his voice is needed to get relativism disproved in the self-refutation argument of 171a-c. I conclude with a brief discussion of the image of Protagoras at 171d. (shrink)

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

The emergence of a new tissue economy raises issues for the governance of risk and concepts of the body and self. This article explores the development of autologous cell therapies as a form of tissue engineering and considers how and why autologous applications are seen as less risky and more socially and politically acceptable. In a careful analysis of contemporary debates around the need for new international policies to regulate these technologies, we critically assess the discursive strategies employed to support (...) ideas of the body as a natural entity. Central to these debates are assumptions that autologous applications do not threaten the moral or corporeal integrity of the individual and that they are ‘an ethics-free zone’. Analysis reveals that concepts such as intercorporeality need to be refined if they are to assist our understanding of these cell-based therapies. We consider the biopolitics of Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) in order to show the linkages between the culturing of cells, regulation and the reproduction of the self. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a revival of interest in Michael Walzer's doctrine of ‘supreme emergency’. Simply put, the doctrine holds that, when a state confronts an opponent who threatens annihilation, it can be morally legitimate to violate one of the cardinal rules of the war convention – the principle of non-combatant immunity. Walzer cites the case of Britain's decision to bomb German cities in 1940 as a case in point. Although the theory of supreme emergency has been scrutinised, the historical (...) case that Walzer refers to has not been looked at in depth. This article seeks to remedy this problem by asking whether the principle actors involved in the decision to bomb German cities understood themselves to be in a supreme emergency. It argues that the British leadership never openly admitted that they were in fact targeting German civilians, and that the principle reason for this was a widespread belief that the British and American publics would not support such a campaign. As a result, throughout the war, the British government publicly maintained the fiction that the devastation of German cities was a collateral product of attacks on its industrial infrastructure. This, in turn, suggests that liberal societies – even those facing imminent destruction – do not tend to support a relaxing of the rules of non-combatant immunity, suggesting that the prohibition on deliberately killing non-combatants may be more embedded than has hitherto been thought. (shrink)

Scholars have paid little attention to the classifications among goods that Epicureans posit. This paper remedies that deficiency. I argue for three claims. First, if we take instrumental goods to be those that are a means or causally lead to the intrinsic good and we take constitutive goods to be those that are part of or amount to the intrinsic good, then the Epicureans probably took reverence for a wise man and wisdom to be instrumental goods but self-sufficiency and phronesis (...) to be constitutive goods. Second, Epicurean personal goods are those that produce eudaimonia but are firmly up to us to achieve rather than owing to chance. Third, Epicurean immortal goods are those that bring about divinely resilient tranquility for those who cultivate them. I then show how positing these classifications enables the Epicureans to claim that godlike happiness is achievable through our own efforts no matter the external circumstances. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 32-34.

Scholars are increasingly concerned about social biases in facial analysis systems, particularly with regard to the tangible consequences of misidentification of marginalized groups. However, few have examined how automated facial analysis technologies intersect with the historical genealogy of racialized gender—the gender binary and its classification as a highly racialized tool of colonial power and control. In this paper, we introduce the concept of auto-essentialization: the use of automated technologies to re-inscribe the essential notions of difference that were established under colonial (...) rule. We consider how the face has emerged as a legitimate site of gender classification, despite being historically tied to projects of racial domination. We examine the history of gendering the face and body, from colonial projects aimed at disciplining bodies which do not fit within the European gender binary, to sexology's role in normalizing that binary, to physiognomic practices that ascribed notions of inferiority to non-European groups and women. We argue that the contemporary auto-essentialization of gender via the face is both racialized and trans-exclusive: it asserts a fixed gender binary and it elevates the white face as the ultimate model of gender difference. We demonstrate that imperialist ideologies are reflected in modern automated facial analysis tools in computer vision through two case studies: commercial gender classification and the security of both small-scale and large-scale spaces. Thus, we posit a rethinking of ethical attention to these systems: not as immature and novel, but as mature instantiations of much older technologies. (shrink)

New challenges are constantly emerging in the social sector in South Africa. Various social (non-profit) organisations are developing new and innovative ways to accommodate these challenges and to meet social needs. The aim of this research article is to measure the current social innovation capacity of the Dutch Reformed Church (DR Church), with reference to innovation capabilities, to determine at what level the church is meeting new social needs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from six different congregations and (...) a governing body in the Pretoria area, South Africa, was included. Twelve participants were interviewed between August and October 2017. The participants, consisting of ministers and board members, each held a management position. The social innovation capacity measurement of the DR Church showed that the organisation was successfully developing new ways to serve as a social agent in society. There are obstacles that prohibit the DR Church from developing new innovative ways to meet the social needs of its society, for example, entrepreneurial, developmental and leadership change capacities. Recommendations are made to maximise social innovation capacity of the managers (ministers and board members). (shrink)

The article concerns a mediaeval Indian debate over whether, and if so how, we can know that a self exists, understood here as a subject of cognition that outlives individual cognitions, being their common substrate. A passage that has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into a European language, from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī, ‘Blossoms of Reasoning’, is examined. This rich passage reveals something not yet noted in secondary literature, namely that Mīmāṃsakas advanced four different models of what happens when the (...) self perceives itself. The article clarifies the differences between the four, and the historical and logical relationships between them. It also hypothesizes pressures that constituted the need for the creation of the newer views, i.e. perceived problems with the earlier views, which the proponents of the newer views saw themselves as overcoming. (shrink)

A term td is called a ternary deductive term for a variety of algebras V if the identity td≈r holds in V and ∈θ yields td≈td for any A∈V and any principal congruence θ on A. A connective f is called td-distributive if td)≈ f,…,td). If L is a propositional logic and V is a corresponding variety that has a TD term td, then any admissible in L rule, the premises of which contain only td-distributive operations, is derivable, and the (...) substitution r↦td is a projective L-unifier for any formula containing only td-distributive connectives. The above substitution is a generalization of the substitution introduced by T. Prucnal to prove structural completeness of the implication fragment of intuitionistic propositional logic. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 55-57, June 2011.

This paper takes as its starting point an examination of the current status of some of the concerns that were raised in the mid?1980s about methodological problems faced by educational researchers using the behavioural approach in schools. These concerns included the measurement of agreement between observers, the interpretation of raw data extracted, the potential influences of observers and the inherent properties of research designs. Subsequently, some more wide?ranging concerns are considered, in particular the kinds of behaviour selected for treatment, the (...) lack of analysis of what is involved in teachers? positive responses to pupils? behaviour and the relatively uninvestigated effects of teachers? negative responses. The conclusions are presented as a series of points that are listed, as far as possible, in the order in which they confront the investigator. (shrink)

(2006). Confronting a World without Justice: Brian Barry’s Why Social Justice Matters. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 461-472.

A popular interpretation of linguistic theories has it that they should describe the brain at a high level of abstraction. One way this has been understood is as the requirement that the theory’s derivational structure reflect (by being isomorphic to) relevant structural properties of the language user’s brain. An important criticisrn of this idea, made originally by Crispin Wright against Gareth Evans in the 1980s, still has purchase, notwithstanding attempts to reply to it, notably by Martin Davies and, indirectly, Christopher (...) Peacocke. Wright’s objection seems to have been forgotten rather than seen off. (shrink)