To understand the endogenous components of the event-related brain potential (ERP), we must use data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity. These hypotheses, in turn, generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component. We review the application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component. The amplitude of the P300 is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and the task relevance of the eliciting events, whereas its (...) latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation. These and other factors suggest that the P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised. Tests of three predictions based on this “context updating” model are reviewed. Verleger's critique is based on a misconstrual of the model as well as a partial and misleading reading of the relevant literature. (shrink)

We concur with Sommer et al. that the processing manifested by P300 is not necessarily conscious. We also note that Verleger is yet again adducing evidence that contradicts an assertion we never made.

Tenure is designed to protect the academic freedom of faculty members by insulating them from arbitrary dismissal by administrative authorities external to their community of scholars. Therefore, the target article's focus on constraints that derive from peer pressures and academic politics is misplaced, rendering the results of the survey irrelevant to the issue of the value of tenure. (Published Online February 8 2007).

Initial vaccine allocations for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be limited. It is crucial to assess the ethical values associated with different methods of allocation, as well as important scientific and practical questions. This Viewpoint identifies three ethical values, benefiting people and limiting harm; prioritizing disadvantaged populations; and equal concern for all. It then explains why these values support prioritizing three groups: health care workers; other essential workers and people in high-transmission settings; and people with medical vulnerabilities associated with (...) poorer COVID-19 outcomes. In contrast, two other groups, people over 65 without medical vulnerabilities and participants in clinical research, present more complex ethical questions. This prioritization also encompasses valuing direct benefits to vaccinated individuals, indirect benefits to individuals protected from spread of infection, and indirect health and socioeconomic benefits to those protected from harm as health system and societal functioning improve. Vaccine allocation that recognizes important ethical values and avoids arbitrariness, waste, and corruption can ensure that the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine is both fair and perceived as fair. (shrink)

It has become increasingly difficult for individuals to exercise meaningful control over the personal data they disclose to companies or to understand and track the ways in which that data is exchanged and used. These developments have led to an emerging consensus that existing privacy and data protection laws offer individuals insufficient protections against harms stemming from current data practices. However, an effective and ethically justified way forward remains elusive. To inform policy in this area, we propose the Ethical Data (...) Practices framework. The framework outlines six principles relevant to the collection and use of personal data—minimizing harm, fairly distributing benefits and burdens, respecting autonomy, transparency, accountability, and inclusion—and translates these principles into action-guiding practical imperatives for companies that process personal data. In addition to informing policy, the practical imperatives can be voluntarily adopted by companies to promote ethical data practices. (shrink)

In our study, we examine the association between hedge fund activism and a target firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and whether activists can promote socially responsible investments while upholding shareholders’ interests. Using different matched samples, we find a strong positive association between the target firm’s CSR in the year before it is targeted by activists and its probability of being targeted by a hedge fund. Classifying hedge fund activists into socially and non-socially responsible funds based on their objectives, we (...) find that both give similar level of consideration to a firm’s CSR activities when initiating campaigns. Similar to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we demonstrate that hedge funds have, on average, a negative impact on target firms’ CSR in the years following the initial investments. Complementary to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we compare the two types of hedge funds and find an asymmetric effect of the hedge funds’ campaigns. Socially responsible hedge fund campaigns are associated with a large _increase_ in their target’s CSR, whereas non-socially responsible hedge funds _decrease_ this measure in their target. Finally, we find that target firms exhibit a long-term improvement in future stock returns and profitability. These findings provide evidence that certain types of activists, such as socially responsible funds, promote both _stakeholder_ and _shareholders’_ long-term interests. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that lying differs from mere misleading in a way that can be morally relevant: liars commit themselves to something they believe to be false, while misleaders avoid such commitment, and this difference can make a moral difference. Even holding all else fixed, a lie can therefore be morally worse than a corresponding misleading utterance. But, we argue, there are also cases in which the difference in commitment makes lying morally better than misleading, (...) as well as cases in which the difference is not morally relevant. This view conflicts with the two main positions philosophers have defended in the ethics of lying and misleading, which entail either that lying is in virtue of its nature worse than misleading or that there is no morally relevant difference between lying and misleading. (shrink)

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by (...) drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

This essay aims to show how feminist theoretical and practical perspectives have enriched and deepened debate about moral and social issues generated by the proliferation and commodification of new reproductive techniques. It evaluates alternative feminist appraisals beginning with the first group to organize a collective response to the medicalization of infertility and explores several weaknesses working within their assessment: objectification of infertile women, naturalizing constructions of motherhood, hostility to technology, and an overly simplistic conception of power relations. Next, it shows (...) how subsequent feminists have reframed the issues to overcome these weaknesses, drawing on themes prominent in recent theoretical debates: the need to reclaim women's agency, to revalue mothering, and to reappraise power relations. Lastly, it weighs the prospects for a collaborative politics that is sensitive to the social marginalization of vulnerable women and suggests practical strategies for responding to mounting pressures to procreate at any price. (shrink)

Height preferences reflecting positive assortative mating for height—wherein an individual’s own height positively predicts the preferred height of their mate—have been observed in several distinct human populations and are thought to increase reproductive fitness. However, the extent to which assortative preferences for height differ strategically for short-term versus long-term relationship partners, as they do for numerous other indices of mate quality, remains unclear. We explore this possibility in a large representative sample of over 500 men and women aged 15–77 from (...) Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States. Participants’ own heights were measured, and they indicated their height preferences for a long-term and short-term mate using graphic stimuli containing metric indices. Replicating the “male-taller norm,” participants on average preferred taller-than-average male mates, and shorter-than-average female mates. Positive assortative preferences for height were observed across sexes and samples, however the strength of these height preferences varied with relationship context for men, and not for women. Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships, indicating stronger assortative preferences for height in a long-term context. These results provide preliminary evidence that, in addition to mate preferences for other physical traits related to mate quality such as masculinity in the body, face, and voice, assortative preferences for height do vary as a function of expected relationship length, but this was surprisingly only observed in preferences for female height. (shrink)

The principled approach to theory building that has been a conspicuous mark of bioethical theory for the past generation has in recent years fallen under considerable critical scrutiny. Although some critics have confined themselves to reordering the dominant principles, others have rejected a principled approach entirely and turned to alternative paradigms. Prominent among critics are antiprin-ciplists, who want to jettison the principle-based approach altogether and adopt a casuistic model, and communitarians, who favor an eclectic model combining features of both the (...) casuistic model and a modified principled approach. Particularly conspicuous in virtually all such critiques is their challenge to the preeminence of the principle of autonomy. Critical barbs have been aimed not only at theories favoring a hierarchical ordering of moral principles that give first place to autonomy, but also at those that include autonomy among a set of ostensibly coequal principles. Though these critics have performed a valued function by displacing bioethical principles from their Olympian perch beyond actual decision-making contexts, some version of the principle of autonomy may, nonetheless, be well worth defending but for very different reasons than those put forward by its supporters. (shrink)

Medical issues affecting health care have become everyday media events. In response to mounting public concern, growing numbers of bioethicists are being appointed to medical school faculties and public policy panels. However the ideas voiced in these forums are seldom informed by feminist perspectives. In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers (...) less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries. (shrink)

Anne Donchin attended graduate school while raising four children, received her doctorate from the University of Texas in 1970, taught for 18 years in Texas and New York, then joined the philosophy department at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis in 1982. Here she developed a Women’s Studies program, specialized and in numerous ways pioneered in feminist bioethics, and won two prestigious grants. She co-edited two books, published some forty articles, and co-founded and co-ordinated The International Network on Feminist Approaches to (...) Bioethics. Before and after retiring she served on the editorial boards of an encyclopedia, several international bioethics collections and nine prestigious journals. Her publications have influenced many scholars here and abroad. At the time of her death she was at work on a book: Procreation, Power and Personal Autonomy: Feminist Reflections, which is now available on IUPUIScholarWorks. Laura Purdy has generously edited, organized, and, where possible, updated the manuscript. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of a decrease in auditor litigation risk in a setting that isolates a change in auditor litigation risk from changes in auditor reputation. _StoneRidge Investment Partners v. Scientific Atlanta_ is a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricted secondary actor liability in class action suits, resulting in a decrease in class actions that listed auditors as defendants. We document that the _StoneRidge_ decision is associated with a negative CAR for clients of Big 4 auditors and (...) industry specialist auditors, in particular those associated with high-litigation risk, low cash, and past incidences of modified going concern opinions. These findings are consistent with investor perception of lower potential payoffs from secondary defendants in class action suits, in particular auditors, following the _StoneRidge_ decision. We also document that auditors are more (less) likely to accept (reject) risky clients and charge lower audit fees to risky clients after _StoneRidge_, consistent with a decrease in auditor litigation risk that increases auditor risk tolerance. Finally, we provide evidence that audit firms issue fewer going concern opinions following _StoneRidge_, consistent with a decrease in litigation risk leading to lower audit quality_._ Our results are relevant to policy makers as they consider the disciplinary role of litigation on audit markets. (shrink)

Two recent articles [Gronchi et al., Citation2018. Automatic and controlled attentional orienting in the elderly: A dual-process view of the positivity effect. Acta Psychologica, 185, 229–234; Wirth & Wentura, Citation2020. It occurs after all: Attentional bias towards happy faces in the dot-probe task. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(5), 2463–2481] report attentional biases for happy facial expressions in the dot-probe paradigm, albeit in different directions. While Wirth and Wentura report a bias towards happy expressions, Gronchi et al. found a reversed effect. (...) A striking difference between the studies was the task performed by the participants. While in Wirth and Wentura, participants performed a discrimination task, they performed a location task in Gronchi et al. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the two versions of the dot-probe paradigm. With the discrimination task, the bias towards happy faces was replicated. However, the location task yielded a null effect. In Experiment 2, we found a cueing effect with an abrupt onset cue in both tasks. However, for the location task a congruence-sequence effect (a typical characteristic of response-priming processes) occurred. This result suggests that in the location task, attentional processes are confounded with response-priming processes. We recommend to generally use discrimination tasks. (shrink)

Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.

Coronavirus disease 2019 can lead to respiratory failure. Some patients require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. During the current pandemic, health care resources in some cities have been overwhelmed, and doctors have faced complex decisions about resource allocation. We present a case in which a pediatric hospital caring for both children and adults seeks to establish guidelines for the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation if there are not enough resources to treat every patient. Experts in critical care, end-of-life care, bioethics, and (...) health policy discuss if age should guide rationing decisions. (shrink)

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

Countermeasures for mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), primarily vaccines, have been in limited supply in many countries during outbreaks. Equitable allocation of scarce resources during public health emergencies is a complex challenge. Identifying the objectives and core values for the allocation of mpox countermeasures, using those values to provide guidance for priority groups and prioritisation tiers, and optimising allocation implementation are important. The fundamental values for the allocation of mpox countermeasures are: preventing death and illness; reducing the association between death (...) or illness and unjust disparities; prioritising those who prevent harm or mitigate disparities; recognising contributions to combating an outbreak; and treating similar individuals similarly. Ethically and equitably marshalling available countermeasures requires articulating these fundamental objectives, identifying priority tiers, and recognising trade-offs between prioritising the people at the highest risk of infection and the people at the highest risk of harm if infected. These five values can provide guidance on preferable priority categories for a more ethically sound response and suggest methods for optimising allocation of countermeasures for mpox and other diseases for which countermeasures are in short supply. Properly marshalling available countermeasures will be crucial for future effective and equitable national responses to outbreaks. (shrink)

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" (...) preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023. (shrink)

Informed consent documents are central to the informed consent process and are required for participation in clinical trials in the U.S. The primary purpose of the document is “to assist a prospect...

Coronavirus disease is having an unprecedented and unpredictable impact on the world's economy. The pandemic has driven the world toward adapting to the current circumstances regardless of the business, sector, or industry. The coronavirus epidemic has affected the global economy and service sector. The purpose of the current study is to assess the effect of COVID-19 on service sector growth and sustainability. Global sectors and industries are trying to anchor themselves amidst the pandemic. The study focuses on the sectors that (...) are badly hit by the outbreak and discussed the strategies and responses different countries are taking to sustain their economies. This study concludes that the vital role of Information Technology and digitization supports the economies in their fight against the pandemic and helps them sustain themselves amid crises. This study also contributes to the body of literature by suggesting IT-based solutions for various industries to elevate effective responsiveness and avoid significant losses. (shrink)

Western philosophy has been powerfully influenced by a paradigm of personal agency that is linked to an individualistic conception of autonomy. This essay contrasts this conception with an alternative understanding that recognizes a social component built into the very meaning of autonomy. After reviewing feminist critiques of the dominant conception of autonomy, I develop the broad outlines of a relational view and apply this reconceptualization to a concrete situation in order to show how this altered view reconfigures understanding of the (...) participants' relationships and each of their personal perspectives. The situation chosen, physician‐assisted suicide, is intended principally to illustrate one respect in which a relational conception of autonomy reframes a controversial moral issue and reveals perspectives toward it that are likely to be obscured when autonomy is viewed through the lens of the dominant individualistic conception. My principal aim is to show that when autonomy is understood relationally, respecting others' autonomy is likely to be a far more complex issue than is apparent within the standard conception, both for those with professional responsibilities and often for personal intimates as well. (shrink)

The eighth-century Latin manuscript Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, L 99 Sup. contains fifteen palimpsest leaves previously used for three Greek scientific texts: a text of unknown authorship on mathematical mechanics and catoptrics, known as the Fragmentum Mathematicum Bobiense (three leaves), Ptolemy's Analemma (six leaves), and an astronomical text that has hitherto remained unidentified and almost entirely unread (six leaves). We report here on the current state of our research on this last text, based on multispectral images. The text, incompletely preserved, (...) is a treatise on the construction and uses of a nine-ringed armillary instrument, identifiable as the “meteoroscope” invented by Ptolemy and known to us from passages in Ptolemy's Geography and in writings of Pappus and Proclus. We further argue that the author of our text was Ptolemy himself. (shrink)

Principle-based formulations of bioethical theory have recently come under increasing scrutiny, particularly insofar as they give prominence to personal autonomy. This essay critiques the dominant conceptualization of autonomy and urges an alternative formulation freed from the individualistic assumptions that pervade the prevailing framework. Drawing on feminist perspectives, I discuss the need for a vision of patient autonomy that joins relational experiences to individuality and acknowledges the influence of patterns of power and authority on the exercise of patient agency. Deficiencies in (...) the current models of science and social relations guiding medical practice are analyzed, particularly (1) the tendency to disregard the patients self-knowledge and (2) failure to recognize limitations on the generalizability of medical knowledge. Models of social relations such as mothering and friendship are explored to advance a conception of autonomy better suited to the practical activities of medicine. In conclusion, I consider how acknowledgement of the specificity and complexity of social relations can contribute to reconfiguration of other principles comprising the standard framework of bioethics, particularly beneficence, justice, and equality. (shrink)

This paper interprets the British legislative process that initiated the first comprehensive national regulation of embryo research and fertility services and examines subsequent efforts to restrain the assisted reproduction industry. After describing and evaluating British regulatory measures, I consider successive failures to control the assisted reproduction industry in the US. I discuss disparities between UK and US regulatory initiatives and their bearing on regulation in other countries. Then I turn to the political and social structures in which the assisted reproduction (...) industry is embedded. I argue that regulatory bodies are seldom neutral arbiters. They tend to respond most readily to special interests and neglect strategies that could more effectively meet the health needs of the people they represent. Neither national nor international bodies have aggressively pursued policies to harness the industry, reduce infertility rates, or meet the needs of people whose fertility is threatened by substandard healthcare and environmental neglect. In conclusion, I consider recent initiatives by activist groups to mount an alternative response to the industry's current practices and build a transnational reproductive justice movement. (shrink)

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates (...) between individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

An exploration of alternative perspectives toward recent innovations in reproductive technology: support for new techniques for the sake of the kind of feminist future they facilitate; unqualified opposition despite therapeutic benefit to individual women; or qualified opposition depending upon specific threats to women's interests and relationships between these positions and values bound up with mothering practices.

Edited by Thomas A. Shannon, this series provides anthologies of critical essays and reflections by leading ethicists in four pivotal areas: reproductive technologies, genetic technologies, death and dying, and health care policy. The goal of this series is twofold: first, to provide a set of readers on thematic topics for introductory or survey courses in bioethics or for courses with a particular theme or time limitation. Second, each of the readers in this series is designed to help students focus more (...) thoroughly and effectively on specific topics that flesh out the ethical issues at the core of bioethics. The series is also highly accessible to general readers interested in bioethics. (shrink)