Using panel data from three Canadian provinces, this article examines the relationship between the de-marketing of tobacco products through provincial-level price increases and consumers’ attempts to quit smoking as measured by the uptake of tobacco replacement therapies. We ground our hypotheses in the rational addiction model and the theory of planned behavior. Our analyses suggest a positive, one-month lagged effect of a price increase of tobacco products on the uptake of tobacco replacement therapies. This effect dissipates 3 months later, suggesting (...) that there is a critical period for aggressive de-marketing of tobacco products. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and future research into de-marketing harmful consumer products. (shrink)

Ethics courses are most commonly evaluated using reaction measures. However, little is known about the specific types of reaction data being collected and how these reaction data relate to improvements in trainee performance. Using a sample of 381 ethics training sessions, major reaction data categories were identified. Content and course satisfaction were the most frequently collected types of reaction criteria. Furthermore, content relevance and course satisfaction showed strong, positive relationships with performance criteria, whereas content satisfaction demonstrated a moderate, negative relationship. (...) These results and future directions for ethics training evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon the archaeological and philosophical literature to offer an analysis and diagnosis of the popular ‘ancient aliens’ theory. First, we argue that ancient aliens theory is a form of conspiracy theory. Second, we argue that it differs from other familiar conspiracy theories because it does distinctive ideological work. Third, we argue that ancient aliens theory is a form of non-contextualized inquiry that sacrifices the very thing that makes archaeological research successful, and does so for the sake of (...) popular accessibility. Rather than merely dismissing ancient aliens as ‘pseudoarchaeology’ on demarcationist grounds, we offer a more complicated account of how the theory works, and what ideological work it does. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of literature on training in the responsible conduct of research, few studies have examined the effectiveness of delivery formats used in ethics courses. The present effort sought to address this gap in the literature through a meta-analytic review of 66 empirical studies, representing 106 ethics courses and 10,069 participants. The frequency and effectiveness of 67 instructional and process-based content areas were also assessed for each delivery format. Process-based contents were best delivered face-to-face, whereas contents delivered online (...) were most effective when restricted to compliance-based instructional contents. Overall, hybrid courses were found to be most effective, suggesting that ethics courses are best delivered using a blend of formats and content areas. Implications and recommendations for future development of ethics education courses in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Equity is a foundational concept for the new World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Treaty. WHO Member States are currently negotiating to turn this undefined concept into tangible outcomes by borrowing a policy mechanism from international environmental law: “access and benefit-sharing” (ABS).

Bullying remains a pervasive problem in healthcare, and evidence suggests systems in place are not utilised due to perceptions of ineffectiveness and inequity. This study examines bystander responses to bullying and factors that influence decisions to intervene. We explore relationships between bystanders’ perceptions of psychological safety across three levels (organisation, supervisor and colleague) and reactions to witnessing bullying. We suggest psychological safety would be positively associated with the decision to intervene. Findings indicate the most pervasive reaction to witnessing incidents of (...) bullying is to discuss with colleagues, a low‐involvement reaction. We find perceptions of supervisory and organisational safety/support are positively related to high‐involvement decisions such as formal reporting of the incidents, highlighting the importance of support from those in power. However, perceptions of collegial support may lead to low‐involvement responses, which risk reinforcing and underpinning dysfunctional organisational dynamics by providing informal social and emotional responses that may substitute more formal organisational responses to this persistent problem. This study highlights the importance of support from individuals in power if bystanders are to feel comfortable making high‐involvement interventions. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Aim: Explore nurses’ values and perceptions regarding the practice of medical aid in dying. Background: Medical aid in dying is becoming increasing legal in the United States. The laws and American Nurses Association documents limit nursing involvement in this practice. Nurses’ values regarding this controversial topic are poorly understood. Methodology: Cross-sectional electronic survey design sent to nurse members of the American Nurses Association. Inductive thematic content analysis was applied to open-ended comments. Ethical Considerations: Approved by the institutional review board (#191046). (...) Participants: 1213 nurses provided 3639 open-ended comments. More than 80% of participants self-identified as white 58% held a graduate degree; and half were of Christian faith. Results: Values ranged on a continuum expressed through four themes: “Honoring Patient Autonomy without Judgment,” “Honoring with Limitations,” “Not until...,” and “Adamantly against.” Some felt it was a duty to honor the patients’ wishes, set aside own beliefs, and respect patients’ choices often with a spiritual connotation. Nurses held concerns about the process, policy, potential psychological harm, legal risk, and the need to learn more about MAID. Nurse who were adamantly against MAID associated the practice with murder/suicide and against religious beliefs. Disparate values were expressed about changing the MAID legislation to allow patient support with taking MAID medications and allowing MAID via advance directive. Conclusions: Nurses desire more education on MAID. There is not one universally held position on the nurse’s role during MAID. Healthcare policy/standards need to accommodate the wide variation in nurses’ values. Implications: Nurses desire education regarding their role in MAID. Nurses are encouraged to participate in policy discussions as the practice becomes increasingly legal. Managers need to expect that nurses, patients, and families will need psychological support to participate in MAID. Careful construction of policy/standards is needed to minimize conflict, moral distress, and psychological harm amongst nurses. Further research is needed. (shrink)

Older adults prefer positive over negative information in a lab setting, compared to young adults. The extent to which OA avoid negative events or information relevant for their health and safety is not clear. We first investigated age differences in preferences for fear-enhancing vs. fear-reducing news articles during the Ebola Outbreak of 2014. We were able to collect data from 15 YA and 13 OA during this acute health event. Compared to YA, OA were more likely to read the fear-enhancing (...) article, select hand-sanitizer over lip balm, and reported greater fear of Ebola. We further investigated our research question during the COVID-19 pandemic with 164 YA and 171 OA. Participants responded to an online survey about the COVID-19 pandemic across 13 days during the initial peak of the pandemic in the United States. Both YA and OA preferred to read positive over negative news about the coronavirus, but OA were even more likely than YA to prefer the positive news article. No age differences in the fear of contraction were found, but OA engaged in more health-protective behaviors compared to YA. Although OA may not always report greater fear than YA or seek out negative information related to a health concern, they still engage in protective health behaviors. Thus, although positivity effects were observed in attention and emotional reports, OA still modified their behaviors more than YA, suggesting that positivity effects did not hamper OA ability to respond to a health crisis. (shrink)

The French philosopher Michel Foucault's work has had a significant impact on feminist and lesbian/gay scholarship in the United States. These explorations of gender and/or sexuality in which feminist, lesbian, and gay scholars rely on Foucault's ideas carry significant implications for the organization of knowledge in our culture beyond the issues of gender and sexuality narrowly defined. Many feminist, lesbian, and gay scholars in the United States initially read Foucault primarily as a historian. Since roughly 1985, many such scholars have (...) increasingly considered and critiqued the philosophical implications of his work, elaborating an account of the assumptions about gender and sexuality that reside at the core of ostensibly universal descriptions of human subjectivity. ;Participants in debates about the "social construction" of sexuality during the 1980s observed that Foucault did not originate social constructionist work in the field, widespread assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding. Indeed, the social constructionist position differs importantly from Foucault's analysis of sexuality as the truth of subjectivity. Historians in the United States have modified many of the substantive claims in Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction. More recently, scholars have attended less to Foucault's substantive claims in favor of his approach to questions of knowledge and subjectivity. ;Feminist, lesbian, and gay scholars have long suspected that gender and sexuality play a major role in authorizing subjects to produce knowledge. Many such scholars continue within existing modes of inquiry to substitute their own, sympathetic versions of their selves for prejudicial, hegemonic versions. Scholars working off of Foucault and other poststructuralist thinkers increasingly suspect that prejudicial assumptions about gender and sexuality lie embedded in the very definition of current modes of inquiry, and thus require a fundamental reconceptualization of knowledge. (shrink)

There are broadly five interconnected meanings of the noun ‘discipline’. Disciplinawere instructions to disciples, and hence a branch of instruction or department of knowledge. This religious context provided the modern educational notion of a ‘body of knowledge’, or a discipline such as sociology or economics. We can define discipline as a body of knowledge and knowledge for the body, because the training of the mind has inevitably involved a training of the body. Second, it signified a method of training or (...) instruction in a body of knowledge. Discipline had an important military connection involving drill, practice in the use of weapons. Third, there is an ecclesiastical meaning referring to a system of rules by which order is maintained in a church. It included the use of penal methods to achieve obedience. To discipline is to chastise. Fourth, to discipline is to bring about obedience through various forms of punishment; it is a means of correction. Finally there is a rare use of the term to describe a medical regimen in which ‘doctor's orders’ brings about a discipline of the patient. In contemporary society, there is, following the work of Michel Foucault, the notion of increasing personal regulation resulting in a ‘disciplinary society’ or a society based upon carceral institutions. (shrink)

Le livre que l’historien américain Frederick Jackson Turner compila en 1920, à partir de différentes communications prononcées devant autant d’associations ou de sociétés dès la fin du XIXe siècle, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, est l’un de ceux qui eurent le plus d’impact sur les études historiques américaines.

According to K. McDaniel’s and J. Turner’s Ontological Pluralism, there are many ways of being that are more fundamental than being in general. In this paper, I shall analyze some constraints on this doctrine. Among other, ontological pluralists are committed to the idea that there are no things that have no way of being at all and that it is not legitimate to quantify over ways of being. Later on, I shall introduce a problem for ontological pluralism: if there (...) is a privileged way of being an ontological pluralist, then, given those constraints, ontological pluralists cannot logically express that privileged way. Finally, I shall justify the acceptance of a Half-Meinongian solution to this problem, that is roughly grounded on the acceptance of entities that have no way of being at all. (shrink)

In questo articolo, prendo in considerazione i vantaggi e i problemi connessi all’accettazione del pluralismo ontologico di J. Turner e K. Mcdaniel, vale a dire, della tesi secondo la quale vi sarebbero diversi modi di essere (o di esistere) che sono più fondamentali rispetto dall’essere (o all’esistenza) in generale. Nella prima sezione, esamino due problemi per gli attualisti, cioè quei filosofi che affermano che non ci sono entità che non esistono. Nella seconda sezione, valuto i vantaggi del pluralismo ontologico (...) attualista nell’affrontare tali problemi. Tuttavia, nella terza sezione, presento una serie di problemi che invece affliggono il pluralismo ontologico. Infine, nella quarta sezione, difendo l’idea che i pluralisti ontologici non-attualisti (e cioè i meinonghiani) possono meglio far fronte ad alcuni (ma non tutti) di questi problemi. La mia conclusione è che chi intende difendere il pluralismo ontologico, dovrebbe farlo da una prospettiva non attualista. (shrink)

I present a puzzle about inquiry and discuss two potential solutions. The puzzle stems from two equally compelling sets of data suggesting that, on the one hand, there’s something epistemically defective with inquiring into questions that don’t have true answers. On the other hand, however, there can be scenarios in which we are epistemically permitted to inquire into questions that don’t have true answers. How is it that inquiries into questions that don’t have true answers can both be defective and (...) permissible from an epistemic point of view? The first solution I consider maintains that inquiries into questions that don’t have true answers are always impermissible but can be excusable. The second solution maintains that inquiries into questions that don’t have true answers are bad inquiries that can be conducted by inquirers we can legitimately trust. I argue against the former and in favor of the latter. (shrink)

The validity of psychological measurement is crucially connected to a peculiar form of epistemic circularity. This circularity can be a threat when there are no independent ways to assess whether a certain procedure is actually measuring the intended target of measurement. This paper focuses on how Gustav Theodor Fechner addressed the measurement circularity that emerged in his psychophysical research. First, I show that Fechner's approach to the problem of circular measurement involved a core idealizing assumption of a shared human physiology. (...) Second, I assess Fechner's approach to this issue against the backdrop of his own epistemology of measurement and the measurement context of his time. Third, I claim that, from a coherentist and historicallysituated perspective, Fechner's quantification can be regarded as a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. To conclude, I draw from these insights some general epistemological reflections that are relevant to current quantitative psychology. (shrink)

Marginal structural models can be used to estimate the causal effect of a potentially time-varying treatment in the presence of time-dependent confounding via weighted regression. The standard approach of using inverse probability of treatment weighting can be sensitive to model misspecification and lead to high-variance estimates due to extreme weights. Various methods have been proposed to partially address this, including covariate balancing propensity score to mitigate treatment model misspecification, and truncation and stabilized-IPTW to temper extreme weights. In this article, we (...) present kernel optimal weighting, a convex-optimization-based approach that finds weights for fitting the MSMs that flexibly balance time-dependent confounders while simultaneously penalizing extreme weights, directly addressing the above limitations. We further extend KOW to control for informative censoring. We evaluate the performance of KOW in a simulation study, comparing it with IPTW, sIPTW, and CBPS. We demonstrate the use of KOW in studying the effect of treatment initiation on time-to-death among people living with human immunodeficiency virus and the effect of negative advertising on elections in the United States. (shrink)

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Em minha tese de doutorado defendi que, para compreender como Hegel articula a passagem da contradição dialética à lógica, o conceito hegeliano de contradição deve ser analisado sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia. Para sustentar este argumento, propus uma atualização deste conceito a partir de uma estrutura antinômica. Essa atualização, porém, trouxe um outro problema: nessa reconstrução, a contradição, em Hegel, continua a se desenvolver de maneira gradativa, ao passo que a lógica tradicional trabalha apenas com valores de p e (...) -p, e não com níveis de gradação. Assim, para continuar sustentando o argumento de que o conceito hegeliano de contradição, sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia, pode ser compreendido como uma contradição lógica, seria necessário encontrar uma lógica que não operasse apenas com valores binários, mas também com níveis de gradação. Foi a partir dessa necessidade que surgiu a ideia de aplicar o conceito de contradição em Hegel à Lógica Difusa, e esta é, portanto, a proposta do presente artigo. (shrink)

Like COVID-19, new infectious disease outbreaks emerge almost annually, and studies predict that this trend will continue due to a variety of factors, including an aging population, ease of travel, and globalization of the economy. In response to episodic public health crises, governments and organizations develop, implement, and enforce policies, procedures, protocols, and programs. The epidemiological triad is both a model of disease causation and fundamentally used to design and deploy such control measures. Here we adapt this model to the (...) workplace setting and use the epidemiological triad to characterize the related ethical challenges in implementing the control measures employers face as a guide for a workplace intervention framework. Through this approach, our aim is to show how an integrated ethical framework, grounded in epidemiological principles, has important implications for how we categorize, understand, and resolve the difficult decisions that emerge in the workplace under pandemic conditions. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher's epistemology is fully evolutionary. However, which kind of evolution are we referring to when talking of evolutionary epistemology? If we take evolution to be an undifferentiated concept we are on a wrong track. The evolutionary "pattern" is certainly one, but this should not lead us to assume that the specific characteristics of mankind must be left out of the picture. Rescher's evolutionary framework is pluralistic. We have both a biological evolution which is Darwinian, and a cultural evolution which (...) is Teilhardian, governed by a rationally-guided selection among purposefully devised mutational variations. (shrink)

Las relaciones entre jueces y política pueden analizarse desde numerosos puntos de vista. Dado que no es posible agotar en este texto un campo de argumentos tan complejo, desarrollaré algunas consideraciones teniendo como punto de partida definiciones específicas de los dos términos, “jueces” y “política” que están relacionados con el tema del seminario.

Summary By introducing the concept of “invariants”, Koffka endowed perceptual psychology with a flexible theoretical tool, which is suitable for representing vision situations in which a definite part of the stimulus pattern is relevant but not sufficient to determine a corresponding part of the perceived scene. He characterised his “invariance principle” as a principle conclusively breaking free from the “old constancy hypothesis”, which rigidly surmised point-to-point relations between stimulus and perceptual properties. In this paper, we explain the basic terms and (...) assumptions implicit in Koffka’s concept, by representing them in a set-theoretic framework. Then, we highlight various aspects and implications of the concept in terms of answers to six separate questions: forms of invariants, heuristic paths to them, what is invariant in an invariant, roots of conditional indeterminacy, variability vs. indeterminacy, and overcoming of the indeterminacy. Lastly, we illustrate the lasting value and theoretical power of the concept, by showing that Koffka’s insights relating to it do occur in modern perceptual psychology and by highlighting its role in a model of perceptual transparency. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJudgments of emotional stimuli’s valence and arousal can differ based on the perceiver’s age. With most of the existing literature on age-related changes in such ratings based on perception...

BackgroundCommentators believe that the ethical decision-making climate is instrumental in enhancing interprofessional collaboration in intensive care units. Our aim was twofold: to determine the perception of the ethical climate, levels of moral distress, and intention to leave one's job among nurses and physicians, and between the different ICU types and determine the association between the ethical climate, moral distress, and intention to leave.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional questionnaire study between May 2021 and August 2021 involving 206 nurses and physicians in a (...) large urban academic hospital. We used the validated Ethical Decision-Making Climate Questionnaire and the Measure of Moral Distress for Healthcare Professionals tools and asked respondents their intention to leave their jobs. We also made comparisons between the different ICU types. We used Pearson's correlation coefficient to identify statistically significant associations between the Ethical Climate, Moral Distress, and Intention to Leave.ResultsNurses perceived the ethical climate for decision-making as less favorable than physicians. They also had significantly greater levels of moral distress and higher intention to leave their job rates than physicians. Regarding the ICU types, the Neonatal/pediatric unit had a significantly higher overall ethical climate score than the Medical and Surgical units and also demonstrated lower moral distress scores and lower “intention to leave” scores compared with both the Medical and Surgical units. The ethical climate and moral distress scores were negatively correlated ; moral distress and "intention to leave" was positively correlated ; and ethical climate and “intention to leave” were negatively correlated.ConclusionsSignificant differences exist in the perception of the ethical climate, levels of moral distress, and intention to leave between nurses and physicians and between the different ICU types. Inspecting the individual factors of the ethical climate and moral distress tools can help hospital leadership target organizational factors that improve interprofessional collaboration, lessening moral distress, decreasing turnover, and improved patient care. (shrink)

L’auteure de cet article, sage-femme et conseillère conjugale et familiale, s’attache à l’étude de l’objet placenta et l’analyse sous plusieurs formes : le point de vue ethnologique, le point de vue historique, le point de vue psychanalytique. Elle répertorie les différentes représentations qu’il revêt et indique des rites auxquels il est soumis. Elle étudie et analyse les raisons qui ont poussé les soignants actuels à le soustraire rapidement à la vue et encourage le lecteur à le penser différemment. Elle amène, (...) par la réflexion à laquelle elle le soumet, à lui redonner sa dimension symbolique de double de l’enfant nouvellement né, et à lui accorder la place importante qu’il mérite. (shrink)

This article argues that beneath the veneer of legitimacy in the organ, tissue, and body part transplantation systems exists a horrifying history of human commodification whose vestiges surprisingly linger in contemporary supply and allocation systems. This history, as the Article demonstrates, dates back to the colonial period in the United States, where “grave robbing” became an important feature in the advancement of medicine. This legacy lives on.