Background In earlier work, we found important selection biases when we tried to obtain consent for participation in a national stroke registry. Recognizing that not all registries will be exempt from requiring consent for participation, we examine here in greater depth the reasons for the poor accrual of patients from a systems perspective with a view to obtaining as representative sample as possible. Methods We determined the percent of eligible patients who were approached to participate and, among those approached, the (...) percent who actually consented to participate. In addition we examined the reasons why people were not approached or did not consent and the variation across sites in the percent of patients approached and consented. We also considered site variation in restrictions on the accrual and data collection process imposed by either the local research ethics board or the hospital. Results Seventy percent of stroke patients were approached, with wide variations in approach rates across sites (from: 41% to 86%), and considerable inter-site variation in hospital policies governing patient accrual. Chief reasons for not approaching were discharge or death before being approached for consent. Seventeen percent of those approached refused to participate (range: 5% to 75%). Finally, 11% of those approached did not participate due to language or communication difficulties. Conclusion We found wide variation in approach and agree rates across sites that were accounted for, in part, by different approaches to accrual and idiosyncratic policies of the hospitals. This wide variation in approach and agree rates raises important challenges for research ethics boards and data protection authorities in determining when to waive consent requirements, when to press for increased quality control, when to permit local adaptation of the consent process, and when to permit alternatives to individual express consent. We offer several suggestions for those registries that require consent for participation. (shrink)

Recent discussions of the doctrine of double effect have contained improved versions of the doctrine not subject to some of the difficulties of earlier versions. There is no longer one doctrine of double effect. This essay evaluates four versions of the doctrine: two formulations of the traditional Catholic doctrine, Joseph Boyle's revision of that doctrine, and Warren Quinn's version of the doctrine. I conclude that all of these versions are flawed. Keywords: double effect, intention, Joseph Boyle, medical ethics, Warren Quinn (...) CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life offers a bold new assessment of the role of the domestic sphere in modernist literature, architecture, and design.

Preface Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was throughout his mature years professor of Latin Eloquence at the University of Naples. His works, first written in ...

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are the frequent target of nongovern-mental organizations (NGOs) in their advocacy efforts. In this article, the author examines NGO advocacy as it occurs in the NGO network and, using insights from the political science literature in conjunction with the resourcebased view of the firm, posits that NGO intranetwork conflict will result in a skewing of corporate social responsibility practices by the multinational corporation toward the MNC's developed country stakeholders. This skewing is a product of the asymmetric accountability (...) of NGOs (upwardly accountable to donors, downwardly accountable to recipients). Developing country government and MNC strategies in the face of such skewing are discussed. (shrink)

Many problems in software development can be traced to a narrow understanding of professional responsibility. The author examines ways in which software developers have tried to avoid accepting responsibility for their work. After cataloguing various types of responsibility avoidance, the author introduces an expanded concept of positive responsibility. It is argued that the adoption of this sense of positive responsibility will reduce many problems in software development.

What can we hope to learn about brains from the free energy principle? In adopting the “primordial soup” physical model, Bruineberg et al. perpetuate the unsupported notion that the free-energy principle has a meaningful physical – and neuronal – interpretation. We examine how minimization of free energy arises in physical contexts, and what this can and cannot tell us about brains.

Faced with the liability of newness, a scarcity of resources, and concerns of survival, new firms frequently encounter difficult ethical decisions and might be pressured to make choices that run counter to the tenets of more developed ethical and moral reasoning. This study explores the impact of newness and entrepreneurial orientation on the ethical climate of firms. Data collected from 304 individuals across 37 firms indicated that firm newness was more strongly related to ethical climate than was an entrepreneurial orientation. (...) Results also revealed that firm newness may be usefully conceptualized in both continuous and categorical terms, with each operationalization holding a somewhat different relationship with climate. Finally, results revealed that firm size was related to several types of ethical climates. (shrink)

In his discussion of "Psychological Egoism" (PPR, June, 1960), Professor Lemos chooses to legislate it out of existence by means of a definition; so I choose to legislate it back into existence by a similar device. The pertinent question is whether definitions of psychological egoism are arbitrary or not.

Relevant to philosophy, law, management, and artificial intelligence, these papers explore the applicability of nonmonotonic or defeasible logic to normative reasoning. The resulting systems purport to solve well-known deontic paradoxes and to provide a better treatment than classical deontic logic does of prima facie obligation, conditional obligation, and priorities of normative principles.

_The American Teacher_ is a comprehensive education foundations text with an emphasis on the historical continuity of educational issues and their practical application in the classroom. Aspiring teachers enter the classrooms with an innate optimism, and the challenge of _The American Teacher_ is to engage them and to provide meaningful direction to channel their idealism. By reconnecting individuals with their society, community, and workplace, this engaging text provides education students with a grounding in their profession and an understanding of how (...) important social and political issues affect educational practice. (shrink)

Annotation. Despite their importance, FOR have been generally underinvestigated. As the first book devoted to the theme, it suggests the exciting idea of a computer model that could change its FOR, and then evaluate its FOR relative to a particular task. The book looks at the influence on understanding, insight, expertise and the advance of knowledge of the forms of representation we use. This book will be welcomed by researchers in the fields of Cognitive Science and AI in particular, and (...) Psychology and Philosophy in general. (shrink)

Quantum theory is highly successful in explaining properties of classes of systems: e.g. chemistry --- molecular binding energies optics --- frequency-dependent susceptibilities superconductivity --- energy gaps nuclear magnetic resonance --- chemical shifts particle physics --- scattering cross-sections cosmology --- helium abundance but many questions arise: What does quantum theory tell us about the nature of reality? Is quantum theory universally valid? Can quantum theory describe individual events? Can quantum theory be applied consistently at the macroscopic level? Is an algorithmic treatment (...) of measurement theory possible? Is it possible to provide an interpretation of quantum theory which is compatible with special relativity/ general relativity/ quantum field theory/ this week's theory of everything? (shrink)

About a decade ago I noticed that when referring to quality health care, or financial pyramid schemes like the one in the Madoff affair, or weakness in the mortgage market, many American intellectuals and politicians talked about the "moral imperatives" or the "ethical bailout" that would be needed to correct the resultant problems. But no one identified what the moral imperatives were. So I decided to investigate what such imperatives might consist of if Chinese and American thinkers tried to work (...) out an answer. This essay attempts to show what I found.What first attracted me to classical Chinese philosophy was that it seemed to anchor morality not in the words of an anthropomorphic God but in some natural... (shrink)

The paper reviews the discussion within transplantation medicine about the organ supply and demand problem. The focus is on the evolution of attitudes toward compensation plans from the early 1980s to the present. A vehement rejection on ethical grounds of anything but uncompensated donation—once the professional norm—has slowly been replaced by an open debate of plans that offer financial rewards to persons willing to have their organs, or the organs of deceased kin, taken for transplantation. The paper asks how this (...) shift has occurred and what it tells us about the dynamics of bioethical debates, both within professional circles and in wider public arenas. (shrink)

Creationism in Twentieth Century America: A Ten‐Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903–1961 Gen ed. Ronald L. Numbers.

A slight modification of Webb's diagrammatic representation of the dimensions for describing models is proposed which extends it to cover a range of theoretical models as well as material models. It is also argued that beyond a certain level robotic simulations could offer a number of real advantages over computer simulations of organisms interacting with their environment.