Background Diversity in Institutional Review Board (IRB) membership is important for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons, including fairness, promoting trust, improving decision quality, and responding to systemic racism. Yet U.S. IRBs remain racially and ethnically homogeneous, even as gender diversity has improved. Little is known about IRB chairpersons’ perspectives on membership diversity and barriers to increasing it, as well as current institutional efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within IRB membership.Methods We surveyed IRB chairpersons leading U.S. boards registered (...) with the Office for Human Research Protections. Here, we focus exclusively on responses from a subset of 388 chairpersons of IRBs at universities and academic medical centers (AMCs).Results Board chairs were predominantly white and evenly split between men and women. Only about half reported that their boards had at least one member who is Black or African American (51%), Asian (56%), or Hispanic (48%), with 85% of university/AMC boards comprised entirely (15%) or mostly (70%) of white members. Most IRB chairpersons (64%) reported satisfaction with the current diversity of their membership. Participants largely agreed that considering diversity in the selection of IRB members is important (91%), including to improve the quality of IRB deliberation (80%), with an emphasis on racial/ethnic (85%) and gender diversity (74%). Most participants (80%) reported some type of active DEI effort regarding board membership at their university/AMC and just over half (57%) expressed satisfaction with these efforts.Conclusions Our national survey found that although university/AMC IRB chairpersons report valuing diversity in board membership, it may be lacking in key areas. Going forward, it will be important to specify clear reasons for diversity in the IRB context, as well to establish targets for acceptable levels of board diversity and to match DEI efforts to those targets. (shrink)

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018.

Background: Informed consent is fundamental to the autonomous decision-making of patients, yet much is still unknown about the process in the clinical setting. In an evolving healthcare landscape, nurses must be prepared to address patient understanding and participate in the informed consent process to better fulfill their well-established role as patient advocates. Research objective: This study examines hospital-based nurses’ experiences and understandings of the informed consent process. Research design: This qualitative descriptive study utilized a semi-structured interview approach identifying thematic concerns, (...) experiences, and knowledge of informed consent across a selected population of clinically practicing nurses. Participants and research context: In all, 20 baccalaureate prepared registered nurses practicing in various clinical settings (i.e. critical care, oncology, medical/surgical) at a large northeastern academic medical center in the United States completed semi-structured interviews and a demographic survey. The mean age of participants was 36.6 years old, with a mean of 12.2 years of clinical experience. Ethical considerations: Participation in this study involved minimal risk and no invasive measures. This study received Institutional Review Board approval from the University of Pennsylvania. All participants voluntarily consented. Findings: The majority of participants (N = 19) believe patient safety is directly linked to patient comprehension of the informed consent process. However, when asked if nurses have a defined role in the informed consent process, nearly half did not agree (N = 9). Through this qualitative approach, three major nursing roles emerged: the nurse as a communicator, the nurse as an advocate, and the clerical role of the nurse. Discussion and conclusion: This investigation contributes to the foundation of ethical research that will better prepare nurses for patient engagement, advance current understanding of informed consent, and allow for future development of solutions. Nurses are at the forefront of patient–provider interactions and they are often presented opportunities to learn about and engage in the informed consent process. (shrink)

Although Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training is common in the sciences, the effectiveness of RCR training is open to question. Three key factors appear to be particularly important in ensuring the effectiveness of ethics education programs: (1) educational efforts should be tied to day-to-day practices in the field, (2) educational efforts should provide strategies for working through the ethical problems people are likely to encounter in day-to-day practice, and (3) educational efforts should be embedded in a broader program of (...) on-going career development efforts. This article discusses a complex qualitative approach to RCR training development, based on a sensemaking model, which strives to address the afore-mentioned training concerns. Ethnographic observations and prior RCR training served the purpose of collecting information specific to a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research center with the goal of identifying metacognitive reasoning strategies that would facilitate ethical decision-making. The extensive qualitative analyses resulted in the identification of nine metacognitive reasoning strategies on which future RCR training will be developed. The implications of the findings for RCR training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Although Responsible Conduct of Research training is common in the sciences, the effectiveness of RCR training is open to question. Three key factors appear to be particularly important in ensuring the effectiveness of ethics education programs: educational efforts should be tied to day-to-day practices in the field, educational efforts should provide strategies for working through the ethical problems people are likely to encounter in day-to-day practice, and educational efforts should be embedded in a broader program of on-going career development efforts. (...) This article discusses a complex qualitative approach to RCR training development, based on a sensemaking model, which strives to address the afore-mentioned training concerns. Ethnographic observations and prior RCR training served the purpose of collecting information specific to a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research center with the goal of identifying metacognitive reasoning strategies that would facilitate ethical decision-making. The extensive qualitative analyses resulted in the identification of nine metacognitive reasoning strategies on which future RCR training will be developed. The implications of the findings for RCR training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

This article considers various approaches used in complementary and alternative medicine research, and discusses the challenges that reviewing such research poses for Human Research Ethics Committees. Drawing on our experience with the University of Technology Sydney HREC, we offer some suggestions about how ethical principles governing conventional medical research can be applied in the context of research in complementary and alternative medicine. We argue that effective HREC review requires members to gain familiarity with such research, which helps ensure (...) that such research is conducted rigorously and ethically. (shrink)

Integrity is a critical determinant of the effectiveness of research organizations in terms of producing high quality research and educating the new generation of scientists. A number of responsible conduct of research (RCR) training programs have been developed to address this growing organizational concern. However, in spite of a significant body of research in ethics training, it is still unknown which approach has the highest potential to enhance researchers’ integrity. One of the approaches showing some promise in improving researchers’ integrity (...) has focused on the development of ethical decision-making skills. The current effort proposes a novel curriculum that focuses on broad metacognitive reasoning strategies researchers use when making sense of day-to-day social and professional practices that have ethical implications for the physical sciences and engineering. This sensemaking training has been implemented in a professional sample of scientists conducting research in electrical engineering, atmospheric and computer sciences at a large multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, and multi-university research center. A pre-post design was used to assess training effectiveness using scenario-based ethical decision-making measures. The training resulted in enhanced ethical decision-making of researchers in relation to four ethical conduct areas, namely data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. In addition, sensemaking training led to researchers’ preference for decisions involving the application of the broad metacognitive reasoning strategies. Individual trainee and training characteristics were used to explain the study findings. Broad implications of the findings for ethics training development, implementation, and evaluation in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

I have tried to expound Whitehead's doctrine of Creativity and of actual entities. Nothing remains but to give a brief summary of what has been said in the foregoing notes.Creativity is the ultimate activity and principle of novelty in the Universe.The world is said to consist of “actual entities,” not substances. An actual entity is also called an “actual occasion.” It is essentially a genetic process, having two sides, the process of “becoming,” and the outcome of the process named the (...) “satisfaction.” The satisfaction is the fully determined achievement abstracted from the process. On attaining satisfaction the actual entity viewed as a self-creating subject loses its “final” causation, and as a subject perishes, but the “satisfaction” remains as a potential constituent for the emergence of a new actual entity. This is its “efficient” causation. The potentiality of the satisfaction for a new creation is called its “objective immortality”: in this capacity it functions as an “object” for the self-creation of another actual entity. (shrink)

Although Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training is common in the sciences, the effectiveness of RCR training is open to question. Three key factors appear to be particularly important in ensuring the effectiveness of ethics education programs: (1) educational efforts should be tied to day-to-day practices in the field, (2) educational efforts should provide strategies for working through the ethical problems people are likely to encounter in day-to-day practice, and (3) educational efforts should be embedded in a broader program of (...) on-going career development efforts. This article discusses a complex qualitative approach to RCR training development, based on a sensemaking model, which strives to address the afore-mentioned training concerns. Ethnographic observations and prior RCR training served the purpose of collecting information specific to a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research center with the goal of identifying metacognitive reasoning strategies that would facilitate ethical decision-making. The extensive qualitative analyses resulted in the identification of nine metacognitive reasoning strategies on which future RCR training will be developed. The implications of the findings for RCR training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

The Universe cannot be exhaustively analysed if we stop at actual entities or even societies of actual entities which, as we shall see later when we discuss the notion of ‘nexus,’ are equivalent to what we ordinarily mean by enduring objects such as a stone, a tree, or a man. There is another class of entities which plays an important part in the constitution of the Universe called ‘eternal objects,’ and we must now proceed to an understanding of these.

Humboldtian science Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9480-6 Authors David Oldroyd, School of History and Philosophy, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052 Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This participatory study, conducted in an introductory psychology class, recounts self-reflections of 22 undergraduate students and their instructor engaging in an GenAI-mediated storyboard generation process. It relies on Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, structuring out the nature of interactions between students, instructor, and GenAI, and then uses a qualitative narrative to describe these conversational feedback loops constituting the creation of draft and final storyboards. Results suggest students engaged in cyclical feedback driven processes to master their creations, used elements of photography related (...) to the relationships between objects in frame, image processing, and cultural objects/themes to generate narratives. Issues were faced with generating text on images, and the consistency and style of generated frames as they interacted with GenAI tools. This study provides guidelines to university teaching professionals to design effective activities mediated by text-to-image GenAI. (shrink)

The self-fashioning of French Newtonianism Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9511-3 Authors Charles T. Wolfe, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia David Gilad, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Why does female under- representation emerge during undergraduate education? At the University of Sydney, we surveyed students before and after their first philosophy course. We failed to find any evidence that this course disproportionately discouraged female students from continuing in philosophy relative to male students. Instead, we found evidence of an interaction effect between gender and existing attitudes about philosophy coming into tertiary education that appears at least partially responsible for this poor retention. At the first lecture, disproportionately (...) few female students intended to major. Further, at the first lecture, female students were less interested in philosophy, were less self-confident about philosophy, and were less able to imagine themselves as philosophers. Similarly, female students predicted they would feel more uncomfortable in philosophy classes than male students did. Further study with a control is warranted to determine whether this interaction effect is peculiar to philosophy, or whether it is indicative of a more general gendered trend amongst first year undergraduate students. (shrink)

Ancient Memphis: ‘Enduring is the Perfection’. Proceedings of the International Conference Held at Macquarie University, Sydney in August 14–15, 2008. Edited by Linda Evans. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, vol. 214. Leuven: UitgeveriJ Peeters, 2012. Pp. viii + 443, illus. €90.

Are artists, designers and musicians inventors? Or does the invention originate from scientific discovery alone? Ecologies of Invention is the first collection of essays that brings together writers and scholars of international standing from the University of Sydney and beyond to examine assumptions underlying notions of inventiveness. The writers explain how inventiveness borne out of aesthetic ambitions is impacting on and changing our culture and society. Ecologies of Invention describes the articulation of inventive capacities across disciplines and across (...) multiple scales, from personal capacities to the social, spatial and network configurations that drive people to produce inventions. The book poses new questions for scholars, artists, architects, designers, historians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and economists about the nature, origins and processes of invention. 'This is a challenging book which confronts traditional thinking around creativity and inventiveness and raises issues that need serious debate'. Barry Jones AO. (shrink)

THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.

Book notice Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9590-9 Authors Alison Bashford, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2007 Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.