Identifying patterns in the world requires noticing not only unusual occurrences, but also unusual absences. We examined how people learn from absences, manipulating the extent to which an absence is expected. People can make two types of inferences from the absence of an event: either the event is possible but has not yet occurred, or the event never occurs. A rational analysis using Bayesian inference predicts that inferences from absent data should depend on how much the absence is (...) expected to occur, with less probable absences being more salient. We tested this prediction in two experiments in which we elicited people's judgments about patterns in the data as a function of absence salience. We found that people were able to decide that absences either were mere coincidences or were indicative of a significant pattern in the data in a manner that was consistent with predictions of a simple Bayesian model. (shrink)

The popularity of Thomas Piketty’s research on wealth inequality has drawn attention to a curious question: why was widening wealth inequality largely neglected by mainstream economists in recent decades? To explore and explain that neglect, I draw on the writing of the early neoclassical economist John Bates Clark, who introduced the notion of the marginal productivity of income distribution at the end of the nineteenth century. I then turn to Piketty’s Capital in order to analyze the salience of marginal productivity (...) theories of income today. I suggest that most of the criticism and praise for Piketty’s research is focused on data that are accessible and measurable, obscuring attention to questions over whether current methods for measuring economic capital are defensible or not. My overarching aim is to explore how “absent” data in economics as a whole help to reinforce blind spots within mainstream economic theory. (shrink)

Ontological realism aims at the development of high quality ontologies that faithfully represent what is general in reality and to use these ontologies to render heterogeneous data collections comparable. To achieve this second goal for clinical research datasets presupposes not merely (1) that the requisite ontologies already exist, but also (2) that the datasets in question are faithful to reality in the dual sense that (a) they denote only particulars and relationships between particulars that do in fact exist and (...) (b) they do this in terms of the types and type-level relationships described in these ontologies. While much attention has been devoted to (1), work on (2), which is the topic of this paper, is comparatively rare. Using Referent Tracking as basis, we describe a technical data wrangling strategy which consists in creating for each dataset a template that, when applied to each particular record in the dataset, leads to the generation of a collection of Referent Tracking Tuples (RTT) built out of unique identifiers for the entities described by means of the data items in the record. The proposed strategy is based on (i) the distinction between data and what data are about, and (ii) the explicit descriptions of portions of reality which RTTs provide and which range not only over the particulars described by data items in a dataset, but also over these data items themselves. This last feature allows us to describe particulars that are only implicitly referred to by the dataset; to provide information about correspondences between data items in a dataset; and to assert which data items are unjustifiably or redundantly present in or absent from the dataset. The approach has been tested on a dataset collected from patients seeking treatment for orofacial pain at two German universities and made available for the NIDCR-funded OPMQoL project. (shrink)

In 2009, with the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union entered into force. Under Article 8 of the Charter, for the first time, a stand-alone fundamental right to data protection was declared. The creation of this right, standing as a distinct right to the right to privacy, is undoubtedly significant, and it is unique to the European legal order, being absent from other international human rights instruments. This commentary examines the (...) parameters of this new right to data protection, asking what are the principles underpinning the right. It argues that the right reflects some key values inherent in the European legal order, namely: privacy, transparency, autonomy and nondiscrimination. It also analyses some of the challenges in implementing this right in an era of ubiquitous veillance practices and Big Data. (shrink)

We develop the concept of ‘aesthetic practices’ to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education’s Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required so that data produced at dispersed sites can (...) be brought into relation and projected as populations in forms such as bar charts, heat maps and tables. Two examples of aesthetic practices are analysed based on ethnographic studies we have conducted on the production of data for the Hub and Warehouse: metadata and data cleaning. Metadata enables data to come into relation by containing and accounting for the differences between data. Data cleaning deals with the indeterminacies and absences of data and involves algorithms to determine what values data can obtain so they can be brought into relation. We attend to how both aesthetic practices involve normative decisions that make absent what exceeds them: embodied knowledge that cannot or has not been documented as well as data that cannot meet the forms required of data portals. While these aesthetic practices are necessary to sustain data portals as ‘sites of projection,’ we also bring critical attention to their performative effects for knowing, enacting and governing populations. (shrink)

Low levels of public trust in data practices have led to growing calls for changes to data-driven systems, and in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation provides a legal motivation for such changes. Data management is a vital component of data-driven systems, but what constitutes ‘good’ data management is not straightforward. Academic attention is turning to the question of what ‘good data’ might look like more generally, but public views are absent (...) from these debates. This paper addresses this gap, reporting on a survey of the public on their views of data management approaches, undertaken by the authors and administered in the UK, where departure from the EU makes future data legislation uncertain. The survey found that respondents dislike the current approach in which commercial organizations control their personal data and prefer approaches that give them control over their data, that include oversight from regulatory bodies or that enable them to opt out of data gathering. Variations of data trusts – that is, structures that provide independent stewardship of data – were also preferable to the current approach, but not as widely preferred as control, oversight and opt out options. These features therefore constitute ‘good data management’ for survey respondents. These findings align only in part with principles of good data identified by policy experts and researchers. Our findings nuance understandings of good data as a concept and of good data management as a practice and point to where further research and policy action are needed. (shrink)

In "Relational Autonomy as Theoretical Lens for Qualitative Bioethics Research" Jennifer A. H. Bell shows the importance of attending to the relational factors that affect the autonomy of research participants. Drawing on the example of her own research into cancer clinical trial participation, Bell illustrates how relational autonomy theory enhances the various stages of qualitative research. Relational theory can contribute insight into the development of a research question. It can help determine research methodology, and it can provide direction on the (...) data sources needed for the study. As recommended by relational theory, the informed consent process should take oppression and power imbalances into... (shrink)

Digital preservation has significantly expanded over the past few decades, renewing old and creating new challenges related to provenance, integrity, completeness, and context in memory and preservation practices. In this paper we explore how, perhaps counterintuitively, a more extensive digital historical record offers greater opportunities to misrepresent reality. We first review a set of concepts and socio-cultural approaches to memory and preservation. We then focus on the multiplicity of digital memory and preservation practices today, examining their limits, possibilities, and tensions; (...) specifically, we explore the challenges of decontextualized data, personal versus institutional preservation, and?outsider? digital collections that are willingly and/or forcibly excluded from official accounts. Through these discussions, we review examples of what we consider good digital memory and preservation practices that take new approaches to context and collaboration. Lastly, we explore the optimism inherent in seeking to preserve human knowledge over the long term and to make it accessible to all. (shrink)

BackgroundThe public and healthcare workers have a high expectation of animal research which they perceive as necessary to predict the safety and efficacy of drugs before testing in clinical trials. However, the expectation is not always realised and there is evidence that the research often fails to stand up to scientific scrutiny and its 'predictive value' is either weak or absent.DiscussionProblems with the use of animals as models of humans arise from a variety of biases and systemic failures including: (...) 1) bias and poor practice in research methodology and data analysis ; 2) lack of transparency in scientific assessment and regulation of the research; 3) long-term denial of weaknesses in cross-species translation; 4) profit-driven motives overriding patient interests; 5) lack of accountability of expenditure on animal research; 6) reductionist-materialism in science which tends to dictate scientific inquiry and control the direction of funding in biomedical research.SummaryBias in animal research needs to be addressed before medical research and healthcare decision-making can be more evidence-based. Research funding may be misdirected on studying 'disease mechanisms' in animals that cannot be replicated outside tightly controlled laboratory conditions, and without sufficient critical evaluation animal research may divert attention away from avenues of research that hold promise for human health. The potential for harm to patients and trial volunteers from reliance on biased animal data1 requires measures to improve its conduct, regulation and analysis. This article draws attention to a few of the many forms of bias in animal research that have come to light in the last decade and offers a strategy incorporating ten recommendations stated at the end of each section on bias. The proposals need development through open debate and subsequent rigorous implementation so that reviewers may determine the value of animal research to human health. The 10Rs + are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and therefore may be 'shared, remixed or built on, even commercially, so long as attributed by giving appropriate credit with a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.’. (shrink)

The curse of dimensionality is one of the most prominent challenge that data scientists face when trying to make valuable inferences. It is an epistemic problem that hits particularly hard in "Big Data" research contexts, where the volume of the data set is particularly large. The way in which we tackle with this problem sheds light on the notion of scientific evidence. Yet, it is virtually absent from the current philosophical literature. In this paper, I aim (...) to broaden the focus of that literature by showing that the dimensions in which the data are embedded are an integral part of scientific evidence. This is an aspect of scientific evidence that is often hidden behind the traditional observation/theory dichotomy that we often encounter in philosophy of science. Dimensions are abstract objects. They are not observables like tables and chairs, nor are they entries in a data set. Ultimately, I aim to show that empirical adequacy is not merely a matter of finding the model that best fit the relevant observational data. It is also a matter of finding the model that best fit the relevant observational data inside the relevant dimensions. (shrink)

Awjila Berber is a highly endangered Berber variety spoken in eastern Libya. The minimal material available on it reveals that the language is in some respects very archaic and in others grammatically unique, and as such is of particular comparative and historical interest. Fieldwork has been impossible for decades due to the political situation. Recently, however, several inhabitants of Awjila have set up a Facebook group Ašal=ənnax (“our village”), posting largely in Awjili. Analysis of this partly conversational corpus makes it (...) possible to extend our knowledge of the language, yielding unattested words and constructions. Examination of its grammatical features also reveals that these posters’ usage is heavily influenced by Arabic, showing language attrition absent from earlier data; even subject-verb agreement has been extensively reworked. In both respects, this study casts light upon the uses and limits of social media as a source of linguistic material. (shrink)

The use of smart mouthguards in contact sports like rugby aims to enhance player safety by providing real-time data on head impacts. These devices, equipped with sensors, measure collision force and frequency, potentially identifying concussions that might go unnoticed during gameplay. The idea is that such enhanced monitoring will enable teams, physicians and other stakeholders to better protect players from the effects of on-pitch injury through immediate detection of head trauma and the long-term provision of player data. While (...) we welcome the move towards a better understanding of the potential harm that contact sports athletes may experience, introducing a new avenue through which information about player performance and health can be collected brings several areas of ethical concern absent from traditional mouthguards. In this paper, we consider four noteworthy areas: device and data efficacy, player choice, the inherent issues of such data’s existence and the harmful consequences of this data’s usage and exposure. We argue that failing to identify and address the risks associated with smart mouthguards’ employment in the elite sporting sphere not only risks the mistreatment and misapplication of player data but may also jeopardise the acceptability of a novel health monitoring method that has the potential to prevent long-term debilitating diseases. (shrink)

According to the theory of contextual integrity (CI), privacy norms prescribe information flows with reference to five parameters — sender, recipient, subject, information type, and transmission principle. Because privacy is grasped contextually (e.g., health, education, civic life, etc.), the values of these parameters range over contextually meaningful ontologies — of information types (or topics) and actors (subjects, senders, and recipients), in contextually defined capacities. As an alternative to predominant approaches to privacy, which were ineffective against novel information practices enabled by (...) IT, CI was able both to pinpoint sources of disruption and provide grounds for either accepting or rejecting them. Mounting challenges from a burgeoning array of networked, sensor-enabled devices (IoT) and data-ravenous machine learning systems, similar in form though magnified in scope, call for renewed attention to theory. This Article introduces the metaphor of a data (food) chain to capture the nature of these challenges. With motion up the chain, where data of higher order is inferred from lower-order data, the crucial question is whether privacy norms governing lower-order data are sufficient for the inferred higher-order data. While CI has a response to this question, a greater challenge comes from data primitives, such as digital impulses of mouse clicks, motion detectors, and bare GPS coordinates, because they appear to have no meaning. Absent a semantics, they escape CI’s privacy norms entirely. (shrink)

Ozone is one of the pollutants with most negative effects on human health and in general on the biosphere. Many data-acquisition networks collect data about ozone values in both urban and background areas. Usually, these data are incomplete or corrupt and the imputation of the missing values is a priority in order to obtain complete datasets, solving the uncertainty and vagueness of existing problems to manage complexity. In the present paper, multiple-regression techniques and Artificial Neural Network models (...) are applied to approximate the absent ozone values from five explanatory variables containing air-quality information. To compare the different imputation methods, real-life data from six data-acquisition stations from the region of Castilla y León are gathered in different ways and then analyzed. The results obtained in the estimation of the missing values by applying these techniques and models are compared, analyzing the possible causes of the given response. (shrink)

This analysis focuses on the role of appresentational orders in the “building of the lifeworld.” Based in phenomenology and the philosophy of culture, the article contributes to semiotics by further developing some of Göran Sonesson’s ideas on signs. Appresentation means that “absent” data is intended as co-present with a directly perceivable term within the unity of consciousness (Husserl). Alfred Schutz sees “marks,” “indications,” and “signs” as different types of couplings between “present” and “absent” data according to (...) one single cognitive style or “subworld.” These appresentational relations contrast with the more complex “symbols,” which are couplings between different styles or subworlds. For instance, a crucifix may co-present a “Latin cross” given to everyday perception with meanings belonging to the world of religion, making it “symbolically pregnant” (Cassirer). Beyond a mere coupling, appresentation is constituted by appresentational orders, which can reflect high relational complexity. Although Schutz introduced the concept of these orders, he, like Sonesson, misses their full potential for understanding appresentation. Signs and sign-like relations (such as marks and indications), which make possible (life)worldly communication, spatial and temporal orientation, and social organization, can be further differentiated according to the appresentational orders “dominant” in each certain case. In contrast, symbols, which ensure an experience of the lifeworld as a whole (Voegelin), that connect subworlds such as religion, science, dreams, etc., are rather to be characterized by a relevance “annihilation” between appresentational orders. (shrink)

Covid data show that wealth is not health. What then are the major variables that affect public health in the Covid–19 pandemic? Based on onsite research in 26 countries across the world this paper singles out three variables – knowledge, state capability and social cooperation. If one of these is dysfunctional or absent Covid–19 performance suffers. The variables work best in combination. Under consideration are three phases of Covid–19 – virus control, vaccines, and the race with variants. Which (...) types of society best combine these variables? Comparing varieties of market economies – liberal, coordinated and state-led market economies, Covid–19 data indicate that coordinated and developmental state-led market economies tend to generate the best combination of variables and public health outcomes, and liberal market economies and rightwing populist countries produce the worst combination. Comparative Covid–19 research points to the limitations of macro theories and methodological nationalism, the importance of the unit of analysis and the database, and how variables interact. At a time when multiple crises interact it leads to reflection on glaring limitations of global governance. (shrink)

Since its origin, bioethics has attracted the collaboration of few social scientists, and social scientific methods of gathering empirical data have remained unfamiliar to ethicists. Recently, however, the clouded relations between the empirical and normative perspectives on bioethics appear to be changing. Three reasons explain why there was no easy and consistent input of empirical evidence into bioethics. Firstly, interdisciplinary dialogue runs the risk of communication problems and divergent objectives. Secondly, the social sciences were absent partners since the (...) beginning of bioethics. Thirdly, the meta‐ethical distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ created a ‘natural’ border between the disciplines. Now, bioethics tends to accommodate more empirical research. Three hypotheses explain this emergence. Firstly, dissatisfaction with a foundationalist interpretation of applied ethics created a stimulus to incorporate empirical research in bioethics. Secondly, clinical ethicists became engaged in empirical research due to their strong integration in the medical setting. Thirdly, the rise of the evidence‐based paradigm had an influence on the practice of bioethics. However, a problematic relationship cannot simply and easily evolve into a perfect interaction. A new and positive climate for empirical approaches has arisen, but the original difficulties have not disappeared. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic presents significant challenges to research ethics committees (RECs) in balancing urgency of review of COVID-19 research with careful consideration of risks and benefits. In the African context, RECs are further challenged by historical mistrust of research and potential impacts on COVID-19 related research participation, as well as the need to facilitate equitable access to effective treatments or vaccines for COVID-19. In South Africa, an absent National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC) also left RECs without national guidance (...) for a significant duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a qualitative descriptive study that explored the perspectives and experiences of RECs regarding the ethical challenges of COVID-19 research in South Africa.MethodsWe conducted in-depth interviews with 21 REC chairpersons or members from seven RECs at large academic health institutions across South Africa that were actively involved in the review of COVID-19 related research from January to April 2021. In-depth interviews were conducted remotely via Zoom. Interviews (60–125 min) were conducted in English using an in-depth interview guide, until data saturation was achieved. Audio-recordings were transcribed verbatim and field notes were converted into data documents. Line-by-line coding of transcripts was performed, and data were organised into themes and sub-themes. An inductive approach to thematic analysis was used to analyse data.ResultsFive main themes were identified, namely: rapidly evolving research ethics landscape, extreme vulnerability of research participants, unique challenges to informed consent, challenges to community engagement during COVID-19, and overlapping research ethics and public health equity issues. Sub-themes were identified for each main theme.ConclusionsNumerous, significant ethical complexities and challenges were identified by South African REC members in the review of COVID-19 related research. While RECs are resilient and adaptable, reviewer and REC member fatigue were major concerns. The numerous ethical issues identified also highlight the need for research ethics teaching and training, especially in informed consent, as well as the urgent requirement for the development of national guidelines for research ethics during public health emergencies. Further, comparative analysis between different countries is needed to develop the discourse around African RECs and COVID-19 research ethics issues. (shrink)

In the last fifty years there has been a surge of immigration to the Western Hemisphere on the part of Middle Eastern and South East Asian Muslim religious leaders who are responding to a call from Muslim communities for religious leadership. In the United States alone, there have been over 1,500 Muslim clergy in the Sunni Tradition immigrate to America within the last twenty years. What is strikingly absent is the training needed to be a clergy person as understood (...) in American society. There is no question that the imams are well trained in the teachings of Islam and the recitation of the Friday prayers. What quite clearly does not exist is an understanding of the concept of professional ministry on the part of these immigrant imams and this has lead to serious problems for the Muslim communities being served and for the imams who serve them. Based on my major data-base study and subsequent book, Muslim Clergy in America: Ministry as Profession in the Islamic Community (2010), I will explore the essential “components” of professional ministry as understood in American society and will illustrate their value and viability within the Islamic communities in America. (shrink)

This paper discusses free-choice like effects in generics. Just as Jane may drink coffee or tea can be used to convey Jane may drink coffee and Jane may drink tea (she is free to choose ), some generics with disjunctive predicates can be used to convey conjunctions of simpler generics: elephants live in Africa or Asia can be used to convey elephants live in Africa and elephants live in Asia. Investigating these logically slightly more complex generics and especially the free-choice (...) like effects throws light on both the semantics of generics and the interaction between world knowledge and the interpretive options generics offer. This paper presents a package of semantic and pragmatic hypotheses to account for the data, including why the effect is absent in the superficially logically similar elephants live in Africa or give birth to live young. (shrink)

From the first months of life, human infants produce “protophones,” speech-like, non-cry sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no direct quantitative comparisons to support this presumption. In addition, by 2 months, human infants show sustained face-to-face interaction using protophones, a pattern thought also absent or very limited in other apes, but again, without quantitative comparison. Such comparison should provide evidence relevant to determining foundations of language, since substantially flexible vocalization, the (...) inclination to explore vocalization, and the ability to interact socially by means of vocalization are foundations for language. Here we quantitatively compare data on vocalization rates in three captive bonobo (Pan paniscus) mother–infant pairs with various sources of data from our laboratories on human infant vocalization. Both humans and bonobos produced distress sounds (cries/screams) and laughter. The bonobo infants also produced sounds that were neither screams nor laughs and that showed acoustic similarities to the human protophones. These protophone-like sounds confirm that bonobo infants share with humans the capacity to produce vocalizations that appear foundational for language. Still, there were dramatic differences between the species in both quantity and function of the protophone and protophone-like sounds. The bonobo protophone-like sounds were far less frequent than the human protophones, and the human protophones were far less likely to be interpreted as complaints and more likely as vocal play. Moreover, we found extensive vocal interaction between human infants and mothers, but no vocal interaction in the bonobo mother–infant pairs—while bonobo mothers were physically responsive to their infants, we observed no case of a bonobo mother vocalization directed to her infant. Our cross-species comparison focuses on low- and moderate-arousal circumstances because we reason the roots of language entail vocalization not triggered by excitement, for example, during fighting or intense play. Language appears to be founded in flexible vocalization, used to regulate comfortable social interaction, to share variable affective states at various levels of arousal, and to explore vocalization itself. (shrink)

Background: Ethical sensitivity has been identified as a foundational component of ethical action. Diminished or absent ethical sensitivity can result in ethically incongruent care, which is inconsistent with the professional obligations of nursing. As such, assessing ethical sensitivity is imperative in order to design interventions to facilitate ethical practice and to ensure nurses recognize the nature and extent of professional ethical obligations. Aim: To review and critique the state of the science of nurse ethical sensitivity and to synthesize findings (...) across studies. Research design: Whittemore and Knafl’s revised framework for integrative reviews guided the analysis. Research context and data sources: A comprehensive, computer-assisted search of literature published in Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature and PubMed was performed. A systematic approach was used to extract, reduce, and synthesize the data. Findings: Four major conceptualizations of ethical sensitivity emerged from the literature. A sample of 25 reports met inclusion criteria, including 17 empirical reports and 8 theoretical reports. Discussion: Despite the existence of a concept analysis and a validated tool, ethical sensitivity remains a highly theoretical concept with multiple, and at times competing, conceptualizations. Ethical sensitivity has been assessed extensively in the context of ethical dilemmas; however, little attention has been paid to the way the concept operates in day-to-day practice. Conclusion: Future research should focus on better ways to operationalize and assess the concept, with particular attention to nurse awareness of the ethical content of everyday practice. (shrink)

The pattern of data underlying the successful replications of cleansing effects is improbable and most consistent with selective reporting. Moreover, the meta-analytic approach presented by Lee and Schwarz is likely to find an effect even if none existed. Absent more robust evidence, there is no need to develop a theoretical account of grounded procedures.

ABSTRACT This article proposes a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about Muslim males’ involvement in criminality, derived from the philosophy of critical realism. This theoretical framework is deployed to explore primary data from life story interviews with 17 Muslim male offenders in a way that explains the role of structural and cultural factors, as well as individual agency, in participants’ involvement in crime at a range of ‘emergent’ ontological levels. As well as factors in common with offending by young (...) males generally, such as absent role models at home, experiences of socio-economic marginalization, the presence of hypermasculine hegemonic masculinities on the street and an inadequate experience of school, ‘unserious’ religion and ‘religious’ justifications for involvement in crime are factored into the ontology of the male Muslim offender as rendering some young Muslim males particularly vulnerable to offending. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite the recognition that developing artificial intelligence (AI) that is trustworthy is necessary for public acceptability and the successful implementation of AI in healthcare contexts, perspectives from key stakeholders are often absent from discourse on the ethical design, development, and deployment of AI. This study explores the perspectives of birth parents and mothers on the introduction of AI-based cardiotocography (CTG) in the context of intrapartum care, focusing on issues pertaining to trust and trustworthiness.MethodsSeventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with birth (...) parents and mothers based on a speculative case study. Interviewees were based in England and were pregnant and/or had given birth in the last two years. Thematic analysis was used to analyze transcribed interviews with the use of NVivo. Major recurring themes acted as the basis for identifying the values most important to this population group for evaluating the trustworthiness of AI.ResultsThree themes pertaining to the perceived trustworthiness of AI emerged from interviews: (1) trustworthy AI-developing institutions, (2) trustworthy data from which AI is built, and (3) trustworthy decisions made with the assistance of AI. We found that birth parents and mothers trusted public institutions over private companies to develop AI, that they evaluated the trustworthiness of data by how representative it is of all population groups, and that they perceived trustworthy decisions as being mediated by humans even when supported by AI.ConclusionsThe ethical values that underscore birth parents and mothers’ perceptions of trustworthy AI include fairness and reliability, as well as practices like patient-centered care, the promotion of publicly funded healthcare, holistic care, and personalized medicine. Ultimately, these are also the ethical values that people want to protect in the healthcare system. Therefore, trustworthy AI is best understood not as a list of design features but in relation to how it undermines or promotes the ethical values that matter most to its end users. An ethical commitment to these values when creating AI in healthcare contexts opens up new challenges and possibilities for the design and deployment of AI. (shrink)

Assessment of decision-making capacity (DMC) can be difficult in acquired brain injury (ABI) particularly with the syndrome of organic personality disorder (OPD) (the “frontal lobe syndrome”). Clinical neuroscience may help but there are challenges translating its constructs to the decision-making abilities considered relevant by law and ethics. An in-depth interview study of DMC in OPD was undertaken. Six patients were purposefully sampled and rich interview data were acquired for scrutiny using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Interview data revealed that awareness (...) of deficit and thinking about psychological states can be present. However, the awareness of deficit may not be “online” and effectively integrated into decision-making. Without this online awareness of deficit the ability to appreciate or use and weigh information in the process of deciding some matters appeared absent. We argue that the decision-making abilities discussed are: (1) necessary for DMC, (2) threatened by ABI, and (3) assessable at interview. Some advice for practically incorporating these abilities within assessments of DMC in patients with OPD is outlined. (shrink)

Turtles are among the most intriguing amniotes but their communication and signaling have rarely been studied. Traditionally, they have been seen as basically just silent armored ‘walking stones’ with complex physiology but no altruism, maternal care, or aesthetic perception. Recently, however, we have witnessed a radical change in the perception of turtle behavioral and cognitive skills. In our study, we start by reviewing some recent findings pertaining to various highly developed behavioral and cognitive patterns with special emphasis on turtles. Then (...) we focus on freshwater turtles and use data about their sexual behavior and size sexual dimorphism to test whether conspicuous coloration of the head is in these animals related to sexual processes. We found that absence of aggressive mating behavior is statistically associated with the presence of conspicuous coloration on turtles’ heads. It also seems that while species with female-biased SSD are characterised by conspicuously colored head ornaments, in species with male-biased SSD conspicuous coloration is absent. Unlike large females, males thus seem to be under pressure to develop conspicuous coloration and engage in non-aggressive behavior using signaling to succeed in courtship. And finally, we discuss possible roles of head color patterns in turtle communication during mating. (shrink)

Within the literature on emotion and behavioral action, studies on approach-avoidance take up a prominent place. Several experimental paradigms feature successful conceptual replications but many original studies have not yet been replicated directly. We present such a direct replication attempt of two seminal experiments originally conducted by Chen and Bargh (1999). In their first experiment, participants affectively evaluated attitude objects by pulling or pushing a lever. Participants who had to pull the lever with positively valenced attitude objects and push the (...) lever with negatively valenced attitude objects (i.e., congruent instruction) did so faster than participants who had to follow the reverse (i.e., incongruent) instruction. In Chen and Bargh's second experiment, the explicit evaluative instructions were absent and participants merely responded to the attitude objects by either always pushing or always pulling the lever. Similar results were obtained as in Experiment 1. Based on these findings, Chen and Bargh concluded that (1) attitude objects are evaluated automatically; and (2) attitude objects automatically trigger a behavioral tendency to approach or avoid. We attempted to replicate both experiments and failed to find the effects reported by Chen and Bargh as indicated by our pre-registered Bayesian data analyses; nevertheless, the evidence in favor of the null hypotheses was only anecdotal, and definitive conclusions await further study. (shrink)

The collection of Edmund Husserl's sketches on time-consciousness from the years 1893-1917, edited by Rudolf Boehm and published as Volume X in the Husserliana series, affords significant new material for the study of the evolution of Husserl's thought. Specifically, the sketches suggest that in the course of analyzing the consciousness of temporal objects Husserl became convinced that a distinction must be drawn between an ultimate or absolute flow of consciousness and the immanent temporal objects or contents -- sense-data, appearances (...) of external things, acts of wishing, judging, etc. -- constituted or known within that flow. Further, the texts indicate that the emergence of the absolute dimension was connected with the development during this period of two distinct interpretations of the constitution of time-consciousness. Husserl apparently worked out the first of these during the years 1901-1907, and only towards the end of this period did the notion of an absolute consciousness, absent in earlier texts, make its appearance. And no sooner did it emerge than Husserl undertook a critique of his first interpretation which ultimately culminated in its rejection. In the new position which then appeared, around 1909, the absolute flow of time-constituting consciousness, and its distinction from temporal objects both immanent and transcendent, was unequivocally affirmed. We propose now to discuss this evolution and the emergence and nature of the absolute flow of consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

It is often assumed that it was the alliance between patient associations and neuroscience, which originally made dementia a matter for intervention. In parallel ways, science and technology studies often attributes the power to define and act upon matters of life to biomedicine and science. The concern here is that the science centrism of STS contributes to the dominance of science and biomedicine by granting these analytical privileges. As a result, alternative modes of acting, for instance in care, are disarticulated (...) and made absent. This article mobilizes the sensibilities of anthropology to difference and draws upon excerpts of data from fieldwork in dementia care to show this and argue that there are different practices that act upon life and its limits; that these enact different versions of life and dementia; and that they matter because they shape how people are cared for and live and die with dementia. (shrink)

There is a well-entrenched schism on the frequency, intensity, and evolutionary significance of warfare among hunter-gatherers compared with large-scale societies. To simplify, Rousseauians argue that warfare among prehistoric and contemporary hunter-gatherers was nearly absent and, if present, was a late cultural invention. In contrast, so-called Hobbesians argue that violence was relatively common but variable among hunter-gatherers. To defend their views, Rousseauians resort to a variety of tactics to diminish the apparent frequency and intensity of hunter-gatherer warfare. These tactics include (...) redefining war, censoring ethnographic accounts of warfare in comparative analyses, misconstruing archaeological evidence, and claiming that outside contact inflates the intensity of warfare among hunter-gatherers. These tactics are subject to critical analysis and are mostly found to be wanting. Furthermore, Hobbesians with empirical data have already established that the frequency and intensity of hunter-gatherer warfare is greater compared with large-scale societies even though horticultural societies engage in warfare more intensively than hunter-gatherers. In the end I argue that although war is a primitive trait we may share with chimpanzees and/or our last common ancestor, the ability of hunter-gatherer bands to live peaceably with their neighbors, even though war may occur, is a derived trait that fundamentally distinguishes us socially and politically from chimpanzee societies. It is a point often lost in these debates. (shrink)

Research on corporate political activity has considered a number of antecedents to a firm’s engagement in politics. The majority of this research has focused on either industry or firm-level motivations that lead to corporate political activity, leaving the role of the firm’s leader noticeably absent in such scholarship. This article combines ideas from Upper Echelons Theory with research in corporate political activity to bridge this important gap. More specifically, this research utilizes CEO demographic characteristics to determine whether a firm (...) will invest in political activity and how these characteristics influence the particular approach to political activity the firm undertakes. Considering 27 years of data from large U.S. firms, we find that a CEO’s age, tenure, functional, and educational backgrounds influence whether and how the firm invests in political activity. (shrink)

The financial crisis, and associated scandals, created a sense of a juridical deficit with regard to the financial sector. Forms of independent judgement within the sector appeared compromised, while judgement over the sector seemed unattainable. Elites, in the classical Millsian sense of those taking tacitly coordinated ‘big decisions’ over the rest of the public, seemed absent. This article argues that the eradication of jurisdictional elites is an effect of neoliberalism, as articulated most coherently by Hayek. It characterizes the neoliberal (...) project as an effort to elevate ‘unconscious’ processes over ‘conscious’ ones, which in practice means elevating cybernetic, non-human systems and processes over discursive spheres of politics and judgement. Yet such a system still produces its own types of elite power, which come to consist in acts of translation, rather than judgement. Firstly, there are ‘cyborg intermediaries’: elites which operate largely within the system of codes, data, screens and prices. Secondly, there are ‘diplomatic intermediaries’: elites who come to narrate and justify what markets (and associated technologies and bodies) are ‘saying’. The paper draws on Lazzarato’s work on signifying vs asignifying semiotics in order to articulate this, and concludes by considering the types of elite crisis which these forms of power tend to produce. (shrink)

In this study, we apply MOSAIC (model of syntax acquisition in children) to the simulation of the developmental patterning of children's optional infinitive (OI) errors in 4 languages: English, Dutch, German, and Spanish. MOSAIC, which has already simulated this phenomenon in Dutch and English, now implements a learning mechanism that better reflects the theoretical assumptions underlying it, as well as a chunking mechanism that results in frequent phrases being treated as 1 unit. Using 1, identical model that learns from child‐directed (...) speech, we obtain a close quantitative fit to the data from all 4 languages despite there being considerable cross‐linguistic and developmental variation in the OI phenomenon. MOSAIC successfully simulates the difference between Spanish (a pro‐drop language in which OI errors are virtually absent) and obligatory subject languages that do display the OI phenomenon. It also highlights differences in the OI phenomenon across German and Dutch, 2 closely related languages whose grammar is virtually identical with respect to the relation between finiteness and verb placement. Taken together, these results suggest that (a) cross‐linguistic differences in the rates at which children produce OIs are graded, quantitative differences that closely reflect the statistical properties of the input they are exposed to and (b) theories of syntax acquisition need to consider more closely the role of input characteristics as determinants of quantitative differences in the cross‐linguistic patterning of phenomena in language acquisition. (shrink)

A substantial body of evidence shows that people tend to rely too heavily on explanations when trying to justify an opinion. Some research suggests these errors may arise from an inability to distinguish between explanations and the evidence that bears upon them. We examine an alternative account, that many people do distinguish between explanations and evidence, but rely more heavily on unsubstantiated explanations when evidence is scarce or absent. We examine the philosophical and psychological distinctions between explanation and evidence, (...) and show that participants use explanations as a substitute for missing evidence. Experiment 1 replicates the results of other researchers, but further shows that participants generate more evidence when they are not constrained by their lack of data. Merely mentioning a source of data can alter both their evaluation (Experiment 2) and their production (Experiment 3) of explanations and evidence. In Experiment 4, we show that participants can explicitly consider the availability of evidence and other pragmatic factors when evaluating arguments. Finally, we consider the implications of using explanations to replace missing evidence as a strategy in argument. (shrink)

Higgins’ et al recent paper1 presents a well-thought ethical analysis of the problems associated with the publication of unethical transplant research. More generally, research ethics committees never allow the use or reuse of data that has been collected without their required approval. Similarly, in many judicial settings, evidence is generally inadmissible when it is gathered illegally.2 Thus, journals and other publishers should follow in their footsteps and also roadblock any associated publications. Moreover, unethical organ donation and transplantation research is (...) rife with integrity issues, which violate publication norms (eg, fabrication or falsification of the source of the donor organs; absent informed consent of living donors or donor families; funder conflict of interest). If these normally accepted exclusions3 are ignored, then publishers are turning off their moral compass and facilitating an attitude of ‘anything goes’ in the conduct of research. Table 1 presents a timeline of scholarly responses to the problem of publishing unethical transplant research. As shown, since 2007 there has been a slow evolution of changing publisher practices, yet more …. (shrink)

Strategies for improving individual decision making have attracted attention from a range of disciplines. Surprisingly, neuroscience has been largely absent from this conversation, despite the fact that it has recently begun illuminating the neural bases of how and why we make decisions, and is poised for further such advances. Here we address empirical and normative questions about “nudging” through the lens of neuroscience. We suggest that the neuroscience of decision making can provide a framework for understanding how nudges work, (...) and how they can be improved. Towards this end, we first examine how nudges can be incorporated into a leading model of decision making supported by neurobiological data, and use the model to make predictions about the relative effectiveness of different classes of nudges. We then use the model to demonstrate how nudges can both infringe upon and promote autonomy. Finally, we explore the normative implications of the converging consensus from neuroscience and related fields that many everyday decisions are susceptible to covert external influences. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement (...) even as they recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

Global science expansion and the ‘skills premium’ in labor markets have been extensively discussed in the literature on the global knowledge economy, yet the focus on, broadly-speaking, knowledge-related personnel as a key factor is surprisingly absent. This article draws on UIS and OECD data on research and development personnel for the period 1980 to 2015 for up to N = 82 countries to gauge cross-national trends and to test a wide range of educational, economic, political and institutional determinants (...) of general expansion as well as expansion by specific sectors and country groups. Findings show that, worldwide, the number of personnel involved in the creation of novel and original knowledge has risen dramatically in the past three decades, across sectors, with only a few countries reporting decrease. Educational and economic predictors show strong effects. Expansion is also strongest in those countries embedded in global institutional networks, yet regardless of a democratic polity. I discuss the emergence of ‘knowledge work’ as a mass-scale and worldwide phenomenon and map out consequences for the analysis of such a profound transformation, which involves both an educated workforce and the strong role of the state. (shrink)

An individual’s accountability to oneself leads to self-regulatory behaviour. A field experiment afforded an opportunity to test this relation, given that external accountability conditions were absent. A single group pre-test/post-test design was used to test the hypothesis. A group of full-time resident management students, n ≈ 550, take four meals during the day in the institute mess. As a part of the experiment, food wastage in the form of leftovers on the plates of subjects was measured. As a pre-test, (...) the measurement occurred at two levels. Subjects could see how much they are adding to the total waste by looking at a weighing scale placed under a waste basket, and they could also see the total waste data for each of the four meals for the day and a day earlier displayed at a prominent place. After 105 days, the weighing scale under the basket was removed, and as a post-test measurement, the total waste data for the four meals were noted down for another 72 days. A manipulation test indicated that the experiment has had the desired effect of invoking self-accountability in subjects during the pre-test phase, and diluting it during the post-test phase. Time series analysis of pre-test and post-test data indicated that the wastage data decreased in the pre-test phase. However, the post-test waste data showed an increase over a period of time. The results indicate that accountability conditions like social norms invoke self-accountability cognition leading to self-regulatory behaviours in individuals. (shrink)

To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent—absent or, as in some domains of Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As (...) a panglobal fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself . . . international, transhistorical, transcultural."1 Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that culture may appear to us. As Barthes says, "narrative...is translatable without fundamental damage" in a way that a lyric poem or a philosophical discourse is not. · 1. Roland Barthes, "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives," Music, Image, Text, trans. Stephen Heath , p. 79.· 2. The words "narrative," "narration," "to narrate," and so on derive via the Latin gnārus and narro from the Sanskrit root gnâ . The same root yields γνωριμος : see Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque , under the entry for this word. My thanks to Ted Morris of Cornell, one of our greatest etymologists. Hayden White, professor in the program of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, The Greco-Roman Tradition, and Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. " The Narrativization of Real Events" appeared in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. Critical Responses to the present essay include Louis O. Mink's "Everyman His or Her Own Annalist", and Marilyn Robinson Waldman's "The Otherwise Unnoteworthy Year 711: A Reply to Hayden White," both in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

The proliferation of legal documents in various formats and their dispersion across multiple courts present a significant challenge for users seeking precise matches to their information requirements. Despite notable advancements in legal information retrieval systems, research into legal recommender systems remains limited. A plausible factor contributing to this scarcity could be the absence of extensive publicly accessible datasets or benchmarks. While a few studies have emerged in this field, a comprehensive analysis of the distinct attributes of legal data that (...) influence the design of effective legal recommenders is notably absent in the current literature. This paper addresses this gap by initially amassing a comprehensive session-based dataset from Jusbrasil, one of Brazil’s largest online legal platforms. Subsequently, we scrutinize and discourse key facets of legal session-based recommendation data, including session duration, types of recommendable legal artifacts, coverage, and popularity. Furthermore, we introduce the first session-based recommendation benchmark tailored to the legal domain, shedding light on the performance and constraints of several renowned session-based recommendation approaches. These evaluations are based on real-world data sourced from Jusbrasil. (shrink)

Being in the bodily presence of others facilitates important perceptual, social, and informational advantages. For example, it enables direct access to other subjects’ embodied perspectives, motivates intersubjective engagements, and is involved in the construction of shared experiences and joint actions. These advantages are based on and gained through attending to and with others, i.e. they rely on social attention. It is no surprise, therefore, that a growing body of empirical data indicates that social attention is a special attentional state (...) that involves specific behavioral and neural-cognitive properties. Another important feature of the human capacity for social attention, which is highlighted in this article is that in everyday environments social attention considerably extends and enriches the subject’s attentional field. This idea draws on phenomenological considerations and on findings from cognitive science research that suggest that subjects can attend to more than in the center of their attention and that under normal conditions we can gain more features and more situations when attending to the movements, gestures, and facial expressions of others. The influence of others on the structure of our attentional field is evident from situations where others are absent from our daily surroundings. In these circumstances our attentional field narrows and the world transforms into an unfamiliar and sometimes uncanny place. Intriguingly, the same most likely occurs in social pathologies such as BPD and SAD, in which the bodily presence of others does not generate the emotional response we see in healthy humans even though the subject’s basic capacity for social attention is intact. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Emotional Responding Is to Blame It Might Not Be to ResponsibilityR. J. R. Blair (bio)Keywordsblame, responsibility, emotional responses, psychopathyIn this interesting paper, Levy argues that by failing the moral/conventional distinction task (Blair 1995), individuals with psychopathy show a fundamental inability to categorize moral harms and as such their moral responsibility for their actions is reduced. He argues that, although we might still wish to incarcerate such individuals to (...) prevent them inflicting further harm on others, we should be less enthusiastic to blame them for their actions.In many respects, I agree with much of Levy's treatise. I certainly do not regard ascriptions of blame as useful in my own work with this population. I believe that our goal should be to fully understand the nature of their emotional deficit to be able to treat it similarly to other researchers who work to treat other emotional disorders. To me, Levy's argument appears sound.However, I offer three considerations and raise questions within these considerations that might further the debate. First, not all rules involve care-based emotional responses to victims. As Levy notes, this is the origin of the moral/conventional distinction. The problem here is that we do consider someone responsible if they break a conventional transgression. The student talking in class is generally considered blameworthy for this action as long as they knew that the rule of not talking during the lesson applied to that classroom. Yet, there is no victim and no care-based emotional response. Here, the only thing necessary to ascribe blame and responsibility is that the individual knew that a rule exists. Given this holds for conventional transgressions, why must we necessarily make a special case, with respect to responsibility, for moral transgressions?I believe that Levy is fully aware of this concern. He specifically makes reference to moral responsibility and writes that:the kind and degree of wrongness, and therefore blame, which attaches to infringements of the rules [against double parking or line-jumping] is very different, and usually much less significant, than the kind and degree attaching to moral wrongs. For psychopaths, all offences are merely conventional, and therefore—from their point of view—none of them are all that serious.(2007, p. 132)But the danger here is that issues of blame and responsibility may become highly relativistic and hinge on the strength of the emotional reaction. This is a problem because, although we might judge someone as more blameworthy if he intentionally [End Page 149] runs over five people rather than one, do we really consider that there is a distinction in moral responsibility between these two cases? If not, might not responsibility relate to factual knowledge of the existence of the rule against the transgression rather than the emotional response to the transgression?Second, there is considerable debate regarding whether psychopathy represents a taxon or a continuum (e.g., Vasey et al. 2005; Edens et al. 2006). Assuming it does represent a continuum, then we have an additional concern. How little of an emotional response to the transgression reduces one's moral responsibility and blame? Is it only the very reduced (although usually not absent) levels of emotional response that are shown by individuals with psychopathy? Or should we consider moral responsibility and blame proportional to the level of the emotional response? If this latter option is adopted, then what should we do about individuals who show heightened emotional responses, for example, patients with specific anxiety disorders (Rauch, Shin, and Wright 2003)? There are already some data that inhibited children (a developmental precursor to some anxiety disorders; Kagan and Snidman 1999) show heightened conscience development (Asendorpf and Nunner-Winkler 1992). If such children commit moral transgressions, should we regard them as more morally responsible and more blameworthy than regular folks?Third, the issue of intention received little attention in this paper. I have been considered to show a similar lack of attention to intention in the past (Nichols 2002) and, moreover, in some respects the issue was of limited concern given Levy's main goals. However, I mention it because so much of whether we consider someone responsible for their actions and... (shrink)

Restricting a person’s liberty presents society with many inherent ethical challenges. The historical purposes of confinement have included punishment, penitence, containment, rehabilitation, and habilitation. While the purposes are indeed complex, multifaceted, and at times ambiguous or contradictory, the fact of incarceration intrinsically creates many ethical challenges for psychiatrists working in correctional settings. Role definition of a psychiatrist may be ambiguous, with potential tensions between forensic and therapeutic demands. Privacy may be limited or absent and confidentiality may be compromised. Patient (...) autonomy may be threatened to address real or perceived security concerns. Care delivery may actually have harmful consequences in court cases for pretrial detainees or lethal consequences for those under a death sentence. An absence of data and targeted research hampers the development of evidence-based care delivery for the disenfranchised, understudied, and disproportionately ill prisoner population. In this review paper, I discuss a few of the challenges and dilemmas routinely faced and present a series of questions. Where feasible, proposed resolutions are offered. (shrink)

This article will engage with the current disasters in Japan from the perspective of semiotic anthropology. Disaster seems to produce two moments of the sign: signa naturalia and signa data. The translation of the sign mirrors the architectonic of the signified of disaster, which is mediated by a token-level instantiation of signifiers that initially appears either absent or in excess. The conceptualization of disaster as a zero sign, that is, unlimited possibility, allows an investigation of “a struggle of (...) interpretants” in stipulating the interpretative grounds of the signified amid regenerative processes of social regularity. It is this very exact moment of translation that the sustained continuity reveals its culture-specific “deep social grammar.” Disaster or “shaking grounds” has the presenting effect of cultural palimpsests. These unearthed palimpsests enable a heightened metasemiotic awareness of institutional and ideological regimentations, on the one hand, and token-level recontexualizations, assimilations, and hybridizations of the depository of signs in society in the post-disaster contexts, on the other. The article concludes with an attempt to synthesize Peircean semeiotics and Saussurean semiology by assessing the two distinct modes of semiosis, culture and trauma, upon a sudden threat of the experience of discontinuity. (shrink)

Children deserve optimal medical care. Although prescription drugs play a prominent and essential role in pediatric health care delivery, health care providers often must make prescribing decisions for their young patients based on imperfect or absent safety and efficacy data for pediatric populations. Until relatively recently, the Food and Drug Administration made surprisingly little effort to improve the quality or quantity of clinical research data for this patient group. Despite recent agency efforts to improve the situation, only (...) one-third of drugs prescribed to children currently have been studied for safety and efficacy in pediatric populations. Moreover, recent agency initiatives to encourage pediatric drug research have generated mixed results and unintended consequences. The complex of issues surrounding the testing and prescribing of prescription drugs used for children will require that pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, and health care providers examine current practices, acknowledge their shortcomings, and consider cooperative, creative solutions. (shrink)

After a period in which Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) stood as a cross-cutting issue under the Eigth European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (R & I), Horizon 2020, its further development and implementation has reached a crossroad. It turned out that there is a lack of consistent integration of RRI in Europe’s R & I practices (Novitzky et al. 2020), and dedicated funding for RRI is almost entirely absent in the Ninth European Union Framework Programme for (...) R & I, Horizon Europe. At the same time, global challenges like climate change become increasingly more urgent and thus continue to call for collective efforts of scientific research and industry, policy makers and civil society. Further, the emergence of disruptive technologies like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics raises several new societal concerns. Finally, the growing disbelief in science, as shown during the Corona pandemic, demonstrates the importance of aligning R & I policy and societal values all the more. For reasons as these, the disinvestment in a dedicated Science With and For Society programme line for RRI in Horizon Europe did not result in decreased academic attention for embedding science in society. On the contrary, a dedicated research community emerged that engages in the academic discourse of RRI and tries to contribute to projects on topics such as responsible data governance, responsible AI, and responsible agroecology within the Horizon Europe framework programme, sometimes even without the use of the frame RRI. (shrink)

Contingent reinforcement behavior is generally regarded as one of the key elements of being a “good” leader, yet the question of what happens when this behavior is absent has received little attention in past empirical research. Drawing upon self-regulation theory, we develop and test a model that specifies the effects of leader reward omission on employes’ deviant behavior. Using the data of 230 workers from two manufacturing companies located in South China collected across three time points, we find (...) that leader reward omission is positively associated with deviant behavior. Moreover, the indirect effects of leader reward omission on employes’ deviant behavior are mediated by moral disengagement. Our study also reveals that Machiavellianism can aggravate the positive effect of leader reward omission on moral disengagement, and subsequently exacerbate the indirect effect on employes’ deviant behavior. Taken together, our findings reveal the consequences of leader reward omission, and the importance of examining subordinate self-regulation under the lack of positive reinforcement. (shrink)

The need for energy system change in order to address the energy ‘trilemma’ of security, affordability and sustainability is well documented and requires the active involvement of individuals, families and communities who currently engage with these systems and technologies. Alongside technical developments designed to address these challenges, alternative ways of living are increasingly being envisaged by those involved in low-impact development. This article draws on data from a qualitative longitudinal study involving residents of a low-impact ecovillage in West Wales, (...) UK, in order to consider how the successful meeting of their planning targets has not been without personal and social troubles, which are absent from official measures of the project's success. We argue that, in exploring issues pertaining to scaling up, policy timescales and the legacy of such projects (such as inspiring others), insights drawn from this study have a wider relevance beyond the specific case site. (shrink)