Pornography is no longer an activity confined to a small group of individuals or the privacy of one’s home. Rather, it has permeated modern culture, including the work environment. Given the pervasive nature of pornography, we study how viewing pornography affects unethical behavior at work. Using survey data from a sample that approximates a nationally representative sample in terms of demographics, we find a positive correlation between viewing pornography and intended unethical behavior. We then conduct an experiment to provide causal (...) evidence. The experiment confirms the survey—consuming pornography causes individuals to be less ethical. We find that this relationship is mediated by increased moral disengagement from dehumanization of others due to viewing pornography. Combined, our results suggest that choosing to consume pornography causes individuals to behave less ethically. Because unethical employee behavior has been linked to numerous negative organization outcomes including fraud, collusion, and other self-serving behaviors, our results have implications for most societal organizations. (shrink)

As public research organisations are increasingly driven by their national and regional governments to engage in knowledge transfer, they have started to support the creation of companies. These research based spin-off companies (RBSOs) often keep contacts with the research institutes they originate from. In this paper we present the results of a study of four research institutes within two universities and two non-university public research organisations (PROs) in the Netherlands. We show that research organisations have distinct motivations to support the (...) creation of spin-off companies. In terms of resources RBSOs contribute, mostly in a modest way, to research activities by providing information, equipment and monetary resources. In particular, RBSOs are helpful for researchers competing for research grants that demand participation of industry. Furthermore, RBSOs may be seen as a proactive response by Dutch public research organisations to demands of economic relevance from their institutional environment. RBSOs enhance the prestige of their parent organisations and create legitimacy for public funds invested in PROs. At the same time, most RBSOs do not have a significant impact on the direction of the research conducted at the PROs. (shrink)

As the burden of misconduct in medical research is increasingly recognised, questions have been raised about how best to address this problem. Whilst there are existing mechanisms for the investigation and management of misconduct in medical literature, they are inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem. Journal editors and publishers play an essential role in protecting the veracity of the medical literature. Whilst ethical guidance for journal editors and publishers is important, it is not as readily enforceable as (...) legal obligations might be. This article questions the legal obligations that might exist for journal editors and publishing companies with respect to ensuring the veracity of the published literature. Ultimately, there is no enforceable legal obligation in Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States. In light of this, more robust mechanisms are needed to deliver greater confidence and transparency in the investigative process, the management of concerns or findings of misconduct and the need to cleanse the literature. We show that the law disincentivises journals and publishers from ensuring truth in their publications. There are harmful consequences for medical care and public confidence in the medical profession and health care system when the foundations of medical science are questionable. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecognising identity and emotion conveyed by the face is important for successful social interactions and has thus been the focus of considerable research. Debate has surrounded the extent...

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1621-1631.

Oswald Spengler was one of the most important thinkers of the Weimar Republic. In Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline, Ben Lewis completely transforms our understanding of Spengler by showing how well-connected this philosopher was and how, at every stage of his career, he attempted to intervene politically in the very real-life events unfolding around him. The volume explains Spengler's politics as the outcome of a dynamic interplay between his meta-historical considerations on world history on the one hand, (...) and the practical demands and considerations of Realpolitik on the other hand. (shrink)

Today, Karl Kautsky is mainly remembered for his polemics against the young Bolshevik regime or as the ‘renegade’ in Lenin’sThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, which pillories him for his wavering stance in opposing World War I and his outright hostility to the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Kautsky’s authority as a Marxist theoretician was seriously called into question ever since Lenin’s polemic. During the Cold War in particular, a consensus emerged which suggested that Kautsky’s views of democracy, organisation (...) and revolutionary change had little or nothing to do with the political practice of Russian Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Recently, however, several studies have challenged this consensus. They highlight the profound impact which Kautsky had on the development of Russian Bolshevism and make the case that – prior to his renegacy in 1914 – thinkers such as Lenin and Trotsky viewed Kautsky as the legitimate intellectual heir of Marx and Engels. This article introduces an autobiographical essay written by Kautsky in 1924 and calls for closer engagement with his œuvre as a whole. (shrink)

Tehseen noorani’s article “Containment Matters: Set and Setting in Contemporary Psychedelic Psychiatry” presents a comprehensive, deeply researched ethnographic perspective on current research practices in psychedelic-assisted therapy. This is rapidly evolving terrain scientifically, clinically, legally, and socially. Noorani’s on-the-ground observations from within the Johns Hopkins research program are fascinating and timely given the numerous challenges faced in investigating and developing this emerging mode of psychiatric treatment as well as the complex history psychedelics represent. The level of detail afforded by Noorani’s embedded (...) work between 2015 and 2019 in characterizing the complexities of this... (shrink)

At the time of writing there appear to have been no electronic submissions to the Journal of Medical Ethics. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin electronic correspondence with a consideration of some of the ethical implications of this new form of ethical dialogue.I have posted this response to Kenneth Boyd’s editorial on Mrs Pretty and Ms B1 as this article may provoke debate far beyond the medical and ethical establishment. This issue may be of tremendous concern to patients or their (...) carers who are presently suffering in circumstances similar to those described.The electronic response forum of the BMJ has been in operation for over four years.2 An editorial in the BMJ on physician assisted suicide3 has attracted 125 responses at the time of writing. An important feature of electronic responses, particularly on items that generate a lot of debate, is that the …. (shrink)

This paper examines the discourses and practices of pedigree livestock breeding, focusing on beef cattle and sheep in the UK, concentrating on an under-examined aspect of this—the deselection and rejection of some animals from future breeding populations. In the context of exploring how animals are valued and represented in different ways in relation to particular agricultural knowledge-practices, it focuses on deselecting particular animals from breeding populations, drawing attention to shifts in such knowledge-practices related to the emergence of “genetic” techniques in (...) livestock breeding which are arguably displacing “traditional” visual and experiential knowledge’s of livestock animals. The paper situates this discussion in the analytical framework provided by Foucault’s conception of “biopower,” exploring how interventions in livestock populations aimed at the fostering of domestic animal life are necessarily also associated with the imperative that certain animals must die and not contribute to the future reproduction of their breed. The “geneticization” of livestock breeding produces new articulations of this process associated with different understandings of animal life and the possibilities of different modes of intervention in livestock populations. Genetic techniques increasingly quantify and rationalize processes of selection and deselection, and affect how animals are perceived and valued both as groups and as individuals. The paper concludes by emphasizing that the valuation of livestock animals is contested, and that the entanglement of “traditional” and “genetic” modes of valuation means that there are multiple layers of valuation and (de)selection involved in breeding knowledge-practices. (shrink)