To address growing concerns about academic integrity, college students (n?=?758) at honor system and non-honor system institutions were presented with eight scenarios to determine the influence of an honor system on their perceptions of and responses to academic dishonesty. Main effects for honor code status emerged. Students from traditional honor system schools considered the behaviors to be more dishonest, and were more likely to respond that they would report the incident when compared to students attending modified and non-honor system institutions. (...) Findings suggest traditional honor systems, with specific rules and regulations in place, are more effective at cultivating academic integrity among students; modified honor systems may not be as effective as previous research suggests. (shrink)

College students from small, medium, and large institutions with either a modified or no honor code were presented with cheating scenarios and asked to rate how dishonest they perceived the behavior to be and the likelihood that they would report it. No main effects were found for institution size or type of honor code. Student–faculty ratio was not correlated with responses to the cheating scenarios. Students from modified honor code schools perceived more severe punishments for cheating and understood the reporting (...) process better than students from non–honor code schools. Implications for modified honor code systems are discussed. (shrink)

This article explores negotiations over the humanistic versus mechanized components of care through an ethnographic account of digital phenotyping research. I focus on a US-based team of psychiatric and engineering professionals assembling a smartphone application that they hope will analyze minute changes in the sounds of speech during phone calls to predict when a user with bipolar disorder will have a manic or depressive episode. Contrary to conventional depictions of psychiatry as essentially humanistic, the discourse surrounding digital phenotyping positions the (...) machine as a necessary addition to mental health care precisely because of its more-than-human sensory, attentional capacities. The bipolar research team likewise portrays their app as capable of pinpointing sonic signs of mental illness that humans, too distracted by semantic meaning, otherwise ignore. Nevertheless, the team members tasked with processing the team’s data must craft and perform a selectively attentive machinic subject position, which they call “listening like a computer”: a paradoxical mode of attention and inattention. By tracing the team’s discursive and on-the-ground enactments of care and attention as both humanistic and machinic, I tune a critical ear to the posthuman promises of digital phenotyping. (shrink)

On the True Sense of Art collects essays by philosophers responding to John Sallis's Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art as well as his other works on the philosophy of art, including Force of Imagination and Logic of Imagination. Each of the chapters, by some of the leading thinkers in Continental philosophy, engages Sallis's work on both ancient and new senses of aesthetics--a transfiguration of aesthetics--as a beginning that is always beginning again. With a responsive essay by Sallis himself, (...) On the True Sense of Art forms a critical introduction to the thought of this generation's most important aesthetician. (shrink)

Backdating of stock options is an example of an agency problem. It has emerged despite all the measures (i.e., new regulations and additional corporate governance mechanisms) aimed at addressing such problems? Beyond such negative controlling measures, a more positive empowering approach based on ethics may also be necessary. What ethical measures need to be taken to address the agency problem? What values and norms should guide the board of directors in protecting the shareholders' interests? To examine these issues, we first (...) discuss the role values and norms can play with respect to underlying corporate governance and the proper role of directors, such as transparency, accountability, integrity (which is reflected in proper mechanisms of checks and balances), and public responsibility. Second, we discuss various stakeholder approaches (e.g., government, directors, managers, and shareholders) by which conflicts of interest (i.e., the agency problem) can be addressed. Third, we assess the practice of backdating stock options, as an illustration of the agency problem, in terms of whether the practice is legally acceptable or ethically justifiable. Fourth, we proceed to an analysis of good corporate governance practice involving backdating options based on a series of ethical standards including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) utilitarianism; (3) justice; and (4) Kantianism. We conclude that while executive compensation schemes (e. g., stock options) were originally intended to help remedy the agency problem by tying together the interests of the executives and shareholders, these schemes may have actually become "part of the problem," and that the solution ultimately depends upon whether directors and executives accept that all of their actions must be based on a set of core ethical values. (shrink)

Ethics should guide the design of electronic health records (EHR), and recognized principles of bioethics can play an important role. This approach was adopted recently by a team of informaticists designing and testing a system where patients exert granular control over who views their personal health information. While this method of building ethics in from the start of the design process has significant benefits, questions remain about how useful the application of bioethics principles can be in this process, especially when (...) principles conflict. For instance, while the ethical principle of respect for autonomy supports a robust system of granular control, the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence counsel restraint due to the danger of patients being harmed by restrictions on provider access to data. Conflict between principles has long been recognized by ethicists and has even motivated attacks on approaches that state and apply principles. In this paper we show how using ethical principles can help in the design of EHRs by first, explaining how ethical principles can and should be used generally, and then by, discuss how attention to details in specific cases can show that the tension between principles is not as bad as it initially appeared. We conclude by suggesting further ways in which the application of these (and other) principles can add value to the ongoing discussion of patient involvement in their health care. This is a new approach to linking principles to informatics design that we expect will stimulate further interest. (shrink)

Although there is a growing recognition that older adults and those with extensive comorbid conditions undergo cancer screening too frequently, there is little information about patients’ perceptions regarding cessation of cancer screening. Information on older adults’ views of screening cessation would be helpful both for clinicians and for those designing interventions to reduce overscreening.

Most people do not know there are different kinds of medical studies; some are conducted on people who already have a disease or medical condition, and others are performed on healthy volunteers who want to help science find answers. No matter what sort of research you are invited to participate in, or whether you are a patient when you are asked, it’s entirely up to you whether or not to do it. This decision is important and may have many implications (...) for your health and well-being, as well as those of other patients now and in the future. Making a good decision – the right one for you – requires you to become educated about topics you may not have thought about before, some of which may be quite complicated. This chapter explains the key issues to help you make a good decision. (shrink)

Background Biobank participants often do not understand much of the information they are provided as part of the informed consent process, despite numerous attempts at simplifying consent forms and improving their readability. We report the first assessment of biobank enrollees’ comprehension under an "integrated consent” process, where patients were asked to enroll in a research biobank as part of their normal healthcare experience. A number of healthcare systems have implemented similar integrated consent processes for biobanking, but it is unknown how (...) much patients understand after enrolling under these conditions. Methods: We recruited patients who enrolled in a biobank while in a healthcare setting when receiving ordinary care. We assessed knowledge of consent materials using 11 true/false questions drawn from a well-known biobank knowledge test. After reviewing the results from 114 participants, we revised the consent form and repeated the knowledge assessment with 144 different participants. Results: Participants scored poorly on the knowledge test in both rounds, with no significant differences in overall scores or individual items between the rounds. In Phase 1, participants answered 53% of the questions correctly, 25% incorrectly, and 22% “I don’t know.” In Phase 2, participants answered 53% of questions correctly, 24% incorrectly, and 23% “I don’t know.” Participants scored particularly poorly on questions about data sharing and accessing medical records. Conclusions: Enrollees under an integrated consent model had significant misunderstandings that persisted despite an attempt to improve information specifically about those topics in a consent form. These results raise challenges for current approaches that attribute misunderstanding to overly complex consent forms. They also suggest that the pressures of the clinic may compound other problems with patient understanding of biobank consent. As health systems increasingly blend research and care, they may need to rethink their approach to educating patients about participation in a biobank. (shrink)

We use screams to explore ideas presented in the target article. Evolving first in animals as a response to predation, screams reveal more complex social use in nonhuman primates and, in humans, uniquely, are associated with a much greater variety of emotional contexts including fear, anger, surprise, and happiness. This expansion, and the potential for manipulation, promotes listener social vigilance.

The Continental tradition has always placed great emphasis on the Logos. The Gift of Logos: Essays in Continental Philosophy celebrates and situates this emphasis in the genre of the gift and its giving. The process of receiving, or giving, of the gift overcomes the existential alienation and separation that is so present in the human condition. To ritualize giving and its gifting is to provide a syntax of solidarity that bespeaks our desire for cohesion and need for identities beyond our (...) own. To give a gift is to befriend. The gift of logos is more than a gift from the gods and goddesses; it is an act of giving for those friends of wisdom for those philosophers who give to each other and to their worlds and receive the blessings of logos from each other. The increasing objectification of human being has mobilized a regressive narcissism that shows the ego's reassertion in the light of the meaningless quantifying forces from without. By not reflecting deeply enough upon its conditions of existence in the modern world and on its orginary moments, philosophy itself has not been immune from this besotted sense of self. Although not an invective against thinking nor against modern and contemporary philosophy's genuine advances, The Gift of Logos portends to shed the delusion that theoretical re-description is somehow the same as transforming who we are. This transformation is our greatest gift to each other. To give it voice is the gift of Logos and what this collection of essays commemorates. (shrink)

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of the political implications of Hobbes’s theory of imagination and his solution to the threat posed by the imagination to political stability. While recent work has correctly identified the problem the imagination poses for Hobbes, it has underestimated the severity of the problem and, accordingly, has underestimated the length to which the Hobbesian sovereign will have to go in order to solve it. By reconstructing Hobbes’s account of sleep and the operation of the imagination (...) during sleep, this paper argues that the Hobbesian sovereign who seeks to solve the problem of the imagination must maintain his subjects in a ‘state of sleep,’ by preventing any kind of new inputs from disturbing their imagination. This solution suggests that the citizens of the Leviathan state are not sleeping sovereigns, but rather sleeping subjects. (shrink)

In social and political theory, the imagination is often used in accounting both for creativity, innovation, and change and for sociopolitical stagnation and the inability to promote innovation and change. To what extent, however, can we attribute such seemingly contradictory outcomes to the same mental faculty? To address this question, this paper develops a comprehensive account of the political imagination, one that explains the various roles played by imagination in politics and thus accounts for the promises and limits of the (...) political imagination. This conceptualization of the political imagination allows us to account for the simultaneous presence of its seemingly contradictory roles—such as promoting stability and order on the one hand while generating creativity and critical innovation on the other. (shrink)

A study was conducted in order to examine the relationship between corporate codes of ethics and behaviour. Fifty-seven interviews of employees, managers, and ethics officers were conducted at four large Canadian companies. The study found that codes of ethics are a potential factor influencing the behaviour of corporate agents. Reasons are provided why codes are violated as well as complied with. A set of eight metaphors are developed which help to explain how codes of ethics influence behaviour.

This book explores four interrelated themes: rethinking civic education in light of the diversity of U.S. society; re-examining these notions in an increasingly interconnected global context; re-considering the ways that civic education is researched and practiced; and taking stock of where we are currently through use of an historical understanding of civic education. There is a gap between theory and practice in social studies education: while social studies researchers call for teachers to nurture skills of analysis, decision-making, and participatory citizenship, (...) students in social studies classrooms are often found participating in passive tasks rather than engaging critically with the curriculum. _Civic Education for Diverse Citizens in Global Times_, directed at students, researchers and practitioners of social studies education, seeks to engage this divide by offering a collection of work that puts practice at the center of research and theory. (shrink)

Based on Geary's theory, intelligence may determine which males utilize innate spatial knowledge to inform their mathematical solutions. This may explain why math gender differences occur mainly with higher abilities. In support, we found that mental rotation ability served as a mediator of gender differences on the math Scholastic Assessment Test for two high-ability samples. Our research suggests, however, that environment and biology interact to influence mental rotation abilities.

The Krüppel‐like factors (KLFs) comprise a family of evolutionarily conserved zinc finger transcription factors that regulate numerous biological processes including proliferation, differentiation, development and apoptosis. KLF4 and KLF5 are two closely related members of this family and are both highly expressed in epithelial tissues. In the intestinal epithelium, KLF4 is expressed in terminally differentiated epithelial cells at the villus borders of the mucosa and inhibits cell growth, while KLF5 is expressed in proliferating epithelial cells at the base of the intestinal (...) crypts and promotes cell growth. KLF4 and KLF5 respond to a myriad of external stress stimuli and are likely involved in restoring cellular homeostasis following exposure to stressors. Confirming their importance in maintaining tissue integrity, KLF4 and KLF5 are both dysregulated in various types of cancer. Here we review the recent advances in defining the physiological and pathobiological roles of KLF4 and KLF5, focusing on their functions in the intestinal epithelium. BioEssays 29:549–557, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

De minimis defenses are an understudied aspect of law, appearing in legal practice more often than in legal theory but rarely garnering any type of extensive analysis in either. This has led to an unfortunate state of affairs in which one term is applied to a set of practices that are, at best, only loosely connected. Using Paul Robinson’s system of defense types, this paper will illustrate the various roles and functions the de minimis defense plays in our legal system. (...) In doing so, it will highlight the dangers of viewing the defense as monolithic and suggest that our terminology surrounding de minimis ought to be revised due to the differing justifications that support the application of each de minimis type. (shrink)

The law and society occasionally impute consent to an agent despite a clear lack of actual consent. A common type of such ‘fictitious consent’ is constructive consent. In this practice, we treat an agent as if she consented to Φ because she did Ψ. By examining how constructive consent operates in law and daily life, I show that our treatment of agents in these cases bears no normatively relevant resemblance to consent because it is grounded in values and concerns other (...) than autonomy. Thus, the practice may diminish the very autonomy consent proper seeks to promote. Hiding this potential for conflict creates the risk moral concerns will not be appropriately balanced when deciding on the permissibility of an action. We thus ought to be explicit that such cases don’t involve consent and its common justification. (shrink)

The Bush administration's military war on terrorism is a blunt, ineffective, and unjust response to the threat posed to innocent civilians by terrorism. Decentralized terrorist networks can only be effectively fought by international cooperation among police and intelligence agencies representing diverse nation‐states, including ones with predominantly Islamic populations. The Bush administration's allegations of a global Islamist terrorist threat to the national interests of the United States misread the decentralized and complex nature of Islamist politics. Undoubtedly there exists a “combat fundamentalist” (...) element within Islamism. But the threat posed to U.S. citizens by Islamist terrorism neither necessitates nor justifies as a response massive military invasions of other nations. Not only does the Bush administration's war on alleged “terrorist states” violate the doctrine of just war, but in addition these wars arise from a new, unilateral, imperial foreign‐policy doctrine of “preventive wars.” Such a doctrine will isolate the United States from international institutions and long‐standing allies. The weakening of these institutions and alliances will only weaken the ability of the international community to deter terrorism. (shrink)

In “Abetting a Crime,” Husak puzzles over what, exactly, abettors are held liable for. Having dismissed the proposal that derivative liability can ground the imposition of punishment, he then turns to fair labeling concerns to further highlight problems surrounding current Anglo-American complicity laws. The best moral solution, according to Husak, is a drastic but ultimately unworkable revising of our laws. Loosely, he presents a two-horned dilemma: the laws are either insufficiently detailed to respect fair labeling practices or too detailed to (...) be workable. Though I agree with his assessment derivative liability, I advocate for a more optimistic outlook. Specifically, I advocate for having multiple new crimes of “abetting _____,” where the blank is filled in by reference to a particular existing crime for which we think it should be wrongful to help another. This framework offers significant advantages over current complicity laws while escaping the two pitfalls Husak highlights. (shrink)

Why have radical political theorists, whose thinking inspired mass movements for democracy, been so suspicious of political plurality? According to Joseph Schwartz, their doubts were involved with an effort to transcend politics. Mistakenly equating all social difference with the harmful way in which particular interests dominated marketplace societies, radical thinkers sought a comprehensive set of "true human interests" that would completely abolish political strife. In extensive analyses of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Arendt, Schwartz seeks to mediate the (...) radical critique of democratic capitalist societies with the concern for pluralism evidenced in both liberal and postmodern thought. He thus escapes the authoritarian potential of the radical position, while appropriating its more democratic implications. In Schwartz's view, a reconstructed radical democratic theory of politics must sustain liberalism's defense of individual rights and social pluralism, while redressing the liberal failure to question structural inequalities. In proposing such a theory, he criticizes communitarianism for its premodern longing for a monolithic, virtuous society, and challenges the "politics of difference" for its failure to question the undemocratic terrain of power on which "difference" is constructed. In conclusion, he maintains that an equitable distribution of power and resources among social groups necessitates not the transcendence of politics but its democratic expansion. (shrink)

For trans youth, the experience of gender differs from expectations based on sex assigned at birth (Frohard-Dourlent, Dobson, Clark, Duoll, & Saewyc, 2016). To support gender health—the ability to...

Health care professionals who travel from their home countries to participate in humanitarian assistance or development work experience distinctive ethical challenges in providing care and services to populations affected by war, disaster or deprivation. Limited information is available about organizational practices related to preparation and support for health professionals working with non-governmental organizations. In this article, we present one component of the results of a qualitative study conducted with 20 Canadian health care professionals who participated in international aid work. The (...) findings reported here relate to expatriate clinicians’ experiences and perceptions of ethics preparation, training and support. The strategies examined include pre-departure training and preparation, in-field supports and retrospective debriefing of ethical issues. Participants experienced a range of training and supports as beneficial for addressing ethical challenges in humanitarian assistance and development work. Participants also expressed ambivalence or scepticism about the benefits offered by specific modalities. This analysis can contribute to informing discussions of how organizations and individual practitioners can best develop, implement and utilize ethics training and support for international aid work. (shrink)

Upon Brexit, the United Kingdom chose to follow the path of EU data protection and remain tied to the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It even enacted the GDPR into its domestic law. This Article evaluates five models relating to preference change, demonstrating how they identify different dimensions of Brexit while providing a rich explanation of why a legal system may or may not reject an established transnational legal order. While market forces and a “Brussels Effect” played (...) the most significant role in the decision of the UK government to accept the GDPR, important nonmarket factors were also present in this choice. This Article’s models of preference change are also useful in thinking about the likely extent of the UK’s future divergence from EU data protection. (shrink)

Digital medicine is a medical treatment that combines technology with drug delivery. The promises of this combination are continuous and remote monitoring, better disease management, self-tracking, self-management of diseases, and improved treatment adherence. These devices pose ethical challenges for patients, providers, and the social practice of medicine. For patients, having both informed consent and a user agreement raises questions of understanding for autonomy and informed consent, therapeutic misconception, external influences on decision making, confidentiality and privacy, and device dependability. For providers, (...) digital medicine changes the relationship where trust can be verified, clinicians can be monitored, expectations must be managed, and new liability risks may be assumed. Other ethical questions include direct third-party monitoring of health treatment, affordability, and planning for adverse events in the case of device malfunction. This article seeks to lay out the ethical landscape for the implementation of such devices in patient care. (shrink)

Neither moral philosophy nor history provides a satisfactory explanation for Oskar Schindler's extraordinary rescue of more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark does. Although Schindler's Ark is technically a work of fiction, that generic label obscures its contribution as a fictionalised account of true events. By using a novelist's tools to tell an historical story, Keneally allows us to make inferences as to the motives of his protagonist and thereby helps us to understand what propelled the (...) moral behaviour of Oskar Schindler. (shrink)

The data emerging from the clinical and brain studies described above suggest that, in the case of OCD, there are two pertinent brain mechanisms that are distinguishable both in terms of neuro dynamics and in terms of the conscious experiences that accompany them. These mechanisms can be characterized, on anatomical and perhaps evolutionary grounds, as a lower level and a higher level mechanism. The clinical treatment has, when successful, an activating effect on the higher level mechanism, and a suppressive effect (...) on the lower level one. (shrink)