Research misconduct has been thoroughly discussed in the literature, but mainly in terms of definitions and prescriptions for proper conduct. Even when case studies are cited, they are generally used as a repository of “lessons learned.” What has been lacking from this conversation is how the lessons of responsible conduct of research are imparted in the first place to graduate students, especially those in technical fields such as engineering. Nor has there been much conversation about who is responsible for what (...) in training students in Responsible Conduct of Research or in allocating blame in cases of misconduct. This paper explores three seemingly disparate cases of misconduct—the 2004 plagiarism scandal at Ohio University; the famous Robert Millikan article of 1913, in which his reported data selection did not match his notebooks; and the 1990 fabrication scandal in Dr. Leroy Hood’s research lab. Comparing these cases provides a way to look at the relationship between the graduate student (or trainee) and his/her advisor (a relationship that has been shown to be the most influential one for the student) as well as at possibly differential treatment for established researchers and researchers-in-training, in cases of misconduct. This paper reflects on the rights and responsibilities of research advisers and their students and offers suggestions for clarifying both those responsibilities and the particularly murky areas of research-conduct guidelines. (shrink)

Engineering educators have long discussed the need to teach professional responsibility and the social context of engineering without adding to overcrowded curricula. One difficulty we face is the lack of appropriate teaching materials that can fit into existing courses. The PRiME (Professional Responsibility Modules for Engineering) Project (http://www.engr.utexas.edu/ethics/primeModules.cfm) described in this paper was initiated at the University of Texas, Austin to provide web-based modules that could be integrated into any undergraduate engineering class. Using HPL (How People Learn) theory, PRiME developed (...) and piloted four modules during the academic year 2004–2005. This article introduces the modules and the pilot, outlines the assessment process, analyzes the results, and describes how the modules are being revised in light of the initial assessment. In its first year of development and testing, PRiME made significant progress towards meeting its objectives. The PRiME Project can strengthen engineering education by providing faculty with an effective system for engaging students in learning about professional responsibility. (shrink)

An updated and extended second edition supporting the findings of its well-known predecessor which claimed that courts employ common-sense notions of causation in determining legal responsibility.

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

Currently, in the United States, there is no legal obligation for medical professionals or civil courts to uphold patients’ Advance Directives (ADs) regarding end-of-life care. The applicability and standing of ADs prepared by Alzheimer’s patients is a persistent issue in bioethics. Those who argue against giving ADs full status take two main approaches: (1) appealing to beneficence on behalf of the Alzheimer’s patient and (2) claiming that there is no longer any personal equivalence between the AD’s creator and the subject (...) of the AD. In this paper, I present profound arguments against both approaches. Firstly, I argue that the principle of beneficence cannot apply in the case of Alzheimer’s patients, and, secondly, that the moral and legal authority of the AD need not depend on strict equivalence of personal identity. I conclude by arguing that valid ADs protect the dignity and autonomy of Alzheimer’s patients and that, therefore, there are moral obligations to uphold ADs which should be reflected in public policy and legislation. (shrink)

In response to cancer, patients may be thrown into precarious processes of remaking their purpose, identity, and connections to the world around them. Thoughtful and thorough responses to these issues can be supported by person-centered phenomenological approaches to caring for patients. The importance of perspectives on illness offered by theoretical phenomenology will become apparent through the example of the experience of nausea, or perhaps more accurately put—chemo sickness. The focus here is on how chemo sickness alters one's way of relating (...) to the world. I will examine the phenomenon of nausea through the lens of the phenomenological concept of mood—an existential feeling that engenders a diffused tone permeating through one's world and shapes the envisioned possibilities on one's horizon. (shrink)

Osteoporosis (OP) is a bone disease which affects a number of post‐menopausal females and puts many at risk for fractures. A large number of patients are taking bisphosphonates (BPs) to treat their OP and a rare complication is the development of atypical femoral fractures (AFF). No real explanations for the mechanisms underlying the basis for development of where AFF develop while on BPs has emerged. The present hypothesis will discuss the possibility that part of the risk for an AFF is (...) a secondary effect of BPs on a subset of vascular cells in a genetically at‐risk population, leading to localized deregulation of the endothelial cell (EC)‐bone cell‐matrix units in nutrient channels/canals of the femur and increased risk for AFF. This concept of targeting ECs is consistent with location of AFF in the femur, the bilateral risk for occurrence of AFF, and the requirement for long term exposure to the drugs. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the question whether God intends that sin occur. We clarify the question, consider some of the answers given in the Christian tradition, and give a careful commentary on a few especially telling passages from the Christian Scriptures. We consider two philosophically informed interpretative strategies, one derived from the work of Frances Kamm, the other from Reformed scholasticism, against our interpretation of these passages. While we concede that in other passages such interpretations may allow a way (...) of escaping our argument, we conclude that in the case of the telling passages we have selected there is simply no comparably plausible alternative interpretation. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper argues that if 'reforms' of education designed to raise standards leave unquestioned the notion of fixed differential ability, then they are likely to be self-defeating. It considers alternative ways of formulating knowledge about individual differences reflected both in the literature and in classroom practice, and concludes by making a case for further research to be undertaken to establish frameworks for teaching consistent with an anti-determinist view of individual potential.

A lot of the talk about education nowadays invokes the notion of ‘quality’ and it has been suggested that education in schools and universities would benefit from exposure to the kind of quality assurance procedures originally developed by industry to monitor and raise performance. The paper is critical of this suggestion, arguing that the notion of quality which has emerged from industry is a very limited one and that importing the latter into education would change our educational thinking and practice (...) in significant ways for the worse. What we need, instead, is a fuller appreciation of the kind of quality and standards which are proper to education and which depend upon the exercise of personal judgement. (shrink)

Transcendental Phenomenology of language wrestles with the relationship of language to mind’s manifestation of being. Of special interest is the sense in which language is, like one’s embodiment, a medium of manifestation. Not only does it permit sharing the world because words as worldly things embody meanings that can be the same for everyone; not only does speaking manifest to others the common world from the speaker’s perspective; but also speaking, as a meaning to say, may achieve the manifestation of (...) the world also for the speaker herself. This requires finding the right words to form true propositions in a well-formed sentences. The manifest telos of proposition-rendering sentences is adumbrated and founded in the infant’s elemental formation of simple phonemic identity syntheses and syntax. This instinctual dynamism is founded in what Husserl names “the idea of truth” which supports the thesis of a universal language instinct. (shrink)

This essay addresses the alienation of aesthetics from ethics in the context of modernity. In examining the modern development of moral theory, it offers a critique of the dominant trends within that tradition, arguing that the result is a fragmented and disordered conception of the good life. Christian ethics, grounded in a conception of the beauty of God’s being as a disclosure of the true good, can reaffirm the connection between ethics and aesthetics, that beauty is not simply a matter (...) of inward reflection but also of action toward the world, which gives content to moral life. Christian ethics ultimately requires a “sense of style” through which we are attracted to a life lived in imitation of Christ, and through which our conceptions of virtue are grounded in a desire to act in such a way as to manifest God’s beauty before the world. (shrink)

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.1"In the antiblack world there is but one race, and that race is black. Thus, to be racialized is to be pushed 'down,' toward blackness, and to be deracialized (...) is to be pushed 'up' toward whiteness." This does not mean, of course, that there are only blacks and whites in some anthropological sense. It does not mean that political reality with regard to race simply reduces to two positions... (shrink)

The project of studying children in order to understand them, which lies at the heart of contemporary thinking about children and their education, is misconceived. It rests, jrst of all, upon a false belief that we can only come to know something properly by deliberately and systematically pursuing knowledge of it. Secondly, it offers a paradigm of knowing children which justifies parents and teachers in not giving themselves to children. By re-interpreting the problems that adults experience with children as technical, (...) as arising from lack of information about them, it ignores the personal and moral dimension of adults’ relations with children and thus further alienates them from one another. (shrink)

Reflection is the basic attitude of transcendental phenomenology. However, as we shall see in this essay, prereflective experiencing may make a unique claim for philosophical foundations - albeit a claim which can only occur when mediated by reflection.

Conceptual understanding and knowing other-wise: Reflections on rationality and spirituality in philosophy.

Non-heterosexual men have long existed on the social and cultural margins. Gay and bisexual male characters in literature, too, have done so for many generations. This essay explores the construction of gay masculinity in the short story “Brokeback Mountain” in relation to the “imaginative leap” that its author, Annie Proulx, undertook in order to conceptualize and represent this noteworthy form of marginalized otherness. It demonstrates that, despite the story’s various refreshing elements, “Brokeback Mountain” ultimately relies far too extensively on the (...) logic of melodrama when telling the tale of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love in 1963 and continue their sexual relationship over the course of two decades. As a result, this story ends up positioning its two queer protagonists as enemies of the patriarchal social order and the larger society within which it so comfortably exists, implicitly perpetuating both heterosexism and homophobia as it does its cultural work. (shrink)

This book provides a focus for future discussion in one of the most important debates within historical theology within the protestant tradition - the debate about the definition of a category of analysis that operates over five centuries of religious faith and practice and in a globalising religion. In March 2009, TIME magazine listed ‘the new Calvinism’ as being among the ‘ten ideas shaping the world.’ In response to this revitalisation of reformation thought, R. Scott Clark and D. G. (...) class='Hi'>Hart have proposed a definition of ‘Reformed’ that excludes many of the theologians who have done most to promote this driver of global religious change. In this book, the Clark-Hart proposal becomes the focus of a debate. Matthew Bingham, Chris Caughey, and Crawford Gribben suggest a broader and more historically responsible definition for ‘Reformed,’ as Hart and Scott respond to their arguments. (shrink)

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, first leaked to the public on 2 May 2022 and officially released on 24 June 2022, overturned Roe v. Wade and thereby determined that abortion is no longer a federally protected right under the Constitution. Instead, the decision gives individual states the right to regulate abortion. Since the Dobbs decision first leaked, our institution has received numerous requests for permanent contraception from individuals stating that their motivation to pursue permanent contraception (...) was influenced by the Dobbs decision and concerns about their reproductive autonomy. Discussions with patients seeking permanent contraception since the Supreme Court’s leaked decision have led us to ask ourselves, is legislative anxiety an indication for surgery? This article presents a case series consisting of a convenience sample of 17 young, nulliparous individuals who sought out permanent contraception in the six months following the leak of the Dobbs decision. Healthcare professionals often feel discomfort in offering permanent contraception to young and nulliparous individuals. Accordingly, we discuss pertinent legal issues, review relevant ethical considerations, and offer a framework for these discussions intended to empower the consulting healthcare professional to center the bodily autonomy of every patient regardless of age, parity, or indication for permanent contraception. (shrink)