Increasing gender diversity in the boardroom has been promoted as a way to enhance corporate governance and risk management. This study empirically examines whether boards with more female directors play a role in reducing R&D risk. We first show that female directors help to reduce the positive relationship between R&D investment and future performance volatility. We then report that firms with more gender-diverse boards exhibit a lower adverse effect of R&D on the cost of debt. These results are robust to (...) endogeneity analysis, alternative measures of gender diversity and risky investment, and other sensitivity tests. Overall, our results suggest that female directors improve board effectiveness in risk management with respect to R&D investment. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the process of entanglement at the 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference (IPNC) at University of California at Irvine held on August 18, 2022. Representing collective work from the US, Canada, UK and Germany, our panel entitled ‘What can critical posthuman philosophies do for nursing?’ examined critical posthumanism and its operations and potential in nursing. Critical posthumanism offers an antifascist, feminist, material, affective, and ecologically entangled approach to nursing and healthcare. Rather than focusing on (...) the arguments of each of the three distinct but interrelated panel presentation pieces, this paper instead focuses on process and performance (per/formance) and performativity as relational, connected and situated, with connections to nursing philosophy. Building upon critical feminist and new materialist philosophies, we describe intra‐activity and performativity as ways to dehierarchise knowledge making practices within traditional academic conference spaces. Creating critical cartographies of thinking and being are actions of possibility for building more just and equitable futures for nursing, nurses, and those they accompany—including all humans, nonhumans, and more than human matter. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics consult services are well established, but often remain underutilized. Our aim was to identify the barriers and perceptions of the Ethics consult service for physicians, advance practice providers (APPs), and nurses at our urban academic medical center which might contribute to underutilization.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional single-health system, anonymous written online survey, which was developed by the UCSD Health Clinical Ethics Committee and distributed by Survey Monkey. We compare responses between physicians, APPs, and nurses using standard parametric and non-parametric statistical (...) methods. Satisfaction with ethics consult and likelihood of calling Ethics service again were assessed using a 0–100 scale using a 5-likert response structured (0 being “not helpful at all” to 100 being “extremely helpful”) and results presented using box plots and interquartile ranges (IQR).ResultsFrom January to July 2019, approximately 3800 surveys were sent to all physicians, APPs and nurses with a return rate of 5.5—10%. Although the majority of respondents had encountered an ethical dilemma (85–92.1%) only approximately half had ever requested an Ethics consult. The primary reason for physicians never having requested a consult was that they never felt the need for help (41%). For APPs the primary reasons were not knowing an Ethics consult service was available (33.3%) or not knowing how to contact Ethics (27.8%). For nurses, it was not knowing how to contact the Ethics consult service (30.8%) or not feeling the need for help (26.2%). The median satisfaction score (IQR) for Ethics consult services rated on a 0–100 scale, from physicians was 76 (29), for AAPs 89 (49), and nurses 70 (40) (p = 0.62). The median (IQR) of likelihood of consulting Ethics in the future also on a 0–100 scale was 71 (47) for physicians, 69 (45) for APPs, and 61 (45) for nurses (p = 0.79). APP’s and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to believe that the team did not act on the Ethics consult’s recommendations.ConclusionsBased on the results presented, we were able to identify actionable steps to better engage healthcare providers—and in particular APPs and nurses—and scale up institutional educational efforts to increase awareness of the role of the Ethics consult service at our institution. Actionable steps included implementing a system of ongoing feedback that is critical for the sustainability of the Ethics service role. We hope this project can serve as a blueprint for other hospital-based Ethics consult services to improve the quality of their programs. (shrink)

This paper investigates how deans and directors at the top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the "Financial Times" in their 2006 Global MBA rankings) respond to questions about the inclusion and coverage of the topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability at their respective institutions. This work purposely investigates each of the three topics separately. Our findings reveal that: (1) a majority of the schools require that one or more of these topics be covered in their MBA (...) curriculum and one-third of the schools require coverage of all three topics as part of the MBA curriculum, (2) there is a trend toward the inclusion of sustainability-related courses, (3) there is a higher percentage of student interest in these topics (as measured by the presence of a Net Impact club) in the top 10 schools, and (4) several schools are teaching these topics using experiential learning and immersion techniques. We note a fivefold increase in the number of stand-alone ethics courses since a 1988 investigation on ethics, and we include other findings about institutional support of centers or special programs; as well as a discussion of integration, teaching techniques, and notable practices in relation to all three topics. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century is a wide-ranging collection of essays that explores philosophy, biography, and texts about and by disabled people living in the eighteenth century. The book, which introduces and affirms the notion that disability studies predates most United States and United Kingdom findings by more than a hundred years, will be of interest to philosophers, historians, sociologists, and literary scholars.

Plant-based milk alternatives–or mylks–have surged in popularity over the past ten years. We consider the politics and consumer subjectivities fostered by mylks as part of the broader trend towards ‘plant-based’ food. We demonstrate how mylk companies inherit and strategically deploy positive framings of milk as wholesome and convenient, as well as negative framings of dairy as environmentally damaging and cruel, to position plant-based as the ‘better’ alternative. By navigating this affective landscape, brands attempt to make mylk as simultaneously palatable and (...) disruptive to the status quo. We examine the politics of mylks through the concept of palatable disruption, where people are encouraged to care about the environment, health, and animal welfare enough to adopt mylks but to ultimately remain consumers of a commodity food. By encouraging consumers to reach for “plant-based” as a way to cope with environmental catastrophe and a life out of balance, mylks promote a neoliberal ethic: they individualize systemic problems and further entrench market mechanisms as solutions, thereby reinforcing the political economy of industrial agriculture. In conclusion, we reflect on the limits of the current plant-based trend for transitioning to more just and sustainable food production and consumption. (shrink)

This paper presents a diagrammatic notation for visualizing epistemic entities and relations. The notation was created during the Visualizing Worldviews project funded by the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute and has been further developed by the scholars participating in the university’s Research Opportunity Program. Since any systematic diagrammatic notation should be based on a solid ontology of the respective domain, we first outline the current state of the scientonomic ontology. We then proceed to providing diagrammatic tools for visualizing the (...) epistemic entities and relations of this ontology. These basic diagramming techniques allow us to construct diagrams of various types for both synchronic and diachronic visualizations. The paper concludes by highlighting some future research directions. As the notation presented here is de facto accepted and used in scientonomy, the paper suggests no modifications. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo describe reporting of informed consent in pragmatic trials, justifications for waivers of consent and reporting of alternative approaches to standard written consent. To identify factors associated with (1) not reporting and (2) not obtaining consent.MethodsSurvey of primary trial reports, published 2014–2019, identified using an electronic search filter for pragmatic trials implemented in MEDLINE, and registered in ClinicalTrials.gov.ResultsAmong 1988 trials, 132 (6.6%) did not include a statement about participant consent, 1691 (85.0%) reported consent had been obtained, 139 (7.0%) reported a (...) waiver and 26 (1.3%) reported consent for one aspect (eg, data collection) but a waiver for another (eg, intervention). Of the 165 trials reporting a waiver, 76 (46.1%) provided a justification. Few (53, 2.9%) explicitly reported use of alternative approaches to consent. In multivariable logistic regression analyses, lower journal impact factor (p=0.001) and cluster randomisation (p<0.0001) were significantly associated with not reporting on consent, while trial recency, cluster randomisation, higher-income country settings, health services research and explicit labelling as pragmatic were significantly associated with not obtaining consent (all p<0.0001).DiscussionNot obtaining consent seems to be increasing and is associated with the use of cluster randomisation and pragmatic aims, but neither cluster randomisation nor pragmatism are currently accepted justifications for waivers of consent. Rather than considering either standard written informed consent or waivers of consent, researchers and research ethics committees could consider alternative consent approaches that may facilitate the conduct of pragmatic trials while preserving patient autonomy and the public’s trust in research. (shrink)

This volume is the first of a trilogy which investigates, from a broadly realist perspective, the place, and challenges, of the human in contemporary social orders. The authors, all members of the Centre for Social Ontology, ask what is specific about humanity's nature and worth, and what are their main challenges in contemporary societies? Examining the ways in which recent advances in technology threaten to blur and displace the boundaries constitutive of our shared humanity, Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex (...) Machina explores the philosophical and ethical questions raised by these developments, and discusses the dangers posed by the combination of transhumanism with post-humanist social theories and antihumanist practices, institutions and ideologies. (shrink)

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of issue legitimacy and organizational legitimacy, providing a new measure of each construct. The scales were developed and tested using data collected through a statewide survey of Alabama residents. Assessments of issue legitimacy were based on perceptions of direct-to-consumer advertising, whereas assessments of organizational legitimacy were based on perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. The findings provide evidence that organizational legitimacy can be reliably measured using a five-item scale (...) and issue legitimacy can be reliably measured using a six-item scale. The implications of the results and potential uses of the scales are discussed. (shrink)

Jamie Dow presents an original treatment of Aristotle's views on rhetoric and the passions, and the first major study of Aristotle's Rhetoric in recent years. He attributes to Aristotle a normative view of rhetoric and its role in the state, and ascribes to him a particular view of the kinds of cognitions involved in the passions.

In philosophy of religion, there are few more frequently visited topics than the problem of evil, which has attracted considerable interest since the time of Epicurus. It is well known that the problem of evil involves responding to the apparent tension between 1) belief in the existence of a good, all powerful, all knowing God and 2) the existence of evil—such as personal suffering embodied in the experience of cancer. While a great deal has been written concerning abstract philosophical theories (...) that academics use to explain the existence of evil, much less has been written about how religious lay people make sense of evil and suffering. What explanations, meanings, and perceptions do they hold concerning the religious significance of evil? What can theologians and philosophers learn from these lay experiences? Our interdisciplinary team designed an experiment to identify the religious significance that personal suffering held for a group of religious cancer sufferers. We interviewed twenty-nine self-identified evangelical Christians who had received a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives for our experiment. Since all interviewees identified as Christians, it was expected that they would assent to belief in a theistic God. It was also expected that each interviewee would assent the existence of evil and see their cancer experience as a dramatic and personal instance of an evil event. The explicit existential threat of cancer guarantees that the individual has much at stake in the experience. Furthermore, the pain and suffering that typically accompanies either the cancer itself or cancer treatments make it a compelling example of evil experienced in a very personal way. Finally, even when successfully treated, the ongoing threat of potentially fatal recurrence looms over the sufferer for years to come. We asked 17 questions related to the religious significance of their cancer experience in each interview and coded these interviews looking for five distinct types of explanations for/meaning of evil: trusting God in mystery, free will, moral development, spiritual growth, and growth in human relationships/community. These categories were meant to correspond loosely to five philosophical responses to the existence of evil.Our interviews included several important results. First, 79% of interviewees had at least one answer that fit into the ‘trust God in mystery’ category of responses with 48% using this category of responses as their most frequently cited theme. This result could be interpreted as a kind of generic theodical response: God has a good, but unknown reason for allowing evil/suffering. Alternatively, another possible interpretation is that at least some of these interviewees intuited something similar to skeptical theism, since it claims that if one understands the type of God proposed by theism and possesses an accurate view of human cognitive capacities, it is apparent that there is no real tension to be resolved between theism and the existence of evil. Some of our interviewees seemed to believe not only that the answer to why evil exists is mysterious, but that they simply could not have the necessary perspective to judge what kinds of purposes God might have for allowing this painful episode in their lives.While it was unsurprising that religious sufferers would find it important to trust God in ambiguous difficult circumstances, more surprisingly, we found that 52% of our respondents did not judge that their cancer experience was at all in tension with their religious beliefs. Whereas a broad range of philosophers and theologians acknowledge that there is at least an apparent conflict between the existence of a good, all-powerful God and the existence of evil, most of our interviewees did not even perceive an apparent tension between theistic beliefs and their painful cancer experiences that would be in need of additional reconciliation.There are at least two ways this result might be interpreted. First, our interviewees might hold additional beliefs that make the existence of evil easier for them to accept. After all, these interviewees were not ‘bare theists’ who held only to the existence of God, but presumably held a broad range of religious beliefs which may already serve to reconcile the existence of evil: that growing closer to God is more important than earthly life itself, that in evil in this life allows us a greater appreciation of a blessed eternity, or simply that ‘God works for our good in mysterious ways.’ Thus, a fully developed Christian worldview may already accommodate the existence of evil in a way not fully appreciated by philosophers.Another possible interpretation is that at least some of our interviewees were not adequately reflective to perceive the tension between their religious beliefs and their experience of suffering. There is at least some reason to doubt this explanation as an overarching interpretation of this result since our interviewees were generally well educated with the median participant holding at least a Bachelor’s degree, and most were ongoing participants in a cancer support group ensuring long-term ongoing engagement with their cancer experience.A final significant finding is that a high portion of our interviewees, 83% reported specific examples of beneficial personal growth—moral, spiritual, or relational— that resulted from their cancer experience. When asked about their cancer experience’s broad effect upon their lives in these areas they volunteered at least one example of a benefit they received in these areas. Depending on one’s accompanying value theory and whether such benefits might have been otherwise achieved, they might provide a morally sufficient reason for the existence of suffering. Our interviewees frequently described experiencing the kind of benefits at the heart of John Hick’s soul making theodicy and Eleonore Stump’s ‘spiritual growth’ theodicy, providing at least some corroborating evidence for such views. Experiences common to our interviewees were similar to what such theodicies would predict. (shrink)

ObjectiveMisophonia is an unusually strong aversion to a specific class of sounds – most often human bodily sounds such as chewing, crunching, or breathing. A number of studies have emerged in the last 10 years examining misophonia in adults, but little is known about the impact of the condition in children. Here we set out to investigate the well-being profile of children with misophonia, while also presenting the first validated misophonia questionnaire for children.Materials and MethodsWe screened 142 children using our (...) novel diagnostic [the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents ]. This allowed us to identify a group of children already manifesting misophonia at that age – the first population-sampled cohort of child misophonics examined to date. Children and their parents also completed measures of well-being and creative self-construct.ResultsData show that children with misophonia have significantly elevated levels of anxiety and obsessive compulsive traits. Additionally children with misophonia have significantly poorer life-satisfaction, and health-related quality of life. As predicted, they show no differences in creative self-construct.ConclusionTogether our data suggest the first evidence in population sampling of poorer life outcomes for children with misophonia, and provide preliminary convergent and discriminant validation for our novel misophonia instrument. Our data suggest a need for greater recognition and therapeutic outlets for adolescents with misophonia. (shrink)

Organizational sensemaking is crucial for resource planning and crisis management since facing complex strategic problems that exceed their capacity and ability, such as crises, forces organizations to engage in inter-organizational collaboration, which leads to obtaining individual and diverse perspectives to comprehend the issues and find solutions. This online qualitative survey study examines how Norwegian Sea Rescue Society employees perceived the concept of an organizational crisis and how they sensed their co-workers react to it. The scope was the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, (...) a global event affecting all countries and organizations and responding similarly globally. Data were collected during the Fall of 2020. The instrument of choice was the Internal Crisis Management and Crisis Communication survey. The results showed that the overall sample strongly believed in their organization’s overall resilience level. However, a somewhat vague understanding of roles and responsibilities in a crisis where detected, together with some signs of informal communication, rumor spreading, misunderstanding, frustration, and insecurity. This study contributes to the academic field of organizational research, hence crisis management and sensemaking, and could be valuable to managers and decision-makers across sectors. Increased knowledge about how employees react to a crisis may help optimize internal crisis management planning and utilize robust mitigation and response strategies. (shrink)

Mirror-touch synaesthesia is a condition where observing touch to another’s body induces a subjective tactile sensation on the synaesthetes body. The present study explores which characteristics of the inducing stimulus modulate the synaesthetic touch experience. Fourteen mirror-touch synaesthetes watched videos depicting a touch event while indicating whether the video induced a tactile sensation, on which side of their body they felt this sensation and the intensity of the experienced sensation. Results indicate that the synaesthetes experience stronger tactile sensations when observing (...) touch to real bodies, whereas observing touch to dummy bodies, pictures of bodies and disconnected dummy body parts elicited weaker sensations. These results suggest that mirror-touch synaesthesia is not entirely bottom-up driven, but top-down information, such as knowledge about real and dummy body parts, also modulate the intensity of the experience. (shrink)

Transcript of an Interview on the podcast: Irreverend: Faith and Current Affairs.

According to the PubMed resource from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, over 750,000 scientific articles have been published in the ~5000 biomedical journals worldwide in the year 2007 alone. The vast majority of these publications include results from hypothesis-driven experimentation in overlapping biomedical research domains. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of information being generated by the biomedical research enterprise has made it virtually impossible for investigators to stay aware of the latest findings in their domain of interest, let alone to (...) be able to assimilate and mine data from related investigations for purposes of meta-analysis. While computers have the potential for assisting investigators in the extraction, management and analysis of these data, information contained in the traditional journal publication is still largely unstructured, free-text descriptions of study design, experimental application and results interpretation, making it difficult for computers to gain access to the content of what is being conveyed without significant manual intervention. In order to circumvent these roadblocks and make the most of the output from the biomedical research enterprise, a variety of related standards in knowledge representation are being developed, proposed and adopted in the biomedical community. In this chapter, we will explore the current status of efforts to develop minimum information standards for the representation of a biomedical experiment, ontologies composed of shared vocabularies assembled into subsumption hierarchical structures, and extensible relational data models that link the information components together in a machine-readable and human-useable framework for data mining purposes. (shrink)

The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants factorial. On (...) ten-point quizzes, SNT made an average difference of 1.22 points. Furthermore, the results indicate that SNT is particularly effective with weaker students, e.g., we found a nearly three-point increase on ten-point quizzes for the weakest students. (shrink)

The development of a human right to water and sanitation under international law has created an imperative to implement human rights in water and sanitation policy. Through forty-three interviews with informants in international institutions, national governments, and non-governmental organizations, this research examines interpretations of this new human right in global governance, national policy, and local practice. Exploring obstacles to the implementation of rights-based water and sanitation policy, the authors analyze the limitations of translating international human rights into local water and (...) sanitation practice, concluding that system operators, utilities, and management boards remain largely unaffected by the changing public policy landscape for human rights realization. To understand the relevance of human rights standards to water and sanitation practitioners, this article frames a research agenda to ensure that human rights aspirations lead to public policy reforms and public health outcomes. (shrink)

The ethics of the Flexibility In duty hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees trial have been vehemently debated. Views on the ethics of the FIRST trial range from it being completely unethical to wholly unproblematic. The FIRST trial illustrates the complex ethical challenges posed by cluster randomised trials of policy interventions involving healthcare professionals. In what follows, we have three objectives. First, we critically review the FIRST trial controversy, finding that commentators have failed to sufficiently identify and address many of the (...) relevant ethical issues. The 2012 Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials provides researchers and research ethics committees with specific guidance for the ethical design and conduct of CRTs. Second, we aim to demonstrate how the Ottawa Statement provides much-needed clarity to the ethical issues in the FIRST trial, including: research participant identification; consent requirements; gatekeeper roles; benefit-harm analysis and identification of vulnerable participants. We nonetheless also find that the FIRST trial raises ethical issues not adequately addressed by the Ottawa Statement. Hence, third and finally, we raise important questions requiring further ethical analysis and guidance, including: Does clinical equipoise apply to policy interventions with little or no evidence-base? Do healthcare providers have an obligation to participate in research? Does the power-differential in certain healthcare settings render healthcare providers vulnerable to duress and coercion to participant in research? If so, what safeguards might be implemented to protect providers, while allowing important research to proceed? (shrink)

Teams are a fundamental aspect of life—from sports to business, to defense, to science, to education. While the cognitive sciences tend to focus on information processing within individuals, others have argued that teams are also capable of demonstrating cognitive capacities similar to humans, such as skill acquisition and forgetting (cf., Cooke, Gorman, Myers, & Duran, 2013; Fiore et al., 2010). As artificially intelligent and autonomous systems improve in their ability to learn, reason, interact, and coordinate with human teammates combined with (...) the observation that teams can express cognitive capacities typically seen in individuals, a cognitive science of teams is emerging. Consequently, new questions are being asked about teams regarding teamness, trust, the introduction and effects of autonomous systems on teams, and how best to measure team behavior and phenomena. In this topic, four facets of human-autonomy team cognition are introduced with leaders in the field providing in-depth articles associated with one or more of the facets: (1) defining teams; (2) how trust is established, maintained, and repaired when broken; (3) autonomous systems operating as teammates; and (4) metrics for evaluating team cognition across communication, coordination, and performance. (shrink)

In this reply, we provide an analysis of Alter et al. response to our earlier paper. In that paper, we reported difficulty in replicating Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, and Eyre’s main finding, namely that a sense of disfluency produced by making stimuli difficult to perceive, increased accuracy on a variety of reasoning tasks. Alter, Oppenheimer, and Epley argue that we misunderstood the meaning of accuracy on these tasks, a claim that we reject. We argue and provide evidence that the tasks were (...) not too difficult for our populations and point out that in many cases performance on our tasks was well above chance or on a par with Alter et al.’s participants. Finally, we reiterate our claim that the distinction between answer fluency and perceptual fluency is genuine, and argue that Thompson et al. provided evidence that these are distinct factors that have different downstream effects on cognitive processes. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSocial sharing of positive life experiences has been linked to increased intensity of positive emotion. Less is known about the relations among sharing, the perceived response of the listener, and the duration of positive emotion. We hypothesised that sharing an experience would sustain positive emotion when listeners responded in a manner that highlighted the appraised importance and remarkability of the experience, thereby slowing hedonic adaptation. College students who received a desirable exam grade reported their emotional response, appraisals, and sharing on (...) the day they received their grade and again the following evening. Sharing was associated with longer episodes of positive emotion and more time spent thinking about the positive event. The association between sharing and emotion duration was greatest when sharing partners were perceived as highlighting the importance and remarkability of the event. This type of sharing also mitigated the fading of emotion intensity over time.... (shrink)

Quality and service improvement (QSI) research employs a broad range of methods to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery. QSI research differs from traditional healthcare research and poses unique ethical questions. Since QSI research aims to generate knowledge to enhance quality improvement efforts, should it be considered research for regulatory purposes? Is review by a research ethics committee required? Should healthcare providers be considered research participants? If participation in QSI research entails no more than minimal risk, is consent required? The (...) lack of consensus on answers to these questions highlights the need for ethical guidance. Three distinct approaches to classifying QSI research in accordance with existing ethical principles and regulations can be found in the literature. In the first approach, QSI research is viewed as distinct from other types of healthcare research and does not require regulation. In the second approach, QSI research falls within regulatory guidelines but is exempt from research ethics committee review. In the third approach, QSI research is deemed to be part of the learning healthcare system and, as such, is subject to a different set of ethical principles entirely. In this paper, we critically assess each of these views. While none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory, we argue that use of the ethical principles governing research provides the best means of addressing the numerous questions posed by QSI research. (shrink)

Allocating access to unapproved COVID-19 drugs available via Pre-Approval Access pathways or Emergency Use Authorization raises unique challenges at the intersection of clinical care and research....

We contribute to the exploration of diversity in interdisciplinary science by elaborating the notion of epistemic commitments to address researchers’ different views of knowledge that matters and how these views are embedded in research practices and networks. Based on previous science and technology studies and science-policy literature, we define epistemic commitments as reflexive commitments to regimes of relevant research. Drawing on an in-depth enquiry in the case of biodiversity studies in France, we describe four regimes of research, each of them (...) bringing together certain disciplinary approaches and technologies, certain scenarios about environmental changes and certain contributions to decision making and management. We distinguish between an environmentalist regime, a management-oriented regime, a function-based regime, and an ecoengineering regime. We give insights into how researchers’ commitments to these regimes are shaped, stabilized, and maintained over time, suggesting the coevolution of research practices, practical contributions, and environmental scenarios. We emphasize pluralism rather than hegemony of a type of knowledge over the others. Our results show that environmental research’s diversity does not result only from the complexity of reality itself but is also embedded in various views of scientific advancement, future scenarios, and useful contributions to environmental governance. (shrink)

In 2006 Jamie Tworkowski wrote a story called "To Write Love on Her Arms" about helping a friend through her struggle with drug addiction, depression, and self-injury. The piece was so hauntingly beautiful that it quickly went viral, giving birth to a non-profit organization of the same name. Nine years later, To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) is an internationally-recognized leader in suicide prevention and a source of hope, encouragement, and resources for people worldwide. Jamie's words have (...) been shared hundreds of thousands of times online. They've shown up on T-shirts and posters and even tattoos. Now, for the first time, Jamie's writing is available in the form of a book. If You Feel Too Much is a celebration of hope, wonder, and what it means to be human. From personal stories of struggling on days most people celebrate to offering words of strength and encouragement in moments of loss, the essays in this book invite readers to believe that it's okay to admit to pain and it's okay to ask for help. If You Feel Too Much is an important book from one of this generation's most important voices. (shrink)