Within the mother’s womb, life finds its first stirrings. The womb shelters the fetus, the growing child within. We recognize the existential traces of a wombed existence when a newborn calms in response to being held; when a newborn stills in response to his or her mother’s heartbeat; and, when a newborn startles in the presence of bright light. Yet, how does experiential human life begin within another human being? What are the conditions and paths of becoming for the fetus (...) within the womb? And for the child born early, what “womb” welcomes the premature child in neonatal intensive care? (shrink)

To advance current knowledge on ethical decision-making in organizations, we integrate two perspectives that have thus far developed independently: the organizational identification perspective and the ethical climate perspective. We illustrate the interaction between these perspectives in two studies, in which we presented participants with moral business dilemmas. Specifically, we found that organizational identification increased moral decision-making only when the organization’s climate was perceived to be ethical. In addition, we disentangle this effect in Study 2 from participants’ moral identity. We argue (...) that the interactive influence of organizational identification and ethical climate, rather than the independent influence of either of these perspectives, is crucial for understanding moral decision-making in organizations. (shrink)

Max van Manen offers an extensive exploration of phenomenological traditions and methods for the human sciences. It is his first comprehensive statement of phenomenological thought and research in over a decade. Phenomenology of practice refers to the meaning and practice of phenomenology in professional contexts such as psychology, education, and health care, as well as to the practice of phenomenological methods in contexts of everyday living. Van Manen presents a detailed description of key phenomenological ideas as they have (...) evolved over the past century; he then thoughtfully works through the methodological issues of phenomenological reflection, empirical methods, and writing that a phenomenology of practice offers to the researcher. Van Manen’s comprehensive work will be of great interest to all concerned with the interrelationship between being and acting in human sciences research and in everyday life. (shrink)

This text gives examples of how a different kind of human experience may be explored, and how the methods used for investigating phenomena may contribute to the process of human understanding.

In some areas of cognitive science we are confronted with ultrafast cognition, exquisite context sensitivity, and scale-free variation in measured cognitive activities. To move forward, we suggest a need to embrace this complexity, equipping cognitive science with tools and concepts used in the study of complex dynamical systems. The science of movement coordination has benefited already from this change, successfully circumventing analogous paradoxes by treating human activities as phenomena of self-organization. Therein, action and cognition are seen to be emergent in (...) ultrafast symmetry breaking across the brain and body; exquisitely constituted of the otherwise trivial details of history, context, and environment; and exhibiting the characteristic scale-free signature of self-organization. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the phenomenon of writing online. We ask, ‘Is writing by means of online technologies affected in a manner that differs significantly from the older technologies of pen on paper, typewriter, or even the word processor in an off‐line environment?’ In writing online, the author is engaged in a spatial complexity of physical, temporal, imaginal, and virtual experience: the writing space, the space of the text, cyber space, etc. At times, these may provide a conduit to (...) a writerly understanding of human phenomena. We propose that an examination of the phenomenological features of online writing may contribute to a more pedagogically sensitive understanding of the experiences of online seminars, teaching and learning. (shrink)

During the last two decades there has been an enormous development in treatment possibilities in the field of neonatology, particularly for (extremely) premature infants. Although there are cross-cultural differences in treatment strategy, an overview of the literature suggests that every country is confronted with moral dilemmas in this area. These concern decisions to initiate or withhold treatment directly at birth and, later on, decisions to withdraw treatment with the possible consequence that the child will die. Given that the neonate cannot (...) express his or her own will, who will decide? And on the basis of what information, values and norms? We explored some of these issues in daily practice by interviewing a small sample of health care practitioners in a Dutch university Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It turned out that experiencing moral dilemmas is part of their daily functioning. Nurses underline the suffering of the newborn, whereas physicians stress uncertainty in treatment outcome. To make the best of it, nurses focus on their caring task, whereas physicians hope that future follow-up research will lead to more predictable outcomes. As for their own offspring, part of these professionals would hesitate to bring their own extremely premature newborn to a NICU. For the most oppressing dilemma reported – terminating an already initiated treatment – we propose the concept of ‘evidence shift’ to clarify the ambiguous position of uncertainty in decision making. (shrink)

There is a scarcity of research on men’s experience of bereavement (Reiniche, 2006), particularly in relation to qualitative research that focuses on the meaning of such an experience. This paper seeks to address this scarcity by presenting the findings from a phenomenological study of the lifeworlds of a small number of bereaved men. The study looked specifically at how the loss of a spouse influences men’s experience of meaning, grief and loss. Three men aged between 32 and 54 years old (...) who had all lost their partners to cancer between 3 and 7 years ago were interviewed. The hermeneutic phenomenological method of Van Manen (1990) was used to uncover three key themes, labelled grief and self-reflection, meaning of life and loss, and refiguring the life-world. These themes are discussed in the light of broader existential concerns and the extant literature. (shrink)

Humeans are often accused of accounting for natural laws in such a way that the fundamental entities that are supposed to explain the laws circle back and explain themselves. Loewer (2012) contends this is only the appearance of circularity. When it comes to the laws of nature, the Humean posits two kinds of explanation: metaphysical and scientific. The circle is then cut because the kind of explanation the laws provide for the fundamental entities is distinct from the kind of explanation (...) the entities provide for the laws. Lange (2013) has replied that Loewer’s defense is a distinction without a difference. As Lange sees it, Humeanism still produces a circular explanation because scientific explanations are transmitted across metaphysical explanations. We disagree that metaphysical explanation is such a ready conduit of scientific explanation. In what follows, we clear Humeanism of all charges of circularity by exploring how different kinds of explanation can and cannot interact. Our defense of Humeanism begins by presenting the circularity objection and detailing how it relies on an implausible principle about the transitivity of explanation. Then, we turn to Lange’s (2013) transitivity principle for explanation to argue that it fairs no better. With objections neutral to the debate between Humeanism and anti-Humeanism, we will show that his principle is not able to make the circularity objection sound. (shrink)

Introduction: Religious experience in modernity : faith itself as the "unknown God" -- Fides qua creditur : the Enlightenment mind and the theology of the heart -- Within the bounds of reason alone : the subjective justification of religious belief in the thought of Immanuel Kant -- Schleiermacher's "higher order Pietism" : subjectivity and Protestant liberal thought -- Søren Kierkegaard and the paradox of faith : subjectivity in Christian existentialism -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American revivalism : Jonathan Edwards (...) and John Wesley -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American revivalism : George Whitefield and Charles G. Finney. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Precision medicine research involving human biological material is becoming an increasingly central component of healthcare, and its potential is quickly growing due to rapid technological progress...

This paper tests the extent of Spinoza’s liberalism through examining the question whether he would tolerate atheists. The first section analyzes the meaning of atheism through the epistolary exchange with Lambert van Velthuysen. It argues that it makes a difference whether Spinoza is an atheist in the strict sense—someone who explicitly denies the existence of God—or a deist—someone who holds a view of unorthodox God. Spinoza denies the charge that his idea of God undermines morality and he also defends his (...) claim that other monotheistic religions than Christianity might contain a kernel of truth. In the second section, the paper discusses Spinoza’s views on toleration. It argues that the state has a limited interest in regulating religious views and it does this through the “dogmas of universal faith.” The state should tolerate a variety of beliefs about God, including those labeled deist, but strict atheistic beliefs, however, are not to be tolerated. In the third section the paper discusses the challenge of the “virtuous atheist” and compares Spinoza’s views to those of Locke and Bayle. Not only Spinoza’s metaphysics but also his ethical project depends on the proper idea of God. Spinoza explicitly contrasts his view, based on a deist conception of God, with that of Hobbes. He reads Hobbes as an epicurean and an atheist. Spinoza’s critical description of Hobbes’s view helps us understand what he thought atheism was and why he was not very sympathetic to it. Spinoza is intolerant towards atheism because it leads to an immoral life and justifies an absolutist state. (shrink)

Abstract:We analyzed data from a survey of employees of a large military base in order to assess possible differences in the whistle-blowing process due to type of wrongdoing observed. Employees who observed perceived wrongdoing involving mismanagement, sexual harassment, or unspecified legal violations were significantly more likely to report it than were employees who observed stealing, waste, safety problems, or discrimination. Further, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to reasons given by employees who observed wrongdoing but did not report it, across (...) all forms of wrongdoing. However, the primary reason that observers did not report it was that they thought nothing could be done to rectify the situation. Finally, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to the cost of the wrongdoing, the quality of the evidence about the wrongdoing, and the comprehensiveness of retaliation against the whistle-blower. These findings suggest that type of wrongdoing makes a difference in the whistle-blowing process, and it should be examined in future research. (shrink)

Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) comprise a large family of developmental and physiological signaling molecules. All FGFs have a high affinity for the glycosaminoglycan heparin and for cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycans. A large body of biochemical and cellular evidence points to a direct role for heparin/heparan sulfate in the formation of an active FGF/FGF receptor signaling complex. However, until recently there has been no direct demonstration that heparan is required for the biological activity of FGF in a developmental system in (...) vivo. A recent paper by Lin et al.(1) has broken through this barrier to demonstrate that heparan sulfate is essential for FGF function during Drosophila development. The establishment of a role for heparan sulfate in FGFR activation in vivo suggests that tissue-specific differences in the structure of heparan may modulate the activity of FGF. BioEssays 22:108–112, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that the important educational developments of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, which are often portrayed as new and revolutionary in nature, were in fact the culmination of an evolutionary process more than two centuries old. It also shows that popular literacy was considerably more widespread by the time of Spenser and Shakespeare than most recent studies suggest. The book treats the long period 1348–1648 as a unit by discounting the importance of the year 1485, which marked (...) the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another but had no discernible effect on educational and cultural conditions. Additionally, it argues that the massive changes of the final years of Henry VIII, which momentarily disrupted the universities and the grammar schools of the realm, were beneficial in the long run, since local energies were thereby unleashed and greater public support for educational institutions of all kinds soon materialized. A period of steady growth continued until the 1640s and 1650s, when the bitter experiences of the Civil War and rancorous arguments about the role of the universities and the grammar schools in precipitating the outbreak of hostilities caused the mainstream of public opinion to question the efficacy of advanced education, which increasingly came to be seen as a threat to established values and traditions. Thereafter an era of decline began that lasted until the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, the book treats the important contributions made by both clerics and women during the long period 1348–1648. Although laymen were the greatest beneficiaries of the steady widening of educational opportunity during those three centuries, clerics and women provided most of the funds, without which many fewer colleges, schools, and scholarships for poor boys would have been established. They did so because of their belief that improved education was necessary for the further spread of the Christian message. (shrink)

Populist attributions of blame have important effects on citizens’ attitudes, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Extending previous studies that have mostly looked at populist messages blaming political elites, we use an online survey experiment (N = 805) to investigate the effects of blaming different elitist actors in populist and non-populist ways: (1) political elites, (2) corporate elites, (3) scientific elites, and (4) a combination of these elites. We compare mere causal responsibility attribution to populist blame attributions that highlight a central opposition (...) between “pure ordinary people” and “corrupt elites” to tease out the specific effect of populist rhetoric. Results suggest that populist messages blaming all elites have stronger effects than isolated cues. Furthermore, populist blame attribution leads to more negative perceptions of the elites than non-populist blame attribution. The finding that populist frames can – under some conditions – activate negative perceptions toward different elites is alarming in times of declining trust in societal institutions, and calls for a more encompassing understanding of populists’ scapegoats. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the question of how the social and economic structure of cities affects the degree of political competition and how in turn these factors affect the degree of a political stability. It isbased on a comparative empirical study of the outcomes of the communal elections of 1952, 1958 and 1964 in 147 Belgian cities that had a population size of 10.000 or more in 1947.In the first place the following generalizations are made with regard to the (...) election outcomes in these cities during the 1952-1964 period. 1. A general proliferation of lists or parties participating in the elections from 1952 to 1964.2. A trend from one-party-control over the college of the city council toward coalition-control.3. A net increase in the number of catholic lists and a net decrease in the number of socialist and liberal lists participating in the colleges of these townships.4. An increase in the number of cities in which newer, smaller and nontraditional parties or lists participated in the college of the city council.Three measures of politica! competitions are employed :1. The average number of parties or lists, that entered the communal election of 1952, 1958 and 1964.2. The average number of lists that received at least ten per cent of the vote in these three elections, and3. The presence or absence of a coalition on the college of the city council in 1952.The two measures of politica! stability, which are also based on the results of the same elections, are :1. The degree of stability in the lists and parties participating in the college of the city council, and2. The degree of stability in the list or party controlling the college of the city council.In general, measures of structural differentiation, linguistic diversity, industrial diversity, and social heterogeneity are found to be positively related to the degree of competition in local politics. In turn, measures of each of these structural factors and the measures of political competition are found to be negatively related to measures of political stability. Regression analysis supports the interpretation that diversity and heterogeneity in the social structure of cities - specifically, population size, density, and the presence of many persons with high occupational status - contribute to greater politica! competition in local polities, but that it is the degree of political competition that most strongly affects the degree of political stability.The conclusion is drawn that cities with a high degree of social and economic heterogeneity have a greater amount of conflict and cleavage. This results in greater competition in the political arena whichin turn predisposes such cities to have a high degree of instability in the control of their city governments. (shrink)

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research (...) attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Rational agents are important objects of study in several research communities, including economics, philosophy, cognitive science, and most recently computer science and artificial intelligence. Crudely, a rational agent is an entity that is capable of acting on its environment, and which chooses to act in such a way as to further its own best interests. There has recently been much interest in the use of mathematical logic for developing formal theories of such agents. Such theories view agents as practical reasoning (...) systems, deciding moment by moment which action to perform next, given the beliefs they have about the world and their desires with respect to how they would like the world to be. In this article, we survey the state of the art in developing logical theories of rational agency. Following a discussion on the dimensions along which such theories can vary, we briefly survey the logical tools available in order to construct such theories. We then review and critically assess three of the best known theories of rational agency: Cohen and Levesque's intention logic, Rao and Georgeff's BDI logics, and the KARO framework of Meyer et al. We then discuss the various roles that such logics can play in helping us to engineer rational agents, and conclude with a discussion of open problems. (shrink)

The free energy principle (FEP) portends to provide a unifying principle for the biological and cognitive sciences. It states that for a system to maintain non-equilibrium steady-state with its environment it must minimise its (information-theoretic) free energy. Under the FEP, to minimise free energy is equivalent to engaging in approximate Bayesian inference. According to the FEP, therefore, inference is at the explanatory base of biology and cognition. In this paper, we discuss a specific challenge to this inferential formulation of adaptive (...) self-organisation. We call it the universal ethology challenge: it states that the FEP cannot unify biology and cognition, for life itself (or adaptive self-organisation) does not require inferential routines to select adaptive solutions to environmental pressures (as mandated by the FEP). We show that it is possible to overcome the universal ethology challenge by providing a cautious and exploratory treatment of inference under the FEP. We conclude that there are good reasons for thinking that the FEP can unify biology and cognition under the notion of approximate Bayesian inference, even if further challenges must be addressed to properly draw such a conclusion. (shrink)

In most decision-making situations, there is a plethora of information potentially available to people. Deciding what information to gather and what to ignore is no small feat. How do decision makers determine in what sequence to collect information and when to stop? In two experiments, we administered a version of the German cities task developed by Gigerenzer and Goldstein (1996), in which participants had to decide which of two cities had the larger population. Decision makers were not provided with the (...) names of the cities, but they were able to collect different kinds of cues for both response alternatives (e.g., “Does this city have a university?”) before making a decision. Our experiments differed in whether participants were free to determine the number of cues they examined. We demonstrate that a novel model, using hierarchical latent mixtures and Bayesian inference (Lee & Newell, 2011) provides a more complete description of the data from both experiments than simple conventional strategies, such as the take–the–best or the Weighted Additive heuristics. (shrink)

Notions of objecthood have traditionally been cast in visuocentric terminology. As a result, theories of auditory and cross-modal perception have focused more on the differences between modalities than on the similarities. In this paper we re-examine the concept of an object in a way that overcomes the limitations of the traditional perspective. We propose a new, cross-modal conception of objecthood which focuses on the similarities between modalities instead of the differences. Further, we propose that the auditory system might consist of (...) two parallel streams of processing (the `what' and `where' subsystems) in a manner analogous to current conceptions of the visual system. We suggest that the `what' subsystems in each modality are concerned with objecthood. Finally, we present evidence for—and elaborate on—the hypothesis that the auditory `where' subsystem is in the service of the visual-motor `where' subsystem. (shrink)

Although the change of beliefs in the face of new information has been widely studied with some success, the revision of other mental states has received little attention from the theoretical perspective. In particular, intentions are widely recognised as being a key attitude for rational agents, and while several formal theories of intention have been proposed in the literature, the logic of intention revision has been hardly considered. There are several reasons for this: perhaps most importantly, intentions are very closely (...) connected with other mental states—in particular, beliefs about the future and the abilities of the agent. So, we cannot study them in isolation. We must consider the interplay between intention revision and the revision of other mental states, which complicates the picture considerably. In this paper, we present some first steps towards a theory of intention revision. We develop a simple model of an agent’s mental states, and define intention revision operators. Using this model, we develop a logic of intention dynamics, and then investigate some of its properties. (shrink)

In studying the history of the ethics of war, the just war tradition may be interpreted as a historically evolving body of tenets about just war principles. Instead of a single just war theory, there have been many just war theories—for example, those of Augustine, Aquinas, Vitoria, and Grotius—theories that have various commonalities and differences. A comprehensive history of the evolving just war tradition should feature a thorough study of how these just war theories were rethought. For example, in his (...) landmark work Just and Unjust Wars, written during the Cold War, Michael Walzer exclaimed: “Nuclear weapons explode the theory of just war.” 1 In his rethinking of the just war tradition in light of the superpower practice of nuclear deterrence, he contributed his influential conception of supreme emergency exceptions. Now that the Cold War is over, the authors of the articles in this book are primarily concerned with the question of how the just war tradition—which is understood somewhat differently by the different authors—should be rethought today. Echoing Walzer’s exclamation, among the particular post–Cold War questions that can be raised are these: Is just war theory exploded by terrorism? Is it annihilated by genocide? In their various rethinkings of the just war tradition, our authors state their own particular post–Cold War questions, and answer them from their diverse viewpoints... (shrink)

The just war tradition is an evolving body of tenets for determining when resorting to war is just and how war may be justly executed. Rethinking the Just War Tradition provides a timely exploration in light of new security threats that have emerged since the end of the Cold War, including ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, threats of terror attacks, and genocidal conflicts within states. The contributors are philosophers, political scientists, a U.S. Army officer, and a senior analyst at (...) the Center for Defense Information. They scrutinize some familiar themes in just war theory from fresh and original angles, and also explore altogether new territory. The diverse topics considered include war and the environment, justice in the ending of war, U.S. military hegemony, a general theory of just armed-conflict principles, supreme emergencies, the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, child soldiers, the moral equality of all soldiers, targeted assassination, preventive war, right authority, and armed humanitarian intervention. Clearly written and free of jargon, this book illustrates how the just war tradition can be rethought and applied today. Contributors include Mark Woods, Eric Patterson, Harry van der Linden, John Lango, Frederik Kaufman, Pauline Kaurin, Reuben Brigety II, Rachel Stohl, Michael Brough, Whitley Kaufman, Jordy Rocheleau, Hartley Spatt, and Robert Hoag. (shrink)

This thesis is presented in the hope that it will resonate with mathematicians and others who are interested in analysis concepts and pure number theory.

To encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate, voluntary self-regulatory codes (SRC) have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years. Two of the most prominent are the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative. In this paper, we explore the impact of different stakeholders' pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join SRCs. Our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the SRC selection (...) depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures. Our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firmstakeholder interactions. (shrink)

We examine whether Thomsonian constitutivism, a metaethical view that analyses value in terms of ‘goodness-fixing kinds,’ i.e. kinds that themselves set the standards for being a good instance of the respective kind, offers a satisfactory explanation of value change and disagreement. While value disagreement has long been considered an important explanandum, we introduce value change as a closely related but distinct phenomenon of metaethical interest. We argue that constitutivism fails to explain both phenomena because of its commitment to goodness-fixing kinds. (...) Constitutivism explains away disagreement and at best explains the emergence of new values, not genuine change. Therefore, Thomsonian constitutivism is not a good fix for realist problems with explaining value disagreement, and value change. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the Societal Readiness Thinking Tool to aid researchers and innovators in developing research projects with greater responsiveness to societal values, needs, and expectations. The need for societally-focused approaches to research and innovation—complementary to Technology Readiness frameworks—is presented. Insights from responsible research and innovation concepts and practice, organized across critical stages of project-life cycles are discussed with reference to the development of the SR Thinking Tool. The tool is designed to complement not only shortfalls in TR (...) approaches, but also improve upon other efforts to integrate RRI, sustainability, and design thinking in research and innovation cycles. Operationalization and early-stage user tests of the Tool are reported, along with discussion of potential future iterations and applications. (shrink)

We seek to add to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD) literature through the empirical study of Latin American firm membership in the United Nations Global Compact (GC) and Global Report Initiative (GRI). Within an institutional-based framework, we explore through three filters – commercial, state-signaling, and distinguished peers – the impact of normative and mimetic pressures associated with GC/gri membership. Our sample includes 207 public firms from six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru). (...) Our results suggest Latin American firms from countries with a greater European influence (normative pressure) are twice as likely to be enrolled in the GC/gri. Additionally, we find that Latin American firms listed on the NYSE (mimetic pressure) are also twice as likely to sign up under the GC/gri. Hence, the normative and mimetic pillars of institutional theory are found to be significant factors for Latin American firms adopting sustainability initiatives. (shrink)

Misinformation perceptions related to global crises such as COVID-19 can have negative ramifications for democracy. Beliefs related to the prevalence of falsehoods may increase news avoidance or even vaccine hesitancy – a problematic context for successful interventions and policymaking. To explore how misinformation beliefs developed over a six-month pandemic period and how they corresponded to (digital) media preferences and selective exposure to the news, we rely on a five-wave panel survey conducted in the Netherlands (N =1,742). Our main findings show (...) that misinformation perceptions got more pronounced as the pandemic evolved. Social media use related to more pronounced misinformation beliefs within waves, whereas mainstream news use corresponded to less pronounced misinformation beliefs. An important implication for journalists and policymakers is to lower the over-time accumulation of misinformation perceptions, for example, by increasing transparency and acknowledging “honest mistakes.”. (shrink)

We define a multi-modal version of Computation Tree Logic (CTL) by extending the language with path quantifiers $E^\delta $ and $E^\delta $ where δ denotes one of finitely many dimensions, interpreted over Kripke structures with one total relation for each dimension. As expected, the logic is axiomatised by taking a copy of a CTL axiomatisation for each dimension. Completeness is proved by employing the completeness result for CTL to obtain a model along each dimension in turn. We also show that (...) the logic is decidable and that its satisfiability problem is no harder than the corresponding problem for CTL. We then demonstrate how Normative Systems can be conceived as a natural interpretation of such a multi-dimensional CTL logic. (shrink)

BackgroundInaccurate, false or incomplete research publications may mislead readers including researchers and decision-makers. It is therefore important that such problems are identified and rectified promptly. This usually involves collaboration between the research institutions and academic journals involved, but these interactions can be problematic.MethodsThese recommendations were developed following discussions at World Conferences on Research Integrity in 2013 and 2017, and at a specially convened 3-day workshop in 2016 involving participants from 7 countries with expertise in publication ethics and research integrity. The (...) recommendations aim to address issues surrounding cooperation and liaison between institutions and journals about possible and actual problems with the integrity of reported research arising before and after publication.ResultsThe main recommendations are that research institutions should: develop mechanisms for assessing the integrity of reported research that are distinct from processes to determine whether individual researchers have committed misconduct;release relevant sections of reports of research integrity or misconduct investigations to all journals that have published research that was investigated;take responsibility for research performed under their auspices regardless of whether the researcher still works at that institution or how long ago the work was done;work with funders to ensure essential research data is retained for at least 10 years.Journals should: respond to institutions about research integrity cases in a timely manner;have criteria for determining whether, and what type of, information and evidence relating to the integrity of research reports should be passed on to institutions;pass on research integrity concerns to institutions, regardless of whether they intend to accept the work for publication;retain peer review records for at least 10 years to enable the investigation of peer review manipulation or other inappropriate behaviour by authors or reviewers.ConclusionsVarious difficulties can prevent effective cooperation between academic journals and research institutions about research integrity concerns and hinder the correction of the research record if problems are discovered. While the issues and their solutions may vary across different settings, we encourage research institutions, journals and funders to consider how they might improve future collaboration and cooperation on research integrity cases. (shrink)