Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analyze the challenges IRBs are facing in the contexts of both industry and academia, and offer concrete recommendations for how these committees might be adapted in order (...) to provide an effective mechanism of oversight for health‐related AI research. (shrink)

Population-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Café method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can (...) meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance. (shrink)

Fictional discourse and fictional languages provide useful test cases for theories of meaning. In this paper, we argue against truth-conditional accounts of meaning on the basis of problems posed by language(s) of fiction. It is well-known how fictional discourse -- discourse about non-existent objects -- poses a problem for truth-conditional theories of meaning. Less well-considered, however, are the problems posed by fictional languages, which can be created to either be meaningful or not to be meaningful; both of these ultimately also (...) provide problems for a truth-conditional account of meaning, because it cannot account for the ways in which we use and evaluate such fictional languages. (shrink)

This article reflects on the relevance and applicability of the Belmont Report nearly four decades after its original publication. In an exploration of criticisms that have been raised in response to the report and of significant changes that have occurred within the context of biomedical research, five primary themes arise. These themes include the increasingly vague boundary between research and practice, unique harms to communities that are not addressed by the principle of respect for persons, and how growing complexity and (...) commodification in research have shed light on the importance of transparency. The repercussions of Belmont's emphasis on the protection of vulnerable populations is also explored, as is the relationship between the report's ethical principles and their applications. It is concluded that while the Belmont Report was an impressive response to the ethical issues of its day, the field of research ethics involving human subjects may have outgrown it. (shrink)

Institutional review boards, tasked with facilitating ethical research, are often pulled in competing directions. In what we call the protection-inclusion dilemma, we acknowledge the tensions IRBs face in aiming to both protect potential research participants from harm and include under-represented populations in research. In this manuscript, we examine the history of protectionism that has dominated research ethics oversight in the United States, as well as two responses to such protectionism: inclusion initiatives and critiques of the term vulnerability. We look at (...) what we know about IRB decision-making in relation to protecting and including “vulnerable” groups in research and examine the lack of regulatory guidance related to this dilemma, which encourages protection over inclusion within IRB practice. Finally, we offer recommendations related to how IRBs might strike a better balance between inclusion and protection in research ethics oversight. (shrink)

Background: People in both Taiwan and China originally descended from the Han Chinese, but the societies have been separated for approximately 38 years. Due to different political systems, variations exist in healthcare and nursing education systems in Taiwan and China. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the professional values of nursing students in Taiwan and China. Design: A cross-sectional design was applied in this study. The Nursing Professional Value Scale–Revised was used to measure the professional values of (...) the students. The questionnaire was distributed to eligible undergraduate students in a classroom setting. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the first investigator’s university. Participants were informed that completion and return of the questionnaire was voluntary, and confidentiality was ensured by keeping the responses anonymous. Participants: A convenience sample included 292 Taiwanese students and 654 Chinese students. Findings: A total of 11 individual Nursing Professional Value Scale–Revised items showed significant differences between the two groups. These results reflect the differences in the perceived importance of these items between the groups. There was no significant difference between the two groups in the mean overall scores for the Nursing Professional Value Scale–Revised (p =.766) and three subscales (all p >.05). Conclusion: There are some differences in professional values between nursing students in Taiwan and China. Given the increasingly frequent and close interactions between Taiwan and China and the globalization of nursing, understanding these differences may help nursing educators identify students’ perceptions of their professional values and support the development of strategies to improve weaknesses in professional values. (shrink)

This book is devoted to applied ethics. We focus on six popular and controversial topics: abortion, the environment, animals, poverty, punishment, and disability. We cover three chapters per topic, and each chapter is devoted to a famous or influential argument on the topic. After we present an influential argument, we then consider objections to the argument, and replies to the objections. The book is impartial, and set up in order to equip the reader to make up her own mind about (...) the controversial topics covered. (shrink)

I describe my current thinking on two old questions—the causal role of appraisals and the relationship of appraisal theories to basic emotions theories and constructivist theories, and three (sort of) new questions—the completeness of appraisals, the role of language, and the development of automaticity in emotional responses.

Facing the possibility of a surge of COVID-19-infected patients requiring ventilatory support in Intensive Care Units, the Singapore Hospice Council and the Chapter of Palliative Medicine Physicians forward its position on the guiding principles that ought to drive the allocation of ICU beds and its role in care of these patients and their families.

Previous studies on parenting adult children with ASD were scarce, and their intervention protocols mainly were derived from established work with children. Development of an applicable adult-oriented protocol and demonstration of its effectiveness is warranted. The present study outlined the development and evaluation of Core Autism Parenting Skills, which targets to enhance parenting self-efficacy intervention for adult children with ASD by addressing two intervention goals in parallel: acquisition of parenting skills and cultivating positive attributes. In CAPS, PSE is operationalised into (...) four parent roles: to observe, reinforce, empathise, and accompany, each with requisite attributes, skills, and prescribed training. Twenty-seven parents with adult children with ASD were recruited. They completed measures assessing their PSE, competence in the four parent roles, and emotional well-being at pre-training, post-training and 2-month follow-up. The intervention was well-received by the participants and reported significant improvements in PSE, parent role competence at post-training and 2-month follow-up. The applicability of PSE and parent role competence in constructing effective parenting intervention for adult children with ASD was supported. (shrink)

Wealth inequality is a prevalent social issue. The present study focuses on acceptance of wealth inequality, and considers personal income, perceived upward mobility, and future time perspective as its antecedents, and collective action intention as its outcome. With reference to the social identity literature and socioemotional selectivity theory, we posit a conditional indirect effect of income on collective action intention through acceptance of wealth inequality: only when mobility and future time perspective are relatively high, higher income is associated with higher (...) acceptance of wealth inequality and in turn, lower collective action intention. Moderated mediation findings, based on territory–wide phone survey data from 866 Hong Kong adults, supported this prediction. This work indicates the relevance of an individual-level instrumental perspective to the understanding of acceptance of wealth inequality as well as collective action intention. (shrink)

We investigate whether smile mimicry and emotional contagion are evident in non-text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC). Via an ostensibly real-time audio-visual CMC platform, participants interacted with a confederate who either smiled radiantly or displayed a neutral expression throughout the interaction. Automatic analyses of expressions displayed by participants indicated that smile mimicry was at play: A higher level of activation of the facial muscle that characterises genuine smiles was observed among participants who interacted with the smiling confederate than among participants who interacted (...) with the unexpressive confederate. However, there was no difference in the self-reported level of joviality between participants in the two conditions. Our findings demonstrate that people mimic smiles in audio-visual CMC, but that even though the diffusion of emotions has been documented in text-based CMC in previous studies, we find no convincing support for the phenomenon of emotional contagion in non-text-based CMC. (shrink)

Focusing on episodes of student-generated and -sustained talk during document-based disciplinary history discussions, this study explored what teacher candidates prioritize and value about social studies discussions, and how these priorities align with their actions and goals as facilitators. Using a complex systems-based model, we investigated candidates’ goals as they planned for, facilitated, and reflected upon student sensemaking relative to three common orientations for social studies discussions: disciplinary history, participatory civics, and critical literacy. Findings revealed that candidates employed elements from all (...) three orientations, yet without clear alignment to any particular approach. This misalignment reflected tensions between candidates’ stated goals, beliefs about student engagement, and instructional decisions. We draw implications for teacher education to support candidates in developing coherent practices for discussion facilitation that align with their instructional visions and sociocultural contexts. (shrink)

In recent years, the possible benefits of mindfulness meditation have sparked much public and academic interest. Mindfulness emphasizes cultivating awareness of our immediate experience and has been associated with compassion, empathy, and various other prosocial traits. However, neurobiological evidence pertaining to the prosocial benefits of mindfulness in social settings is sparse. In this study, we investigate neural correlates of trait mindful awareness during naturalistic dyadic interactions, using both intra-brain and inter-brain measures. We used the Muse headset, a portable electroencephalogram device (...) often used to support mindfulness meditation, to record brain activity from dyads as they engaged in naturalistic face-to-face interactions in a museum setting. While we did not replicate prior laboratory-based findings linking trait mindfulness to individual brain responses, self-reported mindful awareness did predict dyadic inter-brain synchrony, in theta and beta frequencies. These findings underscore the importance of conducting social neuroscience research in ecological settings to enrich our understanding of how neural correlates of social traits such as mindful awareness manifest during social interaction, while raising critical practical considerations regarding the viability of commercially available EEG systems. (shrink)

As participatory research practices are increasingly taken up in health research, claims related to experiential authority and expertise are frequently made. Here, in an exploration of what grounds such claims, we consider how feminist standpoint theory might apply to the psy sciences (psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and so on). Standpoint theory claims that experiences of marginalization and critical engagement can lead to a standpoint that offers an epistemic advantage within a domain of knowledge. We examine experiences of marginalization and critical (...) engagement in the mental health system, as well as evidence for epistemic advantages resulting from these experiences. This evidence, found in the identification of problematic assumptions and the development of new tools and theories in the field, grounds our argument that standpoint theory is indeed relevant to the psy sciences and that many of those who have experienced marginalization and have engaged critically have an epistemic advantage when it comes to knowledge-production. The implications of this argument are significant: those who have attained a standpoint within the psy sciences ought to be included in research and given both tools and funding to develop research programs. However, we must be wary of the risks of tokenization, cooptation, and essentialization that are likely to accompany such a transformation. (shrink)

The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists-agile thinkers and practitioners working across a range of disciplines and geographies-convened to discuss their radical visions of the beautiful world, and the manifestos that may help to guide us there. Their treatises have been captured and luminously expanded in the pages of this book. Cherokee Nation citizen and professor (...) Joseph M. Pierce asserts that "[f]or this decolonial future to become possible, the guiding force must no longer be capital but relations." Informed by her practice of "curation as care," Brazilian film curator Janaína Oliveira evokes music and movement as a means toward this relationality: "it's almost by falling that you live.... The beautiful world dances the stumbles. The beautiful world dances dancing." Kenyan-British visual artist Phoebe Boswell uses the space of a virtual gallery to ask, "If we burn down the institution, what happens next? Do we trust ourselves to know?" and gestures toward the possibility of this "as yet unlived, unexperienced thing." Professor and MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman asks us to consider our capacity to burn, stating that "[P]ragmatism yields a profound tolerance of the unlivable." And Mexican-American author Cristina Rivera Garza gives us the language of the future in the subjunctive, which "lays the groundwork for the irruption.... The subjunctive is the smuggler who crosses the border of the future bearing unknown cargo." Through these expansive, transformative essays, new ways of being are threaded and proposed, illuminating our path towards this possible beautiful world. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between procedural justice and employee job insecurity, and the boundary conditions of this relationship. Drawing upon uncertainty management theory and ethical leadership research, we hypothesized that procedural justice is negatively related to job insecurity, and that this relationship is moderated by ethical leadership. We further predicted that the moderating relationship would be more pronounced among employees with a low power distance orientation. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 381 workers in Macau and Southern (...) China. The results support all of our hypotheses. The implications of these results for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues against incorporating assessments of individual responsibility into healthcare policies by expanding an existing argument and offering a rebuttal to an argument in favour of such policies. First, it is argued that what primarily underlies discussions surrounding personal responsibility and healthcare is not causal responsibility, moral responsibility or culpability, as one might expect, but biases towards particular highly stigmatised behaviours. A challenge is posed for proponents of taking personal responsibility into account within health policy to either expand the (...) debate to also include socially accepted behaviours or to provide an alternative explanation of the narrowly focused discussion. Second, a critical response is offered to arguments that claim that policies based on personal responsibility would lead to several positive outcomes including healthy behaviour change, better health outcomes and decreases in healthcare spending. It is argued that using individual responsibility as a basis for resource allocation in healthcare is unlikely to motivate positive behaviour changes, and is likely to increase inequality which may lead to worse health outcomes overall. Finally, the case of West Virginia's Medicaid reform is examined, which raises a worry that policies focused on personal responsibility have the potential to lead to increases in medical spending overall. (shrink)

Background:Suicide remains an important cause of premature deaths and draws much media attention. However, unsafe reporting and portrayal of suicides by the media have been associated with increased risk of suicidal behavior. Current evidence suggests that media capacity-building could potentially prevent suicide. However, there are still knowledge gaps in terms of a lack of data on effective strategies for improving awareness and safe reporting of suicide-related media content. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a workshop conducted with members (...) of the media community on the safe reporting of suicide-related content.Methods:An interventional single-arm pre and post pilot study was conducted on a sample of the Malaysian media community recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. The media safe reporting workshop was conducted by a suicide prevention expert with a media industry background. Thirty participants completed a self-reported evaluation questionnaire on their awareness and knowledge of reporting on suicide-related media content; before and after the interventional workshop.Results:There was a significant difference between the total scores before and after the intervention, with a large effect size. Post-intervention scores were significantly improved in 8 items, namely those related to the reporting of: (i) the content of any suicide note; (ii) headlines with methods of suicide; (iii) headlines with the location of suicide; (iv) cases of suspected suicide despite the unconfirmed cause of death; (v) suicide news to cater to readers’ interests; (vi) cause of suicide; (vii) details of the location of suicide; and (viii) the negative impact to media community when reporting suicide stories. In particular, there was an improvement in the majority of items for people from the media community with no lived experience of suicidal behavior.Conclusion:The media safe reporting workshop is a potentially effective intervention for improving awareness and knowledge measures relating to safe reporting on suicide among the media community, with a more pronounced effect in those without lived experience of suicidal behavior. Limitations in the sample size, generalizability, short-term evaluation, and lack of a control group warrant future larger, longer-term controlled, and more representative studies. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical analysis of several accounts of the placebo effect that have been put forward. While the placebo effect is most often thought of as a control in research and as a deceptive tool in practice, a growing body of research suggests that it ought to be thought of as a powerful phenomenon in its own right. Several accounts that aim to draw boundaries around the placebo effect are evaluated in relation to current evidence and it is (...) argued that none of them adequately capture the variability and potency of the phenomenon. Two accounts, however, that point towards the underlying mechanisms of the placebo effect, are shown to offer promise in terms of developing a more comprehensive account of the placebo effect. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 28-31, January/February 2022.

The practice of medically assisted dying has long been contentious, and the question of what to call it has become increasingly contentious as well. Particularly among U.S. proponents of legalizing the practice, there has been a growing push away from calling it “physician‐assisted suicide,” with assertions that medically assisted dying is fundamentally different from suicide. Digging deeper into this claim about difference leads to an examination of the difference between two kinds of suffering—suffering from physical conditions and suffering from psychological (...) conditions—and therefore leads also toward an examination of whether requests for medical assistance in dying by those suffering from psychological conditions and those suffering from physical conditions should be painted with the same brush. In this article, I aim both to illuminate some of the considerations that ought to be included in discussions related to medically assisted dying and to shed light on what the indirect effects of such discussions can be. I consider some of the reasons commonly given for holding that suicide and medically assisted dying differ fundamentally and then whether the conclusion that medically assisted dying should not be called “suicide” follows from the premises. I ask what else might justify the conclusion that the two acts ought to be called by different names, and I examine possible justifications for accepting this premise, as well as what justifications might exist for emphasizing how the acts are alike. Finally, I argue that we should be cautious before concluding that medically assisted dying should not be called “suicide.” We need more evidence either that the two acts are fundamentally different or that emphasizing differences between them is not likely to do more harm than good. (shrink)

This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture, ...

Racial disparities in pain treatment are well documented. Such disparities are explained with reference to factors related to providers, health care structures, and patient behaviors. Racial differences in pain experiences, although well documented, are less well understood. Explanations for such differences usually involve genetic or psychological factors. Here, we argue that racial differences in pain experiences might also be explained by disparities in pain treatment. Based on what we know about the nature of pain, particularly the cognitive and affective aspects (...) of the phenomenon, it is likely that disparities in the treatment of racialized patients can lead to significant racial differences in pain experience that show up at the population level. We argue that the failure of research programs to consider this causal factor is an example of white ignorance. We also consider several implications of the link between racial disparities in pain treatment and racial differences in pain experience. (shrink)

It is argued here that the practice of medical students performing pelvic exams on women who are under anesthetic and have not consented is immoral and indefensible. This argument begins by laying out the ethical justification for the practice of informed consent, which can be found in autonomy and basic rights. Foregoing the process of consent within medicine can result in violations of both autonomy and basic rights, as well as trust, forming the basis of the wrong of unauthorized pelvic (...) examinations. Several objections to this argument are considered, all of which stem from the idea that this practice constitutes an exception to the general requirement of informed consent. These objections suggest that nonconsensual pelvic examinations on women under anesthetic are ethically acceptable on utilitarian grounds, in that they offer benefits either to the patient or to society, or on the grounds of triviality, in that consent is already presumed, or the practice is insignificant. Each of these objections is rejected and the practice is deemed indefensible. (shrink)

This article provides a brief introduction to psychological emotion theories, particularly appraisal theory. According to appraisal theory emotions are combinations of a person’s appraisal of the novelty, valence, certainty, goal conduciveness, causal agency, controllability, and morality of a situation. These dimensions correspond to elements of the stories attorneys attempt to create in arguing a case. Appraisal theory puts specific content into the vague concept of reappraisal, accounting for emotional changes that go beyond the changes in valence and intensity generally studied (...) by law and emotions scholars. (shrink)

Sensory and tracking technologies are being introduced into workplaces in ways Taylor and the Gilbreths could only have imagined. New work design experiments merge wellness with productivity to measure and modulate the affective and emotional labour of resilience that is necessary to survive the turbulence of the widespread incorporation of agile management systems, in which workers are expected to take symbolic direction from machines. The Quantified Workplace project was carried out by one company that fitted sensory algorithmic devices to workers’ (...) computers and bodies, which, this article argues, identify workers’ so-called agility and reveal management practices that track affective and emotional labour, categorized in the project as stress, subjective productivity and wellbeing. Capital’s accelerated attempts to capture more areas of work and workers’ capacities facilitate the conversion of labour power into a source of value but also results in alienation and abstraction. Participants’ resistance to participation in the Quantified Workplace reveals tensions in the labour process when affect is measured in processes of corporate change. (shrink)

This article describes James’s distaste for taxonomic classification of emotion and argues that he would not have been pleased by current scholarship which still focuses on the definition and classification of discrete emotions, distracting scholars from more fundamental underlying processes. I argue that as in James’s time, current taxonomies are still arbitrary and still constrain the kinds of questions psychologists ask.

The ‘new normality’ of food crises requires nuanced understandings of emergent responses. Through an exploratory analysis of public-facing reports from major food governance actors, this study empirically outlines mainstream solution frames for addressing the contemporary food crisis and the ways in which these differ from the 2008 food crisis. Using food regime theory as the theoretical underpinning, four con­sistently used solution frames are identified that provide insight into the organizing principles of the third food regime: promoting trade liberalization, emphasizing agricultural (...) productivism, mobilizing private finance, and leveraging data. The latter two involve recent shifts in governance responses that shape global food governance and impact global food insecurity in novel ways. (shrink)

How are data science systems made to work? It may seem that whether a system works is a function of its technical design, but it is also accomplished through ongoing forms of discretionary work by many actors. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork with a corporate data science team, we describe how actors involved in a corporate project negotiated what work the system should do, how it should work, and how to assess whether it works. These negotiations laid the (...) foundation for how, why, and to what extent the system ultimately worked. We describe three main findings. First, how already-existing technologies are essential reference points to determine how and whether systems work. Second, how the situated resolution of development challenges continually reshapes the understanding of how and whether systems work. Third, how business goals, and especially their negotiated balance with data science imperatives, affect a system’s working. We conclude with takeaways for critical data studies, orienting researchers to focus on the organizational and cultural aspects of data science, the third-party platforms underlying data science systems, and ways to engage with practitioners’ imagination of how systems can and should work. (shrink)

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)