BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

The Netherne Hospital in Surrey is perhaps the most prestigious site in the history of British art therapy, associated with the key figures Edward Adamson and Eric Cunningham Dax, whose pioneering work involved the setting-up of a large studio for psychiatric patients to create expressive paintings. What is little-known, however, is the work of the designated scientist for psychiatric research, Hungarian Jewish émigré Francis Reitman, who was charged with an overall scientific analysis of the artistic products of the studio. Schooled (...) in the biological psychiatric tradition of Ladislas J. Meduna in Budapest prior to his exile to the Maudsley Hospital in 1938 – and committed to treatments such as leucotomy and electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) – Reitman was an unusual candidate for research into the unconscious processes behind art and psychosis. Yet he authored two highly popular and widely reviewed books on his analyses of the abundant artistic output created by patients with schizophrenic diagnoses at the Netherne. In his Psychotic Art (1950) and Insanity, Art and Culture (1954), Reitman compared such schizophrenic images with those produced by artists under the influence of mescaline and examined the artistic output of patients having undergone leucotomy. This article draws on archival materials and Reitman’s original research publications in order to reconstruct his theory of schizophrenic art within the complex context of postwar British psychiatry, negotiating as he did between biologically reductive understandings of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic categories, and ultimately synthesizing concepts from both. It also analyses Reitman’s implicit theory of the therapeutic mechanism of art in the treatment of psychiatric patients. (shrink)

Social network analysis has become an increasingly important tool among political scientists for understanding legislative cooperation in modern, democratic nation-states. Recent research has demonstrated the influence that group affinity (homophily) and mutual exchanges (reciprocity) have in structuring political relationships. However, this literature has typically focused on political cooperation where costs are low, relationships are not exclusive, and/or partisan competition is high. Patterns of legislative behavior in alternative contexts are less clear and remain largely unexamined. Here, we compare theoretical expectations of (...) cooperation in these contexts from the political and biosocial sciences and implement the first assessment of political alliance formation in a novel legislative environment where costs to cooperation are high and party salience low. We implement a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) to examine bill floor sponsorship, a process in which a “floor sponsor” becomes the exclusive advocate for a colleague’s piece of legislation, in the Utah state legislature from 2005 to 2008—a context in which gender (male) and political party (Republican) supermajorities exist. We find that (1) party and gender homophily predict who legislators recruit as floor sponsors, whereas seniority does not, and (2) legislators frequently engage in reciprocal exchanges of floor sponsorship. In addition, whereas gender homophily increases the likelihood of reciprocity, party homophily decreases it. Our findings suggest that when the cost of cooperation is high, political actors use in-group characteristics for initiating alliances, but once a cooperative relationship is established with an out-group political member, it is reinforced through repeated exchanges. These findings may be useful for understanding the rise of political polarization and gridlock in democracies internationally. (shrink)

The overdose epidemic continues to accelerate, with deaths from overdose increasing from approximately 78,000 pre-pandemic to nearly 100,000 presently. While much of the focus in mainstream media has been on overdoses from opioids, women are overdosing on a variety of drugs. The gendered dimensions of the overdose epidemic have been largely ignored even though this crisis has been building for decades. From 1997 to 2017, the overall death rate for women ages 30–64 from overdoses has increased 260 percent. The largest (...) increases in this group were women between the ages of 55 and 64. Factors such as the sexual division of labor, greater financial insecurity, intimate partner violence, and significant burdens from... (shrink)

Faces provide information about a person's identity, as well as their sex, age, and ethnicity. People also infer social and personality traits from the face — judgments that can have important societal and personal consequences. In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have proven adept at representing the identity of a face from images that vary widely in viewpoint, illumination, expression, and appearance. These algorithms are modeled on the primate visual cortex and consist of multiple processing layers of simulated (...) neurons. Here, we examined whether a DCNN trained for face identification also retains a representation of the information in faces that supports social‐trait inferences. Participants rated male and female faces on a diverse set of 18 personality traits. Linear classifiers were trained with cross validation to predict human‐assigned trait ratings from the 512 dimensional representations of faces that emerged at the top‐layer of a DCNN trained for face identification. The network was trained with 494,414 images of 10,575 identities and consisted of seven layers and 19.8 million parameters. The top‐level DCNN features produced by the network predicted the human‐assigned social trait profiles with good accuracy. Human‐assigned ratings for the individual traits were also predicted accurately. We conclude that the face representations that emerge from DCNNs retain facial information that goes beyond the strict limits of their training. (shrink)

American polygenism was a provocative scientific movement whose controversial claim that humankind did not share a common ancestor caused a firestorm among naturalists and the lay public beginning in the 1830s. This article gives specific attention to the largely overlooked religious ideas marshaled by American polygenists in their effort to construct race as a unit of analysis. I focus specifically on the thought of the American polygenist and renowned surgeon Dr Josiah Clark Nott (1804–73) of Mobile, Alabama. Scholars have claimed (...) that in his effort to establish a properly modern scientific view of race Nott was one of the first American naturalists to publicly denounce the notion of common human descent (monogenesis) as proclaimed in the Bible. I argue that despite his rejection of monogenesis, Nott’s racial theory remained squarely within the tradition of Christian ideas about the natural world. American polygenism provides an example of how scientific and religious ideas worked together in the minds of American antebellum thinkers in the development of novel theories about race and human origins. (shrink)

Collaboration is increasingly popular across academia. Collaborative work raises certain ethical questions, however. How will the fruits of collaboration be divided? How will the work for the collaborative project be split? In this paper, we consider the following question in particular. Are there ways in which these divisions systematically disadvantage certain groups? -/- We use evolutionary game theoretic models to address this question. First, we discuss results from O'Connor and Bruner (unpublished). In this paper, we show that underrepresented groups (...) in academia can be disadvantaged in such situations by dint of their small numbers. Second, we present novel results exploring how the hierarchical structure of academia can lead to bargaining disadvantage. We investigate models where one actor has a higher baseline of academic success, less to lose if collaboration goes south, or greater rewards for non-collaborative work. We show that in these situations, the less powerful partner is disadvantaged in bargaining over collaboration. (shrink)

In 1942, replying to a criticism put to him by Langford, G. E. Moore confessed that he was unable to solve the paradox of analysis. But while conceding inability to solve the puzzle Moore offered the following suggestion, which he did not further develop: I think that, in order to explain the fact that, even if ‘To be a brother is the same thing as to be a male sibling’ is true, yet nevertheless this statement is not the same as (...) the statement ‘To be a brother is to be a brother’, one must suppose that both statements are in some sense about the expressions used as well as about the concept of being a brother. But in what sense they are about the expressions used I cannot see clearly; and therefore I cannot give any clear solution to the puzzle. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This paper examines the compliance of universities in the European Union with the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher–Education Teaching Personnel, which deals primarily with protection for academic freedom. The paper briefly surveys the European genesis of the modern research university and academic freedom, before evaluating compliance with the UNESCO recommendation on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, university governance and tenure. Following from this, the paper examines the reasons for the generally low level of compliance with the UNESCO Recommendation within (...) the EU states, and considers how such compliance could be improved. (shrink)

I propose a solution to the paradox of the kalela dance, as presented by Richard Werbner, based on a variety of liberalism I once identified.

In this paper we argue the need to introduce the philosophical tradition of the examined life into the workplace in a systematic way and show how it can be done. We set out seven key philosophical areas and selected questions for managers to pose about their organisations. We conclude with a case study, which examines one of our key questions ‘What is real?’. We also provide some recommended reading for managers seeking an introduction to philosophy and to explore the seven (...) areas. (shrink)

Oleoresin capsicum (OC) is a substance contained in capsicum peppers that produces a range of physiological responses in mammals, including inflammation and respiratory constriction. It is also the active ingredient in the most widely used chemical munition in the United States. OC-based pepper sprays are now issued to police officers by nearly every law enforcement agency in the country. Police use of pepper spray is supported by an ostensibly evidence-based consensus that OC exposure presents no significant risk of lethal injury. (...) This essay examines the peculiar durability of that nonlethality consensus in the face of mounting contradictory evidence. It traces the trajectory of European science that links race and capsaicin sensitivity from colonization to slavery to the twentieth century, while also narrating the emergence of OC-based pepper spray as a distinct and highly desirable category of police weapon. It concludes by exposing medicolegal death examination practices that continually rehabilitate the nonlethality consensus by naturalizing deaths caused by or linked to OC exposure. (shrink)

In what follows, I first deal with some of the major philosophical objections raised against my claim that Christian thought has given us racial science. Then, I take on points of dispute surrounding my use of Hans Blumenberg's notion of reoccupation to explain the recurrence of Christian forms within modern scientific thinking. Finally, I address some historiographic issues surrounding my assessment of Johann Blumenbach and the origins of racial science.

The view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict has increasingly lost favor among scholars who have sought more nuanced theoretical frameworks for evaluating the configurations of these two bodies of knowledge in modern life. This article situates, for the first time, the modern study of race into scholarly assessments on the relations between religion and science. I argue that the formation of the race concept in the minds of Western European and American scientists grew out of and remained (...) indebted to Christian intellectual history. Religion was not subtracted from nor stood in conflict with constructions of race developed across the modern life and health sciences. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the emergence of skilled behaviours, in the form of actions, cognitions and emotions, between professional state level cricket batters and their lesser skilled counterparts. Twenty-two male cricket batsmen (n = 6 state level; n = 8 amateur grade club level, n = 8 junior state representative level) participated in a game scenario training session against right arm pace bowlers (n = 6 amateur senior club). The batsmen were tasked with scoring as many (...) runs as possible during a simulated limited-overs game. The actions, cognitions and emotions of each batsmen were recorded in situ with findings showing differences between state level players and those lesser skilled. State level batsmen played more scoring shots and scored more runs, underpinned by superior bat-ball contact and technical efficiency. Furthermore, the state player’s cognitive evaluations of their own performance differed from junior batters, with more reported strategies based on an external outcome focus, such as where to score runs, rather than a focus on internal processes, such as making technical changes. State level batsmen also reported lower levels of nervousness compared with junior level batsmen. These results highlight the importance of viewing the emergence of skilled behaviour as multi-faceted, rather than simply the acquisition of superior execution and technical proficiency. (shrink)

I present a sense of the term “ideal theory” based on Joseph Raz’s response to the situation of a lifeguard faced with three drowning on one side and two on the other and unable to save all. From what is of value, such a theory builds up a conception of an ideal political state or an aspect of it which we have reason to realize, but ignoring whether it is possible for us to realize this.

In this paper, I present a problem for regarding the reflective equilibrium and original position methods as consistent. I do not prove that there is an inconsistency, but there is a puzzle of how the two methods can be made consistent. The concern about inconsistency is because the former method allows for a kind of historical bias, as noted by T.H. Irwin, whereas the latter method seeks to guard against historical bias.

Self-control has been described as the ability to master motivation that is contrary to one’s better judgement; that is, an ability that prevents such motivation from resulting in behaviour that is contrary to one’s overall better judgement (Mele, Irrationality: An essay on Akrasia, self-deception and self-control, p. 54, 1987). Recent discussions in philosophy have centred on the question of whether synchronic self-control, in which one exercises self-control whilst one is currently experiencing opposing motivation, is actional or non-actional. The actional theorist (...) maintains that such exercises are actions, whilst the non-actional theorist claims that synchronic self-control consists in the having of unmotivated thoughts which occur at times when agents experience recalcitrant motivations and which serve to attenuate the strength of those motivations. In this paper I discuss a class of cases which has been largely ignored in these discussions, cases which I argue are common synchronic self-control problems, but in which a lack of motivation is the characteristic symptom. I argue that such cases present problems for actional accounts and add some support to the non-actional approach. (shrink)

Championing what it sees as a family of mischaracterized and undervalued actions and attitudes, this book proposes a new understanding of human behavior, one that encourages self-limitation and restraint.

The authors of the Target article, Shen and colleagues (2024) argue that there is a need for an ethical framework to help analyze when it is appropriate to return individualized research results (I...

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 541-542, July 2012.

This paper evaluates an argument for the conclusion that in order to produce a viable objection to a particular error theory, the objection must not be applicable to any error theory. The reason given for this conclusion is that error theories about some discourses are uncontroversial. But the examples given of uncontroversial error theories are not good ones, nor do there appear to be other examples available.

Using results from evolutionary game theory, we analyze the conditions under which guilt can provide individual fitness benefits to actors, and so evolve. In particular, we focus on the individual benefits of guilty apology. We find that guilty apology is more likely to evolve in cases where actors interact repeatedly over long periods of time, where the costs of apology are low or moderate, and where guilt is hard to fake.

This essay considers the abiding preoccupation with glory in Michel Serres’s work and wonders how useful it is for understanding the economies of glory in the contemporary world. Glory is often linked for Serres with violence and the assertion of power, as these are bound up both with communication and publicity. Though he uses the story of the meeting of Diogenes and Alexander to focus the contrast between temporal power and the humbler claims of knowledge, Serres is also gloomily aware (...) of the ways in which knowledge too can be taken up in the pursuit of glory. His posthumous book, Relire le relié (Religion: Rereading What is Bound Together), proposes that the transcendence of divine glory can contain the human striving for power and fame. This essay uses the arguments of Giorgio Agamben regarding the political theology of glory to unfold an alternative, and much less idealistic account of the esteem economies of collective narcissism maintained by the global mediations of the contemporary world. Ultimately, Serres’s work hovers uncertainly, as perhaps the contemporary world does, between the condition of a glory-war of all against all and the function of glory as a kind of social glue. (shrink)

This 2013 Consortium of Universities for Global Health essay examines the ethical dilemmas encountered by a public health worker engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention and health promotion in a rural Tanzanian community. Is the professional objective of improving the health and well-being of the population so simple?