The extra-therapeutic use of psychotropic drugs to improve cognition and to enhance mood has been the subject of controversial discussion in bioethics, in medicine but also in public for many years. Concerns over a liberal dealing with pharmacological enhancers are raised not only from a biomedical–pharmacological perspective, but particularly from an ethical one. Within these ethical concerns, there is one objection about the normative differentiation between “natural” and “artificial” enhancers, which is theoretically indeed widely discredited in bioethics, which has, (...) however, entrenched itself in such a persistent way in everyday moral consciousness that it keeps a crucial influence on the assessment of pharmacological enhancers made by the public and medical professionals. This paper tries to first show why a normative differentiation between “natural” and “artificial” enhancers is highly problematic. In a second step, the resulting implications for our current dealing with pharmacological enhancers shall be examined. In a specific comparison of synthetic pharmaceuticals (modafinil, SSRIs) with phytopharmaceuticals (ginkgo biloba, St. John’s wort) and other already established enhancers (alcohol, caffeine), argumentative inconsistencies are pointed out which, at least partly, result from a rationally untenable preference for the “natural” over the “artificial”. Therefore, it is conclusively argued the case for an unprejudiced assessment of pharmacological enhancers beyond a “natural”–“artificial” dichotomy, which equally takes into account biomedical and ethical aspects. The goal is to reach a coherent dealing with pharmacological enhancement in the long run. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The reform of German guardianship law coming into force in 2023 will remove the term “well-being” from the law. This is intended to emphasise that the legal guardian should be guided by the subjective wishes of the person rather than by an objective understanding of well-being. This article analyses the understanding of well-being underlying the reformed guardianship law in comparison to common conceptions of well-being in philosophy and medical ethics, aiming to promote interdisciplinary understanding between ethics (...) and law. Arguments The justification for the reform emphasises that the law is based on a subjective understanding of well-being. However, this understanding does not correspond to philosophical subjective theories of well-being, according to which only things that a person desires can contribute to her well-being. In contrast, the guardianship law assumes that the fulfilment of certain wishes can lead to objective harm to the person and thus impair her well-being. Negative consequences for the objective well-being of a person are only relevant insofar as they indicate a limit to following current wishes that are based on a natural will and are not an expression of self-determination. Conclusion While the term “well-being” is removed from reformed guardianship law, the law implicitly contains an understanding of well-being comparable to a hybrid conception of well-being from a medical ethics perspective. According to this conception, fulfilment of a person’s wishes generally contributes to her well-being, although certain objective criteria are also taken into consideration. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The reform of German guardianship law coming into force in 2023 will remove the term “well-being” from the law. This is intended to emphasise that the legal guardian should be guided by the subjective wishes of the person rather than by an objective understanding of well-being. This article analyses the understanding of well-being underlying the reformed guardianship law in comparison to common conceptions of well-being in philosophy and medical ethics, aiming to promote interdisciplinary understanding between ethics (...) and law. Arguments The justification for the reform emphasises that the law is based on a subjective understanding of well-being. However, this understanding does not correspond to philosophical subjective theories of well-being, according to which only things that a person desires can contribute to her well-being. In contrast, the guardianship law assumes that the fulfilment of certain wishes can lead to objective harm to the person and thus impair her well-being. Negative consequences for the objective well-being of a person are only relevant insofar as they indicate a limit to following current wishes that are based on a natural will and are not an expression of self-determination. Conclusion While the term “well-being” is removed from reformed guardianship law, the law implicitly contains an understanding of well-being comparable to a hybrid conception of well-being from a medical ethics perspective. According to this conception, fulfilment of a person’s wishes generally contributes to her well-being, although certain objective criteria are also taken into consideration. (shrink)

Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Studying how children learn foraging skills can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, and social behavior. Modern foragers, with their vast cultural and environmental diversity, have mostly been studied individually. However, cross-cultural studies allow us to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn their subsistence skills. We perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us (...) to systematically extract, summarize, and compare both quantitative and qualitative literature. We found 58 publications focusing on learning subsistence skills. Learning begins early in infancy, when parents take children on foraging expeditions and give them toy versions of tools. In early and middle childhood, children transition into the multi-age playgroup, where they learn skills through play, observation, and participation. By the end of middle childhood, most children are proficient food collectors. However, it is not until adolescence that adults (not necessarily parents) begin directly teaching children complex skills such as hunting and complex tool manufacture. Adolescents seek to learn innovations from adults, but they themselves do not innovate. These findings support predictive models that find social learning should occur before individual learning. Furthermore, these results show that teaching does indeed exist in hunter-gatherer societies. And, finally, though children are competent foragers by late childhood, learning to extract more complex resources, such as hunting large game, takes a lifetime. (shrink)

2Public space is an old habit. The words public space are deceptive; when I hear the words, when I say the words, I’m forced to have an image of a physical place I can point to and be in. I should be thinking only of a condition; but, instead, I imagine an architectural type, and I think of a piazza, or a town square, or a city commons. Public space, I assume, without thinking about it, is a place (...) where the public gathers. The public gathers in two kinds of spaces. The first is a space that is public, a place where the public gathers because it has a right to the place; the second is a space that is made public, a place where the public gathers precisely because it doesn’t have the right—a place made public by force.3In the space that is public, the public whose space this is has agreed to be a public; these are people “in the form of the city,” they are public when they act “in the name of the city.” They “own” the city only in quotes. The establishment of certain space in the city as “public” is a reminder, a warning, that the rest of the city isn’t public. New York doesn’t belong to us, and neither does Paris, and neither does Des Moines. Setting up a public space means setting aside a public space. Public space is a place in the middle of the city but isolated from the city. Public space is the piazza, an open space separated from the closure of alleys and dead ends; public space is the piazza, a space in the light, away from the plots and conspiracies in dark smokey rooms. Vit Acconci’s latest show, entitled “Public Places,” was held in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He is currently at work on a park in Detroit, a pedestrian mall in Baltimore, and a housing project in Regensburg, Germany. (shrink)

In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups” that discuss different future scenarios. (...) In the second phase, the participants are regrouped into three “convergence groups”, each of which contains representatives from each of the three groups from the first phase. In the final third phase, all participants meet for a summary discussion. This pilot project had two aims: (1) to develop and assess the new methodology and (2) to gather advice and recommendations from the public that may be useful for future decisions on nanobiotechnology (NBT). Participants emphasized that they wanted the technology to focus on solutions to environmental and medical problems and to meet the needs of developing countries. The need for further public participation and deliberation on NBT issues seemed to be acknowledged by all participants. Many of them also raised equality concerns. Views on the means by which NBT should be steered into socially useful directions were more divided. In particular, different views were expressed on how much regulation of company activities is needed to curb unwanted developments. The participants’ responses in a questionnaire indicate that the methodology of the convergence seminars was successful for decision-making under uncertainty. In particular, the participants stated that their advice was influenced both by access to different possible future developments and by the points of view of their co-participants, which is what the method is specifically intended to achieve. (shrink)

Discussions of William Lambarde’s interests as a reader have usually focused on his strategies of tracing place names and etymologies in the margins of his books, tying him in with a larger subsection of the Tudor reading public who annotated books in a similar fashion. This article surveys the annotations in Lambarde’s early books to trace the evolution of his reading over time and in collaboration with his contemporaries. In so doing, it explores the uses that Lambarde found for (...) his books beyond organising information within them or excerpting material for publication. The process, as well as the products, of Lambarde’s reading, was shared among his fellow antiquarians and members of the Inns of Court, for whom reading was both a professional practice and a means to communicate privileged information. When juxtaposed with the equally collaborative drafting and reception of his published work the annotations preserved in Lambarde’s books paint a dynamic and evolving picture of his reading practices. Over the course of his lifetime, Lambarde returned to the books in his library, with new questions or acquisitions prompting the re-reading of earlier acquisitions and occasioning new discoveries in them. Lambarde’s habit of marking up and circulating copies of his own published works, as well as the books he owned, publicised both his reading practices and the knowledge they generated about the past to his scholarly and professional companions. (shrink)

Another monumental ZKM publication, redefining politics as a concern for things around which the fluid and expansive constituency of the public gathers; with contributions by more than 100 writers and artists.

In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, many states and countries have adopted public health restrictions on activities previously considered commonplace: crossing state borders, eating indoors, gathering together, and even leaving one’s home. These policies often focus on specific activities or groups, rather than imposing the same limits across the board. In this Article, I consider the law and ethics of these policies, which I call tailored policies. In Part II, I identify two types of tailored policies--activity-based (...) and group-based. Activity-based restrictions respond to differences in the risks and benefits of specific activities, such as walking outdoors and dining indoors. Group-based restrictions consider differences between groups with respect to risk and benefit. Examples are policies that treat children or senior citizens differently, policies that require travelers to quarantine when traveling to a new destination, and policies that treat individuals differently based on whether they have COVID-19 symptoms, have tested positive for COVID-19, have previous COVID-19 infection, or have been vaccinated against COVID-19. In Part III, I consider the public health law grounding of tailored policies in the principles of “least restrictive means” and “well-targeting.” I also examine how courts have analyzed tailored policies that have been challenged on fundamental rights or equal protection grounds. I argue that fundamental rights analyses typically favor tailored policies and that equal protection does not preclude the use of tailored policies even when imperfectly crafted. In Part IV, I consider three critiques of tailored policies, centering on the claims that they produce inequity, cause harm, or unacceptably limit liberty. I argue that we must evaluate restrictions comparatively: the question is not whether tailored policies are perfectly equitable, wholly prevent harm, or completely protect liberty, but whether they are better than untailored ones at realizing these goals in a pandemic. I also argue that evaluation must consider indirect harms and benefits as well as direct and apparent ones. (shrink)

Public health is currently evolving, expanding, and reinforcing itself as a governance project in which health authorities’ concerns meet and blend with epidemiology and civil engineering. Rarely, however, are those concerns found worthy of examination, at least not to account for the multiplying involvements of public health, its ability to find political life in things, and its many translations. The shape of public health is dictated as much by its matters of concern as it is by biopolitical (...) and brute matters of fact. This article presents a genealogy of public health in Victorian England between 1834 and 1848 in order to glimpse the matters of concern around which it stabilized. The political medicine that preceded public health holds the clue in its assertion of life as a form of worth, as prominent a criterion for the assessment of sociomaterial arrangements as profitability or efficiency. This article describes public health as an ensemble presence, a unique gathering, in which political will follows medical diagnosis, and life is worth at least as much as money. (shrink)

There are a wide variety of potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in Defence settings, ranging from the use of autonomous drones to logistical support. However, limited research exists exploring how the public view these, especially in view of the value of public attitudes for influencing policy-making. An accurate understanding of the public’s perceptions is essential for crafting informed policy, developing responsible governance, and building responsive assurance relating to the development and use of AI in military settings. (...) This study is the first to explore public perceptions of and attitudes towards AI in Defence. A series of four focus groups were conducted with 20 members of the UK public, aged between 18 and 70, to explore their perceptions and attitudes towards AI use in general contexts and, more specifically, applications of AI in Defence settings. Thematic analysis revealed four themes and eleven sub-themes, spanning the role of humans in the system, the ethics of AI use in Defence, trust in AI versus trust in the organisation, and gathering information about AI in Defence. Participants demonstrated a variety of misconceptions about the applications of AI in Defence, with many assuming that a variety of different technologies involving AI are already being used. This highlighted a confluence between information from reputable sources combined with narratives from the mass media and conspiracy theories. The study demonstrates gaps in knowledge and misunderstandings that need to be addressed, and offers practical insights for keeping the public reliably, accurately, and adequately informed about the capabilities, limitations, benefits, and risks of AI in Defence. (shrink)

The study aimed to comprehensively overview the experiences encountered by public school employees during the recruitment, selection, and placement (RSP) process within the DepEd Bohol Division. Employing a qualitative-descriptive research design, the researchers utilized a phenomenological approach to delve deeply into these experiences, shedding light on the nuances and intricacies of the division's RSP process. As Lambert et al. (2013) described, qualitative- descriptive studies aim to provide a comprehensive and detailed summary of specific events experienced by individuals or groups (...) in everyday terms. To achieve this, Colaizzi's (1978) data analysis method was applied, meticulously gathering, transcribing, and analyzing recorded participant responses. The rigorous analysis revealed that an overwhelming 81% of the participants recognized significant challenges within the current RSP system of the division, underscoring the pressing need for a renewed approach to address these identified challenges. This highlighted the necessity for an RSP policy that is responsive and innovative, tailored to meet the evolving needs and expectations of applicants, schools, and the division. By implementing improvements to the RSP process, a more efficient and timely filling of vacated and newly available positions is anticipated, contributing to the seamless functioning of the educational system and ultimately enhancing the prospects of success. (shrink)

Low levels of public trust in data practices have led to growing calls for changes to data-driven systems, and in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation provides a legal motivation for such changes. Data management is a vital component of data-driven systems, but what constitutes ‘good’ data management is not straightforward. Academic attention is turning to the question of what ‘good data’ might look like more generally, but public views are absent from these debates. This paper addresses (...) this gap, reporting on a survey of the public on their views of data management approaches, undertaken by the authors and administered in the UK, where departure from the EU makes future data legislation uncertain. The survey found that respondents dislike the current approach in which commercial organizations control their personal data and prefer approaches that give them control over their data, that include oversight from regulatory bodies or that enable them to opt out of data gathering. Variations of data trusts – that is, structures that provide independent stewardship of data – were also preferable to the current approach, but not as widely preferred as control, oversight and opt out options. These features therefore constitute ‘good data management’ for survey respondents. These findings align only in part with principles of good data identified by policy experts and researchers. Our findings nuance understandings of good data as a concept and of good data management as a practice and point to where further research and policy action are needed. (shrink)

Since the second half of the twentieth century, biomedical research has made increasing use of epidemiological methods to establish empirical evidence on a population level. This paper is about practices with data in epidemiological research, based on a case study in Denmark. I propose an epistemology of record linkage that invites exploration of epidemiological studies as heterogeneous assemblages. Focusing on data collecting, sampling and linkage, I examine how data organisation and processing become productive beyond the context of their collection. The (...) case study looks at how a local population database established in 1976 to investigate possibilities for the prevention of cardiovascular disease is used thirty years later to test hypotheses on the aetiology of breast cancer. For two breast cancer investigations based on the same core data set, I follow the underlying record linkage practice and describe how research objects such as molecular markers become relevant with respect to public health through information networking. Epidemiological association studies function as tools that performatively enrol different contexts into statistical risk estimation, thereby configuring options for research as well as for clinical testing and public health policy. (shrink)

versity is full of all manner of public activity: students talking, reading, dozing, playing cards; tables representing a wide variety of ethnic communities and clubs advertising their functions, soliciting membership, and serving as gathering places; and—~most directly related to the topic of this essay—students advocating mainly radical political causes, passing out material exposing and denouncing putative (and more often than not correctly imputed) wrongdoings by authorities ranging from the university administration to the federal government and beyond. It is true (...) that both university officials and students making use of this space count on its campus setting to informally discourage use of it by other than students, but the space admits of an indefinite variety of uses, and at least no members of the.. (shrink)

This research tackled the challenges public secondary schools in Sagbayan District, Bohol, faced regarding records management. The study employed a mixed research design, combining both descriptive-qualitative and descriptive- quantitative methods. The qualitative phase involved conducting in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders involved in records management. On the other hand, the quantitative phase utilized survey questionnaires to gather data from relevant stakeholders to determine the acceptability of the proposed MIS among end-users. The first phase findings revealed various (...) challenges in records management faced by the schools, such as inefficient manual record-keeping systems, difficulties in data retrieval, and the risk of data loss due to inadequate backup procedures. These challenges highlighted the need for a comprehensive, technology-driven solution to streamline records management processes and ensure data security. The evaluation results in the second phase showed that the developed Management Information System (MIS) was well-accepted among the end users. The absence of any significant difference in the level of acceptability among the participants further validated the system's suitability for addressing their specific needs. The successful implementation of the MIS proved to be an effective solution to the records management challenges faced by the public secondary schools in Sagbayan District, Bohol. (shrink)

Media has paid more attention recently on environmental issues caused by construction companies which imposes public opinion pressure on construction companies and could potentially impact their decision-making processes for green innovations. However, research on the relationship between public opinions pressure and construction company green innovation behavior is still limited. To understand how such public opinions pressure can impact construction companies' green transition and formulate advice accordingly, it is necessary to use empirical data to find the correlations. Therefore, (...) this research has gathered questionnaire data of the construction companies in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle of China to study the influencing mechanism of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior, analyzes the realization path of leaders' environmental intention as a mediating variable in the impact of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior, and reveals the role boundary of environmental regulation as a moderating variable in the impact of environmental public opinion pressure on enterprise green innovation behavior. The results show that environmental public opinion pressure has a significant positive impact on enterprise green innovation behavior. More specifically, enterprise green innovation behavior is affected by leaders' environmental intention and the latter plays a partial mediating role between environmental public opinion pressure and enterprise green innovation behavior. Environmental regulation also enhances the sensitivity of companies to environmental public opinion pressure, and therefore can significantly strengthen the relationship between environmental public opinion pressure and enterprise green innovation behavior. Further research find that, compared with incentive-based environmental regulations, mandatory environmental regulations make companies more sensitive to environmental public opinion pressure and has a more significant positive moderating effect. The research conclusions could be used to provide theoretical reference with empirical data for accelerating the green innovation transformation and promoting the high-quality development in the construction industry. (shrink)

Over the last century, droughts have caused more deaths internationally than any other weather- or climate-related disaster. Like other natural disasters, droughts cause significant changes in the environment that can lead to negative health outcomes. As droughts are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change, public health systems need to address impacts associated with these events. Partnering with federal and local entities, we evaluated the state of knowledge of drought and health in the United States through a National (...) Drought and Public Health Summit and a series of subsequent regional workshops. The intended outcome was to develop public health strategies for implementing activities to better support and prepare public health systems for future droughts. The information gathered from this work identified multiple policy and law options to address the public health issues associated with drought. These policy recommendations include the use of public health emergency declarations for drought events, increased usage of preparedness evaluations for drought emergencies, and engagement of drought and climate experts in state and local risk assessments. As drought events are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude with climate change, taking policy action now will help decrease the health impacts of drought and save lives. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking editorial and curatorial project, more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers rethink what politics is about. In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of things. Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a (...) republic, a res publica, a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things—scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of Making Things Public—and the ZKM show that the book accompanies—ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions—technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation—in politics, science, and art—of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part. The authors include such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an "object-oriented democracy.". (shrink)

Over the past few decades, public anxiety about how people interact with science has spawned cycles of discourse across a wide range of media, public and private initiatives, and substantial research endeavors. National and international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education initiatives and research have addressed how students interact with science and pursue careers in STEM fields. Researchers concerned with adult interaction with science have focused on factors that influence how citizens gather and interpret scientific knowledge and (...) form positions on scientific issues, applications, and/or policy in a politicized democratic milieu. Building from research on how the public interacts with science in and outside of formal education, this study focuses on attitudes toward science among students in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades and their parents. Little research to date has paired the STEM experiences of adults with their children. We find that the extent to which parents are positively oriented toward science significantly shapes their children’s attitudes toward science. Furthermore, between 7th and 10th grades, students with parents holding positive orientations toward science are more likely to sustain positive attitudes toward science. Since the foundation for most adults’ interactions with science develops in the K-12 environment, we demonstrate that the foundation, as expressed in adulthood, may directly affect the ways the next generation of students interacts with science. We offer insights into the importance of developing student learning into the social scientific research on public understanding of science and how important scientific issues of today interplay with society. (shrink)

Although interest in the field of public health law has dramatically increased over the past two decades, there remain significant challenges in communicating and sharing public health law-related knowledge. Access to quality information, which may assist in a public health department's efforts to protect the public's health, welfare, and safety, varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and interjurisdictional communication remains at best a patchwork quilt with many holes. What follows is an analysis of several approaches the (...) Public Health Law Association or other public health law-related organizations might undertake to serve as a conduit for the identification, gathering, and dissemination of extant public health law information, as well as the development of new public health law-related content, with a particular focus on the use of electronic means for such efforts. (shrink)

Most people believe that we have a duty to gather evidence on both sides of central moral and political controversies, in order to fulfil our epistemic responsibilities and come to hold justified cognitive attitudes on these matters. I argue, on the contrary, that to the extent to which these controversies require special expertise, we have no such duty. We are far more likely to worsen than to improve our epistemic situation by becoming better informed on these questions. I suggest we (...) do better to embrace the views of experts who are also morally wise. I argue that this is likely to lead to more accurate beliefs about these political and moral controversies; in any case, it will avoid the incoherence and irrationality which are the likely consequence of open-minded evidence gathering. (shrink)

James Wynn’s timely investigation highlights scientific studies grounded in publicly gathered data and probes the rhetoric these studies employ. Many of these endeavors, such as the widely used SETI@home project, simply draw on the processing power of participants’ home computers; others, like the protein-folding game FoldIt, ask users to take a more active role in solving scientific problems. In Citizen Science in the Digital Age: Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement, Wynn analyzes the discourse that enables these scientific ventures, as (...) well as the difficulties that arise in communication between scientists and lay people and the potential for misuse of publicly gathered data. (shrink)

The Nineteenth Annual Biosemotics Gathering was hosted by the Philosophy Faculty of Lomonsov Moscow State University. That it was hosted by a philosophy faculty rather than a science faculty, and that it was hosted in Russia, are both significant. Biosemiotics is a challenge to mainstream biology, still struggling to gain acceptance despite the work of a great many researchers and a great many publications, along with nineteen annual biosemiotics gatherings. But it is much more than this, and this accounts (...) for why gaining acceptance is so difficult. In Thomas Kuhn’s terminology, it is revolutionary science, not normal science. It has not yet achieved a consensus on philosophical issues, basic concepts and methods that allows its practitioners to get on with the business of puzzle solving and forget about philosophy. More importantly, it is a challenge not only to mainstream assumptions in biology but also a challenge to deeper assumptions about what counts as science, what is science, and what is the relationship between science and other cultural fields. It is also a challenge to the broader culture of modernity with its tacit acceptance of Cartesian dualism, manifest in the division between the sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

The discourse on the fundamental issues raised by synthetic biology, such as biosafety and biosecurity, intellectual property, environmental consequences and ethical and societal implications, is still open and controversial. This, coupled with the potential and risks the field holds, makes it one of the hottest topics in technology assessment today. How a new technology is perceived by the public influences the manner in which its products and applications will be received. Therefore, it is important to learn how people perceive (...) synthetic biology. This work gathers, integrates and discusses the results of three studies of public perceptions of synthetic biology: an analysis of existing research on how media portray synthetic biology across 13 European countries and in the USA, the Meeting of Young Minds, a public debate between prospective politicians and synthetic biologists in the Netherlands and the experiences of citizen panels and focus groups in Austria, the UK and the USA. The results show that the media are generally positive in their reports on synthetic biology, rather unbalanced in their view of potential benefits and risks, and also heavily influenced by the sources of the stories, namely scientists and stakeholders. Among the prospective Dutch politicians, there were positive expectations as well as very negative ones. Some of these positions are also shared by participants in public dialogue experiments, such as not only the demand for information, transparency and regulation but also a sense of resignation and ineluctability of scientific and technological progress. (shrink)

On paper, class actions run like clockwork. But practice suggests the need for tune-ups: sometimes judges still approve settlements rife with red flags, and professional objectors may be more concerned with shaking down class counsel than with improving class member’s outcomes. The lack of data on the number of opt-outs, objectors, and claims rates fuels debates on both sides, for little is known about how well or poorly class members actually fare. This reveals a ubiquitous problem — information barriers confront (...) judges, objectors, and even reformers. Rule 23’s answer is to empower objectors. At best, objectors are a partial fix. They step in as the adversarial process breaks down in an attempt to resurrect the information-generating function that culture creates. And, as the proposed changes to Rule 23’s handling of objectors reflect, turmoil exists over how to encourage noble objectors that benefit class members while staving off those that namely seek rents from class counsel. The U.S. class-action scheme is not the only one that relies on private actors to perform public functions: citizens privately fund political campaigns, and private lobbyists provide research and information to lawmakers about public bills and policies. Across disciplines, the best responses to those challenges have often been to level up, not down. This Article therefore proposes a leveling up approach to address judges’ information deficit such that they can better perform their monitoring role. By relying on public funds to subsidize data collection efforts and nonprofit objectors’ information-gathering function, we can disrupt private class counsel’s disproportionate influence. (shrink)

Phenomena like meat sharing in hunter-gatherers, altruistic self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts, and contribution to the production of public goods in laboratory experiments have led to the development of numerous theories trying to explain human prosocial preferences and behavior. Many of these focus on direct and indirect reciprocity, assortment, or (cultural) group selection. Here, I investigate analytically how genetic relatedness changes the incentive structure of that paradigmatic game which is conventionally used to model and experimentally investigate collective action problems: the (...) public goods game. Using data on contemporary hunter-gatherer societies I then estimate a threshold value determining when biological altruism turns into maximizing inclusive fitness in this game. I find that, on average, contributing no less than about 40% of individual fitness to public goods production still is an optimal strategy from an inclusive fitness perspective under plausible socio-ecological conditions. (shrink)

This paper considers the development and judicial application of the Public Sector Equality Duty now found in section 149 Equality Act 2010, previously in a variety of forms in the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. It identifies a number of emerging themes in the jurisprudence concerned, in particular, with the relationship between the PSED and Wednesbury review, the extent of the information-gathering obligation it imposes, the delegability of PSED decision-making (...) and the timing of PSED challenge. It then considers the uncertainties which remain including, in particular, the application of the duty to various categories of decision-making, and concludes by assessing the impact of the PSED on challenges to ‘cuts’ cases arising from the reductions to public sector funding, and on domestic equality jurisprudence. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the content of the syllabi of postgraduate courses on public health ethics within accredited schools and programs of public health in the United States in order to gain an awareness of the topics addressed within these courses. Methods: Data was gathered via the analysis of syllabi of courses on PHE. In 2012, information was requested by e-mail from the 48 schools and 86 PH programs accredited by the U.S. Council on Education for Public Health (...) for 2012. The “Epidemiology and PHE Syllabi” project of the University of Miami also was consulted. A table of topics was drawn up in order to carry out content analysis of the documents. Results: Data was obtained from 25 schools and 36 accredited programs ; 36 syllabi were gathered and 75 different topics were found. Of these, 38 topics were addressed in six or more syllabi and can be grouped as follows: foundations of PHE; autonomy and its limits; infectious disease control; justice; research ethics; health education and promotion; environmental and occupational health; screening; genetics; privacy and confidentiality; and community-based practice and vulnerable populations. Conclusions: The analyzed syllabi show high variability in curricular content. The debate with regard to whether a core curriculum on PHE should be established is ongoing. The results of this work might be of interest for schools and programs of PH in other countries or regions of the world in order to develop or ameliorate their own PHE syllabi. (shrink)

John Dewey was America's greatest public philosopher. A prolific and influential writer for both scholarly and general audiences, he stands out for the remarkable breadth of his contributions. Dewey was a founder of a distinctly American philosophical tradition, pragmatism, and he spoke out widely on the most important questions of his day. He was a progressive thinker whose deep commitment to democracy led him to courageous stances on issues such as war, civil liberties, and racial, class, and gender inequalities. (...) This book gathers the clearest and most powerful of Dewey's public writings and shows how they continue to speak to the challenges we face today. An introductory essay and short introductions to each of the texts discuss the current relevance and significance of Dewey's work and legacy. The book includes forty-six essays on topics such as democracy in the United States, political power, education, economic justice, science and society, and philosophy and culture. These essays inspire optimism for the possibility of a more humane public and political culture, in which citizens share in the pursuit of lifelong education through participation in democratic life. America's Public Philosopher reveals John Dewey as a powerful example for scholars seeking to address a wider audience and a much-needed voice for all readers in search of intellectual and moral leadership. (shrink)

New words have found their way into the public sphere: we now commonly talk about “confinement”, “barrier-gesture” or “distancing”. The very idea of public space has been transformed: with restrictions on movement and interaction in public; with the reintegration of lives (certain lives) into the home (if there is one) and private space; with the publicization of private space through internet relationships; with the cities’ space occupied, during confinement, by so-called “essential” workers; with the restriction of (...) class='Hi'>gatherings and political demonstrations in public space. With these and other recent changes, it is imperative to revisit the concept of public space, which continues to be used as if it were self-evident, despite its profound transformation over the past few decades, in a process of realization and “literalization”. No longer just a comfortable metaphor for reasonable debates, public space has become a concrete reality in the 21th century. This transformation in the various phenomena, such as the occupation of squares and public spaces; the demand for spaces of conversation and expression for those without a voice; the transition of private matters into the public realm through verbal expression; and the expression and circulation of public issues within popular cultures. As a result, the question of public space is increasingly intertwined with that of private spaces, such as the home or individual subjectivities, forming an internal, logical relationship. (shrink)

Virtual community websites are one of the applications that provide a platform for people with common interests to extend their social relations in social media. With the proliferation of food safety incidents in recent years, social media has often been a major channel for public engagement in risk communication because of its social networking and immediate interaction. To understand the users’ needs and satisfaction, this study proposed a model to develop and evaluate the antecedents of continuance intention toward food (...) safety information from social media. Based on the questionnaire collected from 289 Facebook users, this study assessed the integrated model of the expectation-confirmation theory and technology acceptance model with technology readiness as moderator. The results showed that the perceived ease-of-use, usefulness, and confirmation indirectly affected social media continuance usage intention through satisfaction; perceived ease-of-use, usefulness, and satisfaction were the direct determinants that affected the users’ social media continuance intention. Furthermore, positive technology readiness had significant effects on the relationship between the perceived ease-of-use, usefulness, confirmation, satisfaction, and continuance intention toward food safety information. This study contributes some important suggestions and managerial implications for food safety promotion providers, practitioners, and academics in the food industry, and social media environment. (shrink)

Many researchers experiment with participatory settings to increase public engagement in research and innovation (R&I). Because of their temporary nature, it often remains unclear how such participatory experiments can contribute to structural change. This paper empirically explores options for bridging this gap. It analyzes how participants can be supported to act as institutional entrepreneurs to actively promote public engagement in R&I. To draw lessons, we analyze empirical material gathered on nineteen Social Labs which were set up to promote (...) the uptake of Responsible Research and Innovation in a European R&I funding program (Horizon 2020). Involvement of motivated participants, insight in their institutional context, and specific methods and management choices that enhance a sense of agency are identified as essential for organizing change. These findings and the resulting framework of interventions may prove valuable for further (action) research into the institutionalization of public engagement in R&I. (shrink)

John Dewey was America's greatest public philosopher. A prolific and influential writer for both scholarly and general audiences, he stands out for the remarkable breadth of his contributions. Dewey was a founder of a distinctly American philosophical tradition, pragmatism, and he spoke out widely on the most important questions of his day. He was a progressive thinker whose deep commitment to democracy led him to courageous stances on issues such as war, civil liberties, and racial, class, and gender inequalities. (...) This book gathers the clearest and most powerful of Dewey's public writings and shows how they continue to speak to the challenges we face today. An introductory essay and short introductions to each of the texts discuss the current relevance and significance of Dewey's work and legacy. The book includes forty-six essays on topics such as democracy in the United States, political power, education, economic justice, science and society, and philosophy and culture. These essays inspire optimism for the possibility of a more humane public and political culture, in which citizens share in the pursuit of lifelong education through participation in democratic life. America's Public Philosopher reveals John Dewey as a powerful example for scholars seeking to address a wider audience and a much-needed voice for all readers in search of intellectual and moral leadership. (shrink)

The Second World War offered an excellent opportunity for some U.S. think tanks to influence foreign-policy-making processes and get involved in transatlantic diplomacy. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) challenged the stalemate between the U.S. and French authorities by gathering together U.S. experts and non-collaborationist French leaders. A first-hand reconstruction of this informal network is based on the unreleased Peace Aims Group’s records. This was a unique CFR exchange programme for European governments-in-exile’s representatives. In (...) the first part, a general reconstruction of Council on Foreign Relations’ planning introduces an original assessment of the meetings with some prominent French intellectuals and politicians. It is argued that these conferences can be interpreted as rare examples of wartime public diplomacy. The second part discloses new historical evidence demonstrating the participation of Jean Monnet in a Peace Aims session. This discovery proves the existence of a long-term partnership between one of the key protagonists of the European integration process and the most authoritative foreign-policy think tank working for the Roosevelt administration. Overall, the analysis of Peace Aims Group’s off-the-record discussions sheds new light on the WWII transatlantic debate on postwar Europe and France. (shrink)

In this article we take further the debate on the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering, which until now has been very limited. Drawing on empirical research from a mobile telephone company in the United Kingdom, we present the case that while mystery shopping is not the worst activity in which an organization might be involved, it is basically unethical. Mystery shopping involves deception and the obtaining of competitive information under false pretences. Common arguments are that ‘everyone is doing it’ and (...) that the information is in the public domain. Neither of these points convincingly justifies the requirement for an employer to ask an employee to lie and deceive others on behalf of the company. The use of students and those in low power positions in the organization is a further concern. (shrink)

In this article we take further the debate on the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering, which until now has been very limited. Drawing on empirical research from a mobile telephone company in the United Kingdom, we present the case that while mystery shopping is not the worst activity in which an organization might be involved, it is basically unethical. Mystery shopping involves deception and the obtaining of competitive information under false pretences. Common arguments are that ‘everyone is doing it’ and (...) that the information is in the public domain. Neither of these points convincingly justifies the requirement for an employer to ask an employee to lie and deceive others on behalf of the company. The use of students and those in low power positions in the organization is a further concern. (shrink)

Clinical research under the usual regulatory constraints may be difficult or even impossible in a public health emergency. Regulators must seek to strike a good balance in granting as wide therapeutic access to new drugs as possible at the same time as gathering sound evidence of safety and effectiveness. To inform current policy, I reexamine the philosophical rationale for restricting new medicines to clinical trials, at any stage and for any population of patients (which resides in the precautionary principle), (...) to show that its objective to protect public health, now or in the future, could soon be defeated in a pandemic. Providing wider therapeutic access and coordinating observations and natural experiments, including service delivery by cluster (wedged cluster trials), may provide such a balance. However, there are important questions of fairness to resolve before any such research can proceed. (shrink)

Public protest continued to represent a prominent form of social activism in democratic societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Australia, a lack of specific legislation articulating protest rights has meant that, in the context of pandemic restrictions, such events have been treated as illegal mass gatherings. Numerous large protests in major cities have, indeed, stirred significant public debate regarding rights of assembly during COVID-19 outbreaks. The ethics of infringing on protest rights continues to be controversial, with opinion (...) divided as to whether public health goals or human rights should take precedence. This paper applies public health ethical theory to an in-depth analysis of arguments on both sides of the debate. Using the Nuffield Council on Bioethics framework as a backdrop, proportionality and necessity of restrictions are understood as key concepts that are common to both public health and human rights perspectives. The analysis presented here finds a middle-ground between the prevailing arguments on opposing sides and is further able to rationalize the use of protest itself as an important element of a mature public health ethics response to restrictive policy. Thus, this paper aims to influence public health policy and legislation regarding protest rights during public health emergencies. (shrink)

In the light of Markus’s notion of the decent society, this contribution examines the challenges facing public intellectuals in Australia’s contemporary political public sphere. It observes, firstly, that Australia has a distinctly Benthamite political culture that listens more to bureaucratic solutions than to metaphysics, history and arguments grounded in human rights. It explains, secondly, how public opinion gives voice to underlying norms and should thus be treated as the starting point for intellectual activism. Thirdly, the article looks (...) into confusion on the criteria for political deliberation in contemporary Australia. Consideration is then given to the growing constraints imposed on public intellectuals through various new forms of censorship and closure. The conclusion uses the gathering debates on adjustment to climate change to illustrate how public intellectual activism can break new ground. (shrink)

Can discussion with members of the public show philosophers where they have gone wrong? Leslie Cannold argues that it can in her 1995 paper ‘Women, Ectogenesis and Ethical Theory’, which investigates the ways in which women reason about abortion and ectogenesis. In her study, Cannold interviewed female non-philosophers. She divided her participants into separate ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ groups and asked them to consider whether the availability of ectogenesis would change their views about the morality of dealing with an unwanted (...) pregnancy. The women in Cannold’s study gave responses that did not map onto the dominant tropes in the philosophical literature. Yet Cannold did not attempt to reason with her participants, and her engagement with the philosophical literature is oddly limited, focussing only on the pro-choice perspective. In this paper, I explore the question of whether Cannold is correct that philosophers’ reasoning about abortion is lacking in some way. I suggest that there are alternative conclusions to be drawn from the data she gathered and that a critical approach is necessary when attempting to undertake philosophy informed by empirical data. (shrink)

The 2013 Past President’s Panel at the Dewey Society annual meeting invited scholars to revisit the classic political text, The Public and Its Problems . Four exceptional papers were presented at the session and are now gathered here to gain the wider audience they deserve.Dewey’s most comprehensive work of political theory and democratic politics, The Public and Its Problems was a response to the deeply embedded skepticism about participatory democracy and public life expressed by democratic realists of (...) the era, most famously, Walter Lippmann in his The Phantom Public . In response to Lippmann, Dewey offered a thorough analysis of early 20th century democracy and some of his best thinking on both the .. (shrink)

This paper illustrates the importance of monitoring health facility-level information to monitor changes in maternal mortality risks. The annual facility-level maternal mortality ratios (MMRs), complications to live births ratios and case fatality ratios (CFRs) were computed from data recorded during 2007 and 2009 in 31 upgraded public sector health facilities across Pakistan. The facility-level MMR declined by about 18%; both the number of Caesarean sections and the episodes of complications as a percentage of live births increased; and CFR based (...) on Caesarean sections and episodes of complications declined by 29% and 37%, respectively. The observed increases in the proportion of women with complications among those who come to these facilities point to a reduction in the delay in reaching facilities (first and second delays; Thaddeus & Maine, 1994); the decrease in CFRs points to improvements in treating obstetric complications and a reduction in the delay in receiving treatment once at facilities (the third delay). These findings point to a decline in maternal mortality risks among communities served by these facilities. A system of woman-level data collection instituted at health facilities with comprehensive emergency obstetric care is essential to monitor changes in the effects of any reduction in the three delays and any improvement in quality of care or the effectiveness of treating pregnancy-related complications among women reaching these facilities. Such a system of information gathering at these health facilities would also help policymakers and programme mangers to measure and improve the effectiveness of safe-motherhood initiatives and to monitor progress being made toward achieving the fifth Millennium Development Goal. (shrink)

Phenomena like meat sharing in hunter-gatherers, self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts, and voluntary contribution to public goods provision in laboratory experiments have led to the development of numerous theories on the evolution of altruistic in-group beneficial behavior in humans. Many of these theories abstract away from the effects of kinship on the incentives for public goods provision, though. Here, it is investigated analytically how genetic relatedness changes the incentive structure of that paradigmatic game which is conventionally used to model (...) and experimentally investigate collective action problems: the linear public goods game. Using recent anthropological data sets on relatedness in 61 contemporary hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies the relevant parameters of this model are then estimated. It turns out that the kinship patterns observed in these societies substantially reduce the negative effect of increasing group size on incentives for public goods provision. It is suggested, therefore, that renewed attention should be given to inclusive fitness theory in the context of public goods provision also in sizable groups, because its explanatory power with respect to this central problem in the evolution of human cooperativeness and altruism might have been substantially underrated. (shrink)

This article aims to carry out an analysis of the publications about subjective wellbeing that have been developed in Chile. To reach such an objective, all the publications indexed in the main databases were gathered. The analysed variables were: type of research according to its thoroughness, epistemological stance, disciplinary areas of the researchers and characteristics of the journal. The data were analysed through univariate descriptive statistics and analysis of multiple correspondences. The main results indicate that the first publications start in (...) the decade of 2000, and are concentrated in the disciplinary field of psychology, basically using a quantitative research methodology, with correlational analyses, transversal, non-experimental and macro-subjective levels. En el presente artículo se realiza un análisis de las publicaciones sobre el bienestar subjetivo desarrolladas en Chile. Para hacerlo se acopió el total de publicaciones indexadas en las principales bases de datos. Las variables analizadas fueron: tipo de investigación según su profundidad, enfoques epistemológicos, áreas disciplinarias de los investigadores y características de las revistas. Los datos se analizaron a través de estadística descriptiva univariada y análisis de correspondencias múltiples. Los principales resultados indican que las primeras publicaciones se inician a partir de la década del 2000, se concentran en el campo disciplinario de la psicología, fundamentalmente con enfoque cuantitativo, los análisis son de tipo correlacional, transversal, no experimental y de niveles macro-subjetivos. (shrink)

The effect of COVID-induced public anxiety on stock markets, particularly in European stock market returns, is examined in this research. The search volumes for the notion of COVID-19 gathered by Google Trends and Wikipedia were used as proxies for COVID-induced public anxiety. COVID-induced public anxiety was shown to be linked with negative returns in European stock markets when a panel data method was used to a sample of data from 14 European stock markets from January 2, 2020 (...) to September 17, 2020. Using an automated trading system, we used this finding to suggest investment methods based on COVID-induced anxiety. The findings of back-testing indicate that these techniques have the potential to generate exceptional profits. These results have significant consequences for government officials, the media, and investors. (shrink)

‘Flash houses’, a distinctive type of public house associated with criminal activity, are a shadowy and little-studied aspect of early 19th-century London. This article situates flash houses within a wide perspective, arguing that the discourses on flash houses were part of concerns about the threat of the urban environment to the moral character of its inhabitants. The article draws on an original synthesis of a range of sources that refer to flash houses, including contemporary literature, newspapers, court documents, and (...) government papers. It demonstrates that flash houses were part of both popular intrigue about the perceived ‘criminal underworld’ and official concerns about the collusion between police officers and suspected offenders, since police officers allegedly frequented flash houses to gather criminal information. A detailed examination of this term reveals anxieties about the state of the metropolis, poverty, and criminality that were central to the early 19th-century consciousness. However, the discussion of flash houses in this context also demonstrates a powerful connection in contemporary minds between the physical spaces of the city and the risks that they posed to inhabitants' morals. While associations between the physical environment and morality have been drawn throughout history, flash houses represent a paradigmatic moment in this dialogue. This is because different moral concerns coalesced around the discourse on flash houses: anxieties about the criminal underworld, the potential for moral degradation of young people who frequented these spaces, and the corruption of police officers through contact with known or suspected offenders. (shrink)

This essay surveys and synthesizes the academic literature, archival sources and interviews with key policy makers regarding the emergence of community technology centers in the US. Community Technology Centers came to the fore in the late 1990s through an activist nonprofit sector combined with federal government and private sector funding. Federal data indicates that CTCs now represent the most important access points to information communications technology for the poor in the US. This essay reviews the latest arguments for and against (...) continued investment in CTCs and public access in general. In addition to providing access, which is often used beneficially for employment and education related purposes, CTCs appear to contribute to social capital as they become social gathering points. This paper concludes, that both government and nonprofits play a vital role in ensuring public access for the poor and that continued investment in CTCs is warranted. (shrink)