Oxycholesterols (OS) are formed from cholesterol or its immediate precursors by enzymatic or free radical action in vivo, or they may be derived from food. OS exhibit a wide spectrum of biological activities. In OS cytotoxicity, several mechanisms seem to be involved: e.g. inhibition of HMG‐CoA reductase activity, antiproliferative action, apoptosis induction, replacement of cholesterol by OS in membranes followed by changes in cellular membrane structure and functionality, and immune system functions alteration. Furthermore, OS may be mutagenic and carcinogenic and (...) may serve as intracellular signaling or regulatory molecules. Here we review OS cellular activities with special attention to the cytotoxic action in vivo and in vitro using experimental models. BioEssays 28: 387–398, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Exercise-based rehabilitation forms a key part of the UK National Health Service patient-care pathway for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Only around half of all eligible patients attend core CR, however, with social inequalities affecting participation. Few qualitative studies have explored in-depth the key factors influencing engagement with CR, specifically from a sociological theoretical, and ethnographic perspective. Utilising an ethnographic approach allowed us to get a sense of the embodied experiences of 10 participants attending or declining core CR, together with a further (...) seven family members/significant others. This provided in-depth appreciation of participants’ lifeworld contexts as key influences on CR participation. The article draws on these qualitative data and focuses on 1) participants’ initial thoughts about CR; and 2) navigating the field of CR, analysed via thematic analysis. We utilise a Bourdieusian theoretical perspective to theorise the findings, including salient socio-cultural factors influencing attendance/non-attendance and (non)adherence. The article findings highlight how perceptions of CR and the ability to navigate the field are strongly influenced by habitus and capital, and how personal biographies and socio-material conditions affect adherence to CR programmes. The study provides original insights into embodied experiences of exercise-based CR, and novel understandings of the reasons for drop-out/poor adherence, theorised from a Bourdieusian perspective. (shrink)

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2012! Contemporary picturebooks open up spaces for philosophical dialogues between people of all ages. As works of art, picturebooks offer unique opportunities to explore ideas and to create meaning collaboratively. This book considers censorship of certain well-known picturebooks, challenging the assumptions on which this censorship is based. Through a lively exploration of children's responses to these same picturebooks the authors paint a way of working philosophically based on respectful listening and creative and authentic interactions, rather (...) than scripted lessons. This dialogical process challenges much current practice in education. The authors propose that a courageous and critical practice of listening is central to the facilitation of mutually educative dialogue. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of education studies, philosophy of education, literacy teaching and learning, children's literature, childhood and pedagogy. (shrink)

The question of whether AI systems such as robots can or should be afforded moral agency or patiency is not one amenable either to discovery or simple reasoning, because we as societies constantly reconstruct our artefacts, including our ethical systems. Consequently, the place of AI systems in society is a matter of normative, not descriptive ethics. Here I start from a functionalist assumption, that ethics is the set of behaviour that maintains a society. This assumption allows me to exploit the (...) theoretical biology of sociality and autonomy to explain our moral intuitions. From this grounding I extend to consider possible ethics for maintaining either human- or of artefact-centred societies. I conclude that while constructing AI systems as either moral agents or patients is possible, neither is desirable. In particular, I argue that we are unlikely to construct a coherent ethics in which it it is ethical to afford AI moral subjectivity. We are therefore obliged not to build AI we are obliged to. (shrink)

A child’s objection, refusal and dissent regarding participation in non-beneficial biomedical research must be respected, even when the parents or legal representatives have given their permission. There is, however, no consensus on the definition and criteria of a meaningful and valid child’s objection. The aim of this article is to clarify this issue. In the first part we describe the problems of a child’s assent in research. In the second part we distinguish and analyze two models of a child’s objection (...) to research: the capacity-based model and the distress-based model. In the last part we present arguments for a broader and unified understanding of a child’s objection within regulations and practices. This will strengthen children’s rights and facilitate the entire process of assessment of research protocols. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Conferring legal personhood on purely synthetic entities is a very real legal possibility, one under consideration presently by the European Union. We show here that such legislative action would be morally unnecessary and legally troublesome. While AI legal personhood may have some emotional or economic appeal, so do many superficially desirable hazards against which the law protects us. We review the utility and history of legal fictions of personhood, discussing salient precedents where such fictions resulted in abuse or incoherence. We (...) conclude that difficulties in holding “electronic persons” accountable when they violate the rights of others outweigh the highly precarious moral interests that AI legal personhood might protect. (shrink)

This fully revised second edition suggests ways in which you can introduce philosophical enquiry to your Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship teaching and across the curriculum.

A person who is liable to defensive harm has forfeited his rights against the imposition of the harm, and so is not wronged if that harm is imposed. A number of philosophers, most notably Jeff McMahan, argue for an instrumental account of liability, whereby a person is liable to defensive harm when he is either morally or culpably responsible for an unjust threat of harm to others, and when the imposition of defensive harm is necessary to avert the threatened unjust (...) harm. Others may favour a purely noninstrumental account of liability: one that looks only to the past behaviour of the potentially liable person. We argue that both views are vulnerable to serious objections. Instead we develop and defend a new view of liability to defensive harm: the pluralist account. The pluralist account states that liability to defensive harm has at least two bases. First, if an attacker is morally or culpably responsible for an unjust attack then he has forfeited what we call his agency right, and in doing so he has made himself partially liable to defensive harm. Whether the attacker is fully liable to defensive harm depends, however, on whether the imposition of defensive harm would infringe a different right held by the attacker: his humanitarian right. Humanitarian rights are rights to be provided with urgently needed resources or to be protected from serious harms when others can do so at reasonably low cost. We argue the pluralist account avoids the objections to which the instrumental and noninstrumental views are vulnerable, coheres with our intuitive reactions in a wide range of cases, and sheds new light on the way different rights combine to determine a person's liability to suffer harm. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the processes of racialisation on the example of biomedical research. We argue that applying the concept of racialisation in biomedical research can be much more precise, informative and suitable than currently used categories, such as race and ethnicity. For this purpose, we construct a model of the different processes affecting and co-shaping the racialisation of an individual, and consider these in relation to biomedical research, particularly to studies on hypertension. We finish with a discussion on (...) the potential application of our proposition to institutional guidelines on the use of racial categories in biomedical research. (shrink)

Everyone knows what is feels like to be in pain. Scraped knees, toothaches, migraines, giving birth, cancer, heart attacks, and heartaches: pain permeates our entire lives. We also witness other people - loved ones - suffering, and we 'feel with' them. It is easy to assume this is the end of the story: 'pain-is-pain-is-pain', and that is all there is to say. But it is not. In fact, the way in which people respond to what they describe as 'painful' has (...) changed considerably over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, people believed that pain served a specific (and positive) function - it was a message from God or Nature; it would perfect the spirit. 'Suffer in this life and you wouldn't suffer in the next one'. Submission to pain was required. Nothing could be more removed from twentieth and twenty-first century understandings, where pain is regarded as an unremitting evil to be 'fought'. Focusing on the English-speaking world, this book tells the story of pain since the eighteenth century, addressing fundamental questions about the experience and nature of suffering over the last three centuries. How have those in pain interpreted their suffering - and how have these interpretations changed over time? How have people learnt to conduct themselves when suffering? How do friends and family react? And what about medical professionals: should they immerse themselves in the suffering person or is the best response a kind of professional detachment? (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Each year thousands of individuals enrol in clinical trials as healthy volunteers to earn money. Some of them pursue research participation as a full-time or at least a part-time job. They call themselves professional or semiprofessional guinea pigs. The practice of paying healthy volunteers raises numerous ethical concerns. Different payment models have been discussed in literature. Dickert and Grady argue for a wage-payment model. This model gives research subjects a standardised hourly wage, and it is based on an assumption that (...) research participation is morally indistinguishable from other forms of unskilled labour. In this paper, I will challenge this assumption. I will argue that human guinea pigging has particular characteristics which taken together make it significantly different from other forms of labour. Participation in research is skill-independent. Healthy volunteers are valuable not because they are skilful persons, but because they are human bodies. The role of research volunteers is mainly passive. They are not asked to produce goods or deliver services. They are paid for enduring unpleasant, painful and risky interventions performed by investigators. Research volunteering involves inherent risks and uncertainties, and subjects have little or no control over their minimisation and materialisation. I conclude that participation in clinical research is a specific kind of activity. It is more like renting out one’s body to strangers, than working. Thus, research participation should not be treated on par with other forms of employment. (shrink)

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value.

A number of contemporary philosophers have suggested that the recent revival of interest in panpsychism within philosophy of mind could reinvigorate a pantheistic philosophy of religion. This project explores whether the combination and individuation problems, which have dominated recent scholarship within panpsychism, can aid the pantheist’s articulation of a God/universe unity. Constitutive holistic panpsychism is seen to be the only type of panpsychism suited to aid pantheism in articulating this type of unity. There are currently no well-developed solutions to the (...) individuation problem for this type of panpsychism. Moreover, the gestures towards a solution appear costly to the religious significance of pantheism. This article concludes that any hope that contemporary panpsychism might aid pantheists in articulating unity is premature and possibly misplaced. (shrink)

Responding to the invitation of this special issue of Childhood and Philosophy this paper considers the ethos of facilitation in philosophical enquiry with children, and the spatial-temporal order of the community of enquiry. Within the Philosophy with Children movement, there are differences of thinking and practice on ‘facilitation’ in communities of philosophical enquiry, and we suggest that these have profound implications for the political agency of children. Facilitation can be enacted as a chronological practice of progress and development that works (...) against child, in terms of political agency. This paper theorises practices of facilitation grounded in philosophies of childhood that assume listening to child/ren as equals, as already able to philosophise, and against sameness. We explore the political and ethical implications of the radical posthumanist reconfiguration of the ‘zipped’ body in the light of including the disciplinary, imaginative and enabling energies of chronological time through the concept now/ness. We shift from ethics to ethos, and from ‘zipped’ to ‘unzipped’ bodies, through the notion of affect to explore the temporal and spatial dimensions of facilitation in Philosophy with Children and children’s political agency. We re-turn to David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, getting ‘inside the text’, and attending to the postponement of equality in Philosophy with Children. (shrink)

El objetivo del artículo es presentar el diseño y la evaluación de un taller de prevención y sensibilización contra el acoso sexual. En total 286 estudiantes (224 mujeres y 62 hombres) de distintos grados de la Universidad de las Islas Baleares participaron en el taller y mostraron una alta satisfacción con el taller. 197 participantes incluso dieron la máxima puntuación en todos los 9 ítems del cuestionario de evaluación. Estos resultados animan a impulsar su aplicación en otros estudios y también (...) dentro del marco de formación del personal docente e investigador (PDI) y del personal de administración y servicios (PAS). (shrink)

The presence of discourse relations can be marked explicitly with lexical items such as specialized and underspecified connectives or left implicit. It is now well established that the presence of specialized connective facilitates the processing of these relations. The question is to gauge how different degrees of explicitness affect the processing of discourse relations. This study investigates this question with respect to two relations, which are fundamental to our cognition and which are closely tied: causal relations and temporal relations. We (...) carried out a self-paced reading experiment, in which we sought to compare the cost of inferring the presence of causal vs. temporal relations in the absence vs. presence of a connective indicating a given relation in French. For the explicit marking, two types of connectives were tested – one specialized for each relation (doncfor causality andpuisfor temporality) and one underspecified (etin its temporal and causal readings). Overall, our results confirm the facilitator role of discourse connectives: we find that explicit discourse relations are processed faster than implicit ones. The specific (rather than underspecified) connective facilitates processing for temporal relations but not for causal relations; and temporal relations were read equally fast as causal relations. (shrink)

Social work is underpinned by values of anti-oppressive practice and social justice. Our professional standards require social workers to consider their personal and professional development. Thus, this article combines a reflection on both our professional role as academics and our existential identity as social workers in challenging racism and mental health stigma. To progress equality of opportunity, we argue it is necessary to understand first what we mean by an ‘integrated society’ before we can secondly challenge diverse forms of oppression. (...) We conclude by positing that a community free of interpersonal, institutional and structural oppression may only be possible within a virtual world. (shrink)

In 2014, Article 3 of the the Belgian Euthanasia Act (2002) (the Euthanasia Act) was amended (‘the Amendment’) to include the ‘capacity for discernment’ requirement. This paper explores the implications of this highly controversial Amendment. I remain unconvinced of the benefits for children < 12 years old suffering chronic or terminal illnesses. In Part One, I argue that the phrase ‘capacity for discernment’ is problematic and vulnerable to abuse; neither a consistent, widely accepted definition of the phrase has been established (...) nor a standardised method or procedure to adequately gauge a minor’s capacity for discernment. In Part Two I advance the argument that specifically for children < 12 years, aggressive and sophisticated paediatric palliative care treatment, which risks, but does not intend death, is more ethically justified than Euthanasia treatment. A definition of a child’s interests is best achieved through a care-based ethics framework; namely, the child’s relationship with their parents and family members, their doctors and medical practitioners is held to be an interest of crucial importance for the child. I conclude that paediatric palliative care arguably better promotes and upholds this interest. (shrink)

How leaders and managers respond to not knowing is highly relevant given the complex, ambiguous, and chaotic business environment of the twenty-first century. Drawing on the literature from a variety of disciplines, the paper explores the dominant, unfavorable conceptualization of not knowing. The authors present some potential ethical implications of a negative view of not knowing and suggest how organizations would benefit from identifying any unhelpful aspects of the culture that may encourage unethical, undesirable, and/or hasty actions in situations of (...) not knowing. The paper specifically illustrates how patience, courage, honesty, integrity, and humility are integral to negative capability in the contexts of not knowing. Finally, the paper calls for deeper inquiry into the role of virtue ethics in preparing managers and leaders for not knowing and urges organizations to embrace negative capability in not knowing rather than engaging in damaging delusion. (shrink)

This article discusses the idea of intra-generational education. Drawing on Braidotti’s nomadic subject and Barad’s conception of agency, we consider what intra-generational education might look like ontologically, in the light of critical posthumanism, in terms of natureculture world, nomadism and a vibrant indeterminacy of knowing subjects. In order to explore the idea of intra-generationalism and its pedagogical implications, we introduce four concepts: homelessness, agelessness, playfulness and wakefulness. These may appear improbable in the context of education policy-making today, but they are (...) born of theorising our practices in the age-transgressive field of Philosophy with Children. We argue that these concepts help to reconfigure intra-generational relations, ways of being and becoming. They express the longing, corporeality and visionary epistemology of nomadic enquiry. These inventions express a non-hierarchical philosophy of immanence. We draw some tentative conclusions about educational practices more generally. (shrink)

Paying research subjects for their participation in biomedical studies is an increasingly common and acceptable practice. Nevertheless, it continues to raise numerous conceptual, ethical, and pract...

This article explores the context for the accompanying suite of papers on creating and sustaining democratic spaces in education. Prompted by the centenary of Summerhill, the internationally famous democratic school founded in Suffolk, England, in 1921, by A.S. Neill, this collection of papers explores and broadens out the central questions at the heart of experiments in democratic education. We suggest that, at a time of distrust in and questioning of the central institutions of democratic government, and in the wake of (...) challenges to the mainstream system of state schooling, these questions are more relevant than ever. We argue that detailed attention to the everyday practice of creating democratic spaces in a variety of educational and social contexts can highlight the myriad ways in which educators, students, families and communities can keep democratic values and principles alive, thereby enriching our discussions about the meaning and value of democratic education. (shrink)

This article is an analysis and critique of emergent theologies, focusing on areas of Christology and pneumatology. An increasing number of Christian theologians are integrating emergence theory into their work. I argue that, despite the range of theological commitments and methodological approaches represented by these scholars, each faces similar problematic tendencies when their Christian doctrines are combined with emergence theory. It is concluded that the basic logic of emergence theory, whereby matter is seen to precede mind, makes it difficult for (...) emergent theologies to offer an account of salvation, avoid significant issues regarding God's involvement with evil, and maintain divine transcendence. It is concluded, therefore, that Christian theology should look elsewhere for a complementary metaphysical framework with which to bridge scientific and theological discourse. (shrink)

Contemporary electronic music has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, all of which share a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. Listening through the Noise considers how the experience of listening to electronic music constitutes a departure from the expectations that have long governed music listening in the West.

Haneke’s film Funny Games is a reflection on the nature of pain and representation. I argue that the film closely follows Elaine Scarry’s arguments about the structure of torture. Further, by refusing to appeal to categories of generalization such as ‘sadism’ and ‘psychopathy’, Haneke undermines the process of finding meaning in violence. Haneke positions his audiences as more than just witnesses to torture, but active participants in cruelty.

Recently, scholars have described the emotional consequences of transnational motherhood on families. Research, however, has neglected to address the lives of migrant fathers and how they compare to those of migrant mothers. This article fills the gap by analyzing the experiences of Mexican transnational mothers and fathers residing in New Jersey. Ethnographic data and interviews show that parents behave in similar ways when internationally separated from children. However, their migration patterns and emotional responses to separation differ. I show that these (...) differences are tied to Mexican gender ideology in which women’s maternal roles are sacralized, whereas fathers’ roles are tied to financial provision. Although the contemporary Mexican transnational family structure challenges gender norms, the analysis of how parents understand their family roles when separated from their children proves gender ideals to be highly durable in the transnational context. (shrink)

Reigning regulatory frameworks for biomedical research impose on researchers and research ethics committees an obligation to protect research participants from risks that are unnecessary, disproportionate to potential research benefits, and non-minimized. Where the research has no potential to produce results of direct benefit to the subjects and the subjects are unable to give consent, these requirements are strengthened by an additional condition, that risks should not exceed a certain minimal threshold. In this article, I address the question of whether there (...) should be limits of permissible risks in non-therapeutic research involving competent and healthy subjects. Some commentators argue that competent and informed individuals should have a right to participate even in extremely risky research and that research ethics committees should never reject studies because they are too dangerous. To use David Shaw's expression, competent volunteers should have ‘a right to participate in high-risk research’. I argue that this idea is ill-founded, as it does not take into account the social mission and complex collaborative nature of research practice as well as the inequity of power between researchers and subjects. Imposition of limits on permissible risks for healthy volunteers is justified by the need to protect research enterprise and the need to protect the weaker party, namely the subjects. Also, I suggest that the best way to set boundaries on research risks is to leave the judgment of risk acceptability to research ethics committees. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature, several counterexamples to the interpretative principle that symmetry-related models are physically equivalent have been suggested The Oxford handbook of philosophy of physics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, Noûs 52:946–981, 2018; Fletcher in Found Phys 50:228–249, 2020). Arguments based on these counterexamples can be understood as arguments from scientific practice of roughly the following form: because in scientific practice such-and-such symmetry-related models are treated as representing distinct physical situations, these models indeed represent distinct physical situations. In (...) this paper, a strategy for analysing arguments of this type is presented and applied to the examples that can be found in the literature. I argue that if we are exclusively interested in models understood as representing entire possible worlds, arguments from scientific practice should involve some additional assumptions to guarantee they are relevant for models understood in this way. However, none of the examples presented in the literature satisfy all these additional assumptions, which leads to the conclusion that arguments from scientific practice based on these examples do not undermine the interpretative principle that different symmetry-related models represent the same possible world. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse how researchers use the categories of race and ethnicity with reference to genetics and genomics. We show that there is still considerable conceptual “messiness” (despite the wide-ranging and popular debate on the subject) when it comes to the use of ethnoracial categories in genetics and genomics that among other things makes it difficult to properly compare and interpret research using ethnoracial categories, as well as draw conclusions from them. Finally, we briefly reconstruct some of the (...) biases of reductionism to which geneticists (as well as other researchers referring to genetic methods and explanations) are particularly exposed to, and we analyse the problem in the context of the biologization of ethnoracial categories. Our work constitutes a novel, in-depth contribution to the debate about reporting race and ethnicity in biomedical and health research. First, we reconstruct the theoretical background assumptions about racial ontology which researchers implicitly presume in their studies with the aid of a sample of recent papers published in medical journals about COVID-19. Secondly, we use the typology of the biases of reductionism to the problem of biologization of ethnoracial categories with reference to genetics and genomics. (shrink)

Panpsychism is the view, found in ancient and modern, Eastern and Western philosophies, that mind is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. This article explores the use of panpsychism to support different views of God. It is seen that as a family of views, panpsychism is a theologically flexible position that has been used to support atheism, pantheism, panentheism, and traditional monotheism. However, the relationship between panpsychism and philosophy of religion is not infinitely flexible. Different versions of panpsychism (...) constrain these models of God, and vice versa. The different motivations for linking panpsychism to (dis)belief in God reveals the range of ways of interpreting the spiritual import of positing mentality in nature. (shrink)

Since its advent in the 20th century, informed consent has become a cornerstone of ethical healthcare, and obtaining it a core obligation in medical contexts. In my dissertation, I aim to examine the theoretical underpinnings of informed consent and identify what values it is taken to protect. I will suggest that the fundamental motivation behind informed consent rests in something I’ll call bodily self-sovereignty, which I argue involves a coupling of two groups of values: autonomy and non-domination on the one (...) hand, and self-ownership and personal integrity on the other. I will then go on to consider two 'case studies' I take to shed light on what is at stake in securing informed consent - consent in psychiatrically ill populations, and consent to interventions that involve the modification of the genetic germline. (shrink)

In the decades since the Science Wars of the 1990s, climate science has become a crucible for the negotiation of claims about reality and expertise. This negotiation, which has drawn explicitly on the ideas and techniques of science and technology studies, has taken place in genres of fiction as well as non-fiction, which intersect in surprising ways. In this case study, I focus on two interwoven strands of this history. One follows Michael Crichton’s best-selling 2004 novel, State of Fear and (...) its reception by neo-conservatives as a commentary on the mis-uses of facts to stoke fear about anthropogenic climate change. The other considers Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s 2010 publishing success Merchants of Doubt as the inverse, a demonstration of the forms of disinformation that have been used to undermine scientific consensus around climate change. I show that both Crichton’s as well as Oreskes and Conway’s approaches were critiqued by academic STS even as their accounts constituted the most high-profile performances of its stakes and the politics of knowledge since the Science Wars. In highlighting the STS practices deployed by each, as well as how those practices were differently linked to accusations of fear-mongering and a perversion of the purity of STS, I demonstrate the need for a reflexive history of STS. Such an approach, I argue, can better consider the social life of STS ideas and practices amidst calls for more politically-engaged approaches to knowledge production. (shrink)

Background:Data representing people’s behaviour, attitudes, feelings and relationships are increasingly being harvested from social media platforms and re-used for research purposes. This can be ethically problematic, even where such data exist in the public domain. We set out to explore how the academic community is addressing these challenges by analysing a national corpus of research ethics guidelines and published studies in one interdisciplinary research area.Methods:Ethics guidelines published by Research Councils UK, its seven-member councils and guidelines cited within these were reviewed. (...) Guidelines referring to social media were classified according to published typologies of social media research uses and ethical considerations for social media mining. Using health research as an exemplar, PubMed was searched to identify studies using social media data, which were assessed according to their coverage of ethical considerations and guidelines.Results:Of the 13 guidelines published or recom... (shrink)

This paper has arisen directly from the authors’ experiences of leading professional development for teachers in Philosophy with Children (P4C), a well-established approach to teaching that seeks to foster philosophical questioning, critical thinking, reasoning and dialogue. The paper expresses deep concern about the anxiety shown by many teachers regarding discussion of controversial issues in the classroom, and some teachers’ avoidance of open-ended dialogue about works of children’s literature that might touch on taboo subjects. The authors suggest that this is indicative (...) of a desire for risk-free teaching and is a form of censorship that marginalises children and limits their learning and academic freedom. The exercise of such avoidance and control reduces the potential for schools to become more democratic institutions. Drawing directly on their practice of working philosophically with children in school, as well as on philosophical and other sources, the authors of the paper offer a range of arguments about the processes of education to support the case for challenging such forms of censorship and risk avoidance. (shrink)

Saunkeah et al. analyze the aptness of extending the Belmont Principles of Respect for Persons, Beneficence and Justice to AI/AN tribal communities as a whole. They argue that to protect AI/...