BackgroundVast sums are distributed based on grant peer review, but studies show that interrater reliability is often low. In this study, we tested the effect of receiving two short individual feedback reports compared to one short general feedback report on the agreement between reviewers.MethodsA total of 42 reviewers at the Norwegian Foundation Dam were randomly assigned to receive either a general feedback report or an individual feedback report. The general feedback group received one report before the start of the reviews (...) that contained general information about the previous call in which the reviewers participated. In the individual feedback group, the reviewers received two reports, one before the review period and one during the period. In the individual feedback group, the reviewers were presented with detailed information on their scoring compared with the review committee as a whole, both before and during the review period. The main outcomes were the proportion of agreement in the eligibility assessment and the average difference in scores between pairs of reviewers assessing the same proposal. The outcomes were measured in 2017 and after the feedback was provided in 2018.ResultsA total of 2398 paired reviews were included in the analysis. There was a significant difference between the two groups in the proportion of absolute agreement on whether the proposal was eligible for the funding programme, with the general feedback group demonstrating a higher rate of agreement. There was no difference between the two groups in terms of the average score difference. However, the agreement regarding the proposal score remained critically low for both groups.ConclusionsWe did not observe changes in proposal score agreement between 2017 and 2018 in reviewers receiving different feedback. The low levels of agreement remain a major concern in grant peer review, and research to identify contributing factors as well as the development and testing of interventions to increase agreement rates are still needed.Trial registrationThe study was preregistered at OSF.io/n4fq3. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1. Providing information about research integrity§ 2. Providing education, training and mentoring§ 3. Strengthening a research integrity culture§ 4. Facilitating open dialogue§ 5. Wise incentive management§ 6. Implementing quality assurance procedures§ 7. Improving the work environment and work satisfaction§ 8. Increasing transparency of misconduct cases§ 9. Opening up research§ 10. Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels§ 11. Protecting the alleged perpetrators§ 12. Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson§ 13. Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 2, pp 139 - 164 The aim of the present study is to explore the significance of religiousness for patients suffering from first-episode psychosis. Our study is a thematic analysis. The study illustrates how the patients understood their hallucinations as mystical experiences. Even so, many of the patients describe their religiousness to be helpful in coping with their disorder, giving meaning to life as well as a relationship to a sacred figure. However, their religiousness often (...) contained religious omnipotent delusions, and built on hallucinations, displayed an unsecure relationship to the sacred figure. From a psychiatric point of view, the misinterpretation of hallucinations as mystical experiences may reinforce their delusional system and cause an obstacle to recovery. This misinterpretation may also cause problems for patients’ religious coping. Our findings underline the importance of taking patients’ religiousness into account in psychotherapy. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1.Providing information about research integrity § 2.Providing education, training and mentoring § 3.Strengthening a research integrity culture § 4.Facilitating open dialogue § 5.Wise incentive management § 6.Implementing quality assurance procedures § 7.Improving the work environment and work satisfaction § 8.Increasing transparency of misconduct cases § 9.Opening up research § 10.Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels § 11.Protecting the alleged perpetrators § 12.Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson § 13.Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

On the traditional approach to metaethics, theories are expected to be faithful to ordinary normative discourse – or at worst (if we think the ordinary discourse is metaphysically unsound) to deviate from it as little as possible. -/- This paper develops an alternative, “conceptual engineering” approach to metaethical enquiry, which is not in this way restricted by our present discourse. On this approach, we will seek to understand the psychology, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology, not just of our present concepts, but (...) also of other possible normative concepts. The ultimate point of the enquiry is to choose between the available alternatives: to decide what kinds of normative concepts to use, going forward. -/- The paper aims to make this suggestion precise, in a way that a) answers worries about circularity, b) answers worries about “changing the subject”, c) retains metaethics as a truth-seeking enquiry, and d) leads to an independently plausible methodology. (shrink)

This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

Contrary to popular opinion, non-natural realism can explain both why normative properties supervene on descriptive properties, and why this pattern is analytic. The explanation proceeds by positing a subtle polysemy in normative predicates like “good”. Such predicates express slightly different senses when they are applied to particulars (like Florence Nightingale) and to kinds (like altruism). The former sense, “goodPAR”, can be defined in terms of the latter, “goodKIN”, as follows: x is goodPAR iff there is a kind K such that (...) x is a token of K, and K is goodKIN. Now if x and y are descriptively exactly similar, then they are tokens of exactly the same kinds, so x is a token of a goodKIN kind if and only if y is. Therefore, by the definition, x is goodPAR if and only if y is. Supervenience just falls out of the definition of “goodPAR”. (shrink)

Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense—and the relative infrequency of the past tense—in mathematical writing. However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an analysis of corpora of mathematical and day-to-day English. We conclude that the present-to-past ratio of tenses is at least 3:1 in mathematical English, compared to approximately 5:7 in day-to-day English. Further, we (...) show that this tendency to favour the present tense is almost universally present in written mathematics. (shrink)

Researchers sometimes engage in various forms of dishonesty and unethical behavior, which has led to regulatory efforts to ensure that they work according to acceptable standards. Such regulation is a difficult task, as research is a diverse and dynamic endeavor. Researchers can disagree about what counts as good and acceptable standards, and these standards are constantly developing. This paper presents and discusses recent changes in research integrity and ethics regulation in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Recognizing that research norms are developed (...) through practice and are therefore unsuited for comprehensive national regulation, the Scandinavian countries focus on empowering the research community to regulate itself instead, except for the most severe cases of misconduct. This empowerment takes the form of giving research institutions tools and investigatory powers while also holding them responsible for ensuring that both the institution and individual researchers are up to date on relevant norms. In this way, the Scandinavian governments seek to avoid some of the challenges found in more legalistic approaches, which risk lagging behind the continuous development of research norms and can be insensitive to the fact that different disciplines have different norms. While the new approach in Scandinavian has several potential benefits, it also involves potential trade-offs and limitations. The new laws can create confusion about what researchers are allowed to do. Another issue is that it only addresses the fundamental drivers of misconduct to a limited extent. (shrink)

The article defends a mild form of pessimism about moral deference, by arguing that deference is incompatible with authentic interaction, that is, acting in a way that communicates our own normative judgment. The point of such interaction is ultimately that it allows us to get to know and engage one another. This vindication of our intuitive resistance to moral deference is upheld, in a certain range of cases, against David Enoch’s recent objection to views that motivate pessimism by appealing to (...) moral autonomy or understanding. Enoch is right to point out that the value of autonomy or understanding cannot provide reason not to defer, if deferring would reduce the risk of treating others wrongly. But in the kind of case where we would want other people to act authentically towards us, even at the cost of a greater risk of wrongdoing, we should do the same towards them. (shrink)

The struggle to create and sustain meaning in our everyday lives is fought using cultural ingredients to spin the webs of meaning that keep us going. To help reveal the complexity and intricacy of the webs of meaning in which they are suspended, Tom Inglis interviewed one-hundred people in their native home of Ireland to discover what was most important and meaningful for them in their lives. Inglis believes language is a medium: there is never an exact correspondence between what (...) is said and what is felt and understood. Using a variety of theoretical lenses developed within sociology and anthropology, Inglis places their lives within the context of Ireland's social and cultural transformations, and of longer-term processes of change such as increased globalisation, individualisation, and informalisation. (shrink)

In Norway, research ethics committees in medicine are organized as interdisciplinary regional committees. Since 1999, Norway requires that one member of each ethics committee be a psychologist. Competence in psychology is considered relevant not only when evaluating psychology projects. As discussed in this article, a competence in psychology is also relevant for evaluating a number of issues common to all research involving human subjects as well as in the evaluation of protocols where other professionals have employed psychological methodologies.

This article seeks to cause trouble for a brand of consequentialism known as ‘desertarianism’. In somewhat different ways, views of this kind evaluate outcomes more favourably, other things equal, the better the fit between the welfare different people enjoy and the welfare they each deserve. These views imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing welfare to fit desert, which seems plausible enough. Unfortunately, they also imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing desert to fit welfare: in other words, (...) by making happy people more deserving, at the cost of making unhappy people less deserving. Extant versions of desertarianism predict that such ‘deservingness transfers’ are improvements and that we ought to carry them out. Even worse, they will sometimes rank deservingness transfers higher than simply benefitting deserving people who are poorly off. (shrink)

The target article fails to disentangle the functional description from the structural description of the two somatosensory streams. Additional evidence and thorough reconsideration of the evidence cited argue for a functional distinction between the how processing and the what processing of somatosensory information, while questioning the validity and usefulness of the equation of these two types of processing with structural streams. We propose going one step further: to investigate how the distinct functional streams are coordinated via attention.

The book attempts to build a bridge across three cultures: mathematical statistics, quantum theory and chemometrical methods.

Social theory is a crucial resource for the social sciences. It provides rich insights into how human beings think and act and how contemporary social life is constructed. But often the key ideas of social theorists are expressed in highly technical and difficult language that can hide more than it reveals. The new edition of this popular book continues to cut to the core of what social theory is about. Covering key themes from the classical thinkers onwards, including Marxism, post-structuralism, (...) phenomenology, feminism and more, the second edition features a new chapter on Actor-Network Theory and enhanced discussion of postcolonial theory. Wide ranging in scope and coverage, the book is concise in presentation and free from jargon. Showing why social theory matters, and why it is of far-reaching social and political importance, the book is ideal for readers seeking a clear, crisp mapping of a complex but very rewarding area. (shrink)

Der weit gereiste Henrik Steffens schildert im vierten Band seiner zehnbändigen Autobiographie Was ich erlebte eine Begegnung mit Fichte gegen Ende des Jahres 1793.

Der weit gereiste Henrik Steffens schildert im vierten Band seiner zehnbändigen Autobiographie Was ich erlebte eine Begegnung mit Fichte gegen Ende des Jahres 1793.

Ethical notions such as good and bad, are often treated as though they were ?symmetric? in the sense of having the same moral ?weight?, one in a positive the other in a negative sense. I argue that they are in fact ?asymmetric? and that the negative members of such pairs of notions are more fundamental and definite, logically speaking, and operationally more important than the positive members. Detailed arguments are given to show this for some non?moral notions, such as life (...) and death, health and illness; some semi?moral notions such as pleasure and pain; and finally for the moral notions of happiness, benevolence, right, and good and their negative counterparts. One of the intentions of the article is to show that a systematic view of such asymmetries may have consequences for one's view of the proper or desirable structure of a general theory of ethics: norms stating prohibitions and norms stating permissions will be seen to be, in a sense defined in the text, more fundamental and important than norms stating ('positive') obligations. (shrink)

Throughout the ages writers have been concerned with contemporary problems. Their reflection became part of their literary works. By tracing and interpretating mathematical references in literature information can be obtained: on the attitude towards mathematics, on its prestige in society, its cultural recognition and its significance for education. This article analyses the implication of mathematics in some exemplary novels, essays and theoretical writings on literature of authors from the 17th to the 20th century.

From a tradition of discourse ethics, human dignity can be defined as “being an equal member in the realm of subjects and authorities of justification.” Additionally, “to act with dignity means being able to justify oneself to others; to be treated in accordance with this dignity means being respected as such an equal member.” Conversely, “to treat others in ways that violate their dignity means regarding them as lacking any justification authority”. The guidelines found in Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” are (...) essential to guarantee this notion of human dignity. Based on aspects of Habermas’s, as well as Rainer Forst’s theory of justice, this study analyzes efforts made by the late speaker of Deutsche Bank, Dr. Alfred Herrhausen, and the former CEO of Alcoa and United States Secretary of the Treasury, Paul H. O’Neill, to challenge the way debt crises in the developing world were handled. Both leaders understood indebted countries, the livelihoods and dignity of its citizens, not as an external entity but as an integral part of their agendas. The two agents included underrepresented groups in their considerations and discussions through a proxy or surrogate participation, giving them a greater voice and acknowledging their dignity. (shrink)

Book review of Øyvind Kvalnes: Moral reasoning at work: Rethinking ethics in organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 108 pages.First published online: 22 MARCH 2016.

This article is concerned with the role of experientia in medieval law. This could take a number of forms, three of which are treated by way of example. In the first part of the essay, the author discusses how experience first came to serve as a source for the creation and legitimisation of new law since Late Antiquity. Henceforth, it became an important principle within Canon Law that served not only to create legal regulations supplementary to traditional law but also (...) to overwrite and replace it. The second part of the essay is concerned with the role of expert reports (consilia) by men learned in the ius commune which were requested to help rule cases under local law. Being dispersed in collections after their use in court, consilia made a significant impact on common and local law. In the final section the author discusses the use of expert witnesses (from areas as diverse as medicine, agriculture, the arts and crafts etc.). Expert opinions were recognised by court as high-value evidence. (shrink)

Known as the "economist's economist" for his work on creating a synthetic economic theory, Swedish economist Knut Wicksell was a controversial, but highly influential figure in modern economic thought. His contributions to marginal productivity theory, income distribution and, most notably, his theory of interest would come to have a profound impact upon twentieth century economic theory, not least in the work of John Maynard Keynes. First published in English in 1934 and 1935, this _Routledge Revival_ set is a reissue (...) of his two volume work on political economy, first published in Sweden in 1901 and 1906. This work is aimed at both the professional economist and the advanced student alike, as well as all those interested in the theoretical development of political economy. Volume I concerns itself predominiantly with issues of theory: specifically the theory of value, the theory of production and distribution and the theory of capital accumulation. Volume II deals with theories relating to money, currency and credit. _For institutional purchases for e-book sets please contact [email protected]. (shrink)

Among the foundations of the sciences and the humanities should be counted the norms and values which they necessarily presuppose. This argument requires us to view science and scholarship (systematic cognitive activity) as deliberate and complex forms of human activity. Human action can be ('rationally') guided and legitimated only by reference to norms and values. It is shown that, historically, there are at least three distinct traditions: (1) The Platonic?Aristotelian, (2) the Baconian, and (3) the Weberian. The first is based (...) on the value of ?self?realization'; the second on welfare as a function of technological control; and the third on the justification of science through the Wertfreiheit of its practitioners. It is then argued that when we add (4), a set of general methodological norms, and (5), the ideal of academic freedom or autonomy, we have before us an ?ideology of cognitive activity? which it is now important to study, historically, critically, and constructively. For some such ideology is as indispensable as internal and external demands for legitimation (of science, etc.) are now both inescapable and justified. (shrink)

International companies expanding and competing in an increasingly global context are currently discovering the necessity of sharing knowledge across geographical and disciplinary borders. Yet, especially in such contexts, sharing knowledge is inherently complex and problematic in practice. Inspired by recent contributions in science studies, this paper argues that knowledge sharing in a global context must take into account the heterogeneous and locally embedded nature of knowledge. In this perspective, knowledge cannot easily be received through advanced information technologies, but must always (...) be achieved in practice. Empirically, this paper draws from two contrasting initiatives in a major international oil and gas company for improving its current ways of sharing knowledge between geographically distributed sites and disciplines involved in well planning and drilling. The contrasting cases reveal that while a shared database system failed to improve knowledge sharing across contexts, a flexible arrangement supporting collaboration and use of different representation of knowledge was surprisingly successful. Based on these findings the paper underscores and conceptualizes various triangulating practices conducted in order to achieve knowledge across borders. More accurately these practices are central for individuals’ and communities’ abilities to: (i) negotiate ambiguous information, (ii) filter, combine, and integrate various heterogeneous sources of information, and (iii) judge the trustworthiness of information. Concerning the design and use of information technologies this implies that new designs need to facilitate triangulating practices of users rather than just providing advanced platforms (“digital junkyards”) for sharing information. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 56 Heft: 4 Seiten: 473-488.

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 2 Seiten: 294-310.