Omnipresent calls for more women in university administration assume these women will prioritize using resources and power to increase female representation, especially in STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. However, empirical evidence is lacking for systematic differences in female versus male administrators’ attitudes. Do female administrators agree on which strategies are best, and do men see things differently? To answer this question, we explored United States college and university administrators’ opinions regarding policies, strategies, and structural changes in their organizations (...) designed to increase women professors’ representation and retention in STEM fields. A comprehensive review of past research yielded a database of potentially-effective, recommended policies (e.g., increasing emphasis on teaching, service, and administration during promotion reviews; stopping the tenure clock for childbearing; providing on-campus childcare; couples-hiring; sharing tenure lines; having more women chair search committees; setting gender quotas for promotion). A survey based on these recommended policies was sent to provosts, deans, associate deans, and department chairs of STEM fields at 96 public and private research universities (formerly called R1s) across the U.S. These administrators were asked to rate the quality and feasibility of each recommended policy; 474 provided data, of which 334 contained complete numerical data used in the analyses, so our results are based on a large, geographically diverse group of administrators at research universities. Our data revealed that female administrators perceived the 44 strategies to be higher in quality overall than did male administrators--but not higher in feasibility--with 9 policies perceived differently when rated by women versus men administrators, after imposing conservative statistical controls. There was broad general agreement on the relative rankings of the 44 policies in terms of their perceived quality. Overall, our national survey of U.S. administrators supported the assertion that placing women in administrative roles creates greater emphasis on the importance of enacting policies to attract and retain women in STEM. Topics of disagreement between women and men regarding strategy quality are important focuses of future policy and planning, because female administrators may have insights into how to retain women professors that male administrators do not share. (shrink)

In our target article, we took the position that tenure conveys many important benefits but that its original justification – fostering academic freedom – is not one of them. Here we respond to various criticisms of our study as well as to proposals to remedy the current state of affairs. Undoubtedly, more research is needed to confirm and extend our findings, but the most reasonable conclusion remains the one we offered – that the original rationale for tenure is poorly served (...) by the current system as practiced at top-ranked colleges and universities. (Published Online February 8 2007). (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have come under attack for writings and speech that affront sensitivities. At such times, academic freedom and tenure are invoked to forestall efforts to censure and terminate jobs. We review the history and controversy surrounding academic freedom and tenure, and explore their meaning across different fields, at different institutions, and at different ranks. In a multifactoral experimental survey, 1,004 randomly selected faculty members from top-ranked institutions were asked how colleagues would typically respond when confronted with dilemmas concerning (...) teaching, research, and wrong-doing. Full professors were perceived as being more likely to insist on having the academic freedom to teach unpopular courses, research controversial topics, and whistle-blow wrong-doing than were lower-ranked professors (even associate professors with tenure). Everyone thought that others were more likely to exercise academic freedom than they themselves were, and that promotion to full professor was a better predictor of who would exercise academic freedom than was the awarding of tenure. Few differences emerged related either to gender or type of institution, and behavioral scientists' beliefs were similar to scholars from other fields. In addition, no support was found for glib celebrations of tenure's sanctification of broadly defined academic freedoms. These findings challenge the assumption that tenure can be justified on the basis of fostering academic freedom, suggesting the need for a re-examination of the philosophical foundation and practical implications of tenure in today's academy. (Published Online February 8 2007) Key Words: academia; academic freedom; ethical issues; faculty beliefs; professoriate; promotion; scientific misconduct; tenure; whistle-blowing. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

This is the first collection dedicated to presenting research directly influenced by the innovative and groundbreaking ideas of the eminent linguist Ruqaiya Hasan. The collection offers an insight into the breadth and depth of Hasan's distinctive linguistic approaches and theoretical concerns. The chapters cover areas such as verbal art, context of situation, semantic networks, cohesive harmony, text structure and literacy education, contributed by well-known scholars in the field such as M.A.K. Halliday, Geoffrey Williams, David Butt, Donna Miller, Wendy (...) L. Bowcher, Tom Bartlett and Margaret Berry. The volume contains an interview with Ruqaiya Hasan by David Butt and Jennifer Yameng Liang, and a section in which the contributors describe their connection and/or history with Ruqaiya Hasan and her work. This book is of particular value to scholars and students working in sociolinguistics, literary criticism, stylistics, functional linguistic theories, literacy pedagogy, social semiotics, multimodality and applied linguistics. (shrink)

This book contains the 1992 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Christine M. Korsgaard at Cambridge University, along with commentaries by G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, as well as a reply by Korsgaard. The theme taken up in these lectures is the source and authority of norms, what Korsgaard calls “the normative question,” which asks “what justifies the claims that morality makes on us”. With clarity and elegance, she examines four proposed answers to (...) this question: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. (shrink)

Some health care organizations allow physicians to withhold cardiopulmonary resuscitation from a patient, despite patient or surrogate requests that it be provided, when they believe it will be more harmful than beneficial. Such cases usually involve patients with terminal diagnoses whose medical teams argue that aggressive treatments are medically inappropriate or likely to be harmful. Although there is state-to-state variability and a considerable judicial gray area about the conditions and mechanisms for refusals to perform CPR, medical teams typically follow a (...) set of clearly defined procedures for these decisions. The procedures are based on the principle of nonmaleficence and typically include consultation with hospital ethics committees, reflecting the guidelines of relevant professional associations. Ethical debates about when CPR can and should be limited tend to rely more on discussions of theory, principles, and case studies than systematic empirical study of the situations in which such limitations are applied. Sociologists of bioethics call for empirical study, arguing that what ethicists and health professionals believe they are doing when they draft policies or invoke principles does not always mirror what is happening on the ground. In this article, we begin the task of modeling the empirical analyses sociologists call for, focusing on a cohort at Massachusetts General Hospital. We inductively analyzed ethics committee notes and medical records of nineteen patients whose surrogates did not accept the decision to withhold CPR. (shrink)

American democracy faces severe challenges today, as everyday life gathers pace, national borders become increasingly porous, and commodity culture becomes more dominant. Democracy and Vision assembles a cast of prominent political theorists to consider the problems confronting political life by reviewing, assessing, and expanding on the ideas of one of the most influential political thinkers of the past forty years, Sheldon Wolin. The book consists of three sections linked by the underlying theme of Wolin's monumental effort to define ''the political'' (...) and the conditions of democratic life. In the first, Nicholas Xenos, George Kateb, Fred Dallmayr, and Charles Taylor focus, in particular, on whether mass political participation, sustainable in times of upheaval as what Wolin aptly termed ''fugitive democracy,'' can be buoyed by political institutions during periods of stability. In the second section, Wendy Brown, Aryeh Botwinick, Melissa A. Orlie, and Anne Norton examine the relevance of Wolin's ideas to current debates about, for example, social diversity and the commercialization of culture. In the last, Stephen K. White, Kirstie M. McClure, Michael J. Shapiro, and J. Peter Euben address globalization and temporality in relation to Wolin's narrative of decline, asking, among other things, whether citizenship today must incorporate a cosmopolitan dimension. These essays--and an introduction by William Connolly that lucidly outlines Wolin's thought and the deep uncertainty about political theory in the 1960s that did much to inspire his work--offer unprecedented insights into Wolin's lament that modernity has meant the loss of the political. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City swiftly and with devastating effect. The crisis put enormous pressure on all hospital services, including the clinical ethics consultation team. This report describes the recent experience of the ethics consultants and Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the COVID-19 surge and compares the case load and characteristics to the corresponding period in 2019. By reporting this experience, we hope to supplement the growing body of COVID-19 scientific literature and provide details of the (...) human toll the virus took on our hospitals and communities. We also aim to highlight the role of the clinical ethics consultant as well as areas of policy and law that may need to be addressed in order to be better prepared for a future public health crisis. (shrink)

The mammalian chromosome is longitudinally heterogeneous in structure and function and this is the basis for the specific banding patterns produced by various chromosome staining techniques. The two most frequently used techniques are G, or Giemsa banding and R, or reverse banding. Each type of stained band is characterised by variations in gene density, time of replication, base composition, density of repeat sequences, and chromatin packaging. It is increasingly apparent that R and G bands, which are complementary to each other, (...) represent separate compartments of the euchromatic human genome, with R bands containing the vast majority of genes. R bands are also more GC‐rich, contain a higher density of Alu repeats, and replicate earlier in S phase, than G bands. These properties may be interdependent and may have coevolved. (shrink)

The mammalian chromosome is longitudinally heterogeneous in structure and function and this is the basis for the specific banding patterns produced by various chromosome staining techniques. The two most frequently used techniques are G, or Giemsa banding and R, or reverse banding. Each type of stained band is characterised by variations in gene density, time of replication, base composition, density of repeat sequences, and chromatin packaging. It is increasingly apparent that R and G bands, which are complementary to each other, (...) represent separate compartments of the euchromatic human genome, with R bands containing the vast majority of genes. R bands are also more GC‐rich, contain a higher density of Alu repeats, and replicate earlier in S phase, than G bands. These properties may be interdependent and may have coevolved. (shrink)

Corporate philanthropy describes the action when a corporation voluntarily donates a portion of its resources to a societal cause. Although the thought of philanthropy invokes feelings of altruism, there are many objectives for corporate giving beyond altruism. Meeting strategic corporate objectives can be an important if not primary goal of philanthropy. The purpose of this paper is to share insights from a strategic corporate philanthropic initiative aimed at increasing the pool of frontline customer contact employees who are performance-ready, while supporting (...) curriculum development and infrastructure improvement for selected university business programs, creating a win-win situation for the company and the universities. This paper will address three objectives. First, we will examine the evolution of strategic philanthropy from the traditional view to its current position as a strategic option. Second, we will address the recruitment of front line talent needs (customer facing jobs in sales, customer service, and marketing) based on the profit maximization model of strategic philanthropy. Finally, we will offer conclusions and issues for future research. (shrink)

While every health care system stakeholder would seem to be concerned with obtaining the greatest value from a given technology, there is often a disconnect in the perception of value between a technology’s promoters and those responsible for the ultimate decision as to whether or not to pay for it. Adopting an empirical ethics approach, this paper examines how five Canadian medical device manufacturers, via their websites, frame the corporate “value proposition” of their innovation and seek to respond to what (...) they consider the key expectations of their customers. Our analysis shows that the manufacturers’ framing strategies combine claims that relate to valuable socio-technical goals and features such as prevention, efficiency, sense of security, real-time feedback, ease of use and flexibility, all elements that likely resonate with a large spectrum of health care system stakeholders. The websites do not describe, however, how the innovations may impact health care delivery and tend to obfuscate the decisional trade-offs these innovations represent from a health care system perspective. Such framing strategies, we argue, tend to bolster physicians’ and patients’ expectations and provide a large set of stakeholders with powerful rhetorical tools that may influence the health policy arena. Because these strategies are difficult to counter given the paucity of evidence and its limited use in policymaking, establishing sound collective health care priorities will require solid critiques of how certain kinds of medical devices may provide a better (i.e., more valuable) response to health care needs when compared to others. (shrink)

The great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas was Dominican regent master in theology at the University of Paris, where he presided over a series of questions - academic debates - on ethical topics. This volume offers translations of disputed questions on the nature of virtues in general, the fundamental or 'cardinal' virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperateness, the divinely bestowed virtues of hope and charity, and the practical question of how, when and why one should rebuke a 'brother' for (...) wrongdoing. The introduction explains how Aquinas's theory of virtue fits into his ethics as a whole, and it illuminates Aquinas's views by explaining the institutional and intellectual context in which these disputed questions were debated. (shrink)

Although there has been critical analysis of how the informed consent process functions in relation to participation in research and particular ethical 'dilemmas', there has been little examination of consenting to more routine medical procedures. We report a qualitative study of 25 women who consented to surgery. Of these, nine were ambivalent or opposed to having an operation. When faced with a consent form, women's accounts suggest that they rarely do anything other than obey professionals' requests for a signature. An (...) interactionist analysis suggests that women's capacity to act is reduced by the hospital structure of tacit, socially-imposed rules of conduct. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and symbolic power/violence show how the practical logic that women apply confers a 'sense of place' relative to professionals. Women experience deficits in capital that constrain their ability to exercise choice. This work demonstrates the weakness of the consent process as a safeguard of autonomy. (shrink)

Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) has now been part of the dominant medical paradigm for 15 years, and has been frequently debated and progressively modified. One question about EBM that has not yet been considered systematically, and is now particularly timely, is the question of the novelty, or otherwise, of the principles and practices of EBM. We argue that answering this question, and the related question of whether EBM-type principles and practices are unique to medicine, sheds new light on EBM and has (...) practical implications for those involved in all EBM. This is because one's answer to the question (whether explicit or implicit) affects the amount and type of funding and attention received by EBM, the extent to which EBM, and the generation, judgment and use of evidence more generally, can be appropriated by certain groups and questioned by others, and the extent to which truly unique socio-political developments in evidence, and in medicine more generally, are recognized and harnessed. (shrink)

Purpose: Studies of reactive and proactive modes of inhibitory control tend to show age-related declines and are accompanied by abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex. We explored which mode of inhibitory control would be more amenable to change and accrue greater benefits following engagement in a 4-week theater acting intervention in older adults. These gains were evaluated by performance on the AX-CPT task. We hypothesized that an increase in proactive control would relate to an increase in AY errors and a decrease (...) in BX errors. In contrast, an increase in reactive control would be associated with a decrease in AY errors, no change in AY reaction time, and an increase in BX response time. Further, we posited that an increase in behavioral proactive control would accompany greater cue versus probe activity for previously identified regions in the prefrontal cortex. In contrast, an increase in behavioral reactive control would be accompanied by greater probe activation in these identified brain areas.Materials and Methods: The participants were 179 community-dwelling adults aged 60–89 years who were on average, college-educated. Participants were pseudo-randomly assigned to either an active-experiencing acting intervention condition or the active control condition ; participant assignment was subject to time of enrollment. Participants in both groups were trained by theater-actor researchers with expertise in acting interventions. In contrast to the active control participants who attended a course on theater acting, the acting-intervention group was required to consistently deploy proactive and reactive control mechanisms. Both groups met two times/week for 75-min for 4 weeks. Participant brain-behavioral performance on the AX-CPT task was evaluated prior to and after this four-week period.Results: No intervention effects were found in favor of proactive control. Behavioral evidence in favor of reactive control was weak. Brain-related benefits to reactive control was illustrated by greater probe-activation in Brodmann areas 6 and 8, relative to controls and pre-intervention.Conclusion: We found some evidence for improvements in reactive control via brain measures, attributed to engagement in the acting intervention. (shrink)

To study how religiosity affects family business goals, we merge literatures on goal setting, temporal orientation, and family business to argue that family business goals can be distinguished into short-term and long-term orientations and propose that religiosity affects both orientations, but to varying degrees. Drawing on a sample of private U.S. family businesses and applying partial least squares structural equations modeling, we find tentative support that religiosity has a stronger positive effect on long-term goal orientation than on short-term goal orientation. (...) We discuss implications for theory development and future research involving religiosity and family business goals. (shrink)

To study how religiosity affects family business goals, we merge literatures on goal setting, temporal orientation, and family business to argue that family business goals can be distinguished into short-term and long-term orientations and propose that religiosity affects both orientations, but to varying degrees. Drawing on a sample of private U.S. family businesses and applying partial least squares structural equations modeling, we find tentative support that religiosity has a stronger positive effect on long-term goal orientation than on short-term goal orientation. (...) We discuss implications for theory development and future research involving religiosity and family business goals. (shrink)

In recent years, multivariate pattern analysis has been hugely beneficial for cognitive neuroscience by making new experiment designs possible and by increasing the inferential power of functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, and other neuroimaging methodologies. In a similar time frame, “deep learning” has produced a parallel revolution in the field of machine learning and has been employed across a wide variety of applications. Traditional MVPA also uses a form of machine learning, but most commonly with much simpler techniques based on (...) linear calculations; a number of studies have applied deep learning techniques to neuroimaging data, but we believe that those have barely scratched the surface of the potential deep learning holds for the field. In this paper, we provide a brief introduction to deep learning for those new to the technique, explore the logistical pros and cons of using deep learning to analyze neuroimaging data – which we term “deep MVPA,” or dMVPA – and introduce a new software toolbox intended to facilitate dMVPA for neuroscientists everywhere. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that individuals who identify as being more religious request more aggressive medical treatment at end of life. These requests may generate disagreement over life-sustaining treatment (LST). Outside of anecdotal observation, however, the actual role of religion in conflict over LST has been underexplored. Because ethics committees are often consulted to help mediate these conflicts, the ethics consultation experience provides a unique context in which to investigate this question. The purpose of this paper was to examine the (...) ways religion was present in cases involving conflict around LST. Using medical records from ethics consultation cases for conflict over LST in one large academic medical centre, we found that religion can be central to conflict over LST but was also present in two additional ways through (1) religious coping, including a belief in miracles and support from a higher power, and (2) chaplaincy visits. In-hospital mortality was not different between patients with religiously versus non-religiously centred conflict. In our retrospective cohort study, religion played a variety of roles and did not lead to increased treatment intensity or prolong time to death. Ethics consultants and healthcare professionals involved in these cases should be cognisant of the complex ways that religion can manifest in conflict over LST. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is an insidious problem that besets most tertiary institutions, where considerable resources are expended to prevent and manage students' dishonest actions within academia. Using a mixed retrospective and prospective design this research investigated Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as a possible explanation for academic dishonesty in 264 university students. The relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was also examined. A significant but small to moderate relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was present, including correlations with general (...) dishonesty, violent crime and drug offending subcategories. These findings suggested that a general criminological theory may be of use in explaining academic dishonesty, but the overall ability of self-control variables to explain academic dishonesty was not strong. Controlled logistic regressions indicated that a significant positive association with academic dishonesty was only present for one of 6 self-control subscales (self-centeredness), and even this association was only present in the prospective study component. A strong relationship between past and future academic dishonesty was present. Implications of the study for institutions are discussed. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4: .Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression (...) is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4:.Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression is (...) an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

Intellectual contribution in the form of authorship is a fundamental component of the academic career. While research has addressed questionable and harmful authorship practices, there has largely been no discussion of how U.S. academic institutions interpret and potentially mitigate such practices through the use of institution-level authorship policies. To gain a better understanding of the role of U.S. academic institutions in authorship practices, we conducted a systematic review of publicly available authorship policies for U.S. doctoral institutions, focusing on components such (...) as specification of authorship criteria, recommendations for discussing authorship, dispute resolution processes, and guidance for faculty-student collaborations. We found that only 24% of the 266 Carnegie R1 and R2 Universities had publicly available authorship policies. Within these policies, the majority specified criteria for authorship, but provided less guidance about actual processes for applying such criteria, handling authorship disputes, and managing faculty-student author teams. Further, we found that any discussion of dispute resolution practices typically lacked specificity. Recommendations grounded in these findings are offered for institutions to leverage their ability to guide the authorship process by adopting an authorship policy that acknowledges disciplinary diversity while still offering substantive guidance. (shrink)

This case is another in a series intended to highlight the new questions emerging from advances in mapping the human genome and the application of genetic findings to clinical practice. The National Human Genome Research Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, by law is directed to designate a portion of its annual budget to furthering understanding of the ethical, legal, and social questions emerging from research on the human genome. As part of the effort, the Institute supports (...) research by scientists and scholars around the nation with the aim of clarifying and resolving the tough ethical and research choices facing this endeavor. But recently it has launched an intramural program, which is expected to take a catalytic role in grappling with the array of issues the researchers face in carrying out investigations in human genetics. (shrink)

BackgroundThe potential contribution of community engagement to addressing ethical challenges for international biomedical research is well described, but there is relatively little documented experience of community engagement to inform its development in practice. This paper draws on experiences around community engagement and informed consent during a genetic cohort study in Kenya to contribute to understanding the strengths and challenges of community engagement in supporting ethical research practice, focusing on issues of communication, the role of field workers in 'doing ethics' on (...) the ground and the challenges of community consultation.MethodsThe findings are based on action research methods, including analysis of community engagement documentation and the observations of the authors closely involved in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis has been used for documentation of staff meetings and trainings, a meeting with 24 community leaders, and 40 large public and 70 small community group meetings. Meeting minutes from a purposive sample of six community representative groups have been analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsField workers described challenges around misunderstandings about research, perceived pressure for recruitment and challenges in explaining the study. During consultation, leaders expressed support for the study and screening for sickle cell disease. In community meetings, there was a common interpretation of research as medical care. Concerns centred on unfamiliar procedures. After explanations of study procedures to leaders and community members, few questions were asked about export of samples or the archiving of samples for future research.ConclusionsCommunity engagement enabled researchers to take account of staff and community opinions and issues during the study and adapt messages and methods to address emerging ethical challenges. Field workers conducting informed consent faced complex issues and their understanding, attitudes and communication skills were key influences on ethical practice. Community consultation was a challenging concept to put into practice, illustrating the complexity of assessing information needs and levels of deliberation that are appropriate to a given study. (shrink)