A two-body quantum correlation is calculated for a particle reflecting from a moving mirror. Correlated interference results when the incident and reflected particle substates and their associated mirror substates overlap. Using the Copenhagen interpretation of measurement, an asynchronous joint probability density, which is a function both of the different positions and different times at which the particle and mirror are measured, is derived assuming that no interaction occurs between each measurement. Measurement of the particle first, in the correlated interference region, (...) results in a splitting of the mirror substate into ones which have and have not reflected the particle. An analog of the interference from the Doppler effect for only measurements of the particle, in this two-body system, is shown to be a consequence of the asynchronous measurement. The simplification obtained for a microscopic particle reflecting from a mesoscopic or macroscopic mirror is used to illustrate asynchronous correlation interferometry. In this case, the small displacement between these mirror states can yield negligible environmental decoherence times. In addition, interference of these mirror states does not vanish in the limit of large mirror mass due to the small momentum exchange in reflecting a microscopic particle. (shrink)

IntroductionIn this study, we tested a simple, active “ethical consistency” intervention aimed at reducing researchers’ endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs).MethodsWe developed a simple, active ethical consistency intervention and tested it against a control using an established QRP survey instrument. Before responding to a survey that asked about attitudes towards each of fifteen QRPs, participants were randomly assigned to either a consistency or control 3–5-min writing task. A total of 201 participants completed the survey: 121 participants were recruited from a (...) database of currently funded NSF/nih scientists, and 80 participants were recruited from a pool of active researchers at a large university medical center in the southeastern US. Narrative responses to the writing prompts were coded and analyzed to assist post hoc interpretation of the quantitative data.ResultsWe hypothesized that participants in the consistency condition would find ethically ambiguous QRPs less defensible and would indicate less willingness to engage in them than participants in the control condition. The results showed that the consistency intervention had no significant effect on respondents’ reactions regarding the defensibility of the QRPs or their willingness to engage in them. Exploratory analyses considering the narrative themes of participants’ responses indicated that participants in the control condition expressed lower perceptions of QRP defensibility and willingness.ConclusionThe results did not support the main hypothesis, and the consistency intervention may have had the unwanted effect of inducing increased rationalization. These results may partially explain why RCR courses often seem to have little positive effect. (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:176 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY to be accounted for in some way. Goldsmith takes no cognizance of these categorical statements. Secondly, there is no support for Goldsmith's conclusion to be found in Hobbes's comment at the end of De Corpore. A cursory reading of the passage makes it clear that the comments concerning other hypotheses refer only to Part IV of De Corpore and not to the whole system as (...) Goldsmith suggests. Indeed the earlier parts are said to comprise the "theorems" of the systems, and the only way Hobbes suggests they might be found corrigible is if a mistake in deduction has occurred. Finally, Goldsmith pays insufficient attention to Hobbes's account of the process of analysis and sometimes seems to confuse it with the imaginary annihilation of the world which Hobbes uses as an expository device in expounding his concept of space. As Hobbes describes the process it begins with a phenomenal whole which is subjected to continued conceptual analysis until unanalyzable elements are reached. These logically primitive notions are referred to by Hobbes as "the most universal things" and as "first principles" which are "manifest of themselves" or "known to nature" (E. W. I, 69), all of which strongly suggests that they are coguized and not simply posited. Goldsmith mentions these descriptions of Hobbes's first principles in Chapter I, but presents no arguments to justify his abandoning them in favor of "suppositions or assumptions." When Goldsmith moves to Hobbes's political theory, he is on much firmer ground. The sections concerning human nature and natural law are generally excellent, particularly the account in Chapter IV of the relations between the various laws of nature. The treatment throughout this part of the book is exhaustive, although the point of some extended discussions is not very clear. There is a long discursive section in Chapter v on contraetarian thought which seems quite unrelated to anything it follows or precedes. And there are some curious allotments of emphasis. While Hobbes's "economic policy," which is a peripheral matter, is given a section to itself, the concept of obligation, which has been the focus of so much dispute in recent years and which is a central concern, is dealt with only by implication and in passing. In general Goldsmith accepts the traditional interpretation which sees the laws of nature as primarily prudential precepts found out by reason. These precepts are said to be like the "laws" of physics with respect to man's behavior in that they indicate regularities about the world which are ignored at one's own risk. Goldsmith suggests that the possible knowledge of God as a first cause serves only to reinforce man's awareness of the total causal nexus. The laws of nature are, properly speaking, laws only when they become civil regulations under the authority of a sovereign. The final chapter of the book attempts to assess the success of Hobbes's endeavor to create a science of politics by the "test" of its ability to explain the political phenomena of law, religion, and history. This is followed by eight appendices in which various disputes with other interpreters are briefly argued. The book contains an adequate index and a selected bibliography. There is a mistake on page 16, where the reference to De Corpore, Part I, should read Part II. PAUL J. JOHNSON California State College at San Bernardino Jean Chapelain, soixante-dix-sept lettres inddites ~ Nicolas Heinsius. Publi~es...avec une introduction et des notes par Bernard Bray. (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Pp. wii -t- 467. --~ Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Id~s, 13.) A reviewer must admit at once that Jean Chapelain was no philosopher, that his letters have few general ideas, that a collection of them possesses no a priori right to be reviewed in a journal devoted to the history of philosophy. However, the present volume, edited and annotated by a member of the staff of the University of Utrecht, doctor of letters of BOOK REVIEWS 177 Amsterdam, appears in the series of the International Archives of the History of Ideas, published under the direction of P. Dibon of Nijmegen and R. Popkin of the University of California... (shrink)

The article is devoted to the actively discussed question of the uniqueness of Net generation. The digital natives have been credited with the ability to multitask and high-speed information processing, greater efficiency in online work. According to many researchers, the high technological skills of digital generation require an educational approach radically different from that of previous generations. According to S. Benett and K. Maton, these appeals for revolutionary changes in educational policy and practice turn into “moral panic.” The analysis of (...) contemporary empirical researches show that the digital skills and competencies attributed to the new generation are significantly overvalued, they need to be shaped and developed. The question regarding the ability of digital generation to adopt and adapt digital technologies remains controversial. The main characteristics of digital generation are distractibility, low attentional control and memorization ability, the problem with cognitive control, and, as a result, reduced educational achievements. The modified reward system and reduced self-control may lead to the Internet addiction formation. This article presents scientific evidence showing that designing education that assumes the presence of these abilities hinders rather than helps learning. However, this does not mean that we have to abandon the idea of technological modernization in education, this only means that new technologies should be used at the right time in the right place. (shrink)

The key objectives of this book are to demonstrate the applicability of issues in the philosophy of science to problems in psychiatry and to show how the conceptual issues raised by psychiatry should be considered more closely by philosophers of science. These are worthy aims: the philosophy of psychiatry needs to draw more thoughtfully upon contemporary philosophical debates and stimulating interest within the philosophy of science is a good way to do this.Cooper's book succeeds for both of these desiderata. The (...) first five chapters discuss the central issues in the philosophy of psychiatry: whether mental illness is a disease/natural kind and what follows from this. There is a large literature on these questions, some of which …. (shrink)

By 1910 the Cambridge University physiology department had become the kernel of British physiology. Between 1909 and 1914 an astonishing number of young and talented scientists passed through the laboratory. The University College department was also a stimulating place of study under the dynamic leadership of Ernest Starling.I have argued that the reasons for this metropolitan axis within British physiology lie with the social structure of late-Victorian and Edwardian higher education. Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London were national institutions attracting (...) students from all over England and Wales. In contrast, the provincial colleges drew their clientele from relatively narrow geographic radii. Generally, also, these institutions were regarded as socially inferior to the longer-established universities.A brief survey of the biographies of some British physiologists demonstrates how physiology, as an occupation, became, over the later decades of the century, socially elite. The scientists who achieved full-time posts in the 1870s generally came from somewhat marginal backgrounds. Foster, like his mentors T. H. Huxley and William Sharpey, came from a non-conformist family. Edward Schäfer was also a dissenter and, like Foster, began his professional career as a general practitioner.Physiologists of the succeeding generation, however, came from wealthy families with established intellectual traditions. John Scott Haldane, nephew of John Burdon Sanderson, was the brother of the politician R. B. Haldane and uncle of the historian A. R. B. Haldane.71 Joseph Barcroft was one of the most affluent of all physiologists.72 His family's wealth derived from linen manufacturing. He attended the Ley's School Cambridge, where his schoolmates included Henry Dale, later Director of the National Institute for Medical Research; F. A. Bainbridge, who eventually became Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the Cambridge historian J. H. Clapham. A. V. Hill, Professor of Physiology at Manchester and, subsequently, London, married Margaret Keynes, sister of John Maynard Keynes and niece of Sir Walter Langdon Brown, Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Margaret Keynes's younger brother, the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, married a granddaughter of Charles Darwin; their son Richard Keynes also became a physiologist at Cambridge.These families were part of a new class emerging during the late Victorian period, descendants of the great reforming radicals of the 1830s, who had begun to achieve power through positions in the universities, the professions, and the civil service. Their social prestige rested upon their intellectual expertise. Physiology was an appealing research discipline to these groups because of its clear dissociation from industry and commerce. And because physiology's “practical” face was medicine, its acceptability was reinforced by professional ties.The nature of the Physiological Society confirms this image of physiology as an elite science. By the turn of the century the Society had taken on some of the characteristics of a dining club. The scientific meetings were generally followed by dinner: if the Society met at Oxford, they were entertained at Burdon Sanderson's college, Magdalen.73 Through a “black ball” system, unwanted candidates could be excluded. In 1912, when the question of admitting foreigners was discussed, E. H. Starling wrote to Edward Schäfer: “the Society has very much in it the nature of a club, and a certain amount of personal knowledge of the candidate is always desirable.”74.The developing institutional structure of physiology in late Victorian Britain indicates, therefore, that we must look beyond the achievements of individuals and departments to understand why physiology flourished. The discipline became part of a new social order in which the professional middle classes assumed increasing power. These groups valued intellectual skill, especially in the pure scienes, as forces both for self-advancement and for progress within society. (shrink)

Bentham was an influential thinker with an ‘essentially practical mind’. His influence on British social and political reform, however, was indirect, coming largely after his death and largely through the work of his disciples. Bentham's own attempts to put his ideas directly into practice generally had little effect. He came closest to success in the area of penal policy, winning a contract from Pitt's government in the early 1790s to build and manage a penitentiary that was to be organized on (...) the panopticon principle. Bentham saw the penitentiary as the spearhead of prison reform and as a means of effecting a change from transportation to imprisonment as a punishment for serious crime. While Bentham's use of the panopticon principle itself has attracted most attention in the literature, there was more to his scheme than this. The penitentiary proposals were worked out in great detail, they were a conscious application of his theory of punishment, and they were consistent with and an element of his all-embracing plan of social, political, and constitutional reform. (shrink)

Buddhist teachings and modern science are analogous both in their approach to the search for truth and in some of the discoveries of contemporary physics, biology, and psychology. However, despite these congruencies and the recognized benefits of science, Buddhism reminds us of the dangers of a tendency toward scientific reductionism and imperialism and of the sciences’ inability to deal with human moral and spiritual values and needs. Buddhism and science have human concerns and final goals that are different, but as (...) long as the boundaries between them are not trespassed, they can be mutually corrective and allied to benefit humankind. Buddhism must be open to the discoveries of science about the physical world as must all religions today, but no matter how much it may have to modify some of its ancient beliefs, its basic truths—the truths about human suffering and its release—will remain untouched. (shrink)