Introduction Financial conflicts of interest (fCOI) present well documented risks to the integrity of biomedical research. However, few studies differentiate among fCOI types in their analyses, and those that do tend to use preexisting taxonomies for fCOI identification. Research on fCOI would benefit from an empirically-derived taxonomy of self-reported fCOI and data on fCOI type and payor prevalence.Methods We conducted a content analysis of 6,165 individual self-reported relationships from COI statements distributed across 378 articles indexed with PubMed. Two coders used (...) an iterative coding process to identify and classify individual fCOI types and payors. Inter-rater reliability was κ = 0.935 for fCOI type and κ = 0.884 for payor identification.Results Our analysis identified 21 fCOI types, 9 of which occurred at prevalences greater than 1%. These included research funding (24.8%), speaking fees (20.8%), consulting fees (18.8%), advisory relationships (11%), industry employment (7.6%), unspecified fees (4.8%), travel fees (3.2%), stock holdings (3.1%), and patent ownership (1%). Reported fCOI were held with 1,077 unique payors, 22 of which were present in more than 1% of financial relationships. The ten most common payors included Pfizer (4%), Novartis (3.9%), MSD (3.8%), Bristol Myers Squibb (3.2%), AstraZeneca (3.1%), GSK (3%), Boehringer Ingelheim (2.9%), Roche (2.8%), Eli LIlly (2.5%), and AbbVie (2.4%).Conclusions These results provide novel multi-domain prevalence data on self-reported fCOI and payors in biomedical research. As such, they have the potential to catalyze future research that can assess the differential effects of various types of fCOI. Specifically, the data suggest that comparative analyses of the effects of different fCOI types are needed and that special attention should be paid to the diversity of payor types for research relationships. (shrink)

Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Pp. ix+417. ISBN 0-8018-4801-6, £16.50.George Levine , Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature and Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Pp. xiii+330. ISBN 0-229-13630-2, £40.00 ; 0-229-13634-5, £19.00 .Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Pp. 347. ISBN 0-297-81514-8. No (...) price given.Despite the alarming drop in numbers of students studying science throughout the Western world today there is no more important subject in our time than science broadly construed, and these three books provide some of the reasons. Their diversity indicates the shape of the debates occurring about the scientist in Western culture, science's tortured philosophical realism and representation as troubled categories, and, most predictably, life on the screen in the age of the Internet. (shrink)

Résumé L’historiographie du négoce lyonnais du premier âge moderne s’est fondée sur l’affirmation d’une asymétrie entre les acteurs locaux et les firmes italiennes qui dominaient la place grâce à meilleur savoir-faire technique et à des capacités économiques supérieures. En l’absence de sources directes, la littérature destinée aux marchands peut-elle témoigner d’un rattrapage? L’étude des manuels de comptabilité ouvre quelques pistes. Les pratiques italiennes de gestion ont-elles influencé les modèles techniques que ces ouvrages proposent? Dans quelle mesure ces fictions à but (...) pédagogique produisent-elles une image de l’entreprise commerciale et de son rapport à l’économie globale? Publiés à Lyon entre 1581 et 1627, les manuels de comptabilité de Pierre de Savonne et de Claude Boyer servent de base à cette étude. (shrink)

_The Languages of Psyche_ traces the dualism of mind and body during the "long eighteenth century," from the Restoration in England to the aftermath of the French Revolution. Ten outstanding scholars investigate the complex mind-body relationship in a variety of Enlightenment contexts—science, medicine, philosophy, literature, and everyday society. No other recent book provides such an in-depth, suggestive resource for philosophers, literary critics, intellectual and social historians, and all who are interested in Enlightenment studies.

_The Languages of Psyche_ traces the dualism of mind and body during the "long eighteenth century," from the Restoration in England to the aftermath of the French Revolution. Ten outstanding scholars investigate the complex mind-body relationship in a variety of Enlightenment contexts—science, medicine, philosophy, literature, and everyday society. No other recent book provides such an in-depth, suggestive resource for philosophers, literary critics, intellectual and social historians, and all who are interested in Enlightenment studies.

First published posthumously in 1782 from an unfinished manuscript, _The Reveries of the Solitary Walker_ continues Rousseau's exploration of the soul in the form of a final meditation on self-understanding and isolation. This accurate and graceful translation by Charles Butterworth--the only English version based on Rousseau's original text--is accompanied by an interpretive essay, extensive notes, and a comprehensive index.

The degree of autonomy present in the choices made by individuals with an addiction, notably in the context of research, is unclear and debated. Some have argued that addiction, as it is commonly understood, prevents people from having sufficient decision-making capacity or self-control to engage in choices involving substances to which they have an addiction. Others have criticized this position for being too radical and have counter-argued in favour of the full autonomy of people with an addiction. Aligning ourselves with (...) middle-ground positions between these two extremes, we flesh out an account of voluntary action that makes room for finer-grained analyses than the proposed all-or-nothing stances, which rely on a rather static metaphysical understanding of the nature of the voluntariness of action. In contrast, a dynamic concept of voluntary action better accounts for varying levels of voluntariness of the person with an addiction which takes into consideration internal and external determinants of choice. Accordingly, like other components of autonomous choices such as level of information, voluntariness can fluctuate. Therefore, there are important implications for research and clinical ethics in matters of consent, recruitment, and therapeutic approaches. Overall, our proposal is inspired by a pragmatist understanding of voluntary action, notably with respect to how voluntariness is both informed by actions and experiences that shape one's view of the world. (shrink)