Background: Nurses and midwives have a professional obligation to promote health and prevent disease, and therefore they have an essential role to play in vaccination. Despite this, some nurses and midwives have been found to take an anti-vaccination stance and promulgate misinformation about vaccines, often using Facebook as a platform to do so. Research question: This article reports on one component and dataset from a larger study – ‘the positives, perils and pitfalls of Facebook for nurses’. It explores the specific (...) issue of nurses and midwives who take an anti-vaccination stance, deemed to be unprofessional by crossing professional boundaries and by providing medical information on Facebook that is not within their scope of practice. Participants: Data were collected via an online worldwide survey from nurse and midwife participants, distributed and ‘snowballed’ through relevant nursing and midwifery groups on Facebook. In total, 1644 Registered Nurses and Midwives, and Enrolled Nurses worldwide attempted the online survey. There were 1100 completed surveys and 54 partially completed surveys. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted online using Skype® with 17 participants in Australia. Ethical considerations: Ethical processes and procedures have been adhered to relating to privacy, confidentiality and anonymity of the participants. Findings/results: A mixed-methods approach was used, including descriptive and content analysis of the quantitative survey data and thematic analysis of the qualitative interview data. The main theme ‘blurred boundaries’ was generated, which comprised three sub-themes: ‘follow the science, ‘abuse of power and erosion of trust’ and ‘the moral and ethical responsibility to safeguard public health’. The results offer an important and unique understanding of how nurses and midwives interpret the conduct of fellow health professionals as unprofessional and crossing the professional boundary if they used Facebook to promulgate anti-vaccination messages and/or give medical advice online. Conclusion: There are many positives and negatives for nurses and midwives associated with using Facebook for personal and professional communication, which is in keeping with the results of the larger study from which this article is taken. Professional behaviour is a key theme in the larger research as is the ethical construct of ‘every act has a consequence’; however, in this article, the theme ‘blurred boundaries’ offers an overall understanding of how nurses and midwives interpret the behaviour of their colleagues who espouse anti-vaccination sentiment and/or give medical advice online that is outside their scope of practice and education. (shrink)

My note on McShane's “Implementation” article indicates what I have learned from it (a) about its author, (b) about Lonergan, and (c) about implementation of Lonergan’s transcendental method. My sheaf of quotations from the article may offer a focus – not distorting, I hope – different from the reader’s own.

In the context of academic research, a diversity of ethical issues, conditioned by the different roles of members within these institutions, arise. Previous studies on this topic addressed mainly the perceptions of researchers. However, to our knowledge, no studies have explored the transversal ethical issues from a wider spectrum, including other members of academic institutions as the research ethics board (REB) members, and the research ethics experts. The present study used a descriptive phenomenological approach to document the ethical issues experienced (...) by a heterogeneous group of Canadian researchers, REB members, and research ethics experts. Data collection involved socio-demographic questionnaires and individual semi-structured interviews. Following the triangulation of different perspectives (researchers, REB members and ethics experts), emerging ethical issues were synthesized in ten units of meaning: (1) research integrity, (2) conflicts of interest, (3) respect for research participants, (4) lack of supervision and power imbalances, (5) individualism and performance, (6) inadequate ethical guidance, (7) social injustices, (8) distributive injustices, (9) epistemic injustices, and (10) ethical distress. This study highlighted several problematic elements that can support the identification of future solutions to resolve transversal ethical issues in research that affect the heterogeneous members of the academic community. (shrink)

Research on research ethics—regarding both the governance and practice of the ethical review of human subjects research—has a tumultuous history in North America and Europe. Much of the academic literature focuses on issues to do with regulating the conduct and quality of ethics review of research protocols by ethics committees (research ethics boards (REBs) in Canada and institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States). In addition, some of the literature attends to issues particular to the review of qualitative research, (...) and still other literature addresses the challenges posed by and the need for research on REBs/IRBs. It is this third group of literature within which our article is situated. (shrink)

This paper analyses the ethical performance of foreign-investment enterprises operating in China in comparison to that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises, collectives and private enterprises. It uses both the deontological approach and the utilitarian approach in conceptualization, and applies quantitative and econometric techniques to ethical evaluations of empirical evidences. It shows that according to various ethical performance indicators, foreign-investment enterprises have fared well in comparison with local firms. This paper also tries to unravel the effect of a difference in business (...) culture and competitive market forces on ethical performance by comparing the behavior of foreign-investment enterprises with that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises and collectives on the one hand, and with that of the indigenous private enterprises on the other. (shrink)

University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on (...) the experience of an REB President and a bioethicist, this series of Frequently Asked Questions aims to demystify research ethics so that researchers and REBs can collaborate in the advancement of knowledge, while ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

Jusqu’à présent, les discussions au sein de la communauté universitaire et dans la littérature scientifique sur la conduite responsable en recherche (CRR), incluant l’intégrité scientifique et l’éthique de la recherche, ont principalement été menées par les chercheurs en sciences de la santé et en sciences fondamentales. Préoccupés, à juste titre, par des problèmes d’inconduite, leurs effets négatifs sur la rigueur scientifique et la confiance du public dans l’entreprise de la recherche, ces débats ont conduit à l’élaboration et à la mise (...) en œuvre de lignes directrices nationales et de politiques institutionnelles. Ces lignes directrices visent entre autres à promouvoir la CRR, notamment dans le but de prévenir ces inconduites. Cependant, pour garantir la pertinence et une application appropriée de ces normes à tous les domaines universitaires, il est nécessaire que les sciences humaines et sociales (SHS) contribuent plus directement à ces discussions. Un tel engagement devrait permettre d’exprimer les particularités disciplinaires et méthodologiques des SHS, dont certaines peuvent être très différentes des sciences appliquées et fondamentales. Cela permettrait également de s’assurer que la littérature sur la CRR ainsi que les politiques et les directives qui en découlent soient à la fois fondées sur des principes universellement généralisables, mais aussi appliquées avec nuance afin de refléter la diversité des pratiques disciplinaires. Dans ce chapitre, nous explorons trois grands domaines dans lesquels les SHS pourraient contribuer à façonner les discussions dans la littérature sur la CRR, tout en informant les chercheurs en SHS des meilleures pratiques en matière de CRR : l’autorat/paternité, la collaboration et l’autorégulation. (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard is one of the indespensable figures in the history of 20th-century ideas. The broad scope of his work has had a lasting impact in several fields - notable philosophy, architecture and literature.

In an elegant translation, Mary McAllester Jones brings to English-speaking readers the writings of a singular French philosopher of science whose rich intellectual legacy is too little known. Gaston Bachelard, who died in 1962, left us twelve works on the philosophy of science, nine on the poetic imagination, and two on time and consciousness, written in an image-laden style that rejected traditional academic discourse in favor of a subversive, allusive, highly metaphorical way of thinking and writing. Gaston Bachelard, (...) Subversive Humanist gives us a generous introduction to Bachelard's brilliant and idiosyncratic writings about the relation of science, poetry, and human consciousness. The extracts are framed in succinct critical essays that explicate the development of his ideas and clarify his relation to the contemporary French intellectual revolution more commonly associated with Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The matrix of Bachelard's thought is twentieth-century science, the "new scientific mind" that he dates from 1905 and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Like the discovery of America five hundred years before, the discoveries of mathematics and physics today have undermined our familiar epistemologies. Modern science has forced us to revise our conception of the rational subject and of the relation between reason and reality, subject and object. A "psychic revolution" has accompanied this revolution in reason. If we try to grasp the dialectics of matter and energy in physics, or the dualism of waves and particles, we shall learn to maintain difference and handle complexity; we are shaken out of the reductive, identity-ridden habits of ordinary life and thought. As a writer of science, Bachelard deliberately aimed to rid us of the preconceptions that blind us to the facts, to science as it is now. The same wariness with regard to theory is present in his approach to poetry. For Bachelard, mathematical equation and poetic image alike break with everyday experience. Reading poetic images brings us "the experience of openness, of newness", says Bachelard. The reader "is called upon to continue the writer's images, he is aware of being in a state of open imagination." There is little place for abstract critical theory in Bachelard's view of Poetry. _Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist_ will interest literary scholars, philosophers, and intellectual historians. (shrink)

The workings of global finance are like that part of the iceberg beneath the waterline – vast, unseen and, for many, unknown. The interaction of global finance with human rights is especially opaque. The globalization of each phenomenon has occurred very largely independently of the other. Even the recent surge in interest in the global economy and human rights has been heavily focused on the real economy and on what (non-banking) corporations do and how they behave. The particular dimension of (...) interactions between finance and human rights has, by and large, been a blank space. In this article we seek to bridge the gap in understanding, perspective, and practice between the two fields by investigating actual and potential linkages in respect of four specific features of global finance – two financial products: bonds and derivatives; and two financial processes: risk management and procyclicality. These have been chosen as an illustrative sample of the complex and diverse ways in which the global financial system interacts with human rights. Although these products and processes played an important role in the recent global financial crisis, and although the interface between global finance and human rights is extensive, they have not so far featured on the human rights agenda or been the subject of detailed human rights critique. As such they provide an overview of the types of human rights issues in the financial sector that have so far been hidden from view. The paper therefore constructs an argument as to why the bridging of the gap is important and provides pointers as to how it can be done. (shrink)

The essays in this volume discuss the life and work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, exploring the context of his thought, the relationship between his work on science and on poetry, and his approach to language. Contents: include: 1. "Bachelard in the Context of a Century of Philosophy of Science," by Colin Smith; 2. "Gaston Bachelard: Phenomenologist of Modern Science," by Alfons Grieder; 3. "Gaston Bachelard and Ferdinand Gonseth: Philosophers of Scientific Dialectics," by Henri Lauener; 4. "Science and Poetry in (...) the Ontology of Human Freedom: Bachelard's Account of the Poetic and the Scientific Imagination," by Noel Parker; 5. "Bachelard and the Refusal of Metaphor," by Jean-Claude Margolin; 6. "The Place of Alchemy in Bachelard's Oneiric Criticism," by John G. Clark; "Unfixing the Subject: Gaston Bachelard and Reading," by Mary McAllester. Co-published with the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. (shrink)

In Canada, there are currently no guidelines at either the federal or provincial level regarding the provision of kidney transplantation services to foreign nationals (FN). Renal transplant centres have, in the past, agreed to put refugee claimants and other FNs on the renal transplant waiting list, in part, because these patients (refugee claimants) had health insurance through the Interim Federal Health Programme to cover the costs of medication and hospital care. However, severe cuts recently made to this programme have forced (...) clinicians to question whether they should continue with transplants for FNs, for financial and ethical reasons. This paper first examines different national policies (eg, in Canada, USA, France and the UK) to map the diversity of approaches regarding transplantation for FNs, and then works through different considerations commonly used to support or oppose the provision of organs to these patients: (1) the organ shortage; (2) the free-rider problem; (3) the risk of becoming a transplant destination; (4) the impact on organ donation rates; (5) physicians’ duties; (6) economic concerns; (7) vulnerability. Using a Canadian case as a focus, and generalising through a review of various national policies, we analyse the arguments for and against transplantation for FNs with a view to bringing clarity to what is a sensitive political and clinical management issue. Our aim is to help transplant centres, clinicians and ethicists reflect on the merits of possible options, and the rationales behind them. (shrink)