Cancer is most commonly viewed as resulting from somatic mutations enhancing proliferation and invasion. Some hypotheses further propose that these new capacities reveal a breakdown of multicellularity allowing cancer cells to escape proliferation and cooperation control mechanisms that were implemented during evolution of multicellularity. Here we critically review one such hypothesis, named “atavism,” which puts forward the idea that cancer results from the re‐expression of normally repressed genes forming a program, or toolbox, inherited from unicellular or simple multicellular ancestors. This (...) hypothesis places cancer in an interesting evolutionary perspective that has not been widely explored and deserves attention. Thinking about cancer within an evolutionary framework, especially the major transitions to multicellularity, offers particularly promising perspectives. It is therefore of the utmost important to analyze why one approach that tries to achieve this aim, the atavism hypothesis, has not so far emerged as a major theory on cancer. We outline the features of the atavism hypothesis that, would benefit from clarification and, if possible, unification. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

Violence risk assessment tools are increasingly used within criminal justice and forensic psychiatry, however there is little relevant, reliable and unbiased data regarding their predictive accuracy. We argue that such data are needed to (i) prevent excessive reliance on risk assessment scores, (ii) allow matching of different risk assessment tools to different contexts of application, (iii) protect against problematic forms of discrimination and stigmatisation, and (iv) ensure that contentious demographic variables are not prematurely removed from risk assessment tools.

In this paper some lessons are learned regarding how to extend and deepen the theory of Macagno on assessing dialectical relevance by using the notion of argument distance. An argument is defined as dialectically relevant if it is an appropriate move in a multiagent dialogue exchange. Three examples are studied where a criticism of relevance is made against an argument, and the problem posed is how a response to this type of criticism should be judged to be justified or not, (...) based on the evidence. Based on these examples, an algorithm is presented that helps the user to determine argument distance in a given case as a means of helping to judge whether a criticism that an argument is not relevant is justified or not. (shrink)

Sustainability assessments bring together different perspectives that pertain to sustainability in order to produce overall assessments and a wealth of approaches and tools have been developed in the past decades. But two major problematics remain. The problem of integration concerns the surplus of possibilities for integration; different tools produce different assessments. The problem of implementation concerns the barrier between assessment and transformation; assessments do not lead to the expected changes in practice. This paper aims to analyze (...) issues of complementarity in sustainability assessment and transformation as a key to better handling the problems of integration and implementation. Based on a generalization of Niels Bohr’s complementarity from quantum mechanics, we have identified two forms of complementarity in sustainability assessment, observer stance complementarity and value complementarity. Unlike many other problems of sustainability assessment, complementarity is of a fundamental character connected to the very conditions for observation. Therefore complementarity cannot be overcome methodologically; only handled better or worse. Science is essential to the societal goal of sustainability, but these issues of complementarity impede the constructive role of science in the transition to more sustainable structures and practices in food systems. The agencies of sustainability assessment and transformation need to be acutely aware of the importance of different perspectives and values and the complementarities that may be connected to these differences. An improved understanding of complementarity can help to better recognize and handle issues of complementarity. These deliberations have relevance not only for sustainability assessment, but more generally for transdisciplinary research on wicked problems. (shrink)

Army Officers face increased moral pressure in modern warfare, where character judgement and ethical judgement are vital. This article reports the results of a study of 242 junior British Army officers using the Army Intermediate Concept Measure, comprising a series of professionally oriented moral dilemmas developed for the UK context. Results are suggestive of appropriate application of Army values to the dilemmas and of ethical reasoning aligning with Army excellence. The sample does slightly less well, however, for justification than for (...) action reasoning, and there are differences following initial training for infantry and artillery officers versus other branches of service. Dilemmas involving anti-torture methods and not covering up soldiers' failings generated best results compared to those requiring balance between compassion and mission, and negotiating personal relationships with military needs. Gender differences favouring women were less than those observed for other professional groups using similar measures. This research further develops a much-needed measure of ethical reasoning among junior Army officers, with potential for use among other ranks. This approach is advocated for other professional groups. (shrink)

Assessment relativism, as developed by John MacFarlane, is the view that the truth of our claims involving a variety of English expressions—‘tasty’, ‘knows’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘might’, and ‘ought’—is relative not only to aspects of the context of their production but also to aspects of the context in which they are assessed. Assessment relativism is thus a form of truth relativism which is offered as a new way of understanding perspectival thought and talk. In this article, I present the main theses of (...) assessment relativism, focusing in particular on highlighting the points of commonality and contrast with other forms of truth relativism. I then offer some critical remarks concerning the motivation of assessment relativism in relation to matters of taste. (shrink)

Using emotional film clips is one of the most popular and effective methods of emotion elicitation. The main goal of the present study was to develop and test the effectiveness of a new and comprehensive set of emotional film excerpts. Fifty film experts were asked to remember specific film scenes that elicited fear, anger, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness, as well as emotionally neutral scenes. For each emotion, the 10 most frequently mentioned scenes were selected and cut into film clips. Next, (...) 364 participants viewed the film clips in individual laboratory sessions and rated each film on multiple dimensions. Results showed that the film clips were effective with regard to several criteria such as emotional discreteness, arousal, positive and negative affect. Finally, ranking scores were computed for 24 classification criteria: Subjective arousal, positive and negative affect (derived from the PANAS; Watson & Tellegen, 1988), a positive and a negative affect scores derived from the Differential Emotions Scale (DES; Izard et al., 1974), six emotional discreteness scores (for anger, disgust, sadness, fear, amusement and tenderness), and 15 “mixed feelings” scores assessing the effectiveness of each film excerpt to produce blends of specific emotions. In addition, a number of emotionally neutral film clips were also validated. The database and editing instructions to construct the film clips have been made freely available in a website. (shrink)

The concept of natural behavior is a key element in current Dutch policy-making on animal welfare. It emphasizes that animals need positive experiences, in addition to minimized suffering. This paper interprets the concept of natural behavior in the context of the scientific framework for welfare assessment. Natural behavior may be defined as behavior that animals have a tendency to exhibit under natural conditions, because these behaviors are pleasurable and promote biological functioning. Animal welfare is the quality of life as perceived (...) by the animal. Animals have evolved cognitive-emotional systems (“welfare needs”) to deal with a variable environment. Animals do not only have so-called physiological needs such as the need for food, water, and thermal comfort. They also need to exercise certain natural behaviors such as rooting or nest-building in pigs, and scratching or dust-bathing in poultry. All needs must be taken into account in order to assess overall welfare. The degree of need satisfaction and frustration can be assessed from scientific information about the intensity, duration, and incidence of (welfare) performance criteria such as measurements of behavior and/or (patho)physiology. Positive welfare value relates to how animals are inclined to behave under natural conditions, in preference tests, and in consumer-demand studies. Negative welfare value relates to stress, frustration, abnormal behavior, aggression, and reduced fitness. Examples are given to illustrate how the need to perform natural behaviors can be assessed following the general principles for welfare assessment, providing a first approximation of how different natural behaviors affect animal welfare. (shrink)

When making decisions about action to improve animal lives, it is important that we have accurate estimates of how much animals are suffering under different conditions. The current frameworks for making comparative estimates of suffering all fall along the lines of multiplying numbers of animals used by length of life and amount of suffering experienced. However, the numbers used to quantify suffering are usually generated through unreliable and subjective processes which make them unlikely to be correct. In this paper, I (...) look at how we might apply principled methods from animal welfare science to arrive at more accurate scores, which will then help us in making the best decisions for animals. I argue that a combined use of both a whole-animal measure and a combination measurement framework for assessing welfare will give us the most accurate answers to guide our action. (shrink)

This paper describes a research project assessing the effect on second grade students’ understanding of argumentation that a twelve-week program of weekly philosophy lessons had. The philosophy lessons were taught using popular picture books in the manner employed in my Teaching Children Philosophy program. Compared to a control group of second graders who did not study philosophy, it was demonstrated that the 45-minute weekly philosophy classes led to a significant and sustainable increase in students’ understanding of argumentation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed a novel framework for assessing and communicating uncertainty in the findings published in their periodic assessment reports. But how should these uncertainty assessments inform decisions? We take a formal decision-making perspective to investigate how scientific input formulated in the IPCC’s novel framework might inform decisions in a principled way through a normative decision model.

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, difficulty levels, specialty data, error analysis and character count (...) were analysed. We found that ChatGPT had an accuracy of 59.6%, with greater accuracy in topics surrounding death and patient–physician relationships and performed poorly on questions pertaining to informed consent. Of all the specialties, it performed best in paediatrics. Yet, certain specialties and bioethical categories were under-represented. Among the errors made, it tended towards content errors and application errors. There were no significant associations between character count and accuracy. Nevertheless, this investigation contributes to the ongoing dialogue on artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in healthcare and medical education, advocating for further research to fully understand AI systems’ capabilities and constraints in the nuanced field of medical bioethics. (shrink)

Recent allegations of unethical decision-making by leaders in prominent business organizations have jeopardized the world's confidence in American business. The purpose of this research was to develop a measure of managerial moral judgment that can be used in future research and managerial assessment. The measure was patterned after the Defining Issues Test, a widely used general measure of moral judgment. With content validity as the goal, we aimed to sample the domain of managerial ethical situations by establishing links to dimensions (...) of managerial performance, as well as to the types of organizational justice issues managers encounter. Proposed scenarios were evaluated for realism by ethics officers and human resource managers. Results indicated that the new measure is reliable and correlates with a number of relevant variables in the hypothesized manner, demonstrating evidence of construct validity. Implications for future research and for human resources management are discussed. (shrink)

The transformers that drive chatbots and other AI systems constitute large language models (LLMs). These are currently the focus of a lively discussion in both the scientific literature and the popular media. This discussion ranges from hyperbolic claims that attribute general intelligence and sentience to LLMs, to the skeptical view that these devices are no more than “stochastic parrots”. I present an overview of some of the weak arguments that have been presented against LLMs, and I consider several of the (...) more compelling criticisms of these devices. The former significantly underestimate the capacity of transformers to achieve subtle inductive inferences required for high levels of performance on complex, cognitively significant tasks. In some instances, these arguments misconstrue the nature of deep learning. The latter criticisms identify significant limitations in the way in which transformers learn and represent patterns in data. They also point out important differences between the procedures through which deep neural networks and humans acquire knowledge of natural language. It is necessary to look carefully at both sets of arguments in order to achieve a balanced assessment of the potential and the limitations of LLMs. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as (...) it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. (shrink)

Fear of cancer is mostly related to cancer recurrence, metastasis, additional cancer, and diagnostic tests. Its legacy as a lethal disease has raised fear of approaching death. Currently, cancer’s total suffering and the worsening phenomena have raised fear, especially among female patients. Family caregivers (FCGs) who are responsible for the day-to-day cancer care at home need to help the patients deal with this fear frequently. Due to the limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer fear (...) management. This study aims to assess how types of demanded healthcare information affect the FCG’s role in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of healthcare information, FCGs with higher demand on cancer-specific information and information on cancer physical needs were more likely to need support in reducing the fear of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information on support services were less likely to need support to reduce cancer patients’ fear. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in reducing cancer-induced fear. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer’s prognosis or likely outcome and information on cancer physical needs, need to be met in priority to assist FCG’s role in cancer fear management. (shrink)

This paper advances an approach to relevance grounded on patterns of material inference called argumentation schemes, which can account for the reconstruction and the evaluation of relevance relations. In order to account for relevance in different types of dialogical contexts, pursuing also non-cognitive goals, and measuring the scalar strength of relevance, communicative acts are conceived as dialogue moves, whose coherence with the previous ones or the context is represented as the conclusion of steps of material inferences. Such inferences are described (...) using argumentation schemes and are evaluated by considering 1) their defeasibility, and 2) the acceptability of the implicit premises on which they are based. The assessment of both the relevance of an utterance and the strength thereof depends on the evaluation of three interrelated factors: 1) number of inferential steps required; 2) the types of argumentation schemes involved; and 3) the implicit premises required. (shrink)

The authors of the feature article argue against implied consent in all episiotomy cases, but allow that opt-out consent might be appropriate in limited circumstances.1 However, they do not indicate how clinicians should assess whether the pregnant person is capable of consenting in this way during an obstetric emergency. This commentary will focus on how capacity should be determined during these circumstances, suggest next steps for clinicians if capacity is deemed uncertain or absent, and discuss the appropriate role for opt-out (...) consent in labour. Previous studies investigating the extent to which pregnant persons retain decision-making capacity during labour have shown poor recall, a component of capacity, about consent processes during obstetric emergency procedures in 14%–49% of cases.1 2 As the feature article acknowledges, this does not mean that pregnant persons should be assumed to lack decision-making capacity during labour. Although pain, labour intensity, exhaustion and medications can make consenting processes during labour more difficult and it is possible that these factors will result in the impaired ability of the pregnant person to make informed and voluntary decisions about treatment options, this possibility of impaired capacity should not be taken as the expected outcome nor should it be used as an excuse to skip consenting procedures.1 2 The default to treat labouring patients as able to make their own decisions still stands, although signs that a person lacks …. (shrink)

Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience, a structured interview that can be used by researchers and clinicians without a comprehensive phenomenological background to explore abnormal time experiences in persons with abnormal mental conditions regardless of their diagnosis. When extensive data gathered by this scale are available, it will be possible to delineate well-defined anomalous lived temporality profiles for each psychopathological (...) disorder. This instrument may also prove useful for clinicians by providing a more refined assessment of relevant psychopathological symptoms and an in-depth understanding of the patient’s abnormal behaviour as related to specific types of time experience. In the first part of the article, we provide a brief overview of the phenomenological concept of temporality, including pre-phenomenal and phenomenal time, synthesis, conation and synchronization, and of abnormal time experiences in persons affected by psychopathological conditions. In the following part, we describe the basic structure of the interview that comprises seven categories corresponding to the abnormal features of lived temporality: anomalies of synchrony, of time structure, of implicit time flow, of explicit time flow, and anomalous experiences of the past, the present and the future. The paper also includes a section on administration and scoring of the TATE scale, the complete interview and a Likert table for quantifying the frequency, intensity and interference with daily life of the phenomena explored. (shrink)

BackgroundAmidst expanding roles in education and policy making, questions have been raised about the ability of Clinical Ethics Committees (CEC) s to carry out effective ethics consultations (CECons). However recent reviews of CECs suggest that there is no uniformity to CECons and no effective means of assessing the quality of CECons. To address this gap a systematic scoping review of prevailing tools used to assess CECons was performed to foreground and guide the design of a tool to evaluate the quality (...) of CECons.MethodsGuided by Levac et al’s (2010) methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews, the research team performed independent literature reviews of accounts of assessments of CECons published in six databases. The included articles were independently analyzed using content and thematic analysis to enhance the validity of the findings.ResultsNine thousand sixty-six abstracts were identified, 617 full-text articles were reviewed, 104 articles were analyzed and four themes were identified – the purpose of the CECons evaluation, the various domains assessed, the methods of assessment used and the long-term impact of these evaluations.ConclusionThis review found prevailing assessments of CECons to be piecemeal due to variable goals, contextual factors and practical limitations. The diversity in domains assessed and tools used foregrounds the lack of minimum standards upheld to ensure baseline efficacy.To advance a contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, program specific assessment tool to assess CECons, clear structural and competency guidelines must be established in the curation of CECons programs, to evaluate their true efficacy and maintain clinical, legal and ethical standards. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism – Assessment Sensitivity – provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: statements about the future that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and solves the puzzle, Assessment Sensitivity is ultimately self-refuting.

The main aim of this article is to reflect on the impact of biases related to artificial intelligence (AI) systems developed to tackle issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, with special focus on those developed for triage and risk prediction. A secondary aim is to review assessment tools that have been developed to prevent biases in AI systems. In addition, we provide a conceptual clarification for some terms related to biases in this particular context. We focus mainly on nonracial biases (...) that may be less considered when addressing biases in AI systems in the existing literature. In the manuscript, we found that the existence of bias in AI systems used for COVID-19 can result in algorithmic justice and that the legal frameworks and strategies developed to prevent the apparition of bias have failed to adequately consider social determinants of health. Finally, we make some recommendations on how to include more diverse professional profiles in order to develop AI systems that increase the epistemic diversity needed to tackle AI biases during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

This book makes the case for a revival in interest in the viva. As an oral assessment of a treatise or dissertation or of a student's performance in art or dance the viva has a long history dating back to the time of the Greeks. It can be found today in the form of professional, vocational and academic vivas, where a judgment of oral performance is required to gain entry into a profession or community of scholars. In a time when (...) there are scandals about students selling essays to other students, the viva provides a fertile ground for probing the student to see whether they are in fact the authors of the work being assessed and know its content and how to think cognitively or otherwise. Given that we actually know so little about the viva, the book theorises the viva based on a unique sample of vivas that have been filmed or in which the author himself has been participant, and discusses why its format is so different in Anglo-Saxon languages and Latin and other languages. The book offers educational policy-makers and examiners a trade-off between arguments in support of the viva and the demand for other, ever more cost-effective forms of assessment as the numbers of both undergraduate and postgraduate students threaten to increase. It also argues that with demand in the labour market for qualified graduates who are better equipped with transferable skills, such as the ability to communicate complex ideas verbally in a competent, well-argued fashion and not merely through the use of rhetoric, what appear to be cost-effective forms of assessment in the short run (e.g. written exams with standardised questions or multiple choice) may actually in the long run be of less value if we are investing in a future workforce with so-called 21st century communication skills. If the viva were abandoned, the student would be robbed of the opportunity to stage a defence. (shrink)

The article identifies real losses of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises of Ukraine under the influence of modern challenges. The main purpose of the study is to implement a scientific and methodological approach to assess the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of enterprises. A critical analysis of the content of scientific publications on the studied issues revealed the lack of an integrated approach to establishing the real losses of foreign economic activity of enterprises (...) under the influence of modern challenges. The urgency of solving a certain problem is due to the scale of the impact of modern challenges on the dynamics of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises, which requires an assessment of such an impact for the further development of measures that will be aimed at minimizing the negative impact of modern challenges. The methodological basis is the system of methods used to obtain the results of the study: theoretical generalization and analytical methods ‒ to clarify scientific approaches in determining the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of enterprises; generalization, grouping and integral evaluation ‒ to determine the level of influence of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises in 2013‒2021; relative and absolute deviations, coefficient analysis of changes in foreign trade turnover ‒ to establish the volume of losses of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises of Ukraine under the influence of modern challenges; logical generalization ‒ to obtain conclusions and develop recommendations based on research results. The object of research in the work is the foreign economic activity of enterprises. The article presents the results of assessing the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises, which became possible due to the developed and implemented author's scientific and methodological approach. Analysis and logical generalization of the results of assessing the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises became the basis for determining the real volumes of losses of their foreign trade turnover. The results of the study have practical value for the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and the Entrepreneurship and export promotion office, because they can serve as the basis for developing a program of recommendations for activating the export initiative of industrial enterprises under modern conditions. (shrink)

In recent years, language has been shown to play a number of important cognitive roles over and above the communication of thoughts. One hypothesis gaining support is that language facilitates thought about abstract categories, such as democracy or prediction. To test this proposal, a novel set of semantic memory task trials, designed for assessing abstract thought non-linguistically, were normed for levels of abstractness. The trials were rated as more or less abstract to the degree that answering them required the participant (...) to abstract away from both perceptual features and common setting associations corresponding to the target image. The normed materials were then used with a population of people with aphasia to assess the relationship of abstract thought to language. While the language-impaired group with aphasia showed lower overall accuracy and longer response times than controls in general, of special note is that their response times were significantly longer as a function of a trial’s degree of abstractness. Further, the aphasia group’s response times in reporting their degree of confidence (a separate, metacognitive measure) were negatively correlated with their language production abilities, with lower language scores predicting longer metacognitive response times. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that language is an important aid to abstract thought and to metacognition about abstract thought. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the semantics of knowledge-attributing sentences, not just among epistemologists but among philosophers of language seeking a general understanding of linguistic context sensitivity. Despite all this critical attention, however, we are as far from consensus as ever. If we have learned anything, it is that each of the standard views—invariantism, contextualism, and sensitive invariantism—has its Achilles’ heel: a residuum of facts about our use of knowledge attributions that it can explain only with (...) special pleading. This is not surprising if, as I will argue, there is a grain of truth in each of these views. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 3-3, September–October 2022.

Recent revisions to the Conservation of Resources theory have not only reclassified categories of resources, but have also acknowledged the conceptual importance of “gain spirals” and “resource caravans” in enriching the theoretical understanding of resources. Given that teachers’ assessment literacy is a prominent yet underexplored personal constructive resource in teaching, this paper examines its role in teaching efficacy. In addition, personal energy resources are studied as antecedents to teaching efficacy. To this end, a survey based on the Chinese versions of (...) the Teacher Assessment Literacy Scale, the Teaching Efficacy Scale, the Psychological Capital Scale, and the Teacher Professional Identity Scale was administered to secondary school teachers in Henan Province, China, and 351 completed, valid surveys were returned. The findings indicated that the teachers’ assessment literacy and teaching efficacy were positively correlated, verifying that assessment literacy can influence teaching efficacy through the separate and chain mediation effects of psychological capital and professional identity. The identification of such mediating pathways has confirmed that resources owned by teachers can lead to gain spirals and full resource caravans, thus expanding the Conservation of Resources theory by positing that resources can be nested within one another. This study has theoretical implications for teaching efficacy research and the Conservation of Resources theory as well as practical implications regarding how to boost teachers’ constructive and energy resources and professional development. (shrink)

Assessment is at the heart of teaching as it provides a necessary condition for judging success or failure. It is also necessary to ensure that providers of education are accountable to users and providers of resources. Inferential hazard is an inescapable part of any assessment procedure but cannot be an argument against assessment as such. Rich knowledge may be the aim of education but it does not follow that it is the aim of every stage of education. Teaching to tests (...) is the most natural way of ensuring that teaching matches assessment. Failure to assess places public education in jeopardy. (shrink)

Business school faculty have begun to increase ethics instruction, but very little has been done to assess the effectiveness of this instruction. Curricula-wide studies present conflicting results of the effect of ethics integration into the business curricula. Several studies suggest that courses like business ethics and business and society might have an effect on the ethical awareness or ethical reasoning of business students. A belief of many individuals interested in business ethics is that students must be exposed to ethical awareness (...) and ethical reasoning in business ethics and business and society-type courses and this should be supplemented by discussions of these topics in various business courses such as Accounting, Finance, Marketing, and others.This study reports the results of integrating a unit of business ethics into eleven accounting classes at two universities. An approach for measuring the effect of ethics integration into accounting and other business courses is suggested, and an assessment is made of the impact of ethics integration on students in accounting classes. Results indicate that the principles on which students rely when making moral decisions were affected by ethics integration. After ethics integration, students relied more heavily on the disclosure rule, the golden rule, and the professional ethic. (shrink)

This paper reflects on quality assessment and performance evaluation in higher education, namely by analysing the insufficient link between those two aspects. We start by reviewing the current state of the art regarding different processes and mechanisms of quality assessment and performance evaluation and discuss some of the major issues regarding the implementation of some of them. In particular, we analyse the current limitations regarding data collected, available and publicised on the performance of HEIs and the problems those limitations bring (...) to a fair evaluation of higher education. Through this analysis we intend to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of evaluation in higher education and the way these may lead to the promotion of better quality assessment practices and institutional management. (shrink)

Agent-based models (ABMs) are one of the main sources of evidence for decisions regarding mitigation and suppression measures against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. These models have not been previously included in the hierarchy of evidence put forth by the evidence-based medicine movement, which prioritizes those research methods that deliver results less susceptible to the risk of confounding. We point out the need to assess the quality of evidence delivered by ABMs and ask the question of what is the risk that (...) assumptions entertained in ABMs do not include all the key factors and make model predictions susceptible to the problem of confounding. (shrink)

Having emerged as an important concept in the organizational field, entrepreneurial orientation has also become a key idea in the context of education. Indeed, entrepreneurial education is now one of the common objectives for education and training systems in the European Union. Despite its importance, however, there is a scarcity of valid and reliable measures for assessing entrepreneurial orientation in students. The present study aimed to address this by developing and examining the psychometric properties of the Entrepreneurial Orientation Scale (EOS). (...) A second objective is to study the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and gender, self-efficacy, and personal initiative. The sample comprised 411 vocational training students (50.36% male, 49.64% female). The final version of the instrument comprised 32 items assessing six dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, competitiveness, achievement orientation, and learning orientation. The EOS showed good psychometric properties and its dimensions demonstrated concurrent relationships with self-efficacy and personal initiative. The EOS may be used to measure entrepreneurial orientation in the educational context and to evaluate interventions designed to promote an entrepreneurial spirit in schools, colleges, and universities. (shrink)

Authentic assessment has been proposed as having potential to enhance student learning for a changing world. Conventionally, assessment is seen to be authentic when the tasks are real-to-life or have real-life value. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s work, we challenge this conceptualisation as narrow and limited. We argue that authenticity need not be an attribute of tasks but, rather, is a quality of educational processes that engage students in becoming more fully human. Adopting the mode of authenticity involves calling things into (...) question, challenging public assumptions and striving to take a stand in the situations encountered. In addition to assessing student achievement, then, authentic assessment can enhance integration of what students know and how they act with who they are becoming. (shrink)

Student cheating on university assessments from entrance exams to finals and from contract cheating on coursework to requesting exam answers using a mobile phone during the exam, has received more and more attention of late. As connection to the Internet becomes ubiquitous and computing and communications technology more embedded in our environment, it is argued that a re-focussing on providing educational opportunities is needed in higher education, rather than chasing the ever-retreating prospect of perfect, or even adequate, assessment for (...) the purposes of qualification. (shrink)

How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, (...) because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies. (shrink)

Current orthodoxy in research ethics assumes that subjects of clinical trials reserve rights to withdraw at any time and without giving any reason. This view sees the right to withdraw as a simple extension of the right to refuse to participate all together. In this paper, however, I suggest that subjects should assume some responsibilities for the internal validity of the trial at consent and that these responsibilities should be captured by contract. This would allow the researcher to impose a (...) penalty on the subject if he were to withdraw without good reason and on a whim. This proposal still leaves open the possibility of withdrawing without penalty when it is in the subject's best interests to do so. Giving researchers recourse to legal remedy may now be necessary to protect the science, as existing methods used to increase retention are inadequate for one reason or another. (shrink)

Empirical research can aid ethical reflection in bioethics by identifying issues, by seeing how they are currently resolved, and by assessing the consequences of these current resolutions. This potential can be misused when the ethical issues in question are fundamentally non-consequentialist or when they are consequentialist but the empirical research fails to address the important consequences. An example of the former problem is some recent studies about bad consequences resulting from commercialized living kidney donor programs. These consequences could be avoided, (...) but the crucial non-consequentialist ethical issues about exploitation and commercialization would still remain. Examples of the latter problem are provided by recent studies of the allocation of ICU beds and of physician deception, where important consequences were not adequately studied. (shrink)

Is the assessment of a view of life only a matter of personal preference? I argue that there is more than personal preference. I defend the position that a view of life must be useful for the ascription of meaning and therefore needs to fulfil the requirements of the process of ascribing meaning. In this article I analyse this process and its requirements and deduce from them a set of criteria by which views of life can be assessed.

The problem addressed in this paper is “the main epistemic problem concerning science”, viz. “the explication of how we compare and evaluate theories [...] in the light of the available evidence” (van Fraassen, BC, 1983, Theory comparison and relevant Evidence. In J. Earman (Ed.), Testing scientific theories (pp. 27–42). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Sections 1– 3 contain the general plausibility-informativeness theory of theory assessment. In a nutshell, the message is (1) that there are two values a theory should exhibit: (...) truth and informativeness—measured respectively by a truth indicator and a strength indicator; (2) that these two values are conflicting in the sense that the former is a decreasing and the latter an increasing function of the logical strength of the theory to be assessed; and (3) that in assessing a given theory by the available data one should weigh between these two conflicting aspects in such a way that any surplus in informativeness succeeds, if the shortfall in plausibility is small enough. Particular accounts of this general theory arise by inserting particular strength indicators and truth indicators. In Section 4 the theory is spelt out for the Bayesian paradigm of subjective probabilities. It is then compared to incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. Section 4 closes by asking whether it is likely to be lovely. Section 5 discusses a few problems of confirmation theory in the light of the present approach. In particular, it is briefly indicated how the present account gives rise to a new analysis of Hempel’s conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation (Hempel, CG, 1945, Studies in the logic of comfirmation. Mind, 54, 1–26, 97–121.), differing from the one Carnap gave in § 87 of his Logical foundations of probability (1962, Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Section 6 adresses the question of justification any theory of theory assessment has to face: why should one stick to theories given high assessment values rather than to any other theories? The answer given by the Bayesian version of the account presented in section 4 is that one should accept theories given high assessment values, because, in the medium run, theory assessment almost surely takes one to the most informative among all true theories when presented separating data. The concluding section 7 continues the comparison between the present account and incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these parts difficult to handle within RE. Further, ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong to the (...) philosophical context, in which "eternal questions" are gathered and reflected upon. The first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers' objectives and to students' texts, respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student perspectives. Next, the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further, can contemporary moral philosophers contribute to such a discussion? In turn, the book discusses the role of statistical analyses with regard to national tests, while the closing chapters present international perspectives on the book's main themes and concluding remarks. The book's critical yet constructive approach to issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the field of assessment, as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative evaluation may provide important guidelines, but may also pose challenges of their own. (shrink)

Introducing alternative modes of assessment is but one response to the recent call for democratic and ethical language assessment. Yet, despite the recent emphasis in the discourse community and the rise in publication on alternative assessment, these new forms of assessment still need to be explored further. This study is a two-fold attempt: first, to investigate teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about different aspects of traditional testing and alternative assessment, and second to delve into their ethical orientation and to examine views (...) on language testing apropos of their general ethical viewpoints. A questionnaire was developed and used to collect Iranian EFL teachers’ views on language testing and ethics in general (N = 153). The results indicated that despite its agreed-upon disadvantages, an obstinate stigmatization and refusal of traditional testing may still seem a practice at odds with the common sense. In fact, until a better proposal can be offered, alternative assessment and traditional testing can best be regarded as supplements rather than substitutes. (shrink)

The primary responsibility of the US Food and Drug Administration is to protect public health by ensuring the safety of the food supply. To that end, it sometimes conducts risk assessments of novel food products, such as genetically modified food. The FDA describes its regulatory review of GM food as a purely scientific activity, untainted by any normative considerations. This paper provides evidence that the regulatory agency is not justified in making that claim. It is argued that the FDA’s (...) policy stance on GM food is shaped by neoliberal considerations. The agency’s review of a genetically engineered animal, the AquAdvantage salmon, is used as a case study to track the influence of neoliberalism on its regulatory review protocol. After that, an epistemic argument justifying public engagement in the risk assessment of new GM food is outlined. It is because risk evaluations involve normative judgments, in a democracy, layperson representatives of informal epistemic communities that could be affected by a new GM food should have the opportunity to decide the ethical, political or other normative questions that arise during the regulatory review of that entity. (shrink)