The documented low levels of reliability of the peer review process present a serious challenge to editors who must often base their publication decisions on conflicting referee recommendations. The purpose of this article is to discuss this process and examine ways to produce a more reliable and useful peer review system.

Given the money, prestige and power at stake in high-level sports, ethical lapses are hardly surprising. Nor are the rules, people, and organizations we entrust to punish infractions and ensure fair play. Similarly, the high stakes involved in medical education invite ethical slips. Yet, there are not only few referees in this all-important “game,” but also the subject itself has been almost entirely off-limits in the academic literature.

We write in response to the original article by Rennie and Rudland published in the April 2003 edition of this journal.1 Current and former Dundee Medical School students are concerned at the media misinterpretation of the study and the consequences that this branding of “dishonesty” will have on Dundee Medical School’s reputation and also on individuals embarking on their ….

This article presents an analysis of contractual relations in sport from the standpoint of the Croatian legislative system. Due to the complexity of the subject matter, the author considers only a small fragment of it - the significance and the role of sport in Croatian society and the law of contracts „as a cornerstone on which „sports law“ has been built and which is of primary importance in most areas where there is an interface between sport and the law, irrespective (...) of whether the sport is being played at an elite level or at a more humble one“. Bearing in mind the limited extent of this article, the autor tries to provide some clarifications and some guidance on how to deal with the designation and the determination of the applicable law for contracts in the sporting context. Considering that there are different legal regimes which may come into play with regard to the designation of the law applicable to contracts in the sporting context, the author first presents the determination of the applicable law according to the Rome I Regulation and then according to the Croatian Arbitration Act, Swiss Private International Law Act and the CAS Code of Sports-related Arbitration, as the most common in sports practice. Then, the author deals with contracts concluded with minor athletes and the determination of the law applicable to some preliminary questions. Finally, the author presents her perception of the problems encountered and some suggestions for the improvement of the existing legal framework. (shrink)

This code of practice for health professionals was prepared by a multi-professional group and reflects good clinical practice in encouraging dialogue about individuals' wishes concerning their future treatment. It has a broad practical approach, considers a range of advance statements, advises of dangers and benefits of making treatment decisions in advance and combines annotated code of practice with a quick pull out guide for easy reference.

1. Aim of the guidelines2. Principles of good practice3. Circumcision for medical purposes4. Non-therapeutic circumcision 4.1. The law 4.1.1. Summary: the law 4.2. Consent and refusal 4.2.1. Children’s own consent 4.2.2. Parents’ consent 4.2.3. Summary: consent and refusal 4.3. Best interests 4.3.1. Summary: best interests 4.4. Health issues 4.5. Standards 4.6. Facilities 4.7. Charging patients 4.8. Conscientious objection5. Useful addresses.

Summary Principles Timely support for patients and people close to them, and effective, sensitive communication are essential. Decisions must be based on the individual patient's circumstances and reviewed regularly. Sensitive advance discussion should always be encouraged, but not forced. Information about CPR and the chances of a successful outcome needs to be realistic. Practical matters Information about CPR policies should be displayed for patients and staff. Leaflets should be available for patients and people close to them explaining about CPR, how (...) decisions are made and their involvement in decisions. Decisions about attempting CPR must be communicated effectively to relevant health professionals. In emergencies If no advance decision has been made or is known, CPR should be attempted unless: the patient has refused CPR; the patient is clearly in the terminal phase of illness; or the burdens of the treatment outweigh the benefits. Advance decision making Competent patients should be involved in discussions about attempting CPR unless they indicate that they do not want to be. Where patients lack competence to participate, people close to them can be helpful in reflecting their views. Legal issues Patients' rights under the Human Rights Act must be taken into account in decision making. Neither patients nor relatives can demand treatment which the health care team judges to be inappropriate, but all efforts will be made to accommodate wishes and preferences. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland relatives and people close to the patient are not entitled in law to take health care decisions for the patient. In Scotland, adults may appoint a health care proxy to give consent to medical treatment. Health professionals need to be aware of the law in relation to decision making for children and young people.IntroductionWhy policies are neededCardiopulmonary resuscitation can be attempted on any person whose cardiac or respiratory functions cease. Failure of these functions is part of dying and thus …. (shrink)

*The views expressed are the author's own. This article should not be construed as representing policies of the American Medical Association.

*Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author's and should not be ascribed to the American Medical Association.

Now I know why so many stories have been written with the theme: “everything changed in one moment.” More than 1,000 days have come and gone, and I still remember one Sunday morning and still follow and feel the effects of one decision.

The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association examines physicians’ professional ethical responsibility in the event that the security of patients’ electronic records is breached.

Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argue for a framework to examine the ethical issues associated with genetic screening for non-medical traits in the context of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Such s...

The quality of the consent obtained from 41 volunteer subjects in eight experiments is evaluated. Five subjects (all physicians) gave informed consent; 22 subjects gave partially informed consent; and 14 subjects merely gave consent. It is argued that 'informed' consent is obtainable only from medically trained people, and that lip service to this concept in laymen should cease. The concept of medical competence should instead be introduced and a personal medical referee appointed to adjudicate on behalf of (...) the volunteer. (shrink)

Cet article repose sur une recherche en psychopathologie clinique étudiant la construction du maternel dans les situations de grande prématurité. Les chercheurs, psychologues cliniciennes référées à la psychanalyse, ont effectué une analyse discursive et thématique d’entretiens de recherche réalisés auprès de cinq femmes vivant en couple ayant accouché de leur premier enfant entre 27 et 29 semaines d’aménorrhées. Les résultats indiquent que certaines mères ont un vécu traumatique de la naissance qui empêche la poursuite des rêveries maternelles et entrave l’investissement (...) libidinal du bébé, fondateur dans le nouage des liens précoces. Malgré l’événement de corps et la vision de l’enfant prématuré, d’autres parviennent à maintenir un regard « auréolé ». La recherche montre aussi comment la création par le discours médical de la catégorie des « prémas » offrirait un cadre symbolique aux parents pour penser ces bébés nés trop tôt et relancerait leur capacité de rêverie. (shrink)

Cet article repose sur une recherche en psychopathologie clinique étudiant la construction du maternel dans les situations de grande prématurité. Les chercheurs, psychologues cliniciennes référées à la psychanalyse, ont effectué une analyse discursive et thématique d’entretiens de recherche réalisés auprès de cinq femmes vivant en couple ayant accouché de leur premier enfant entre 27 et 29 semaines d’aménorrhées. Les résultats indiquent que certaines mères ont un vécu traumatique de la naissance qui empêche la poursuite des rêveries maternelles et entrave l’investissement (...) libidinal du bébé, fondateur dans le nouage des liens précoces. Malgré l’événement de corps et la vision de l’enfant prématuré, d’autres parviennent à maintenir un regard « auréolé ». La recherche montre aussi comment la création par le discours médical de la catégorie des « prémas » offrirait un cadre symbolique aux parents pour penser ces bébés nés trop tôt et relancerait leur capacité de rêverie. (shrink)

Biometrics has done damage with levels of R or p or Student’s t. The damage widened with Ronald A. Fisher’s victory in the 1920s and 1930s in devising mechanical methods of “testing,” against methods of common sense and scientific impact, “oomph.” The scale along which one would measure oomph is particularly clear in biomedical sciences: life or death. Cardiovascular epidemiology, to take one example, combines with gusto the “fallacy of the transposed conditional” and what we call the “sizeless stare” of (...) statistical significance. Some medical editors have battled against the 5% philosophy, as did, for example, Kenneth Rothman, the founder of Epidemiology. And decades ago a sensible few in education, ecology, and sociology initiated a “significance test controversy.” But, grantors, journal referees, and tenure committees in the statistical sciences had faith that probability spaces can substitute for scientific judgment. A finding of p <.05 is deemed to be “better” for variable X than p <.11 for variable Y. It is not. It depends on the oomph of X and Y—the effect size, size judged in the light of how much it matters for scientific or clinical purposes. In 1995 a Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group, for example, came to a rare consensus on effect size: 10 different studies had agreed that a certain drug for treating prostate cancer can increase patient survival by 12%. An 11th study published in the New England Journal in 1998 dismissed the drug. The dismissal was based on a t-test, not on what William Gosset had called, against Ronald A. Fisher’s machinery, “real” error. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the Roman Catholic tradition the nature of the ordinary/extraordinary means distinction is best understood in light of its historical development. The moralist tradition that reared and nurtured this distinction implicitly developed a set of general criteria to distinguish the extraordinary from the ordinary. These criteria, conjoined with the context within which they were understood, can play an important role in refereeing the contemporary debate over the agressiveness of medical treatment and the extent of one's moral obligation.

The two-volume set LNCS 1842/1843 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Computer Vision, ECCV 2000, held in Dublin, Ireland in June/July 2000. The 116 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from a total of 266 submissions. The two volumes offer topical sections on recognitions and modelling; stereoscopic vision; texture and shading; shape; structure from motion; image features; active, real-time, and robot vision; segmentation and grouping; vision systems engineering and evaluation; calibration; medical image understanding; and (...) visual motion. (shrink)

In an editorial to a recent issue of Neurology, Richard Dees expresses the same criticism in an even more rigorous epistemic tone: Veikko Launis, Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Ethics and Adjunct Professor of Ethics and Social Philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland.FootnotesThis article is part of the Neuroethics of Brainreading research project, directed by myself and funded by the Academy of Finland. I am grateful to Olli Koistinen, Pekka Louhiala, Helena Siipi, and an anonymous referee for (...) helpful comments, criticism, and suggestions. (shrink)

The materials consist of a co-authored, peer-reviewed book, a co-authored, peer-reviewed book chapter, 30 single authored peer-reviewed journal papers, and 15 co-authored peer-reviewed journal papers, of which I was the lead author on 8 papers. There are 32 papers from Australasian journals, at least two of which are also regarded as international. 22 papers are published in international journals. The co-authored book was favourably described in his foreword by Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia. The refereed chapter (...) is contained in an issue of the Australian Legal Monographs series. The papers constitute a body of work in Australasian and international contexts in a field which is relatively new to academic achievement, broadly understood as philosophy of medicine, medical ethics and health law. The journals in which the papers are published include two of the most highly regarded bioethics journals in the world, Australia’s leading medical journal, the two leading world medical education journals, Australia’s leading journal for health and medical law, and the Torts Law Journal, an Australian journal which is recognized as one of the world’s leading journals in the field of tort law. (shrink)

Gripped by an odd blend of excited liberation at forthcoming retirement and the sadness of impending loss, I've been skimming past issues of the JME looking for themes, for developments, for ideas, for this valedictory editorial after twenty years as its editor. A few may be worth offering. First some general impressions. The enthusiasm that medical ethics still seems to inspire in those who write about it leaps out of the JME's pages. So does the enormous breadth of the (...) subject, along with the multi-, interand trans-disciplinarity from which it is approached. Doctors, philosophers, theologians and lawyers; bishops and rabbis, social scientists and government officials; patients and patient representatives; professors and students, and many many more are in our pages, advocating and arguing vigorously: and they have been doing so from an ever increasing number of countries. One of the most agreeable benefits for me has been the friendships, intellectual with many and personal with quite a few, with people from these various disciplines, occupations and perspectives, cultures and countries, that medical ethics has facilitated and it was good to find so many of these friends communicating with me as I browsed through the journal's pages. Let me also take the opportunity of thanking all my friends and colleagues who have helped me edit this journal—authors, book reviewers, letter writers, referees (so exceedingly important and unsung and unrewarded a group), editorial and advisory board members, especially our wise chairman, Tom Oppe, members of the BMJ special journals division, and all those who actually make the journal appear once the editor has chosen its contents. While I don't have space to name all whom I thank, particular tribute is due to the small team who have been with me for eighteen or more of my editorial years, Ann Lloyd, our excellent …. (shrink)

This paper clarifies why editors of academic journals should share with their referees the information about the number of referees they consult and the decision rule they apply. Our analysis also rationalizes the common questionable phenomenon of editors who seem to distort the yes or no recommendations of their referees. The editors request a recommendation of whether to accept or reject the paper as well as an assessment of the paper. The editors need the complete reports to make the appropriate (...) correction of the referees' final recommendations. (shrink)

The advent of communications technology has enabled large and world-wide audiences to have visual access to sports whose spatially limited field of action prevents such numbers of interested spectators attending the event in person to witness them. Simultaneously a number of new issues for sport have arisen. Recognising that spectators’ location and distance from sporting events at times permit audiences viewing at home to enjoy a better view of the action, organisers sometimes erect huge screens relaying the action at sporting (...) arenas to redress this disadvantage. But the facility to focus in close-up, slow-motion, repeat display and from several angles provides not only a detailed inspection of sporting episodes, but also a mechanism for quality control of refereeing decisions. This article examines one recent attempt to make recommendations concerning the relative role of technology and humans in officiating, given an analysis of the problems technology can cause officials. (shrink)

We receive a variety of submissions on various topics of libertarian scholarship, such as philosophy, economics, legal theory, political science, history, and social/cultural analysis. If you are interested in serving as an occasional referee, please contact me privately at [email protected].

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to be explanations.

Referees are essential participants in the sport of football. They are responsible for enforcing the rules and achieving the necessary impartiality for the matches. Referees are often target of hostile reactions from fans, players, and coaches. However, few studies have focused on these experiences and the strategies they use to manage them. In order to fill this gap, a qualitative interview-based study was developed to explore the experiences of a group of football referees on aggression, violence, and coping. A thematic (...) analysis was developed combining inductive and deductive processes. Results indicated that the most frequent aggressions experienced were verbal abuse. Most of the aggressions from spectators were of a sexist nature. When aggressions were considered normal by referees, symbolic violence emerged. Racist aggressions were directed to the two Moroccan participants. Problem and emotional-focused coping strategies were identified. The two most common referee responses to coaches’ and players’ verbal abuse were penalties and send-off calls. Smiling and not considering insults as a personal matter were two emotional-focused coping strategies used toward spectator aggressions. Implications for the referees’ job and well-being as well as the quality of football competitions were highlighted to reduce aggressions and violence and to help referees to cope with hostile behaviors. (shrink)

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize With a new preface by the author In his most powerful and important book, renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton presents a brilliant analysis of the crucial role that German doctors played in the Nazi genocide. Now updated with a new preface, The Nazi Doctors remains the definitive work on the Nazi medical atrocities, a chilling exposé of the banality of evil at its epitome, and a sobering reminder of the darkest side (...) of human nature. (shrink)