OBJECTIVES: Early-emerging, temperamental differences in fear-related traits may be a heritable vulnerability factor for anxiety disorders. Previous research indicates that the serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism is a candidate gene for such traits. METHODS: Associations between 5-HTTLPR genotype and indices of fearful child temperament, derived from maternal report and standardized laboratory observations, were examined in a community sample of 95 preschool-aged children. RESULTS: Children with one or more long alleles of the 5-HTTLPR gene were rated as significantly more nervous during (...) standardized laboratory tasks than children who were homozygous for the short alleles. Children homozygous for the short alleles were also rated as significantly shyer, by maternal report, than those with at least one copy of the long allele of the 5-HTTLPR gene. CONCLUSIONS: This study extends the literature linking the short alleles of the serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism to fear and anxiety-related traits in early childhood and adulthood, and is one of very few studies to examine the molecular genetics of preschoolers' temperament using multiple measures of traits in a normative sample. (shrink)

Between 2013 and 2016, West Africa experienced the largest ever outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease. In the absence of registered treatments or vaccines to control this lethal disease, the World Health Organization coordinated and supported research to expedite identification of interventions that could control the outbreak and improve future control efforts. Consequently, the World Health Organization Research Ethics Review Committee was heavily involved in reviews and ethics discussions. It reviewed 24 new and 22 amended protocols for research studies including interventional (...) and observational studies. WHO-ERC provided the reviews within on average 6 working days. The WHO-ERC often could not provide immediate approval of protocols for reasons which were not Ebola Virus Disease specific but related to protocol inconsistencies, missing information and complex informed consents. WHO-ERC considerations on Ebola Virus Disease specific issues are presented. To accelerate study approval in future public health emergencies, we recommend: internally consistent and complete submissions with information documents in language participants are likely to understand, close collaboration between local and international researchers from research inception, generation of template agreements for data and sample sharing and use during the ongoing global consultations on bio-banks, formation of Joint Scientific Advisory and Data Safety Review Committees for all studies linked to a particular intervention or group of interventions, formation of a Joint Ethics Review Committee with representatives of the Ethics Committees of all institutions and countries involved to strengthen reviews through the different perspectives provided without the ‘opportunity costs’ for time to final approval of multiple, independent reviews, direct information exchange between the chairs of advisory, safety review and ethics committees, more Ethics Committee support for investigators than is standard and a global consultation on criteria for inclusion of pregnant women and children in interventional studies for conditions which put them at particularly high risk of mortality or other irreversible adverse outcomes under standard-of-care. (shrink)

Are there epistemic duties to inquire? The idea enjoys intuitive support. However, prominent evidentialists argue that our only epistemic duty is to believe well (i.e., to have doxastically justified beliefs), and doing so does not require inquiry. Against this, I argue that evidentialists are plausibly committed to the idea that if we have epistemic duties to believe well, then we have epistemic duties to inquire. This is because on plausible evidentialist views of evidence possession (i.e., views that result in plausible (...) theories of evidentialist justification), inquiry is sometimes a necessary constitutive means of forming doxastically justified beliefs—beliefs that are proportioned to and based on one's evidence. So, either evidentialist views of evidence possession commit them to epistemic duties to inquire or they lead to independently implausible theories of evidentialist justification. My discussion also has important implications for the zetetic turn in epistemology, since I argue that evidentialists who are staunchly opposed to epistemic norms on inquiry have reason to reconsider. (shrink)

Belief polarization occurs when subjects who disagree about some matter of fact are exposed to a mixed body of evidence that bears on that dispute. While we might expect mutual exposure to common evidence to mitigate disagreement, since the evidence available to subjects comes to consist increasingly of items they have in common, this is not what happens. The subjects’ initial disagreement becomes more pronounced because each person increases confidence in her antecedent belief. Kelly aims to identify the mechanisms that (...) underlie this phenomenon and assess whether these processes undermine the justification of polarized beliefs. He concludes that given evidentialism, justification is not undermined by the polarizing mechanisms. I take on board Kelly’s description of the polarizing mechanisms, but challenge his conclusion. I argue that on plausible versions of evidentialism, the beliefs that result from these routes to polarization are not justified. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but (...) politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

There is an undeniable tendency to dismiss women’s sexual assault allegations out of hand. However, this tendency is not monolithic—allegations that black men have raped white women are often met with deadly seriousness. I argue that contemporary rape culture is characterized by the interplay between rape myths that minimize rape, and myths that catastrophize rape. Together, these two sets of rape myths distort the epistemic resources that people use when assessing rape allegations. These distortions result in the unjust exoneration of (...) people we cannot conceive of as monstrous, while making it too easy to believe that some marginalized people could be rapists. I also argue that rape myths enable a novel kind of epistemic injustice. This injustice concerns how our assessments of trustworthiness and our assessments of plausibility interact. I argue that rape myths can result in runaway credibility deflations that can explain both why people fail to believe most women, and also why people may unjustly believe false allegations that white women have been raped by black men. (shrink)

BackgroundWhen conducting research with Indigenous populations consent should be sought from both individual participants and the local community. We aimed to search and summarise the literature about methods for seeking consent for research with Indigenous populations.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted for articles that describe or evaluate the process of seeking informed consent for research with Indigenous participants. Guidelines for ethical research and for seeking consent with Indigenous people are also included in our review.ResultsOf 1447 articles found 1391 were excluded (...) ; 56 were relevant and included. Articles were categorised into original research that evaluated the consent process or publications detailing the process of seeking consent and guidelines for ethical research. Guidelines were categorised into international ; national and state/regional/local guidelines. In five studies based in Australia, Canada and The United States of America the consent process with Indigenous people was objectively evaluated. In 13 other studies interpreters, voice recording, videos, pictures, flipcharts and “plain language” forms were used to assist in seeking consent but these processes were not evaluated. Some Indigenous organisations provide examples of community-designed resources for seeking consent and describe methods of community engagement, but none are evaluated. International, national and local ethical guidelines stress the importance of upholding Indigenous values but fail to specify methods for engaging communities or obtaining individual consent. In the ‘Grey literature’ concerns about the consent process are identified but no solutions are offered.ConclusionConsultation with Indigenous communities is needed to determine how consent should be sought from the community and the individual, and how to evaluate this process. (shrink)

Madison Kilbride recently argued that insurance ) should cover in vitro fertilisation with preimplantation genetic testing services for couples at high risk of having a child affected with a genetic condition. She argues that IVF-PGT meets CMS’s definition of ‘medically necessary care’, where such care includes ‘services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease or its symptoms’. Kilbride argues that IVF-PGT satisfies this definition in two ways: as a diagnostic tool and as a treatment. Contradicting (...) Kilbride, however, I argue that IVF-PGT provides neither diagnosis nor treatment under CMS’s definition. Thus, as long as we accept CMS’s definition of medically necessary care—which Kilbride does, explicitly—it follows that IVF-PGT does not count as medically necessary care. Still, there may be other reasons to conclude that IVF-Preimplantation genetic testing should be covered, and so, it would be a mistake to reject Kilbride’s conclusion altogether. The problem is simply that Kilbride’s argument—that the procedure should be covered because it is medically necessary per CMS’s definition—is not sound. I conclude by discussing a number of other genetic services that are not currently being covered despite the fact that they do seem to satisfy CMS’s definition of ‘medically necessary diagnosis or treatment’. These services, I argue, should be provided under CMS before we consider expanding coverage to include elective procedures such as IVF-PGT. (shrink)

Experiments are commonly thought to have epistemic privilege over simulations. Two ideas underpin this belief: first, experiments generate greater inferential power than simulations, and second, simulations cannot surprise us the way experiments can. In this article I argue that neither of these claims is true of experiments versus simulations in general. We should give up the common practice of resting in-principle judgments about the epistemic value of cases of scientific inquiry on whether we classify those cases as experiments or simulations, (...) per se. To the extent that either methodology puts researchers in a privileged epistemic position, this is context sensitive. (shrink)

Deception sometimes results in nonconsensual sex. A recent body of literature diagnoses such violations as invalidating consent: the agreement is not morally transformative, which is why the sexual contact is a rights violation. We pursue a different explanation for the wrongs in question: there is valid consent, but it is not consent to the sex act that happened. Semantic conventions play a key role in distinguishing deceptions that result in nonconsensual sex (like stealth condom removal) from those that don’t (like (...) white lies). Our framework is also applicable to more controversial cases, like those implicated in so-called “gender fraud” complaints. (shrink)

Background Between 2013 and 2016, West Africa experienced the largest ever outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease. In the absence of registered treatments or vaccines to control this lethal disease, the World Health Organization coordinated and supported research to expedite identification of interventions that could control the outbreak and improve future control efforts. Consequently, the World Health Organization Research Ethics Review Committee was heavily involved in reviews and ethics discussions. It reviewed 24 new and 22 amended protocols for research studies including (...) interventional and observational studies. WHO-ERC reviews WHO-ERC provided the reviews within on average 6 working days. The WHO-ERC often could not provide immediate approval of protocols for reasons which were not Ebola Virus Disease specific but related to protocol inconsistencies, missing information and complex informed consents. WHO-ERC considerations on Ebola Virus Disease specific issues are presented. Conclusions To accelerate study approval in future public health emergencies, we recommend: internally consistent and complete submissions with information documents in language participants are likely to understand, close collaboration between local and international researchers from research inception, generation of template agreements for data and sample sharing and use during the ongoing global consultations on bio-banks, formation of Joint Scientific Advisory and Data Safety Review Committees for all studies linked to a particular intervention or group of interventions, formation of a Joint Ethics Review Committee with representatives of the Ethics Committees of all institutions and countries involved to strengthen reviews through the different perspectives provided without the ‘opportunity costs’ for time to final approval of multiple, independent reviews, direct information exchange between the chairs of advisory, safety review and ethics committees, more Ethics Committee support for investigators than is standard and a global consultation on criteria for inclusion of pregnant women and children in interventional studies for conditions which put them at particularly high risk of mortality or other irreversible adverse outcomes under standard-of-care. (shrink)

Francesco Redi’s seventeenth-century experiments on insect generation are regarded as a key contribution to the downfall of belief in spontaneous generation. Scholars praise Redi for his experiments demonstrating that meat does not generate insects, but condemn him for his claim elsewhere that trees can generate wasps and gallflies. He has been charged with rejecting spontaneous generation only to change his mind and accept it, and in the process, with failing as a rigorous experimental philosopher. In this paper I defend Redi (...) from both of these charges. In doing so, I draw some broader lessons for our understanding of spontaneous generation. ‘Spontaneous generation’ does not refer to a single theory, but rather a landscape of possible views. I analyze Redi’s theoretical commitments and situate them within this landscape, and argue that his error in the case of insects from plants is not as problematic as previous commentators have said it is. In his research on gall insects Redi was addressing a different question from that of his experiments on insect generation—the question was not “Can insects come from nonliving matter?,” but rather, “Can insects come from living organisms which are not their parents?” In the latter case, he gave an answer which we now know to be false, but this was not due to any failure in his rigor as an experimental philosopher. (shrink)

We consider the extent to which artistic and scientific representations can give us knowledge of how things are or could be. Focusing on representations of time, we take two case studies: simultaneity and temporal order; time-travel to the past. We analyse relevant scientific representations – from Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity – alongside relevant artistic representations – fictions which are non-committal about temporal order, and time-travel stories. In all the cases, we argue, drawing reliable conclusions from (...) the representations requires an understanding of the metaphysics of their subject matter and of the nature of representation itself. If we attempt to work out what is represented from the representation alone, then, far from acquiring knowledge, we risk obscuring the representation’s subject matter. (shrink)

The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention to plagiarize and (...) plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

The consent and community engagement process for research with Indigenous communities is rarely evaluated. Research protocols are not always collaborative, inclusive or culturally respectful. If participants do not trust or understand the research, selection bias may occur in recruitment, affecting study results potentially denying participants the opportunity to provide more knowledge and greater understanding about their community. Poorly informed consent can also harm the individual participant and the community as a whole. Invited by local Aboriginal community leaders of the Fitzroy (...) Valley, the Kimberley, Western Australia, The Picture Talk project explores the consent process for research. Focus groups of Aboriginal community members were conducted to establish preferences for methods of seeking individual consent. Transcripts were analysed through NVivo10 Qualitative software using grounded theory with inductive and deductive coding. Themes were synthesised with quotes highlighted. Focus groups with Aboriginal community members were facilitated by a Community Navigator as a cultural guide and interpreter and a researcher. Participants were recruited from all main language groups of the Fitzroy Valley – Gooniyandi, Walmajarri, Wangkatjungka, Bunuba and Nikinya. Participants were aged ≥18 years, with 5 female groups and one male group. Themes identified include: Reputation and trust is essential; The Community Navigator is key; Pictures give the words meaning – milli milli versus Pictures; Achieving consensus in circles; Signing for consent; and Research is needed in the Valley. Aboriginal communities of the Fitzroy Valley recommend that researchers collaborate with local leaders, develop trust and foster a good reputation in the community prior to research. Local Aboriginal researchers should be employed to provide cultural guidance throughout the research process and interpret local languages especially for elders. Pictures are preferred to written text to explain research information and most prefer to sign for consent. The Fitzroy Valley welcomes research when collaborative and for the benefit of the community. Future research could include exploring how to support young people, promote health screening and improve understanding of medical knowledge. (shrink)

Fiscal equivalence in the public administration of justice requires local police and courts to be financed exclusively by the populations that benefit from their services. Within a polycentric framework, broad based taxation to achieve fiscal equivalence is a desirable principle of public finance because it conceptually allows for the provision of justice to be determined by constituent’s preferences, and increases the political accountability of service providers to constituents. However, the overproduction of justice services can readily occur when the benefits of (...) the justice system are not enjoyed equally. Paradoxically, the same properties that make fiscal equivalence desirable by imposing restraint and control between constituents and local government also create internal pressures for agents of the state to engage in predatory, revenue-generating behavior. (shrink)

A contemporary of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe was one of the most influential early modern dramatists, whose life and mysterious death have long been the subject of critical and popular speculation. This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by leading international scholars discuss both his major and lesser-known works. Divided into three sections, 'Marlowe's works', 'Marlowe's world', and 'Marlowe's reception', the book ranges from Marlowe's (...) relationship with his own audience through to adaptations of his plays for modern cinema. Other contexts for Marlowe include history and politics, religion and science. Discussions of Marlowe's critics and Marlowe's appeal today, in performance, literature and biography, show how and why his works continue to resonate; and a comprehensive further reading list provides helpful suggestions for those who want to find out more. (shrink)

Recently, some work in feminist epistemology has received more uptake from mainstream western analytic epistemology than it had in the past. There has been recognition of the importance of topics like epistemic injustice, standpoint epistemology, and epistemologies of ignorance, for instance. But these discussions are often seen as orthogonal to core epistemic theorizing - they have not received uptake as fundamental contestations of the ways we understand epistemic value, or core normative epistemic concepts. I suggest that one reasons for this (...) is the perception that insofar as feminist theorizing is responsive to moral and political concerns, it is not doing epistemology because it is not theorizing about epistemic value. This assumes a specific kind of epistemic value monism - a view whose popularity, I argue, derives at least partly from features of the methodologies that are popular in mainstream epistemology. I show that by using a different type of methodology - ameliorative inquiry - we see that there is a principled reason to doubt epistemic value monism. We can thus understand feminist theorizing in ways that are richer, more accurate, and that contribute to our understanding of the ways in which our practical, moral, and epistemic agency are intertwined. (shrink)

Current literature suggesting a shared endophenotype between individuals with anorexia nervosa and autism spectrum disorder related to executive functioning has several limitations: performance-based instead of ecologically valid measures of set-shifting are used, lack of comparisons between same-sex groups, and reliance on adult samples only. This was the first study directly comparing female youth with ASD to female youth with AN using an ecologically valid measure of EF. A secondary data analysis combined caregiver-reported EF on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive (...) Functioning for 22 female adolescent youth with AN and 29 female adolescent youth with ASD. EF in each group was compared to population norms, and EF was compared between groups. Compared to population norms, adolescents with AN had elevated scores on shift, initiate, and emotional control scales, and adolescents with ASD had elevated scores on all scales of the BRIEF and were more likely to have scores in the clinical range. There were significant differences between groups on all but three scales. The cognitive profiles and clinical scores of AN females were not comparable to those of ASD females. The findings reveal a clear clinical impairment in females with ASD but not in females with AN. The results do not support the hypothesis of similar real-world EF profiles between these groups. The results encourage further exploration into the similarities and distinctions between these two disorders. (shrink)

Concepts like testimonial injustice (Fricker, 2007) and testimonial violence (Dotson, 2011) articulate that marginalized epistemic agents are unjustly undermined as testifiers when dominant agents cannot or will not hear, understand, or believe their testimony. This paper turns attention away from these constraints on uptake, and towards pragmatic, social, and political constraints on how dominant audiences receive and react to testimony. I argue that these constraints can also be sources of testimonial injustice and epistemic violence. Specifically, I explore a kind of (...) injustice that I call testimonial withdrawal, which occurs when a would-be speaker chooses to remain silent because they know or reasonably expect that there is pragmatic risk associated with speaking, given their unjust marginalization. I argue that this unjustly undermines epistemic agency, and that expanding Fricker and Dotson’s umbrella concepts to accommodate this idea results in a better understanding of the moral and epistemic contours of both testimonial withdrawal and these broader categories. (shrink)

The practice of communicating research findings to participants has been identified as important in the research ethics literature, but little research has examined empirically how this occurs and...

In this paper, I discuss the recent discovery of alleged arsenic bacteria in Mono Lake, California, and the ensuing debate in the scientific community about the validity and significance of these results. By situating this case in the broader context of projects that search for anomalous life forms, I examine the methodology and upshots of challenging biochemical constraints on living things. I distinguish between a narrower and a broader sense in which we might challenge or change our knowledge of life (...) as the result of such a project, and discuss two different kinds of projects that differ in their potential to overhaul our knowledge of life. I argue that the arsenic bacteria case, while potentially illuminating, is the kind of constraint-challenging project that could not—in spite of what was said when it was presented to the public—change our knowledge of life in the deeper sense. (shrink)

Returning genomic research results to family members raises complex questions. Genomic research on life-limiting conditions such as cancer, and research involving storage and reanalysis of data and specimens long into the future, makes these questions pressing. This author group, funded by an NIH grant, published consensus recommendations presenting a framework. This follow-up paper offers concrete guidance and tools for implementation. The group collected and analyzed relevant documents and guidance, including tools from the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium. The authors then (...) negotiated a consensus toolkit of processes and documents. That toolkit offers sample consent and notification documents plus decision flow-charts to address return of results to family of living and deceased participants, in adult and pediatric research. Core concerns are eliciting participant preferences on sharing results with family and on choice of a representative to make decisions about sharing after participant death. (shrink)

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to cope with environmental variability, and yet, despite its adaptive significance, phenotypic plasticity is neither ubiquitous nor infinite. In this review, we merge developmental and population genetic perspectives to explore costs and limits on the evolution of plasticity. Specifically, we focus on the role of modularity in developmental genetic networks as a mechanism underlying phenotypic plasticity, and apply to it lessons learned from population genetic theory on the interplay between relaxed selection and mutation accumulation. We (...) argue that the environmental specificity of gene expression and the associated reduction in pleiotropic constraints drive a fundamental tradeoff between the range of plasticity that can be accommodated and mutation accumulation in alternative developmental networks. This tradeoff has broad implications for understanding the origin and maintenance of plasticity and may contribute to a better understanding of the role of plasticity in the origin, diversification, and loss of phenotypic diversity. (shrink)

Focus on the evolutionary origins of musicality has been neglected relative to attention on language, so these new proposals are welcome stimulants. We argue for a broad comparative approach to understanding how the elements of musicality evolved, and against the use of overly simplistic evolutionary accounts.

Competition among scientists for funding, positions and prestige, among other things, is often seen as a salutary driving force in U.S. science. Its effects on scientists, their work and their relationships are seldom considered. Focus-group discussions with 51 mid- and early-career scientists, on which this study is based, reveal a dark side of competition in science. According to these scientists, competition contributes to strategic game-playing in science, a decline in free and open sharing of information and methods, sabotage of others’ (...) ability to use one’s work, interference with peer-review processes, deformation of relationships, and careless or questionable research conduct. When competition is pervasive, such effects may jeopardize the progress, efficiency and integrity of science. (shrink)

Persistent and pervasive rudeness and lack of respect are unfortunately common in workplaces today. The deleterious effects of this incivility at work may be even worse than previously demonstrated, impacting not only employee victims but also trickling down to those who employees contact. However, we propose that leaders who prioritize their followers’ needs above their own, also known as servant leaders, may be a critical preventative mechanism to reduce group-level incivility through promoting a virtuous climate. Applying social learning theory and (...) social information processing theory, we argue that servant leaders role model virtuous character that contributes to a virtuous climate that influences group members to reduce incivility and, in turn, treat others well. We utilize the healthcare setting to support this hypothesized process across multi-source measures of incivility from coworkers and team supervisors and three indicators of quality of patient care. Specific findings and implications for managers in healthcare settings and beyond are discussed. (shrink)

Koonin argues that CRISPR-Cas systems present the best-known case in point for Lamarckian evolution because they satisfy his proposed criteria for the specific inheritance of acquired adaptive characteristics. We see two interrelated issues with Koonin’s characterization of CRISPR-Cas systems as Lamarckian. First, at times he appears to confuse an account of the CRISPR-Cas system with an account of the mechanism it employs. We argue there is no evidence for the CRISPR-Cas system being “Lamarckian” in any sense. Second, it is unclear (...) whether the mechanism is more “Lamarckian” than many other forms of genetic change already well-characterized in Darwinian terms. We present three conceptually distinct senses in which the mechanism of IAC may be considered Lamarckian and argue that only the strongest sense of goal-directed IAC would be difficult to accommodate in a Darwinian account. As the CRISPR-Cas mechanism does not qualify as “Lamarckian” in this strong sense, we argue there is no conceptual value in calling it “Lamarckian”. Finally, we suggest that CRISPR-Cas systems do hold the potential for genuinely non-Darwinian, directed evolution in a way that Koonin did not discuss, involving their potential use as a human gene-editing tool. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.