Background Genuine uncertainty on superiority of one intervention over the other is called equipoise. Physician-investigators in randomized controlled trials need equipoise at least in studies with more than minimal risks. Ideally, this equipoise is also present in patient-participants. In pediatrics, data on equipoise are lacking. We hypothesize that 1) lack of equipoise at enrolment among parents may reduce recruitment; 2) lack of equipoise during participation may reduce retention in patients assigned to a less favoured treatment-strategy. Methods We compared preferences of (...) parents/patients at enrolment, documented by a questionnaire, with preferences developed during follow-up by an interview-study to investigate equipoise of child-participants and parents in the BeSt-for-Kids-study. This trial in new-onset Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis-patients consists of three strategies. One strategy comprises initial treatment with a biological disease-modifying-antirheumatic-drug, currently not standard-of-care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 parents and 7 patients, median 11 months after enrolment. Results Initially most parents and children were not in equipoise. Parents/patients who refused participation, regularly declined due to specific preferences. Many participating families preferred the biological-first-strategy. They participated to have a chance for this initial treatment, and would even consider stopping trial-participation when not randomized for it. Their conviction of superiority of the biological-first strategy was based on knowledge from internet and close relations. According to four parents, the physician-investigator preferred the biological-first-strategy, but the majority stated that she had no preferred strategy. In phase 2, preferences tended to change to the treatment actually received. Conclusions Lack of equipoise during enrolment did not reduce study recruitment, mainly due to the fact that preferred treatment was only available within the study. Still, when developing a trial it is important to evaluate whether the physicians’ research question is in line with preferences of the patient-group. By exploring so-called ‘informed patient-group’-equipoise, successful recruitment may be enhanced and bias avoided. In our study, lack of equipoise during trial-participation did not reduce retention in those assigned to a less favoured option. We observed a change for preference towards treatment actually received, possibly explained by comparable outcomes in all three arms. (shrink)

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable (...) if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. (shrink)

The most important and common solution to the Pyrrhonian skeptic’s regress problem is foundationalism. Reason-giving must stop somewhere, argues the foundationalist, and the fact that it does stop does not threaten knowledge or justification. The foundationalist has a problem, though; while foundationalism might adequately answer skepticism, it does not allow for a satisfying reply to the skeptic. The feature that makes a belief foundationally justified is not the sort of thing that can be given to another as a reason. Thus, (...) if foundationalism is true, we can only fall silent in the face of a challenge to our epistemically basic beliefs. Call this the practical or existential problem of foundationalism. Thomas Reid offers a rather stunning solution to this problem. Humor, he thinks, can be used to defend basic beliefs which cannot be defended by argument. We develop and defend an account on which Reid is correct and emotions such as rueful amusement can be invoked to rationally persuade the skeptic to accept foundationally justified beliefs. Then, inspired by Kierkegaard, we extend the account to foundational moral and religious beliefs. (shrink)

A theory is presented to explain how accurate, single-joint movements are controlled. The theory applies to movements across different distances, with different inertial loads, toward targets of different widths over a wide range of experimentally manipulated velocities. The theory is based on three propositions. (1) Movements are planned according to “strategies” of which there are at least two: a speed-insensitive (SI) and a speed-sensitive (SS) one. (2) These strategies can be equated with sets of rules for performing diverse movement tasks. (...) The choice between SI and SS depends on whether movement speed and/or movement time (and hence appropriate muscle forces) must be constrained to meet task requirements. (3) The electromyogram can be interpreted as a low-pass filtered version of the controlling signal to the motoneuron pools. This controlling signal can be modelled as a rectangular excitation pulse in which modulation occurs in either pulse amplitude or pulse width. Movements to different distances and with loads are controlled by the SI strategy, which modulates pulse width. Movements in which speed must be explicitly regulated are controlled by the SS strategy, which modulates pulse amplitude. The distinction between the two movement strategies reconciles many apparent conflicts in the motor control literature. (shrink)

There are many ongoing debates within the scientific and ethical communities about the subject of animal welfare. This book distills some of the major themes of current debate into one volume, edited by internationally known names in the field of animal welfare. Each chapter is written by one or more leading experts who discuss, in an even-handed way, a provocative topic that will be of interest to anyone concerned with animal welfare. Issues covered include tail docking, farm animal production, neutering (...) of feral cats and the need to conserve habitats of native wild animals in the face of threats from non-native species. Chapters address the different values and priorities involved in dealing with these issues, including scientific and more explicit ethical approaches. Each chapter ends with questions for discussion that may help readers to engage with these dilemmas. (shrink)

Supporting children to successfully transition from primary to secondary school is of utmost importance for several reasons, including to prevent future emotional and behavioural problems. Level Up is a novel, UK-based intervention consisting of five online group sessions, straddling the summer holidays, and providing at-risk children and their parents/carers with skills to manage their behaviour, emotions, and relationships to support their transition to secondary school. A prior evaluation of Level Up reported a need to better describe the mechanisms of change. (...) This study therefore evaluated the experiences of children and their parents/carers regarding the facilitators and barriers to engagement and change, and the perceived impact. Fourteen children and 17 parents/carers were interviewed. Identified barriers and facilitators were: (1) Having a safe, supportive, and fun space, (2) Learning through connection, (3) A family approach, (4) Problematic group dynamics, and (5) Connecting through video calls. Perceived impact was described as: (1) Empowering children, (2) Supporting children socially, (3) Supporting parents and carers in their parenting role, and (4) Supporting a successful transition to secondary school. Another theme (5) describes some families’ experiences of limited impact. These findings can be used to better understand how to support children in their school transition. (shrink)

When someone steps on your toe on purpose, it seems to hurt more than when the person does the same thing unintentionally. The physical parameters of the harm may not differ—your toe is flattened in both cases—but the psychological experience of pain is changed nonetheless. Intentional harms are premeditated by another person and have the specific purpose of causing pain. In a sense, intended harms are events initiated by one mind to communicate meaning (malice) to another, and this could shape (...) the recipient’s experience. This study examined whether self-reported pain is indeed higher when the events producing the pain are understood as intentionally (as opposed to unintentionally) caused by another person. Although pain was traditionally conceived to be solely physical in nature (Aydede, 2005), its experience varies substantially with psychological context. The placebo analgesia effect, for example, is the reduction of pain without a change in physical stimulation when context, expectations, or sugar pills challenge the interpretation of a sensation as painful (e.g., Fields, 2008). The nocebo effect, in turn, is the experience of pain without any physical stimulation—as when participants report headaches when told that a (nonexistent) electric current is passing through their heads (Schweiger & Parducci, 1981). These variations in pain experience seem to depend on the meaning of the stimulus: A sugar pill is meant to decrease pain, whereas electric current is meant to increase pain. In an interpersonal context, the meaning of an action is derived from the would complete. perceiver’s perceptions of the actor’s intention (Clark, 1996). (shrink)

This essay comments on the theory of social norms developed by Cristina Bicchieri in The Grammar of Society. It applauds her theory of norms but argues that it cannot account for the experimental results concerning ultimatum games. A theory of fairness is also needed. It develops a number of specific criticisms of her way of incorporating the influence of norms into preferences. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 5197 Helen C. White Hall, 600 (...) N. Park Street, Madison, WI 53706‐1474; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

BackgroundAdverse childhood experiences can cause serious mental problems in adolescents and therefore may expected to be associated with higher use of psychosocial care, potentially varying by type of specific ACE. The aim of our study is to explore the association of the number of ACE and types of specific ACE with entering and using psychosocial care.MethodsWe used data from the Slovak Care4Youth cohort study, comprising 509 adolescents from 10 to 16 years old. We used logistic regression models adjusted for age, (...) gender, and family affluence to explore the associations of number and type of specific ACE with the use of psychosocial care.ResultsHaving three or more ACE as well as experiencing some specific ACE increased the likelihood of using psychosocial care. Regarding experience with the death of somebody else you love, we found a decreased likelihood of the use of psychosocial care.ConclusionExperiencing ACE above a certain threshold and parent-related ACE increase the likelihood of adolescent care use. (shrink)

Patients fit with cochlear implants commonly indicate at the time of device fitting and for some time after, that the speech signal sounds abnormal. A high pitch or timbre is one component of the abnormal percept. In this project, our aim was to determine whether a number of years of CI use reduced perceived upshifts in frequency spectrum and/or voice fundamental frequency. The participants were five individuals who were deaf in one ear and who had normal hearing in the other (...) ear. The deafened ears had been implanted with a 18.5 mm electrode array which resulted in signal input frequencies being directed to locations in the spiral ganglion that were between one and two octaves higher than the input frequencies. The patients judged the similarity of a clean signal presented to their implanted ear and candidate, implant-like, signals presented to their normal-hearing ear. Matches to implant sound quality were obtained, on average, at 8 months after device activation and at 35 months after activation. At Time 1, the matches to CI sound quality were characterized, most generally, by upshifts in the frequency spectrum and in voice pitch. At Time 2, for four of the five patients, frequency spectrum values remained elevated. For all five patients F0 values remained elevated. Overall, the data offer little support for the proposition that, for patients fit with shorter electrode arrays, cortical plasticity nudges the cortical representation of the CI voice toward more normal, or less upshifted, frequency values between 8 and 35 months after device activation. Cortical plasticity may be limited when there are large differences between frequencies in the input signal and the locations in the SG stimulated by those frequencies. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:M. C. Henberg GEORGE ELIOT'S MORAL REALISM No moment in the history of ethics could be more propitious than the present for a comprehensive restudy of George Eliot's moral realism. Analysis of the "logic" of moral language has proved barren, prescriptivism is in full flight, and schematic divisions of moral theories into descriptive versus normative, deontological versus teleological, or substantive versus meta-ethical have promised much but delivered little. Such (...) distinctions dominate maps to the modern moral terrain, but awanderer in the land ofchoice itselfstill finds himselfwithout signposts. A particularly unhealthy bias in contemporary ethics has been the belief that moral principles ought to withstand all counterexamples, however plausible or implausible, whether concocted from a sense of men's actual capacities or from a fondness for outrageous possibilities, many of them lifted from the pages of science fiction. If moral rules do not govern in hard cases, it is thought, they do not govern at all. Few philosophers have bothered to distinguish between the hard cases common to men's actual choices and the hard cases confronted by one man in a million or by the imagined inhabitants of some future world. (Witness, for example, the present preoccupation with "lifeboat ethics" and ask yourself how many actual moral choices are so starkly dramatic.) Any logically possible circumstance is too often assumed to qualify as a fruitful area for moral investigation; and any conceivable counterexample, achieved by whatever stretch of the imagination, is assumed to be fair ammunition in the debate over principles. Closely related to this first bad tendency in modern philosophical ethics is another, equally bad. Too often the examples used are of little moral significance, obviously conceived to make a point rather than to direct attention to commonplace but nonetheless important circumstances where informed choice is essential. Philosophy journals have treated us to discussions about whether failing to wear tennis whites is or is not "rude" and about whether a first sinner's crossing of a patch of lawn does or does not have a "threshold-related effect" 20 M. C. Henberg21 which must be considered in assessing later consequences (a bare path ultimately worn in the grass). Such examples rightly earn a contemptuous snort from anyone who expects philosophy to increase our understanding in matters of serious consequence. Whatever her other accomplishments as a moralist and philosophical thinker, George Eliot never commits either of the preceding crimes. Her moral realism constitutes first and foremost an ethics aimed at the bulk of her fellow men. She yields to the theoretic impulse solely in criticizing other theories. When it comes to providing answers, she depicts fictional characters whose struggles, failings, and passions are ultimately akin to what we ourselves are likely to experience. Her ethical precepts are not aimed at proving themselves in every conceivable situation. They are instead precepts which are sometimes susceptible to ruin, just as are the changeable creatures who profess them. To know the natural boundaries of a moral rule, Eliot tells us, is as difficult and important as knowing the rule itself. Moral realism requires a combination of clear-eyed perception and imaginative sympathy—faculties ill-served by lectures on abstract principles. Eliot reminds us that our best moral judgments must be "checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot" (The Mill on the Floss, Book VII, chap. 3). This emphasis in particular—found both in her early essays and early fiction—makes Eliot's moral realism a welcome anodyne to the worst tendencies of modern ethics. The discussion which follows will be confined to early works, including Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, and The Mill on the Floss. The ruminations of her authorial voice in these novels may conveniently be juxtaposed with her essays, for the works are near to one another both temporally and thematically. Later novels such as Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda—however interesting from an ethical perspective— do not lend themselves to this mode of analysis. To what extent Eliot's views are modified in these later novels constitutes a separate topic whose omission here does not reflect upon its intrinsic interest or importance. Since George Eliot offers no... (shrink)

Conversation is supported by the beliefs that people have in common and the perceptual experience that they share. The visual context of a conversation has two aspects: the information that is available to each conversant, and their beliefs about what is present for each other. In our experiment, we separated these factors for the first time and examined their impact on a spontaneous conversation. We manipulated the fact that a visual scene was shared or not and the belief that a (...) visual scene was shared or not. Participants watched videos of actors talking about a controversial topic, then discussed their own views while looking at either a blank screen or the actors. Each believed (correctly or not) that their partner was either looking at a blank screen or the same images. We recorded conversants’ eye movements, quantified how they were coordinated, and analyzed their speech patterns. Gaze coordination has been shown to be causally related to the knowledge people share before a conversation, and the information they later recall. Here, we found that both the presence of the visual scene, and beliefs about its presence for another, influenced language use and gaze coordination. (shrink)

This paper proposes to examine Daniel Cohen’s recent attempt to apply virtues to argumentation theory, with special attention given to his explication of how open-mindedness can be regarded as an argumentational or critical virtue. It is argued that his analysis involves a contentious claim about open-mindedness as an epistemic virtue, which generates a tension for agents who are simultaneously both an arguer and a knower (or who strive to be both). I contend that this tension can be eased or resolved (...) by clarifying the nature of open-mindedness and by construing open-mindedness in terms of its function. Specifically, a willingness to take a novel viewpoint seriously is sufficient for making open-mindedness both an epistemic and a critical virtue. (shrink)

It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male. Evidence to test these hypotheses, however, is inconclusive due to the difficulties of obtaining unbiased data. Here we report a pre-registered test of these four hypotheses, conducted on papers that were (...) identified in a previous study as containing problematic image duplications through a systematic screening of the journal PLoS ONE. Image duplications were classified into three categories based on their complexity, with category 1 being most likely to reflect unintentional error and category 3 being most likely to reflect intentional fabrication. We tested multiple parameters connected to the hypotheses above with a matched-control paradigm, by collecting two controls for each paper containing duplications. Category 1 duplications were mostly not associated with any of the parameters tested, as was predicted based on the assumption that these duplications were mostly not due to misconduct. Categories 2 and 3, however, exhibited numerous statistically significant associations. Results of univariable and multivariable analyses support the hypotheses that academic culture, peer control, cash-based publication incentives and national misconduct policies might affect scientific integrity. No clear support was found for the “pressures to publish” hypothesis. Female authors were found to be equally likely to publish duplicated images compared to males. Country-level parameters generally exhibited stronger effects than individual-level parameters, because developing countries were significantly more likely to produce problematic image duplications. This suggests that promoting good research practices in all countries should be a priority for the international research integrity agenda. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the development of well-founded conceptual models for Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic ex- changes are a central notion in these areas and they occupy a prominent position in frameworks such as the Resource-Event Action (REA) ISO Standard, service core ontologies (e.g., UFO-S) as well as financial stan- dards (e.g. OMG’s Financial Industry Business Ontology - FIBO). We present a core ontology for economic exchanges inspired by a (...) recent view on this phenomenon. According to this view, economic exchanges are based on an agreement on the actions that the agents are committed to perform. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction. We ground our core ontology on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), discussing its formal and conceptual aspects, instantiating it as a reusable OntoUML model, and confronting it with the REA standard and the UFO-S service ontology. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in thedevelopment of ontologically well-founded conceptual models for Information Systems in areas such as Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic exchanges are central phenomena in these areas. For this reason, they occupy a prominent position in modelling frameworks such as the REA (Resource-EventAction) ISO Standard as well as the FIBO (Financial Industry BusinessOntology). In this paper, we begin a well-founded ontological analysisof economic exchanges inspired by a recent ontological (...) view on the nature of economic transactions. According to this view, what counts asan economic transaction is based on an agreement on the actions thatthe agents are committed to perform. The agreement is in turn based on convergent preferences about the course of action to bring about. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction, and complies with the view that all economictransactions are about services. In this paper, we start developing our analysis in the framework of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). (shrink)

Clinical trials of xenotransplantation may begin early in the next decade, with kidneys from genetically modified pigs transplanted into adult humans. If successful, transplanting pig hearts into children with advanced heart failure may be the next step. Typically, clinical trials have a specified end date, and participants are aware of the amount of time they will be in the study. This is not so with XTx. The current ethical consensus is that XTx recipients must consent to lifelong monitoring. While this (...) presents challenges to the right to withdraw in the adult population, additional and unanswered questions also linger in the paediatric population. In paediatric XTx, parents or guardians consent not only to the initial treatment of the child but also to lifelong monitoring, thus making a decision whose consequences will remain present as the child develops the capacity for assent, and finally the capacity for informed consent or refusal. This article presents and evaluates unanswered paediatric ethical questions in regard to the right to withdraw from XTx follow-up in the paediatric population. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

We apply the author's computational approach to groups to our empirical work studying and modelling riots. We suggest that assigning roles in particular gives insight, and measuring the frequency of bystander behaviour provides a method to understand the dynamic nature of intergroup conflict, allowing social identity to be incorporated into models of riots.

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research (...) agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)