I address the controversy in evolutionary biology concerning which levels of biological entity (units) can and do undergo natural selection. I refine a definition of the unit of selection, first presented by William Wimsatt, that is grounded in the structure of natural selection models. I examine Elliott Sober's objection to this structural definition, the "homogeneous populations" problem; I find that neither the proposed definition nor Sober's own causal account can solve the problem. Sober, in his solution using his causal view, (...) imports precisely the information needed to make the structural definition effective. Finally, I indicate how the proposed definition can clarify which sorts of evidence could be brought to bear on the controversial case of the Myxoma virus. (shrink)

Judges were never bound by law to convict a defendant unless they considered him guilty. Yet, they could be prohibited by law from convicting a person they consider guilty due to the absence of legally prescribed or the presence of legally prohibited evidence.Evaluation of Evidence addresses the question: should the law restrict the freedom of judges in assessing the probative value of evidence in the criminal process? Tracing the treatment of evidence from pre-modern to modern (...) times, Mirjan Damaška argues that there has always been some understanding about rules regarding the use and treatment of evidence, and these rules should not be looked askance as a departure from ideal arrangements. In a time when science and technology have the ability to contribute to factual inquiry, there needs to be acceptance of rules that expand or corroborate evidence produced by our native sensory apparatus. (shrink)

The conflation of two fundamentally distinct issues has generated serious confusion in the philosophical and biological literature concerning the units of selection. The questions of how a unit of selection is defined, theoretically, is rarely distinguished from the question of how to determine the empirical accuracy of claims--either specific or general--concerning which unit(s) are undergoing selection processes. In this paper, I begin by refining a definition of the unit of selection, first presented by William Wimsatt, that is grounded in the (...) structure of natural selection models. I then explore the implications of this definition for empirical evaluation of group selection models. I examine an objection to Wimsatt’s definition raised by Elliott Sober, and I conclude by indicating how the proposed refined definition can clarify which sorts of empirical evidence could be brought to bear on group selection controversies. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the application of ethical frameworks to public health policy. In particular, the article considers the use of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics stewardship model, as an applied framework for the evaluation of evidence within public health policymaking. The ‘Stewardship framework’ was applied to a policy proposal to restrict marketing of food and beverages to children. Reflections on applying the stewardship model as a framework are provided. The article concludes that the questions used (...) to apply the stewardship model usefully introduced ethical considerations into the evidence review. However, the real value will likely come from the type of policy process within which the framework is used, identifying competing value positions and capturing local value requirements. (shrink)

This monograph poses a series of key problems of evidential reasoning and argumentation. It then offers solutions achieved by applying recently developed computational models of argumentation made available in artificial intelligence. Each problem is posed in such a way that the solution is easily understood. The book progresses from confronting these problems and offering solutions to them, building a useful general method for evaluating arguments along the way. It provides a hands-on survey explaining to the reader how to use current (...) argumentation methods and concepts that are increasingly being implemented in more precise ways for the application of software tools in computational argumentation systems. It shows how the use of these tools and methods requires a new approach to the concepts of knowledge and explanation suitable for diverse settings, such as issues of public safety and health, debate, legal argumentation, forensic evidence, science education, and the use of expert opinion evidence in personal and public deliberations. (shrink)

One common mistake in discussions about the ethics of infant male circumcisioni is to attempt to answer the question of the practice's permissibility by appealing to general principles and bypassing the empirical evidence about purported benefits and harms of the practice.Joseph Mazor1 avoids the mistake of appealing only to general principles. He correctly argues that it is not sufficient to invoke a child's right to bodily integrity or to self-determinationii. Moreover, he does not appeal to parents’ rights to religious (...) or cultural freedom in order to make his case for the permissibility of parents having their sons circumcised for religious or cultural reasons.However, in invoking empirical considerations, he is insufficiently careful. For example, he includes, on the negative side of the circumcision ledger, a reduction in sexual pleasure, yet it is not clear that even his own reasoning warrants this. The problem is that he seems to want both, to acknowledge the absence of clear evidence for this claim, and to accept it as one of the costs of circumcision.He says that Michael Benatar and I2 ‘carefully reviewed the medical evidence’1 about circumcision. In the paper that he cites, we noted that competing claims were made about the effect of circumcision on sexual pleasureiii and we established that no conclusion could be drawn from the limited and conflicting evidence available on this question. Dr Mazor notes that critics could point to those studies that lend support to the conclusion that circumcision reduces sexual pleasure, but he concedes that this would be controversial,1 …. (shrink)

How should we evaluate an argument in which two witnesses independently testify to some claim? In fact what would happen is that the testimony of the second witness would be taken to corroborate that of the first to some extent, thereby boosting up the plausibility of the first argument from testimony. But does that commit the fallacy of double counting, because the second testimony is already taken as independent evidence supporting the claim? Perhaps the corroboration effect should be considered (...) illogical, since each premise should be seen as representing a separate reason in a convergent argument for accepting the claim as plausible. In this paper, we tackle the problem using argumentation schemes and argument diagramming. We examine a number of examples, and come up with two hypotheses that offer methods of analyzing and evaluating this kind of evidence. (shrink)

This thesis examines philosophical controversies surrounding the evaluation of medical treatments, with a focus on the evidential roles of randomised trials and mechanisms in Evidence-Based Medicine. Current 'best practice' usually involves excluding non-randomised trial evidence from systematic reviews in cases where randomised trials are available for inclusion in the reviews. The first paper challenges this practice and evaluates whether adding of evidence from non-randomised trials might improve the quality and precision of some systematic reviews. The second (...) paper compares the alleged methodological benefits of randomised trials over observational studies for investigating treatment benefits. It suggests that claims about the superiority of well-conducted randomised controlled trials over well-conducted observational studies are justified, especially when results from the two methods are contradictory. The third paper argues that postulating the unpredictability paradox in systematic reviews when no detectable empirical differences can be found requires further justification. The fourth paper examines the problem of absence causation in the context of explaining causal mechanisms and argues that a recent solution is incomplete and requires further justification. Solving the problem by describing absences as causes of 'mechanism failure' fails to take into account the effects of absences that lead to vacillating levels of mechanism functionality. The fifth paper criticises literature that has emphasised functioning versus 'broken' or 'non-functioning' mechanisms emphasising that many diseases result from increased or decreased mechanism function, rather than complete loss of function. Mechanistic explanations must account for differences in the effectiveness of performed functions, yet current philosophical mechanistic explanations do not achieve this. The last paper argues that the standard of evidence embodied in the ICE theory of technological function is too permissive for evaluating whether the proposed functions of medical technologies have been adequately assessed and correctly ascribed. It argues that high-quality evidence from clinical studies is necessary to justify functional ascriptions to health care technologies. (shrink)

Consider what the brain-state theorist has to do to make good his claims. He has to specify a physical–chemical state such that any organism (not just a mammal) is in pain if and only if (a) it possesses a brain of suitable physical–chemical structure; and (b) its brain is in that physical–chemical state. This means that the physical–chemical state in question must be a possible state of a mammalian brain, a reptilian brain, a mollusc’s brain (octopuses are mollusca, and certainly (...) feel pain), etc. At the same time, it must not be a possible (physically possible) state of the brain of any physically possible creature that cannot feel pain. Even if such a state can be found, it must be nomologically certain that it will also be a state of the brain of any extraterrestrial life that may be found that will be capable of feeling pain before we can even entertain the supposition that it may be pain. It is not altogether impossible that such a state will be found... . But this is certainly an ambitious hypothesis. (Putnam 1967/1975, p. 436) The belief that mental states are multiply realized is now nearly universal among philosophers, as is the belief that this fact decisively refutes the identity theory. I argue that the empirical support for multiple realization does not justify the confidence that has been placed in it. In order for multiple realization of mental states to be an objection to the identity theory, the neurological differences among pains, for example, must be such as to guarantee that they are of distinct neurological kinds. But the phenomena traditionally cited do not provide evidence of that sort of variation. In particular, examples of neural plasticity do not provide such evidence. (shrink)

Scientific evidence is crucial in a burgeoning number of litigated cases, legislative enactments, regulatory decisions, and scholarly arguments. Evaluating Scientific Evidence explores the question of what counts as scientific knowledge, a question that has become a focus of heated courtroom and scholarly debate, not only in the United States, but in other common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Controversies are rife over what is permissible use of genetic information, whether chemical exposure causes disease, (...) whether future dangerousness of violent or sexual offenders can be predicted, whether such time-honored methods of criminal identification have any better foundation than ancient divination rituals, among other important topics. This book examines the process of evaluating scientific evidence in both civil and criminal contexts, and explains how decisions by nonscientists that embody scientific knowledge can be improved. (shrink)

In response to the failure of Zeelenberg, Plomp, and Raaijmakers to replicate the results of Seamon, Luo, and Gallo regarding their purported finding of a reliable false memory effect in the absence of memory for the list items, Gallo and Seamon report a new experiment that they claim shows that conscious activation of a related lure during study is not necessary for its subsequent recognition. We critically evaluate their conclusion and argue that the evidence clearly shows that false recognition (...) is critically dependent on the conscious recollection of one or more of the list items. Thus, this as well as the previous experiments show no evidence for nonconscious processes in producing false memories. (shrink)

With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science’s unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. (...) The worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodies ought to enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that non-epistemic values can be rationally evaluated and that standpoint epistemology’s universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding, I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can be rationally chosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos’s search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science. (shrink)

Proponents of evidence-based medicine have recently suggested a “4S” approach to clinical decision making in which physicians are advised to rely on increasingly abstract summaries of the available research evidence. This retreat from the original data of medical research is ill-advised: it extends an unjustified evidence hierarchy, overestimates the role of computer systems, divides communities, discards evidence, ignores contexts, and devalues broad critical evaluation. I draw upon feminist social epistemology to evaluate the 4S approach to (...) EBM and to suggest means for improving the evidence base of medical research and practice. (shrink)

Proponents of evidence-based medicine have recently suggested a “4S” approach to clinical decision making in which physicians are advised to rely on increasingly abstract summaries of the available research evidence. This retreat from the original data of medical research is ill-advised: it extends an unjustified evidence hierarchy, overestimates the role of computer systems, divides communities, discards evidence, ignores contexts, and devalues broad critical evaluation. I draw upon feminist social epistemology to evaluate the 4S approach to (...) EBM and to suggest means for improving the evidence base of medical research and practice. (shrink)

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of (...) variance (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

This paper presents an impact evaluation of the policies for teacher education programs within the framework of the National Development Plan 2014-2018. The programs were compelled to obtain high-quality accreditation, increase the credits in school practices, and the English level, among other requirements. Relying on multivariable regression, it shows that, for the year 2021, there is no association between high-quality accreditation in most modules of the Saber Pro tests, or it is negative in the global score and quantitative reasoning. (...) In a second step, using Differences–in–Differences, it evidences how the changes made by the programs had positive effects on the performance of students compared to other professional programs. The results show significant improvement in most modules of the Saber Pro test, except for the English module. The effects were homogeneous by characteristics of the students and institutions, but heterogeneous by area of knowledge, indicating that the effect is mainly due to the curricular changes of the programs. (shrink)

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results (...) of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning. (shrink)

Given the risks of misinformation, addressees need to calibrate their trust towards communicators effectively. One way to do this is to evaluate the evidence speakers rely on (their evidential warrant) or claim to have (their evidential claims) when providing testimony. We review key findings in experimental psychology and experimental pragmatics to uncover the mechanisms underlying this form of trust calibration. This will ultimately shed light on the psychological foundations of principles that guide the evaluation of testimony in legal (...) contexts, such as the law against hearsay. (shrink)

The desire to maintain current beliefs can lead individuals to evaluate contrary evidence more critically than consistent evidence. We test whether priming individuals’ scientific reasoning...

Gaze direction signals another person’s focus of interest. Facial expressions convey information about their mental state. Appropriate responses to these signals should reflect their combined influence, yet current evidence suggests that gaze-cueing effects for objects near an observed face are not modulated by its emotional expression. Here, we extend the investigation of perceived gaze direction and emotional expression by considering their combined influence on affective judgments. While traditional response-time measures revealed equal gaze-cueing effects for happy and disgust faces, affective (...) evaluations critically depended on the combined product of gaze and emotion. Target objects looked at with a happy expression were liked more than objects looked at with a disgust expression. Objects not looked at were rated equally for both expressions. Our results demonstrate that facial expression does modulate the way that observers utilize gaze cues: Objects attended by others are evaluated according to the valence of their facial expression. C 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The use of evidence in medicine is something we should continuously seek to improve. This book seeks to develop our understanding of evidence of mechanism in evaluating evidence in medicine, public health, and social care; and also offers tools to help implement improved assessment of evidence of mechanism in practice. In this way, the book offers a bridge between more theoretical and conceptual insights and worries about evidence of mechanism and practical means to fit the (...) results into evidence assessment procedures. (shrink)

The subject of journal quality has received little attention in the business ethics literature. While there are reasons for this past neglect, there are important new considerations which make it vital that researchers now address this topic. First, virtually all business school departments use evaluations of journal quality as an important indicator of scholarly achievement, yet business ethics has no such studies. Second, as many schools are beginning to ask ethicists to publish in the wider management literature, it is important (...) to find a way to compare journal quality across these domains. In the absence of such studies, performance review committees (including tenure decisions) may well make incorrect inferences about journal quality within business ethics or assume that ethics journals are not prestigious unless a candidate can provide evidence to the contrary (i.e. as in a study like this one). This study addresses these two issues. It relies on an opinion-based survey to establish journal quality by incorporating a list of journals within business ethics and the wider management literature. The target population is active business ethics researchers within the Society for Business Ethics (SBE). We present the results of the study and discuss their implications. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 6, Page 33-34, June 2012.

The subject of journal quality has received little attention in the business ethics literature. While there are reasons for this past neglect, there are important new considerations which make it vital that researchers now address this topic. First, virtually all business school departments use evaluations of journal quality as an important indicator of scholarly achievement, yet business ethics has no such studies. Second, as many schools are beginning to ask ethicists to publish in the wider management literature, it is important (...) to find a way to compare journal quality across these domains. In the absence of such studies, performance review committees (including tenure decisions) may well make incorrect inferences about journal quality within business ethics or assume that ethics journals are not prestigious unless a candidate can provide evidence to the contrary (i.e. as in a study like this one). This study addresses these two issues. It relies on an opinion-based survey to establish journal quality by incorporating a list of journals within business ethics and the wider management literature. The target population is active business ethics researchers within the Society for Business Ethics (SBE). We present the results of the study and discuss their implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Questions of Evidence: An Anonymous Tract Attributed to John TolandRhoda RappaportIn 1695 there was published in London a tract with the unprepossessing title, Two Essays sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London, by “L. P. Master of Arts.” Because the larger part of this work attacks John Woodward’s theory of the earth, published earlier that year, historians of geology have long been familiar with (...) the Two Essays, even if none has managed to identify L. P. In 1975 Giancarlo Carabelli offered evidence for a conjectural attribution of the Two Essays to John Toland (1670–1722), the famous deist who established his notoriety the next year with his Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). 1 Carabelli’s cautious attribution would require no comment, were it not for the fact that what began as conjecture has evolved into a strong probability and even into an established fact—all this without any notable addition to Carabelli’s evidence. It is surely time to look more closely at that evidence.Carabelli first presents the main points of the Two Essays: a rejection of Woodward’s supernaturalism, a preference for natural causes to explain even the origins of the earth, and a reduction of the Bible to the level of ancient myth and legend. We have here a pronounced free-thinker and materialist, and Toland’s later writings make him a plausible candidate as author. (Whether this interpretation of the Two Essays is accurate will be discussed later in this study.) Carabelli then provides three pieces of evidence, without discussion or evaluation. The next paragraphs rehearse that evidence, with commentary. [End Page 339]The Rumor in OxfordAccording to Edward Lhwyd (or Lhuyd), Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford rumor had it that Toland was L. P. Lhwyd denied the rumor, chiefly because L. P. seemed to have had the aid of “some good naturalist”—this did not fit Lhwyd’s notion of Toland’s temperament. 2 In truth, although Lhwyd did not yet know it, L. P. did indeed get such aid from Tancred Robinson, F.R.S., but Robinson declined to identify L. P. 3 Thus far Carabelli.A rumor is no secure basis for attribution, especially when it is contradicted by someone who knew Toland reasonably well. In the small community of Oxford, Lhwyd quickly knew about Toland even before meeting him, because the two had common antiquarian interests. Toland had gone to Oxford with the intention of compiling an Irish dictionary, and fragmentary evidence shows that the two then met to discuss their Celtic researches. 4 A distinguished naturalist, Lhwyd also was consulted by Toland on matters of natural history—at least, the surviving text on this issue shows Toland asking one question of a trivial sort. Lhwyd then comments that Toland is “not conversant in these studies” but yet has ideas about them. 5 As the latter phrase indicates, Lhwyd learned much about the temper and opinions of Toland. He knew that Toland was “railing in coffee houses” about matters religious and political, but he did not associate religious radicalism with the Two Essays. Instead, Lhwyd assessed Toland’s fitness to deal with Woodward entirely in terms of temperament and personality: Toland was a man “of excellent parts, but as litle [sic] a share as may be of modesty or conscience; and one of the best scolds I ever met with.” In the same letter Lhwyd assessed Woodward as Toland’s presumed equal in stubbornness and egotism. 6In saying that L. P. must have had the advice of “some good naturalist,” Lhwyd seems to imply that Toland was too ignorant (of natural history) and too intemperate to profit from or perhaps even to seek advice. [End Page 340] Despite these doubts, is it not possible that Toland could have acquired sufficient knowledge of natural history, in a period of about four months (between the publication of Woodward’s book and that of the Two Essays), to display the expertise shown by L. P.? Any British virtuoso could surely have done so, and the Two Essays actually include a good little bibliography of suitable publications that would provide a working knowledge of the latest ideas... (shrink)

Evidence and Evolution has four chapters: (1) Evidence, (2) Intelligent Design, (3) Natural Selection, and (4) Common Ancestry. The first chapter develops tools that are used in the rest of the book, though more ideas about evidence are added. In Chapter 1, I endorse a pluralistic outlook—Bayesianism is fine in some inference problems, likelihoodism in others, and AIC in still others. In Chapter Two, on intelligent design, I try to develop the strongest possible formulation of the design (...) argument for the existence of God, after which I criticize the argument so conceived. This second chapter also attempts to resuscitate the concept of testability. Chapter 3, on natural selection, discusses how to evaluate competing hypotheses on evolution mechanisms and evaluate the use of the principle of common cause, molecular data, and cladistic parsimony. Chapter 4 is on common ancestry: what it means to say that all life on earth has a common ancestor, and s. Why should the similarity of two species be evidence that they have a common ancestor? The chapter concludes with a discussion of how biologists use cladistic parsimony to infer phylogenetic trees and compare it with explicit statistical approaches. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evaluation of Implicit AnthropologiesJochen Fahrenberg (bio) and Marcus Cheetham (bio)Keywordsmind-body, philosophical assumptions, human natureThe three commentaries and the reviewer’s notes contain valuable reflections and expand on number of important points. There is general agreement that surprisingly little is known about psychologists’, psychotherapists’, clinicians’, and other professionals’ philosophical assumptions about human nature. It is conceivable that these implicit anthropologies represent a potential source of bias in research and (...) practice and that further research is therefore justified.Doctor Walach emphasizes the pluralism of world views, which is evident in the questionnaire response patterns. The findings contradict the assumption that monism, immanence, and a scientific worldview are predominant preconceptions. Instead, psychology students mostly favor ontological or methodological dualism, and con-firm that they have spiritual beliefs or indeed some belief in paranormal phenomena. From this, Dr. Walach extends his thought-provoking perspective to folk psychology, as opposed to mainstream psychology, and reflects on the influence of individual beliefs on scientific culture. It is especially from this perspective that the investigation of certain key concepts and belief systems should be given every encouragement.Doctors Wells and Rackley were particularly interested in the implicit anthropologies of clinicians. They are inclined to attribute individual differences in understanding and interaction with patients to “psychological” traits or to momentary experience rather than to philosophical beliefs. The latter view was supported by the majority of students in our investigation. With respect to psychotherapists and clinicians, our article contained only a short reference to the interviews conducted by Wider. The majority of the forty-two professionals taking part in this pilot study assumed that there may be such differential biases in their fields, but they conceded that the momentary clinical condition and pragmatic necessities would often override such biases. An empirical investigation to differentiate psychological, pragmatic–clinical, and philosophical factors and the associated bias would be an ambitious project; very careful interviews and perhaps participant observation would be necessary. But before undertaking such a study, further descriptive studies and the development of testable hypotheses are required.Doctor Brendel referred to the intricacies of the mind–body problem. We agree that many of the recent philosophical writings show nonreductive physicalism to be among the highly favored conceptions. (We do not know whether this discourse represents the majority opinion of philosophers, psychologists, clinicians, or even neuroscientists.) [End Page 213] The inclusion of this specific conception in the multiple-choice item list would require the inclusion of a specific vocabulary and some definitions that are controversial, even among the proponents of nonreductive physicalism. We decided to restrict the wide spectrum of concepts to five categories. Doctor Brendel goes on to voice explicit support for the conceptualization proposed by Horgan, who recommended a pragmatic approach and the use of double vocabularies. He suggests that context-related features in a given instance would suffice for selecting the most appropriate explanation. It is, however, conceivable that close examination of the decision process would reveal criteria containing or stemming from philosophical assumptions.Doctor Walach makes reference to the complementarity principle, which has a certain intellectual appeal when cross-category relationships are considered, and is not restricted to the domain of physics. Compared with a double-language dualism, the complementarity principle postulates that both frames of reference are fundamentally different in categories, exhaustive within their specific explanation scheme, but are essentially incomplete if, for example, brain and consciousness are viewed as a whole.Pertinent methodological aspects were already addressed in the article and endnote. However, the appropriateness of a questionnaire with which to assess philosophical standpoints will continue to be met with concern and require careful consideration. It is clear that there is no other practical method for gathering in a population like first-year students of psychology representative data about ontological beliefs, religious attitudes, or assumptions on human nature.Doctors Wells and Rackley noted discrepancies in the response to two items relating to spiritual existence after death and the cessation of consciousness with biological death. The two statements seem to be contradictory and the observed inconsistencies point to possible misunderstandings, response tendencies, context-dependent effects, or other shortcomings well-known in research using personality questionnaires. However, the assumed postmortal existence... (shrink)

The experience of grace is currently attracting increased empirical interest. Validated instruments to assess aspects of the experience of grace in a secularized context are scarce which limits current psychological research on grace in other than highly religious populations. We present a bottom-up construction of the Experiencing Grace Scale (EGS) and evidence supporting its reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit for the four subscales: Appraising Grace, Giving Grace, Receiving Grace, and Divine Grace. Reliability analysis showed (...) overall good internal consistency and test–retest stability. Convergent validity was demonstrated by means of expected associations between subscales of the EGS and other relevant measures. Predictive validity was confirmed by associations between subscales of the EGS at measurement Wave 1 with mental well-being scales at Wave 2. The EGS contributes to further research on the experience of grace and its relationship to other psychosocial variables in the field of positive psychology. (shrink)

We examine whether the "evidence of evidence is evidence" principle is true. We distinguish several different versions of the principle and evaluate recent attacks on some of those versions. We argue that, whatever the merits of those attacks, they leave the more important rendition of the principle untouched. That version is, however, also subject to new kinds of counterexamples. We end by suggesting how to formulate a better version of the principle that takes into account those new (...) counterexamples. (shrink)

Food advertising targeted at children is associated with the development of unhealthy eating habits and childhood obesity. In Spain, where one in every three children suffers from overweight, a voluntary regulation mechanism has been adopted to control such advertising, despite evidence of its ineffectiveness. This study's stated objective was to evaluate the grounds for implementing a policy that would ban the advertising of energy-dense, nutrient-poor food and beverages targeted at children in Spain, incorporating an ethical perspective in the analysis. (...) Using a bibliographic search of various databases, we reviewed the evidence for answering the seven questions posed by Walton et al.'s ethical evaluation framework, drawn up on the basis of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Stewardship model. The results show that the proposed intervention is cost-effective, minimally intrusive, promotes healthy environments, acts on a vulnerable population, helps children lead healthy lifestyles, reduces social health inequalities, increases parents' individual freedom of choice and enjoys the support of scientists, health professionals and consumers alike. Accordingly, we feel that the time has come for food advertising directed to children in Spain to be statutorily regulated, by banning the promotion of EDNP products. (shrink)

Student evaluations of teaching are ubiquitous in the academe as a metric for assessing teaching and frequently used in critical personnel decisions. Yet, there is ample evidence documenting both measurement and equity bias in these assessments. Student Evaluations of Teaching have low or no correlation with learning. Furthermore, scholars using different data and different methodologies routinely find that women faculty, faculty of color, and other marginalized groups are subject to a disadvantage in SETs. Extant research on bias on teaching (...) evaluations tend to review only the aspect of the literature most pertinent to that study. In this paper, we review a novel dataset of over 100 articles on bias in student evaluations of teaching and provide a nuanced review of this broad but established literature. We find that women and other marginalized groups do face significant biases in standard evaluations of teaching – however, the effect of gender is conditional upon other factors. We conclude with recommendations for the judicious use of SETs and avenues for future research. (shrink)