Introduction: Vulnerability is a poorly understood concept in research ethics, often aligned to autonomy and consent. A recent addition to the literature represents a taxonomy of vulnerability developed by Kipnis, but this refers to the conduct of clinical trials rather than qualitative research, which may raise different issues. Aim: To examine issues of vulnerability in cancer and palliative care research obtained through qualitative interviews. Method: Secondary analysis of qualitative data from 26 black Caribbean and 19 white British patients with advanced (...) cancer. Results: Four domains of vulnerability derived from Kipnis’s taxonomy were identified and included: (i) communicative vulnerability, represented by participants impaired in their ability to communicate because of distressing symptoms; (ii) institutional vulnerability, which referred to participants who existed under the authority of others—for example, in hospital; (iii) deferential vulnerability, which included participants who were subject to the informal authority or the independent interests of others; (iv) medical vulnerability, which referred to participants with distressing medical conditions; and (v) social vulnerability, which included participants considered to belong to an undervalued social group. Participants from both ethnic groups populated all these domains, but those who were black Caribbean were more present among the socially vulnerable. Conclusions: Current classifications of vulnerability require reinterpretation when applied to qualitative research at the end of life. We recommend that researchers and research ethics committees reconceptualise vulnerability using the domains identified in this study and consider the research context and interviewers’ skills. (shrink)

Everyone interested in Arabic and Persian literature, in Islam and in comparative religion, regrets the death of Arthur J. Arberry, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Arberry combined rare human qualities and exceptional professional attainment, and this enabled him to make a unique contribution both to learning and to mutual understanding between East and West. He had a deep sense of vocation, which he brought to his unremitting labours as a skilled editor of texts, especially (...) in the field of Islamic mysticism, and as an imaginative translator of these texts of the Koran and of Arabic and Persian poetry, and as a sympathetic interpreter of Sūfism. (shrink)

The form of argument used by Popper and Miller to attack the concept of probabilistic induction is applied to the slightly different situation in which some evidence undermines a hypothesis. The result is seemingly absurd, thus bringing the form of argument under suspicion.

The causal propensity of an event F to cause another event E is explicated as the weight of evidence against F if E does not occur, given the state of the universe just before F occurred. This definition, first given in 1961, is sharpened, defended, and applied to several examples. In this definition the concept of weight of evidence in favor of a proposition, provided by another one, is to be understood in a technical sense that is intended to capture (...) its most customary informal meaning. (shrink)