In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging (...) issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders. (shrink)

Recently, Bohr’s complementarity principle was assessed in setups involving delayed choices. These works argued in favor of a reformulation of the aforementioned principle so as to account for situations in which a quantum system would simultaneously behave as wave and particle. Here we defend a framework that, supported by well-known experimental results and consistent with the decoherence paradigm, allows us to interpret complementarity in terms of correlations between the system and an informer. Our proposal offers formal definition and operational interpretation (...) for the dual behavior in terms of both nonlocal resources and the couple work-information. Most importantly, our results provide a generalized information-based trade-off for the wave–particle duality and a causal interpretation for delayed-choice experiments. (shrink)

The data produced by the scientific community impacts on academia, clinicians, and the general public; therefore, the scientific community and other regulatory bodies have been focussing on ethical codes of conduct. Despite the measures taken by several research councils, unethical research, publishing and/or reviewing behaviours still take place. This exploratory study considers some of the current unethical practices and the reasons behind them and explores the ways to discourage these within research and other professional disciplinary bodies. These interviews/discussions with PhD (...) students, technicians, and academics/principal investigators were conducted mostly in European higher education institutions including UK, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands.Through collegiate discussions, sharing experiences and by examining previously published/reported information, authors have identified several less reported behaviours. Some of these practices are mainly influenced either by the undue institutional expectations of research esteem or by changes in the journal review process. These malpractices can be divided in two categories relating to methodological malpractices including data management, and those that contravene publishing ethics. The former is mostly related to “committed bias”, by which the author selectively uses the data to suit their own hypothesis, methodological malpractice relates to selection of out-dated protocols that are not suited to the intended work. Although these are usually unintentional, incidences of intentional manipulations have been reported to authors of this study. For example, carrying out investigations without positive controls; but including these from a previous study. Other methodological malpractices include unfair repetitions to gain statistical significance, or retrospective ethical approvals. In contrast, the publication related malpractices such as authorship malpractices, ethical clearance irregularities have also been reported. The findings also suggest a globalised approach with clear punitive measures for offenders is needed to tackle this problem. (shrink)

Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) is a rare lysosomal storage disorder treated with bone marrow transplantation or enzyme replacement therapy with laronidase, a high-cost orphan drug. Laronidase was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency in 2003 and by the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency in 2005. Many Brazilian MPS I patients have been receiving laronidase despite the absence of a governmental policy regulating access to the drug. Epidemiological and treatment data concerning MPS I (...) are scarce. This study aims to present a demographic profile of Brazilian patients with MPS I, describe the routes of access to laronidase in Brazil, and discuss associated ethical issues relating to public funding of orphan drugs. (shrink)

Moreau sketches here with enthusiasm the large features of Aquinas’s epistemology. He is not, as he makes clear, a Thomist either by training or by avowal. The book is not, then, a specialist’s monograph or dogmatic treatise. It is Moreau’s attempt to hear what Aquinas will say to the great questions. The attempt is largely successful in attending to Aquinas’s remarks, though it does not catch their ambiguities.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems, Thomistic Solutions by Christopher M. BrownElizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BROWN, Christopher M. Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems, Thomistic Solutions. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. xiii + 487 pp. Cloth, $75.00The contents of the book are straightforwardly announced by the title. Christopher Brown entertains four apparent problems about eternal life in heaven (...) considered by contemporary philosophers and theologians and offers solutions to them from the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The book consists of seventeen chapters together with an introduction and conclusion and is divided into four parts. In the first part Brown lays out the problems and the solutions to them proposed by contemporary philosophers and theologians. In the second part he explains St. Thomas's distinction between essential and accidental reward in heaven and goes on to treat of the former—which consists in the beatific vision, that is, our beholding of God—and its proper accidents—which are delight, joy, and charity. In the third part he then deals with the accidental reward, which has to do with the perfected condition of our glorified bodies, society with other persons, and so on. Finally, in the fourth part Brown, drawing on his expositions of St. Thomas's doctrine in the two previous parts, details Thomistic solutions to the four problems discussed in the first part and argues that these solutions are superior to those proposed by the contemporary philosophers and theologians he has engaged.So, what are the four problems that Brown addresses? Let's present them as questions. (1) Is heaven just a private communion between a human person and God, or is it a perfect community centered on God that also involves angels, other human persons, and other creatures? (2) Is heaven just a spiritual affair, or are our resurrected bodies a part of it? (3) Is heaven a static or dynamic reality? (4) Is heaven boring?The answers are as follows. Ad primum: Heaven is a perfect community centered on God that also involves angels, other human persons, and other creatures. Ad secundum: Heaven is a spiritual and physical affair that includes our souls and our resurrected bodies. Ad tertium: Heaven is a dynamic reality. Ad quartum: Heaven is not boring!I cannot cover here all of the specifics of the way Brown shows how St. Thomas arrives at these answers. People who know St. Thomas well, even if they have not reflected much on these problems before, probably will [End Page 135] not have great difficulty thinking through how he might get to the first and second answers, at least in general terms. But the third and fourth, I think, call for further comment. My comments will necessarily be brief.If I understand Brown correctly, he wants to say (and contends that St. Thomas holds) that heaven is dynamic insofar as in heaven we are in act. But we can be in act in two senses: We can be in act in an unchanging way or in a changing way. In heaven my capacities to know God and to love him are both fully perfected, that is, they are fully actualized and undergo no change. But in heaven we will enjoy our resurrected bodies as well, and our bodies will also be active and interacting with other bodies. This activity will entail change. So, either way we will be active in heaven and, therefore, heaven will be something dynamic.What, then, about the problem of boredom? Because we will be perfectly happy in heaven, argues Brown (interpreting St. Thomas), heaven won't be boring. But the matter doesn't end there. Brown points out that Brian Ribeiro, developing an idea of Bernard Williams, objects that a person who is perfectly happy in the way that we are supposed to be in heaven, cannot be personally identical with any person in this life because the conditions of the beatified person and the nonbeatified person are just too radically different for there to be continuity between the two. Brown replies that St. Thomas convincingly shows that God can, by grace, prepare persons in this... (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre–post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Objective: The field of clinical ethics is relatively new and expanding. Best practices in clinical ethics against which one can benchmark performance have not been clearly articulated. The first step in developing benchmarks of clinical ethics services is to identify and understand current practices.Design and setting: Using a retrospective case study approach, the structure, activities, and resources of nine clinical ethics services in a large metropolitan centre are described, compared, and contrasted.Results: The data yielded a unique and detailed account of (...) the nature and scope of clinical ethics services across a spectrum of facilities. General themes emerged in four areas—variability, visibility, accountability, and complexity. There was a high degree of variability in the structures, activities, and resources across the clinical ethics services. Increasing visibility was identified as a significant challenge within organisations and externally. Although each service had a formal system for maintaining accountability and measuring performance, differences in the type, frequency, and content of reporting impacted service delivery. One of the most salient findings was the complexity inherent in the provision of clinical ethics services, which requires of clinical ethicists a broad and varied skill set and knowledge base. Benchmarks including the average number of consults/ethicist per year and the hospital beds/ethicist ratio are presented.Conclusion: The findings will be of interest to clinical ethicists locally, nationally, and internationally as they provide a preliminary framework from which further benchmarking measures and best practices in clinical ethics can be identified, developed, and evaluated. (shrink)