This paper argues that some widely used laws of implication are false, and arguments based upon them invalid. These laws are Exportation, Commutation, (as well as various restricted forms of these), Exported Syllogism and Disjunctive Syllogism. All these laws are false for the same reason – that they license the suppression or replacement in some position of some class of propositions which cannot legitimately be suppressed or replaced. These laws fail to preserve the property of sufficiency of premiss set for (...) conclusion. They are false, and can be seen to be false, independently of their respon- sibility for the paradoxes. Hence the main ‘independent’ argument for the paradoxes – that they follow from an allegedly immaculate set of laws – is undermined. Counterexamples to all these laws are produced. (shrink)

This paper offers general support for what Valerie Plumwood’s paper is trying to achieve by supporting the rejection of each of her four “false laws of logic”: exportation, illegitimate replacement, commutation (aka. permutation) and disjunctive syllogism. We start by considering her general characterizations of entailment, beginning with her stated definition of entailment as the converse of deducibility. However, this applies to a wide range of relevant logics and so is not able to be used as a criterion for (...) deciding what laws to include in a logic. In this context, we examine the two key differences between deduction from premises to conclusion and entailment from antecedent to consequent. We also consider her use of sufficiency as a general characterizing feature. We then discuss Plumwood’s syntactic criteria used to reject the first three of her false laws of logic and add the Relevance Condition in this context. We next consider semantic characterizing criteria for a logic. After making a case against using truth, we introduce Brady’s logic MC of meaning containment. We then examine the content semantics for MC and use it to reject all of Plumwood’s false laws of logic together with some others. We follow with the related Depth Relevance Condition, which is a syntactic cri- terion satisfied by MC. This clearly rejects the first three of these laws and many others, but not the fourth law. We conclude by giving our overall support for her general enterprise. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the special issue of the AJL on Val Plumwood's manuscript "False Laws of Logic" and her other work in logic.

A key facet of Valerie Plumwood’s feminist critique of logic is her analysis of classical negation. On Plumwood’s reading, the exclusionary features of classical negation generate hierarchical dualisms, i.e., dichotomies in which dominant groups’ primacy is reinforced while underprivileged groups are oppressed. For example, Plumwood identifies the system collapse following from ex contradictione quodlibet—that a theory including both φ and ∼φ trivializes—as a primary source of many of these features. Although Plumwood considers the principle of (...) excluded middle to be compatible with her goals, that she identifies relevant logics as systems lacking a hierarchical negation—whose first-degree fragments are both paraconsistent and paracomplete—suggests that excluded middle plays some role in hierarchical dualisms as well. In these notes, I examine the role of excluded middle in generating oppressive homogenization and try to clarify the relationship between Plumwood’s critique and this principle from several contemporary perspectives. Finally, I examine the matter of whether Plumwood’s critique requires relevance or whether a non-relevant logic could satisfy her criteria and serve as a liberatory logic of difference. (shrink)

Valerie Plumwood introduced in "Some false laws of logic" a series of arguments on how the rules Exported Syllogism, Disjunctive Syllogism, Commutation, and Exportation are not acceptable. Based on this we define the class of Plumwood algebras - logical matrices that do not verify any of these theses. Afterwards we provide conditional variants of the characteristic matrix of the logic RM3 that are also Plumwood algebras. These matrices are given an axiomatization based on First Degree Entailment (...) and are endowed with Belnap-Dunn Semantics. Finally we provide results of Soundness and Completeness in the strong sense for each of the defined variants. (shrink)

‘Feminist logic’ may sound like an impossible, incoherent, or irrelevant project, but it is none of these. We begin by delineating three categories into which projects in feminist logic might fall: philosophical logic, philosophy of logic, and pedagogy. We then defuse two distinct objections to the very idea of feminist logic: the irrelevance argument and the independence argument. Having done so, we turn to a particular kind of project in feminist philosophy of logic: Valerie Plumwood's feminist argument for (...) a relevance logic. Plumwood's work serves as our primary case study as we turn to the project of considering three different ways we might understand her argument and revisionist arguments like it: as a priori theorizing, as ameliorative conceptual engineering, or as instances of anti-exceptionalist approaches to logic. After arguing that the anti-exceptionalist approach seems to provide the most promising means of understanding the kind of project undertaken in a feminist challenge to classical logic, we briefly address the consequences that this might have for logic instruction. Here, we argue for the perhaps unexpected conclusion that feminist programs ought to offer more, not less, instruction in logic for those who take interest. (shrink)

Three misrepresentations of informal and formal logic by two feminist writers are discussed. Andrea Nye's criticism that the semantics for formal logic abstracts from context is a misrepresentation of formal logic because Nye ignores the development of intensional logics. Second, Nye's criticism that informaIlogicians ignore the origins of arguments is a misrepresentation of fallacy theory. Prominent writers in the field specifiy numerous cases where the origins of an argument are relevant to its evaluation. Third, Valerie Plumwood's criticism that (...) negation in classical logic rests on an exclusivistic dualism that encourages the exclusion of women is shown to be false. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypatia 17.4 (2002) 238-243 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle. Edited by Cynthia A. Freeland. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. This volume consists of twelve essays, mostly newly published, on a variety of topics in Aristotelian scholarship ranging from the theoretical to the practical and productive parts of the corpus. The volume divides the papers into one group addressing (...) topics in Aristotle's metaphysics, physics, epistemology, biology, and logic on one hand, and his ethics, politics, poetics, and rhetoric on the other. The contributors include established scholars in ancient philosophy, such as Cynthia Freeland, Deborah Modrak, Martha Nussbaum, and Charlotte Witt, and younger scholars such as Angela Curran, as well as those in disciplines outside ancient philosophy, including literature, law, and political science. The latter group of essays includes a chapter by Luce Irigaray on Book IV of Aristotle's Physics from her work, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993), Freeland's interpretation of Irigaray's essay, as well as papers on Aristotelian political emotion, the historiography of Aristotle's rhetoric, and his political anthropology from Texas Law Review (1992). The very range of methodological perspective that lends breadth to the volume presents difficulties for an overview, in light of which four papers were selected for detailed comment, those on Aristotle's logic, Freeland's essay on Irigaray's reading of Physics IV, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and Aristotelian political emotion. Feminism and Aristotelian Logic While it is familiar to cite the inherent biases of theoretical disciplines like the social sciences and philosophy, it is less common to read how areas like mathematics and logic are similarly biased. It seems hard to see how a system of proof with rules, axioms, and formal notation is inherently biased against any one group. Yet feminists like Andrea Nye, Valerie Plumwood, and Luce Irigaray have criticized formal logic on the ground that it is antithetical to women's experience and interests. 1 In "Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic" (1998), Marjorie Hass takes on criticisms of Aristotle's logic, including three main objections: his logic is motivated by unequal relations of power, uses binary [End Page 238] truth-value, and ignores the concrete and the subjective in experience. In being thus characterized, Aristotle's logical theory represents a "gendered" way of reasoning, and should be avoided. Hass does well in replying to these objections with one exception. The first objection, that logic masks unequal power relations, is answered by Hass noting that logic and logical systems (in mathematics and philosophy) have arisen among various cultures and classes worldwide, and are not the domain of an elite group of men. Hass's further point that attaining logical skill can be liberatory to women needs to be underscored: it is surely politically loaded for feminists to argue that women cannot, or should not, do logic. Hass rightly responds to the third objection concerning the need for concrete experience on two grounds: first, for Aristotle the end of logical argument is in part the illumination of observed experience, not its dissolution, and second, that it is impossible to conceive of a language without any abstraction. We cannot construct a feasible language without abstract terms or categories, as Nye's criticism suggests.Hass's response to the second criticism, that bivalence is noxious, is correct but incomplete. The ground of this objection stems from the idea that in classical logic the laws of excluded middle and noncontradiction obtain such that given two contradictory propositions, only one can be true, and this fact implies inequality to feminist critics. But, as Hass points out, this objection does not acknowledge Aristotle's notion of contrariety in which both sentences are false—the point being that contrariety does not yield the same results as negation. Still, Hass admits, the "fluid" form of negation sought for by thinkers like Irigaray is not forthcoming in Aristotle's logic. 2 Here Hass overlooks what Aristotle has to say about future contingents in De Interpretatione 9, that statements about the future are neither true nor false: "it is not necessary that of every affirmation... (shrink)

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add (...) two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 72-74.

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

We apply Benacerraf’s distinction between mathematical ontology and mathematical practice to examine contrasting interpretations of infinitesimal mathematics of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, in the work of Bos, Ferraro, Laugwitz, and others. We detect Weierstrass’s ghost behind some of the received historiography on Euler’s infinitesimal mathematics, as when Ferraro proposes to understand Euler in terms of a Weierstrassian notion of limit and Fraser declares classical analysis to be a “primary point of reference for understanding the eighteenth-century theories.” Meanwhile, scholars like (...) Bos and Laugwitz seek to explore Eulerian methodology, practice, and procedures in a way more faithful to Euler’s own. Euler’s use of infinite integers and the associated infinite products are analyzed in the context of his infinite product decomposition for the sine function. Euler’s principle of cancellation is compared to the Leibnizian transcendental law of homogeneity. The Leibnizian law of continuity similarly finds echoes in Euler. We argue that Ferraro’s assumption that Euler worked with a classical notion of quantity is symptomatic of a post-Weierstrassian placement of Euler in the Archimedean track for the development of analysis, as well as a blurring of the distinction between the dual tracks noted by Bos. Interpreting Euler in an Archimedean conceptual framework obscures important aspects of Euler’s work. Such a framework is profitably replaced by a syntactically more versatile modern infinitesimal framework that provides better proxies for his inferential moves. (shrink)

While there is a significant amount of research investigating managerial ethical judgments, a limited amount examines consumer judgments of unethical corporate behavior and its impact on the marketplace. This study examines how consumers' commitment to a company impacts not only their ethical judgment of corporate behavior but also the outcomes of that judgment. The authors test hypotheses with data from 334 consumers and find that consumers' level of commitment attenuates the level of perceived fairness. More specifically, highly committed consumers may (...) forgive companies for behaviors when perceived harm is low, but become progressively dissatisfied as the level of perceived harm increases. Results of the study point to the importance of considering ethical behavior from a consumer perspective. If corporate actions are perceived as unethical, the company stands to lose favor with their most committed customers. Considering that more time, effort and investment is required to gain a new customer as to retain an old, this study shows that engaging in behavior perceived as unethical by consumers risks alienating the most committed customers. (shrink)

Memory exhibits episodic superposition, an analog of the quantum superposition of physical states: Before a cue for a presented or unpresented item is administered on a memory test, the item has the simultaneous potential to occupy all members of a mutually exclusive set of episodic states, though it occupies only one of those states after the cue is administered. This phenomenon can be modeled with a nonadditive probability model called overdistribution (OD), which implements fuzzy-trace theory's distinction between verbatim and gist (...) representations. We show that it can also be modeled based on quantum probability theory. A quantum episodic memory (QEM) model is developed, which is derived from quantum probability theory but also implements the process conceptions of global matching memory models. OD and QEM have different strengths, and the current challenge is to identify contrasting empirical predictions that can be used to pit them against each other. (shrink)

In an adaptive clinical trial , key trial characteristics may be altered during the course of the trial according to predefined rules in response to information that accumulates within the trial itself. In addition to having distinguishing scientific features, adaptive trials also may involve ethical considerations that differ from more traditional randomized trials. Better understanding of clinical trial experts’ views about the ethical aspects of adaptive designs could assist those planning ACTs. Our aim was to elucidate the opinions of clinical (...) trial experts regarding their beliefs about ethical aspects of ACTs. (shrink)

Most studies investigating the relationship between cultural constructs and ethical perception have focused on individual- and societal-level values without much attention to other type of cultural constructs such as social beliefs. In addition, we need to better understand how social beliefs are linked to ethical perception and the level of analysis at which social beliefs may best predict ethical perceptions. This research contributes to the cross-cultural ethical perception literature by examining the relationship of individual-level social cynicism belief, one of five (...) universally endorsed social beliefs, together with individual social dominance orientation and the perception of unethical behavior. By means of two studies, we examine these relationships across societies that significantly differ on societal-level social cynicism belief. Using 371 business students from Russia and the U.S. in Study 1 and 268 professionals from Portugal and the U.S. in Study 2, we found that individual-level social cynicism belief was positively associated with social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, in turn, mediated the relationship between individual social cynicism belief and the perception of unethical behavior. Although we found significant societal-level differences in social cynicism belief in both studies, the relationships between individual-level social cynicism belief, social dominance orientation, and the perception of unethical behavior were structurally equivalent across societies in both studies, suggesting that societal-level differences did not significantly affect these relationships. Implications for cross-cultural business ethics research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined audience perceptions of a political candidate’s credibility and likeability as a function of varying the candidate’s responses to an opponent’s nonverbal disparagement during a televised debate. 412 participants watched a purported televised debate between candidates for mayor in a small city in Utah. In all six versions, one debater engaged in strong nonverbal disagreement during his opponent’s opening statement. His opponent responded to the nonverbal behavior with one of six decreasingly polite messages. Results indicated that more direct (...) messages increased audience perceptions of the speaker’s expertise and character compared to providing no response. The results also showed a significant interaction between response type and audience member’s level of trait verbal aggressiveness. The “indirect” and “on-record with redress” responses led to stronger perceptions of speaker composure and extroversion for members high in verbal aggression and the “off the record” strategy led to higher perceptions of extroversion and composure for members low in verbal aggression. (shrink)

When the accrediting association for collegiate schools of business, AACSB International, reformulated its accreditation standards to include a systematic assessment of undergraduates’ progress in analytic and reflective thinking, our interdisciplinary team looked at available instruments. Logistical problems, concerns about validity, and an interest in assessing quantitative skills not covered in the available instruments led us to devise the Texas Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills™ (TACTS™). As part of the process we followed a suggestion from Scriven and Fisher and incorporated novel (...) multiple-rating items. We went through a lengthy process of test validation, employing both expert consultants and a large-scale comparison between performances on a standard critical thinking skills test and the TACTS™. Consequently, our university is in a position to regularly assess the progress made by undergraduates from our College of Business in acquiring the relevant analytic and reflective thinking skills. (shrink)

When the accrediting association for collegiate schools of business, AACSB International, reformulated its accreditation standards to include a systematic assessment of undergraduates’ progress in analytic and reflective thinking, our interdisciplinary team looked at available instruments. Logistical problems, concerns about validity, and an interest in assessing quantitative skills not covered in the available instruments led us to devise the Texas Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills™ (TACTS™). As part of the process we followed a suggestion from Scriven and Fisher and incorporated novel (...) multiple-rating items. We went through a lengthy process of test validation, employing both expert consultants and a large-scale comparison between performances on a standard critical thinking skills test and the TACTS™. Consequently, our university is in a position to regularly assess the progress made by undergraduates from our College of Business in acquiring the relevant analytic and reflective thinking skills. (shrink)

In order to train healthcare professionals in the announcement of serious medical diagnoses, we propose the de-sign of a section of a website that aims to enable caregivers to better control this professional activity that they dread. These diagnoses materialize through language interactions between doctors and patients that are emotion-ally charged. The analysis of these announcement interviews involves access to interactions that are as close as possible to those that take place in real work situations through role-playing. We will show (...) that the design of the website based on the architectural dimension (functional structure of the activity), the relational dimension (roles, co-constructed communication contract) and the communicational dimension (mobilized language processes) allows to identify this sensitive professional activity in its characteristic aspects. Based on a study commissioned by the Ligue contre le cancer, we will show how and in what way the identified dimensions have formative potential and we will highlight their contribution to improving the understanding of the activity and developing training materi-als. (shrink)

For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

Background The fourth section of the 1967 Abortion Act states that individuals (including health care practitioners) do not have to participate in an abortion if they have a conscientious objection. A conscientious objection is a refusal to participate in abortion on the grounds of conscience. This may be informed by religious, moral, philosophical, ethical, or personal beliefs. Currently, there is very little investigation into the impact of conscientious objection on service users in Britain. The perspectives of service users are imperative (...) in understanding the real-world consequences and potential impact of conscientious objection and should be considered when creating and reviewing policies and guidelines. This research provided a platform for women and those who can become pregnant to share their experiences and opinions at a time when these voices are largely excluded in the great tradition of Western political philosophy and law-making processes. Method Five service users were interviewed using a narrative interview approach to uncover their abortion journeys and experiences of conscientious objection. Findings The findings were presented as found poems and uncovered that doctors are not always: informing service users that they have a conscientious objection to abortion, giving service users enough information to access abortion (indirect referral), treating them non-judgmentally, and providing medically correct information. Service users did not experience burdens such as long waiting times and were still able to access legal abortion. However, service users did experience negative emotional effects, as they were often left feeling scared, angry, and hopeless when they were not referred and/or were mistreated. Conclusions Findings indicate that conscientious objection could work in practice. However, it is currently failing some individuals on an emotional level, as not all doctors are adhering to guidelines. Conscientious objection in Britain needs to be addressed, to ensure service users receive fair, impartial, non-judgmental care. (shrink)

Patients have received experimental pharmaceuticals outside of clinical trials for decades. There are no industry-wide best practices, and many companies that have granted compassionate use, or ‘preapproval’, access to their investigational products have done so without fanfare and without divulging the process or grounds on which decisions were made. The number of compassionate use requests has increased over time. Driving the demand are new treatments for serious unmet medical needs; patient advocacy groups pressing for access to emerging treatments; internet platforms (...) enabling broad awareness of compelling cases or novel drugs and a lack of trust among some that the pharmaceutical industry and/or the FDA have patients’ best interests in mind. High-profile cases in the media have highlighted the gap between patient expectations for compassionate use and company utilisation of fair processes to adjudicate requests. With many pharmaceutical manufacturers, patient groups, healthcare providers and policy analysts unhappy with the inequities of the status quo, fairer and more ethical management of compassionate use requests was needed. This paper reports on a novel collaboration between a pharmaceutical company and an academic medical ethics department that led to the formation of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. Comprising medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives, CompAC established an ethical framework for the allocation of a scarce investigational oncology agent to single patients requesting non-trial access. This is the first account of how the committee was formed and how it built an ethical framework and put it into practice. (shrink)

For the past two decades, agricultural workers in regions of Central America have reported an epidemic of chronic kidney disease of undetermined etiology (CKDu) that is not associated with established risk factors of chronic kidney disease. Several hypotheses have emerged, but the etiology of CKDu remains elusive and controversial. The aim of this literature review was to describe the potential risk factors of CKDu in Mesoamerica and implications for the U.S. agricultural worker population. PubMed and CINAHL databases were searched for (...) articles published between 2000 and 2018 that examined CKDu in Mesoamerica; 29 original studies were included in this review. CKDu is a multifactorial disease that is often asymptomatic with hallmark characteristics of elevated serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN), low glomerular filtration rate, electrolyte abnormalities, and non-nephrotic proteinuria. Reducing the global prevalence of CKDu will require more robust studies on causal mechanisms and on interventions that can reduce morbidity and mortality in vulnerable populations. (shrink)

SCHOFIELD I, TOLSON D and FLEMING V. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 165–176 [Epub ahead of print]How nurses understand and care for older people with delirium in the acute hospital: a Critical Discourse AnalysisDelirium is a common presentation of deteriorating health in older people. It is potentially deleterious in terms of patient experience and clinical outcomes. Much of what is known about delirium is through positivist research, which forms the evidence base for disease‐based classification systems and clinical guidelines. There is little (...) systematic study of nurses’ day‐to‐day practice of nursing patients with delirium. The aim was to uncover the kinds of knowledge that informs nurses’ care and to explicate the basis of that knowledge. Critical Discourse Analysis is underpinned by the premise that powerful interests within society mediate how social practices are constructed. Links were made between the grammatical and lexical features of nurses’ language about care in interviews and naturalistic settings, and the healthcare context. Care focused on the continuous surveillance of patients with delirium by nurses themselves or vicariously through other patients, and containment. Nurses influenced by major discourses of risk reduction and safety, constructed patients with delirium as risk objects. The philosophy of person‐centred and dignified care advocated in nursing literature and government policy is an emerging discourse, though little evident in the data. The current dominant discourses on safety must give space to discourses of dignity and compassion. (shrink)

BackgroundThe outbreak of COVID-19 has been a major interrupting event, challenging how societies and individuals deal with risk. An essential determinant of the virus’ spread is a series of individual decisions, such as wearing face masks in public space. Those decisions depend on trade-offs between costs and risks, and beliefs are key to explain these.MethodsWe elicit beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic during lockdown in France by means of surveys asking French citizens about their belief of the infection fatality ratio for (...) COVID-19, own risk to catch the disease, risk as perceived by others, and expected prevalence rate. Those self-assessments were measured twice during lockdown: about 2 weeks after lockdown started and about 2 weeks before lockdown ended. We also measured the quality of these beliefs with respect to available evidence at the time of the surveys, allowing us to assess the calibration of beliefs based on risk-related socio-demographics. Finally, comparing own risk to expected prevalence rates in the two successive surveys provides a dynamic view of comparative optimism with respect to the disease.ResultsThe risk perceptions are rather high in absolute terms and they increased between the two surveys. We found no evidence for an impact of personal experience with COVID-19 on beliefs and lower risk perceptions of the IFR when someone in the respondent’s family has been diagnosed with a disease. Answers to survey 1 confirmed this pattern with a clear indication that respondents were optimistic about their chances to catch COVID-19. However, in survey 2, respondents revealed comparative pessimism.ConclusionThe results show that respondents overestimated the probabilities to catch or die from COVID-19, which is not unusual and does not necessarily reflect a strong deviation from rational behavior. While a rational model explains why the own risk to catch COVID-19 rose between the two surveys, it does not explain why the subjective assessment of the IFR remained stable. The comparative pessimism in survey 2 was likely due to a concomitant increase in the respondents’ perceived chances to catch the disease and a decreased expected prevalence rate. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

A number of roles have been ascribed to poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase* including involvement in DNA repair, cell proliferation, differentiation and transformation. Cloning of the gene has allowed the development of molecular biological approaches to elucidate the structure and the function(s) of this highly conserved enzyme. This article will review the recent results obtained in this field.

Medicine is often thought of as a science of the body, but it is also a science of data. In some contexts, it can even be asserted that data drive health. This article focuses on a key piece of data technology central to contemporary practices of medicine: the medical record. By situating the medical record in the perspective of its history, we inquire into how the kinds of data that are kept at sites of clinical encounter often depend on informational (...) requirements that originate well outside of the clinic, in particular in health insurance records systems. Although this dependency of today's electronic medical records on billing requirements is widely lamented by clinical providers, its history remains little studied. Following the archaeology of medicine developed by Michel Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic and expanding his methodology in light of more recent contributions to the field of media archaeology, this article excavates some of the underexplored technological conditions that help constitute today's electronic medical record. If in some contexts, it is true that data drive health, then an archaeology of medical records helps reveal how health insurance records often impact clinical care and, by extension, health and disease. (shrink)

_Changing the Subject_ is a classic critique of traditional psychology in which the foundations of critical and feminist psychology are laid down. Pioneering and foundational, it is still _the _groundbreaking text crucial to furthering the new psychology in both teaching and research. Now reissued with a new foreword describing the changes which have taken place over the last few years, _Changing the Subject _will continue to have a significant impact on thinking about psychology and social theory.

This paper examines ethical, legal and economic dimensions of the decision facing employers regarding whether it is appropriate to monitor the electronic mail (e-mail) communications of its employees. We review the question of whether such monitoring is lawful. Recent e-mail monitoring cases are viewed as a progression from cases involving more established technologies (i.e., phone calls, internal memoranda, faxes and voice mail).The central focus of the paper is on the extent to which employer monitoring of employee e-mail presents a structure (...) of costs and benefits to the employer which are unlikely to make such a practice profitable or practical to the employer. The practice of employer monitoring to detect illicit employee behavior (e.g., fraud, harassment of fellow employees, industrial espionage) is considered. (shrink)