Peer review facilitates quality control and integrity of scientific research. Although publishing policies have adapted to include the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), in the preparation of manuscripts by authors, there is a lack of guidelines or policies on whether peer reviewers can use such tools. The present article highlights the lack of policies on the use of AI tools in the peer review process (PRP) and argues that we need to go (...) beyond policies by creating transparent procedures that will enable journals to investigate allegations of non-compliance and take decisions that will protect the integrity of the peer review system. Reviewers found to violate relevant policies must be excluded from the process to safeguard the integrity of the peer review system. (shrink)

ChatGPT has taken the academic community by storm (Cotton, Cotton, and Shipway 2023; Cox and Tzoc 2023; Sullivan, Kelly, and McLaughlan 2023). Since its release in November 2022, chatGPT has predic...

In their proof-of-concept, Meier and colleagues describe the purpose and programming decisions underpinning Medical Ethics Advisor, an automated decision support system used t...

This volume offers papers touching on four inter-related themes: a critique of the European Enlightenment as a basis for the production of knowledge; the use of "gender" as a concept; problems in feminist theories of development; and the place of feminism in the production of knowledge.

How do we respect the legitimate privacy interests of individuals and communities about whom data relate while maximizing data’s utility as a fundamental resource? Pyrrho, Cambraia and de Vasconcel...

Focusing primarily on the writings of Kierkegaard and secondarily on those of Kant, St. Augustine and Schelling, this work offers a novel and challenging way of approaching the concepts of anxiety, repetition, freedom and contemporaneity. Pivotal to this project is a reinterpretation of Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘taking notice’ and its elevation to the status of a central principle which opens up new interpretive dimensions.

Der Band ist der erste eines Corpus, das von der Akademie von Athen geplant und herausgegeben wird. Das Ziel ist, alle byzantinischen Fresken Griechenlands in mehreren Bänden zu publizieren. Im vorliegenden Band werden die Fresken der Insel Kythera vorgestellt. Die griechische Version dieses Bandes erschien bereits 1997 unter dem Titel: Ευϱετήϱιο Βυζαντινών Τοιχογϱαφιών Κυθήϱων.

Der großformatige, luxuriöse Band ist die englische Fassung des im gleichen Jahr erschienen griechischen Werkes mit dem Titel: Mιϰϱογϱαφίες των Βνςαντινών Χειϱογϱάφων τον Πατϱιαϱχείον Ιεϱοσολύμων. Der Autor stellt in diesem Buch 23 illuminierte Handschriften des griechisch-orthodoxen Patriarchats in Jerusalem vor, die vom 11. bis zum 15. Jh. datieren.

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz werden zwei unbekannte und für die byzantinische Kunst einzigartige Szenen aus der Kreuzauffindungslegende zum ersten Mal vorgestellt. Sie befinden sich in einer byzantinischen Kirche in der Ortschaft Spina, ca. 10 km nordöstlich von Kantanos, in der Eparchie Selino des Nomos Chania auf Kreta. Da die Fresken dieser Kirche bisher nicht publiziert wurden und die Kirche in der Literatur kaum erwähnt wird, möchte ich hier die Gelegenheit nutzen, den Bau und sein Bildprogramm kurz vorzustellen. Anschließend werden die Darstellungen (...) der Kreuzauffindung ausführlicher besprochen. (shrink)

Private companies are data-rich. But market pressures to collect more, store more, and analyze more consumer data can often make them ethically bankrupt in the way of proactively protecting consume...

Background Institutional review board (IRB) expertise is necessarily limited by maintaining a manageable board size. IRBs are therefore permitted by regulation to rely on outside experts for review. However, little is known about whether, when, why, and how IRBs use outside experts.Methods We conducted a national survey of U.S. IRBs to characterize utilization of outside experts. Our study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design to understand how IRBs engage with such experts and to identify areas where outside expertise is most frequently (...) requested.Results The survey response rate was 18.4%, with 55.4% of respondents reporting their institution’s IRB uses outside experts. Nearly all respondents who reported using outside experts indicated they do so less than once a month, but occasionally each year (95%). The most common method of identifying an outside expert was securing a previously known subject matter expert (83.3%). Most frequently, respondents sought consultation for scientific expertise not held by current members (69.6%). Almost all respondents whose IRBs had used outside experts reported an overall positive impact on the IRB review process (91.5%).Conclusions Just over half of the IRBs in our sample report use of outside experts; among them, outside experts were described as helpful, but their use was infrequent overall. Many IRBs report not relying on outside experts at all. This raises important questions about what type of engagement with outside experts should be viewed as optimal to promote the highest quality review. For example, few respondents sought assistance from a Community Advisory Board, which could address expertise gaps in community perspectives. Further exploration is needed to understand how to optimize IRB use of outside experts, including how to recognize when expertise is lacking, what barriers IRBs face in using outside experts, and perspectives on how outside expert review impacts IRB decision-making and review quality. (shrink)

In this paper we report findings from a commissioned report to the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition on approaches to streamline multinational REC review/approval during public health emergencies. As currently envisioned in the literature, a system of REC mutual recognition is theoretically possible based on shared procedural REC standards, but raises numerous concerns about perceived inequities and mistrust.

In their recent article, Porsdam Mann et al propose to share biomedical research data more widely, securely and efficiently using blockchain technologies. 1 They present compelling arguments for how the blockchain presents both a technological innovation, and a deontologically grounded policy innovation to traditional research consent. Their proposal can be read in conversation with a rich body of evidence to suggest current consent processes are problematic on at least one of tripartite bases in biomedical research: that it be fully informed. (...) This response attempts to further the author’s discussion of social justice discourse in, and of their proposed prosent model to enhance engagement among under-represented and vulnerable populations in research, specifically. Motivating this response is the view that advancing technological capabilities is no doubt necessary, but on its own insufficient to reinvigorate distributive, procedural and social justice as guiding principles for con/prosent processes. I offer three pros and cons to consider in effort to deepen the model’s commitments to social justice to historically marginalised groups in the biomedical research enterprise. (shrink)

The philosophical understanding of moral conscience should constitute one of the most significant concerns of any modern theory of moral education that wishes to be credible and reliable in all morally demanding situations. The purpose of this paper is not to contest the widely accepted notion of conscience as the absolute mark of our moral and spiritual integrity. The purpose of the paper is to postulate and stress the importance of certain "contextual" factors without which modern teaching of moral conscience (...) could very easily lose its certainty and significance. It is argued that unless we make such assumptions, our following the dictates of individual conscience could become a trivial and redundant affair, because nothing could prove that this act is something more than "listening to one's inner voice". In the light of this, the paper proposes a qualified theory that avoids looking at individual conscience as a formal schema and embraces it within the broader framework of the educational demands raised by modern democratic culture. (shrink)

Truth has always been a controversial subject in Aristotelian scholarship. In most cases, including some well-known passages in the Categories, De Interpretatione and Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the predicate ‘true’ for assertions, although exceptions are many and impossible to ignore. One of the most complicated cases is the concept of practical truth in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics: its entanglement with action and desire raises doubts about the possibility of its inclusion to the propositional model of truth. Nevertheless, in one (...) of the most extensive studies on the subject, C. Olfert has tried to show that this is not only possible but also necessary. In this paper, we explain why trying to fit practical truth into the propositional model comes with insurmount­able problems. In order to overcome these problems, we focus on multiple aspects of practical syllogism and correlate them with Aristo­tle’s account of desire, happiness and the good. Identifying the role of such concepts in the specific steps of practical reasoning, we reach the conclusion that practical truth is best explained as the culmination of a well-executed practical syllogism taken as a whole, which ultimately explains why this type of syllogism demands a different approach and a different kind of truth than the theoretical one. (shrink)

The suitability of the artificial grammar learning paradigm to capture relevant aspects of the acquisition of linguistic structures has been empirically tested in a number of EEG studies. Some have shown a syntax-related P600 component, but it has not been ruled out that the AGL P600 effect is a response to surface features rather than the underlying syntax structure. Therefore, in this study, we controlled for the surface characteristics of the test sequences and recorded the EEG before and after exposure (...) to a grammar. After exposure, a typical, centroparietal P600 effect was elicited by grammatical violations and not by unfamiliar subsequences, suggesting that the AGL P600 effect signals a response to structural irregularities. Moreover, preference and grammaticality classification showed a qualitatively similar ERP profile, strengthening the idea that the implicit structural mere-exposure paradigm in combination with preference classification is a suitable alternative to the traditional grammaticality classification test. (shrink)

This study contributes to the cross-linguistic investigation of written language difficulties in children with DLD by reporting new findings from Greek-speaking individuals. Specifically, we investigate the writing performance of children with DLD and compare it to that of a group of typically developing children, matched for gender and chronological age. The specific orthographic properties of Greek, radically different from those of English, offer a unique opportunity to understand the nature of written language production in DLD. The participants of the study (...) were 62 children, 31 with DLD and 31 TD. Both groups were asked to write a text on a special prompt they were given by the researcher and they were assessed in the total number of words used in text, in the proportion of incorrectly spelt words in text as well as in the use of verbs, nouns, content and function words. Also, the different words and the total number of main and subordinate clauses each of the participants used in their text were counted. The findings of the study showed that the written outputs of the DLD group were poorer in almost all measurements compared to those of their TD peers. We discuss our findings in relation to those reported by other languages, in particular English, and spell out the implications for assessing written language in children with DLD. (shrink)

In their article, Cho and Martinez-Martin (2023) argue that developers and users of digital simulacra for modelling health and disease should involve a continued focus on causality of health states...

The ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning exemplify the conceptual struggle between applying familiar pathways of ethical analysis versus generating novel strategies. Mel...

Despite ample evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of evidence-based parenting programmes (EBPPs) within research-led environments, there is very little evidence of maintenance of effectiveness when programmes are delivered as part of regular service provision. The present study examined the effectiveness of EBPPs provided during a period of sustained service-led implementation in comparison to research-led effectiveness evaluation. Data from 3706 parents who received EBPPs during sustained implementation by services were compared to data from 1390 parents who had participated in an (...) earlier researcher-led effectiveness trial of a national roll-out of EBPPs in England. In both phases, parents completed measures of child behaviour problems, parenting style and parental mental well-being prior to starting parenting programmes (pre-test), at the end of the programmes (post) and at 12-months follow up. Results from Generalised Estimating Equations controlling for potential covariates indicated significant improvements in child behaviour problems during sustained implementation, similar to the effectiveness phase; significant improvements in parenting style which were larger than the effectiveness phase at 12-month follow up; and significant improvements in parental mental well- being. Our findings demonstrate effective maintenance of gains when EBPPs are provided as part of regular provision across a large sample of English parents. Successful long-term implementation should consider effectiveness of EBPPs across the population, given the large contextual changes that take place between researcher-led evaluations and service take-up. Our findings support the integration of EBPPs in public health approaches to addressing child behaviour problems and parent well-being. (shrink)

This paper addresses how impairments in prediction in young adults with autism spectrum disorder relate to their behavior during a collaboration. To assess it, we developed a task where participants play in collaboration with a synthetic agent to maximize their score. The agent’s behavior changes during the different phases of the game, requiring participants to model their sensorimotor contingencies to play collaboratively. Our results (n = 30) show differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals in their behavioral adaptation to the other (...) partner. Contrarily, there are no differences in the self-reports of that collaboration. (shrink)

La comparaison de la teneur en étain de trois groupes d'échantillons, bronzes grecs géométriques, bronzes orientaux, bronzes grecs orientalisants, montre que c'est ύ partir de la date de leurs contacts avec le Proche-Orient que les métallurgistes grecs du Ier millénaire ont utilisé le bronze proprement dit, Cu+Sn. La comparaison des teneurs en fer et en plomb montre que les Grecs ont appris des Orientaux un certain nombre de procédés de travail du métal, lors de la réduction du métal ou du (...) martelage. L'étude métallographique confirme cette hypothèse. (shrink)

Bayefsky and Berkman argue in favor of evidence-based policy development for expanded prenatal genetic testing. They propose to identify what kinds of information pregnant persons, their par...

UK-based research conducted within a healthcare setting generally requires approval from the National Research Ethics Service. Research ethics committees are required to assess a vast range of proposals, differing in both their topic and methodology. We argue the methodological benchmarks with which research ethics committees are generally familiar and which form the basis of assessments of quality do not fit with the aims and objectives of many forms of qualitative inquiry and their more iterative goals of describing social processes/mechanisms and (...) making visible the complexities of social practices. We review current debates in the literature related to ethical review and social research, and illustrate the importance of re-visiting the notion of ethics in healthcare research. (shrink)