Safety testing of biological pharmaceuticals is often carried out by contract testing laboratories which perform these tests on behalf of the drug’s developer. These laboratories are confronted with a number of ethical issues related to selling their services, maintaining confidentiality, and the handling of results. This paper outlines these issues, and, by way of illustration, discusses how one such laboratory addresses them.

In Pabon v. Wright, the Second Circuit held that the Fourteenth Amendment right to refuse medical treatment contained a corollary right to the information necessary to make an informed decision. Plaintiff, William Pabon, was an inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York. He named two groups of defendants: his doctors and nurses at Green Haven and his doctors at Dutchess Gastroenterologists, P.C..In October 1996, a laboratory test indicated that Plaintiff may have contracted Hepatitis C. The Green Haven doctors (...) referred Plaintiff to Dutchess for additional testing, where additional tests confirmed that Plaintiff had Hepatitis C. In July 1997, Plaintiff returned to Dutchess for additional evaluation, and the physicians told him that he must undergo a liver biopsy in order to receive treatment for his condition. (shrink)

In Pabon v. Wright, the Second Circuit held that the Fourteenth Amendment right to refuse medical treatment contained a corollary right to the information necessary to make an informed decision. Plaintiff, William Pabon, was an inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York. He named two groups of defendants: his doctors and nurses at Green Haven and his doctors at Dutchess Gastroenterologists, P.C..In October 1996, a laboratory test indicated that Plaintiff may have contracted Hepatitis C. The Green Haven doctors (...) referred Plaintiff to Dutchess for additional testing, where additional tests confirmed that Plaintiff had Hepatitis C. In July 1997, Plaintiff returned to Dutchess for additional evaluation, and the physicians told him that he must undergo a liver biopsy in order to receive treatment for his condition. (shrink)

In Pabon v. Wright, the Second Circuit held that the Fourteenth Amendment right to refuse medical treatment contained a corollary right to the information necessary to make an informed decision. Plaintiff, William Pabon, was an inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York. He named two groups of defendants: his doctors and nurses at Green Haven and his doctors at Dutchess Gastroenterologists, P.C..In October 1996, a laboratory test indicated that Plaintiff may have contracted Hepatitis C. The Green Haven doctors (...) referred Plaintiff to Dutchess for additional testing, where additional tests confirmed that Plaintiff had Hepatitis C. In July 1997, Plaintiff returned to Dutchess for additional evaluation, and the physicians told him that he must undergo a liver biopsy in order to receive treatment for his condition. (shrink)

In the trauma surrounding mass disasters, the need to identify victims accurately and as soon as possible is critical. DNA identification testing is increasingly used to identify human bodies and remains where the deceased cannot be identified by traditional means. This form of testing compares DNA taken from the body of the deceased with DNA taken from their personal items or from close biological relatives. DNA identification testing was used to identify the victims of the terrorist attack (...) on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, and of the victims of the Tsunami that hit Asia on December 26, 2004. Shortly after the 9/11 attack, police investigators asked the victims' families for personal items belonging to the missing, and for DNA samples from family members themselves. The New York medical examiner's office coordinated the DNA identification testing program; however, some of the identification work was contracted out to private laboratories. (shrink)

: Decisions about funding health services are crucial to controlling costs in health care insurance plans, yet they encounter serious challenges from intellectual property protection—e.g., patents—of health care services. Using Myriad Genetics' commercial genetic susceptibility test for hereditary breast cancer (BRCA testing) in the context of the Canadian health insurance system as a case study, this paper applies concepts from social contract theory to help develop more just and rational approaches to health care decision making. Specifically, Daniels's and (...) Sabin's "accountability for reasonableness" is compared to broader notions of public consultation, demonstrating that expert assessments in specific decisions must be transparent and accountable and supplemented by public consultation. (shrink)

The Safe by Design conceptual initiative being developed for nanomaterials offers a template for a new sustainable innovation approach for advanced materials with four important sustainability characteristics. Firstly, it requires potential toxicity risks to be evaluated earlier in the innovation cycle simultaneously with its chemical functionality and possible commercial applications. Secondly, it offers future options for reducing animal laboratory testing by early assessment using in silico predictive toxicological approaches, minimizing the number that reaches in vitro and in vivo trials. (...) Thirdly, it promotes a culture of shared responsibility for ethical and sustainable outcomes in the innovation process by promoting early dialogue between groups with vested interests. Finally, it offers the prospect of a more democratized innovation process by including civil society actors in decisions on product safety, commercial applications, and social utility. Collectively, these four characteristics offer the prospect for a new social contract between science, technology, and society for the societal alignment and sustainable innovation of advanced materials. (shrink)

The use of opioid contracts, which often require patients to submit to random drug screens, have become widespread amongst physicians using opioids to treat chronic pain. The main purpose of the contract is to improve care through better adherence to opioid therapy but there is little evidence as to its efficacy. The author suggests the use of opioid contracts and random drug testing destroys patients' trust which impacts health outcomes, and that physicians' motivation for their use are concerns (...) about prosecution, medication abuse and misuse, and addiction. Statistics are provided to counter fears, and evidence is offered suggesting opioid contracts are unenforceable and lack efficacy; random drug testing is often inconclusive, and a patient's trust improves adherence to treatment. (shrink)

It is common for physicians who prescribe opioids for chronic pain to have their patients sign an opioid contract in order to receive opioid therapy. A vast majority of these contracts contain a stipulation requiring patients to submit to random drug testing which screens for both licit and illicit drugs. Physicians who prescribe opioids may be concerned about prosecution and disciplinary actions; medication abuse and misuse; and addiction. Steven Passik et al. write, “…physicians still fear the risk of (...) abuse or addiction as well as the potential legal consequences of their prescribing.”Issues surrounding OC/RDT need a closer look with a focus on enforceability and efficacy of the opioid contract; accuracy and complications of drug screens and their interpretation; and the importance of trust between patient and physician. In addition, it is vital to dispel fears with facts regarding prosecutions, nonmedical use of prescription opioids, and addiction. (shrink)

Ideas for explaining the mechanism of gravity involving the expansion of matter have been proposed several times since the 1890’s. Due to their radical nature and other reasons, these ideas have not gotten much attention. Another essential feature needed to augment the viability of the model proposed here---even more important than matter expansion---is that of space generation. I.e., the production of space by matter, involving motion into or outfrom a fourth spatial dimension. An experiment is proposed whose result would unequivocally (...) either falsify the model or support it. Analyses of star cluster velocity dispersions suggest that some support already exists. The simplest, most definitive way to test the model is to build and operate an apparatus that may be called a Small Low-Energy Non-Collider. Essentially the same experiment was proposed by Galileo in 1632. We are way overdue to at last bring to fruition this idea put forth by the Father of Modern Science so long ago. (shrink)

This article focuses on the effects of nonbinding recommendations on bargaining outcomes. Recommendations are theorized to have two effects: they can create a focal point for final bargaining positions, and they can decrease outcome uncertainty should dispute persist. While the focal point effect may lower dispute rates, the uncertainty reduction effect is predicted to do the opposite for risk-averse bargainers. Which of these effects dominates is of critical importance in the design of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures, which are increasingly (...) utilized in a variety of settings. We theoretically examine the effects of recommendations on the contract zone using a framework which allows bargainers’ final positions to influence a binding outcome should negotiations fail. This provides a more stringent test of focal points than previously considered. We also present data from controlled laboratory experiments consistent with our model. Recommendations are empirically shown to influence final bargaining positions and negotiated settlement values. In fact, recommendations significantly reduce dispute rates, even where they are completely ignored in final-stage arbitration. This highlights a potentially significant role for the use of nonbinding procedures, such as mediation, as a preliminary stage in more efficient ADR procedures. (shrink)

Integrative Social Contracts Theory is a popular framework to assist managers in making decisions on international moral dilemmas. Although the theory has been praised for its comprehensiveness and sophistication, commentators have raised concerns regarding the justification and identification of substantive hypernorms, fundamental moral principles valid across cultures. This paper introduces the deliberative test, a new method for testing the cross-cultural validity of ethical norms in ISCT. The test relies on the concept of Deliberative Capacity, arising from new developments in (...) system-level deliberative democracy research, which studies deliberation at the level of national societies and over time. Based on this recent stream of research, the deliberative test has the potential of providing better guidance for managers to decide which norms to follow in case of conflicting standards between home and host countries. (shrink)

Features of experimental design impose auxiliary hypotheses on experimenters. Hertwig & Ortmann rightly argue that the ways some variables are implemented in psychology cloud results, whereas the different implementations in economics provide for more robust results. However, not all design variables support this general conclusion. The repetition of trials may confuse results depending on what theory is being tested. We explore this in the case of simple bargaining games.

Contract cheating – outsourcing student assignments for a fee – presents a growing threat to the integrity of higher education. As contract cheating is based on students purchasing assignments that are original, traditional plagiarism detection tools remain insufficient to detect contract cheating. Part of the problem is that proving contract cheating is difficult. As a result, instructors may find it hard to prosecute students. To help address the problem, this conceptual paper builds upon extant scholarship on (...) contract cheating and argues that a novel evidence-based approach is needed. Such an approach should allow instructors to detect and prosecute cases of contract cheating effectively and efficiently. The paper then presents an outline of such an approach and calls it the “Doping Test” approach as it mimics some aspects of doping testing in professional sport. (shrink)

We apply the author's computational approach to groups to our empirical work studying and modelling riots. We suggest that assigning roles in particular gives insight, and measuring the frequency of bystander behaviour provides a method to understand the dynamic nature of intergroup conflict, allowing social identity to be incorporated into models of riots.

This article seeks to provide a historically well-informed analysis of an important post-Newtonian area of research in experimental physics between 1798 and 1898, namely the determination of the mean density of the earth and, by the end of the nineteenth century, the gravitational constant. Traditionally, research on these matters is seen as a case of “puzzle solving.” In this article, the author shows that such focus does not do justice to the evidential significance of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century experimental research on (...) the mean density of the earth and the gravitational constant. As Newton’s theory of universal gravitation was mainly based on astronomical observation, it remained to be shown that Newton’s law of universal gravitation did not break down at terrestrial distances. In this context, Cavendish’ experiment and related nineteenth-century experiments played a decisive role, for they provided converging and increasingly stronger evidence for the universality of Newton’s theory of gravitation. More precisely, the author shall argue that, as the accuracy and precision of the experimental apparatuses and the procedures to eliminate external disturbances involved increasingly improved, the empirical support for the universality of Newton’s theory of gravitation improved correspondingly. (shrink)

In their article, Pavarani and colleagues offer a vision of evolutionary bioethics that focuses on innovation and empirical research as a means to enrich the field of bioethics. Empirical bi...

In light of the so-called ‘chaos theorems’ from social choice theory, William Riker argues that the indeterminacy of majority rule leads to voting cycles making democratic decisions arbitrary and meaningless. Moreover, when the core is empty, majority instability correlates with the level of conflict among actors. This study uses laboratory committee decision-making experiments to provide an empirical test of both aspects of Riker’s argument. Committees make repeated majority decisions over 20 periods picking points from a two-dimensional policy space. The experiment (...) manipulates committee members’ preferences and thus varies the existence of a core and the level of conflict between group members. The experimental results contradict Riker’s interpretation of the chaos theorems’ implications. Thus, the core exhibits less attraction than generally assumed. Moreover, an empty core is not associated with increased majority rule instability. Instead, conflicting preferences lead to more instability irrespective of the existence of an equilibrium. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Challenge to the Distinctiveness and the Coherence of Contract Four Autonomy‐Based Theories Three Teleological Theories Concluding Remarks References.

Testing economic propositions in laboratory experiments has proven a very fruitful research endeavor in recent years. This volume brings together the major contributors to experimental economics. The papers present their views on the way experiments should be done, on the power and limitations of the techniques, and on the areas in which experimentation could contribute substantially to our understanding of economic behavior. This book distills the main lessons from great experience in experimental work. It will be essential reading for (...) all who wish to follow experimental work or who wish to do such work themselves. (shrink)

Features of experimental design impose auxiliary hypotheses on experimenters. Hertwig & Ortmann rightly argue that the ways some variables are implemented in psychology cloud results, whereas the different implementations in economics provide for more robust results. However, not all design variables support this general conclusion. The repetition of trials may confuse results depending on what theory is being tested. We explore this in the case of simple bargaining games.

Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the (...) laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium? By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are unable to find out anything about their ‘absolute’ state of motion. Therefore, we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system. This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics, in particular regarding the quest towards a theory of quantum gravity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay presents an alternative to interpretations of laboratories as institutions for controlled investigation of nature that are either placeless or “set apart.” It historicizes the claim by showing how the meaning of “laboratory” has both changed and diversified over the last two centuries. Originally a laboratory could be a site of organic growth or material manufacture, but it can now be a specialized domain for technological development, educational training, or quality testing. The essay then introduces some (...) contingencies of geography and gender by showing how boundaries between laboratories and other spaces—especially domestic kitchens—could be permeable or nonexistent; importantly, some spaces served as experimental laboratories without ever being designated as such. A key corollary, however, is that there were limits to this permeability: not all social spaces could be turned consensually into laboratories, and laboratory users could be intolerant of certain imported technical cultures. (shrink)

Mirrored-self misidentification is the delusional belief that one's own reflection in the mirror is a stranger. In two experiments, we tested the ability of hypnotic suggestion to model this condition. In Experiment 1, we compared two suggestions based on either the delusion's surface features (seeing a stranger in the mirror) or underlying processes (impaired face processing). Fifty-two high hypnotisable participants received one of these suggestions either with hypnosis or without in a wake control. In Experiment 2, we examined the extent (...) to which social cues and role-playing could account for participants' behaviour by comparing the responses of 14 hypnotised participants to the suggestion for impaired face processing (reals) with those of 14 nonhypnotised participants instructed to fake their responses (simulators). Overall, results from both experiments confirm that we can use hypnotic suggestion to produce a compelling analogue of mirrored-self misidentification that cannot simply be attributed to social cues or role-playing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of WartimeOksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Oleksandr DudinFunding. Oksana Sulaieva, MD, PhD is supported by the Loyola University Chicago–Ukrainian Catholic University Bioethics Fellowship Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (D43TW011506).After 500 days of the unjust war initiated by the Russians, we look back to reflect on the challenges our medical laboratory faced during these early days. On the (...) morning of February 24th, we were awakened by the dreadful roar of sirens, the sound of which filled us with adrenaline and anxiety. Although our team had considered the risks of Russian military aggression and thus updated our emergency plan at the beginning of 2022, the first day of the war revealed that nobody was truly ready for the bombing, air alarms, tanks on the streets of towns and cities, violence and murders of civilians. That morning the city’s transportation system collapsed, and the flow of cars cluttered all the roads as people were trying to leave the city and escape the upcoming atrocities and death. Serious and disquieted people hurried along the streets—some people rushed to shelters, and others went to the military registration and enlistment offices to fight against Russian aggressors for the life, independence, and sovereignty of Ukraine.We hurried to work, committed to performing our duties. Our medical laboratory serves more than 750 hospitals in Ukraine. Despite fear and uncertainty, we walked to the lab, taking our children and alarm case1 with documents and essential things. Months later, people asked us why we went to the laboratory instead of leaving the city or even the country. At that moment, our [End Page 155] professional duties were an anchor linking us to each other against fear and panic. Our responsibility to provide patients and physicians with the results of blood testing, pathology, and molecular reports outweighed our fears of the war. We had to complete the testing of all the samples delivered to the laboratory to provide our customers—who include children, pregnant women, diabetic and cancer patients—with data essential for identifying accurate diagnoses and effective treatments. So we spent the first days of the war in the laboratory. At the same time, we had obligations and responsibilities to our staff as well. We had to consider how to manage our employees’ protection along with continuous laboratory services provided under endless air alarms and bombings. Many healthcare facilities in eastern regions and around Kyiv were affected by missiles or completely destroyed. Of our sixty laboratory offices around Ukraine, ten were damaged or abandoned due to occupation. Several of our fleet cars were also damaged and riddled with bullets. Many employees in the regional offices in Melitopol, Kherson, Mariupol, Chernihiv, and in suburbs of Kyiv such as Bucha and Irpin lost their homes as a result of massive military operations or occupation. Dozens of our employees joined the Ukrainian armed forces to defend civilians and fight against aggressors. Many others became volunteers, involved in blood donation, medical care for the wounded, cooking, and serving the troops. And still, we had to continue our work and protect our staff at the same time. We also helped each other by sharing our goods, medication, homes, cars, warmth, and support. Some pathologists stayed at the workplace for several days moving between pathology stations, microscopes and shelters, and sleeping on the floor but continuing to work.Our main challenge was the regular terroristic attacks on healthcare facilities situated far away from the front line, which in fact, violated international humanitarian law regarding respect for human rights during armed conflicts. During the first weeks of the war, the magnitude of military aggression, massive bombing, and air attacks undermined the healthcare system and endangered laboratory staff and patients. We prioritized protective measures. Some of our laboratory staff and facilities were evacuated from Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine. The partial relocation of our laboratory to Lviv was also driven by the displacement of several million Ukrainians to the western part of the country.We were able to arrange relatively safe accommodations for our laboratory employees and their families in Lviv. Under strikes and alarms, our... (shrink)

Laboratory experimentation was once considered impossible or irrelevant in economics. Recently, however, economic science has gone through a real ‘laboratory revolution’, and experimental economics is now a most lively subfield of the discipline. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of controlled experimentation constitute the main subject of this thesis. After a survey of the literature on experiments in philosophy and economics, the problem of testing normative theories of rationality is tackled. This philosophical issue was at the centre of a famous (...) controversy in decision theory, during which a methodology of normative falsification was first articulated and used to assess experimental results. In the third chapter, the methodological advantages of controlled experimentation are illustrated and discussed with examples taken from the experiments on the so-called ‘preference reversal’ phenomenon. Laboratory testing allows to establish with a high degree of certainty that certain phenomena lie behind the experimental data, by means of independent testing, elimination of alternative hypotheses, and the use of different instruments of observation. The fourth chapter is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the problem of ‘parallelism’. This is the problem of inferring from the occurrence of a phenomenon in the laboratory, to its instantiation also in non-laboratory environments. Experimental economists have discussed parallelism at length, and their views are presented and criticised. Eventually, it is argued that parallelism is a factual matter and as such can only be established on empirical grounds. The fifth chapter provides an example of how one can argue for parallelism, focusing on the case of experimentation on the ‘winner’s curse’ phenomenon. The role of experiments as ‘mediators’ between theoretical models and their target domain of application is illustrated, and the structure of parallelism arguments analysed in detail. Finally, in the last chapter, economic experiments are compared to simulations, in order to highlight their specific characteristics. (shrink)

Designing, building, and experimenting with physical simulation models are central problem‐solving practices in the engineering sciences. Model‐based simulation is an epistemic activity that includes exploration, generation and testing of hypotheses, explanation, and inference. This paper argues that to interpret and understand how these simulation models function in creating knowledge and technologies requires construing problem solving as accomplished by a researcher–artifact system. It draws on and further develops the framework of “distributed cognition” to interpret data collected in ethnographic and cognitive‐historical (...) studies of two biomedical engineering research laboratories, and articulates the notion of distributed model‐based cognition to answer the question posed in the title. (shrink)

Consistency is the hallmark of a coherent ethical philosophy. When considering the morality of particular behaviour, one should look to identify comparable situations and test one’s approach to the former against one’s approach to the latter. The obvious comparator for animal experiments is non-consensual experiments on people. In both cases, suffering and perhaps death is knowingly caused to the victim, the intended beneficiary is someone else, and the victim does not consent. Animals suffer just as people do. As we condemn (...) non-consensual experiments on people, we should, if we are to be consistent, condemn non-consensual experiments on animals. The alleged differences between the two practices often put forward do not stand up to scrutiny. The best guide to ethical behaviour is empathy—putting oneself in the potential victim’s shoes. Again to be consistent, we should empathise with all who may be adversely affected by our behaviour. By this yardstick, too, animal experiments fail the ethical test. (shrink)

With the intensification of COVID-19 epidemic, it becomes prominent to discuss the issue about the influence of psychological contract breach on job performance of new generation of employees. Based on social exchange theory, fairness theory, and conservation of resource theory, this study constructed a relationship model between psychological contract breach and job performance of new generation of employees with considering the mediating effect of job burnout and the moderating effect of past breach experience. Our hypotheses were tested using (...) data from 235 respondents working in Yunnan Province, China. The results were as follows: first, psychological contract breach had a significant negative effect on job performance of new generation of employees, whether in the whole sample or in two grouped samples; second, both in the overall sample and the grouped sample of state-owned enterprises, job burnout partially mediated the negative relationship between psychological contract breach and job performance of new generation of employees, and past experience of breach positively moderated the negative relationship between psychological contract breach and job performance of new generation of employees; third, in the grouped sample of non-state-owned enterprises, job burnout did not play a significant mediating role in the relationship between psychological contract breach and job performance of new generation of employees, and past breach experience did not play a significant moderating role in this relationship. These findings uncover the psychological mechanism underlying work performance of new generation of employees, and also provide useful theoretical reference for management practices of new generation of employees among different natures of enterprises. (shrink)

What counts as human rationality: reasoning processes that embody content-independent formal theories, such as propositional logic, or reasoning processes that are well designed for solving important adaptive problems? Most theories of human reasoning have been based on content-independent formal rationality, whereas adaptive reasoning, ecological or evolutionary, has been little explored. We elaborate and test an evolutionary approach, Cosmides' social contract theory, using the Wason selection task. In the first part, we disentangle the theoretical concept of a “social contract” (...) from that of a “cheater-detection algorithm”. We demonstrate that the fact that a rule is perceived as a social contract — or a conditional permission or obligation, as Cheng and Holyoak proposed — is not sufficient to elicit Cosmides' striking results, which we replicated. The crucial issue is not semantic, but pragmatic: whether a person is cued into the perspective of a party who can be cheated. In the second part, we distinguish between social contracts with bilateral and unilateral cheating options. Perspective change in contracts with bilateral cheating options turns P & not-Q responses into not-P & Q responses. The results strongly support social contract theory, contradict availability theory, and cannot be accounted for by pragmatic reasoning schema theory, which lacks the pragmatic concepts of perspectives and cheating detection. (shrink)

Thought-intrusions, automatic inferences, and other unintended thought are beginning to play an important role in the study of psychiatric disease as well as normal thought processes. We examine one method for study of task-unrelated imagery and thought . TUIT likelihood was shown to be reliably measured over a wide range of vigilance tasks, to have high short-term and long-term test-retest reliability, and to be sensitive to information processing demands. Likelihood of TUITs was shown to be different as a function of (...) aging, hyperactivity, time of day, and level of depression. Thus, we now can reliably measure the influence of endogenous and exogenous influences on TUITs. In addition, TUIT measurement was proposed as a minimally interfering and natural second task for determining resource utilization in a primary task. Finally, this method was offered as a reliable approach to quantification of such mental states as obsessions and drug craving and addiction. (shrink)

Prevalence of contract cheating and outsourcing through organised methods has received interest in research studies aiming to determine the most suitable strategies to reduce the problem. Few studies have presented an international approach or tested which variables could be correlated with contract cheating. As a result, strategies to reduce contract cheating may be founded on data from other countries, or demographics/situations which may not align to variables most strongly connected to engagement in outsourcing. This paper presents the (...) results of a series of statistical analyses aimed at testing which variables were found to be predictors of students’ self-reported formal outsourcing behaviours. The data are derived from an international research study conducted in 22 languages, with higher education students (from Europe, the Americas and Australasia. Analyses found that country and discipline of study as well as the rate at which respondents n = 7806) believed other students to be cheating, were positively correlated to their cheating behaviours. Demographic variables did not show strong statistical significance to predicting contract cheating. (shrink)

Contemporary regulation of food safety incorporates principles of quality management and systemic performance objectives that used to characterize private standards. Conversely, private standards are covering ground that used to be the realm of regulation. The nature of the two is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. The case study of the Ugandan fish export industry highlights how management methods borrowed from private standards can be applied to public regulation to achieve seemingly conflicting objectives. In the late 1990s, the EU imposed repeated bans on (...) fish imported from Uganda on the basis of food safety concerns. However, the EU did not provide scientific proof that the fish were actually “unsafe.” Rather, the poor performance of Uganda’s regulatory and monitoring system was used as justification. Only by fixing “the system” and performing the ritual of laboratory testing for all consignments for export to the EU did the Ugandan industry regain its status as a “safe” source of fish. Yet, gaps and inconsistencies abound in the current Ugandan fish safety management system. Some operations are by necessity carried out as “rituals of verification.” Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the compliance system, “alchemic rituals” provide an appropriate metaphor. These rituals are part and parcel of a model that reassures the EU fish-eating public that all is under control in Uganda from boat to point of export. As a consequence, actual non-compliance from boat to landing site allows the fishery to survive as an artisanal operation. (shrink)

This article evaluates the social contract theorizing of Professors Thomas DonaIdson, Thomas Dunfee and Michael Keeley. This theorizing is tested with G.E. Moore’s concept of moral authority, with moral psychology, and by managerial utility. Both strengths and weaknesses are found in the theories and the author concludes that while there is great potential, much work in theory development remains.

According to Hugo Münsterberg, the direct application of experimental psychology to the practical problems of education, law, industry, and art belonged by definition to the domain of psychotechnics. Whether in the form of pedagogical prescription, interrogation technique, hiring practice, or aesthetic principle, the psychotechnical method implied bringing the psychological laboratory to bear on everyday life. There were, however, significant pitfalls to leaving behind the putative purity of the early psychological laboratory in pursuit of technological utility. In the Vocation Bureau, for (...) example, psychological instruments were often deemed too intimidating for a public unfamiliar with the inner workings of experimental science. Similarly, when psychotechnical means were employed by big business in screening job candidates, ethical red flags were raised about this new alliance between science and capital. This tension was particularly evident in Münsterberg's collaboration with the Paramount Pictures Corporation in 1916. In translating psychological tests into short experimental films, Münsterberg not only envisioned a new mass medium for the dissemination of psychotechnics, but a means by which to initiate the masses into the culture of experimental psychology. (shrink)