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

While much has been written on the cultural and intellectual antecedents that gave rise to Carolus Linnaeus?s herbarium and his Systema Naturae, the tools that he used to transform his raw observations into nomenclatural terms and categories have been neglected. Focusing on the Philosophia Botanica, the popular classification handbook that he published in 1751, it can be shown that Linnaeus cleverly ordered and reordered the work by employing commonplacing techniques that had been part of print culture since the Renaissance. Indeed, (...) the functional adaptability of commonplace heads allowed him to split and combine the book?s chapters and tables and played a notable conceptual role in the way in which he spatialized words and, to a certain extent, specimens. (shrink)

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

The following questions arising in connection with the géométrisation of modern physics are discussed: is the physical theory a bicomponent one or everything can be reduced to space? Whether the hypothesis of the macroscopic nature of space and time deals with the theoretical or empirical structure of physical theory? Is there géométrisation of quanta or quantisation of geometry?

The imbalance between supply of organs for transplantation and demand for them is widening. Although the current international drive to re-establish procurement via non-heart beating organ donation/donor is founded therefore on necessity, the process may constitute a desirable outcome for patient and family when progression to brain stem death does not occur and conventional organ retrieval from the beating heart donor is thereby prevented. The literature accounts of this practice, however, raise concerns that risk jeopardising professional and public confidence in (...) the broader transplant programme. This article focuses on these clinical, ethical, and legal issues in the context of other approaches aimed at increasing donor numbers. The feasibility of introducing such an initiative will hinge on the ability to reassure patients, families, attendant staff, professional bodies, the wider public, law enforcement agencies, and the media that practitioners are working within explicit guidelines which are both ethically and legally defensible. (shrink)

This book studies the interfaces of ethics, economics, and politics. Public policy issues involve all three of these subjects. Although it may be seen as suggesting the nucleus of a joint university course, the book is accessible to and should interest all those concerned with political decisions. Any such decision needs a criterion for judging whether one action or outcome is better than another. Even a dictator must to some extent be concerned about the economic elfare of the citizens; and (...) a democratic government more so. But how is a person's economic welfare to be judged? Furthermore, any political decision affects the economic welfare of different people differently. How then is the welfare of a community to be judged? This is an ethical question. Underlying any coherent public policy there must be a relevant moral code. (shrink)

This book studies the interfaces of ethics, economics, and politics. Public policy issues involve all three of these subjects. Although it may be seen as suggesting the nucleus of a joint university course, the book is accessible to and should interest all those concerned with political decisions. Any such decision needs a criterion for judging whether one action or outcome is better than another. Even a dictator must to some extent be concerned about the economic welfare of the citizens; and (...) a democratic government more so. But how is a person's economic welfare to be judged? Furthermore, any political decision affects the economic welfare of different people differently. How then is the welfare of a community to be judged? This is an ethical question. Underlying any coherent public policy there must be a relevant moral code. (shrink)

In the 18th century, the concept of ‘affinity’, ‘principle’ and ‘element’ dominated chemical discourse, both inside and outside the laboratory. Although much work has been done on these terms and the methodological commitments which guided their usage, most studies over the past two centuries have concentrated on their application as relevant to Lavoisier's oxygen theory and the new nomenclature. Kim's affinity challenges this historiographical trajectory by looking at several French chemists in the light of their private thoughts, public disputations and (...) communal networks. In doing so, she tells a complex story which points to the methodological and practical importance of industrial and medical chemistry. The following review highlights the advantages and snares of such an approach and makes a few historiographical points along the way. (shrink)

This essay addresses mineral water as a medical, experimental and economic material. It focuses on the career of the Reverend Dr William Laing , a physician and cleric who wrote two pamphlets about the water of provincial spa located in Peterhead, a town on the north-east coast of Scotland. I begin by outlining his education and I then reconstruct the medical theory that guided his efforts to identify tonics in the well’s water. Next, I explain why Laing and several other (...) local inhabitants thought themselves to be authorities on the palliative power of the water and I close by showing how such effects were commodified by local entrepreneurs. Although I concentrate primarily upon Peterhead Spa, this study touches upon several issues relevant to the types of medical theory and chemical experimentation that were being used in provincial Scotland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. (shrink)