In the current study we look at whether subjective and proprioceptive aspects of selfrepresentation are separable components subserved by distinct systems of multisensory integration. We used the rubber hand illusion to draw the location of the ‘self’ away from the body, towards extracorporeal space , thereby violating top-down information about the body location. This was compared with the traditional RHI which drew position of the ‘self’ towards the body . We were successfully able to draw proprioceptive position of the limbs (...) in and out from the body suggesting body perception is a purely bottom-up process, resistant to top-down effects. Conversely, we found subjective self-representation was altered by the violation of top-down body information – as the strong association of subjective and proprioceptive factors found in the In Condition became non-significant in the Out Condition. Interestingly, we also found evidence that subjective embodiment can modulate tactile perception. (shrink)

BackgroundInnovations in technology have contributed to rapid changes in the way that modern biomedical research is carried out. Researchers are increasingly required to endorse adaptive and flexible approaches to accommodate these innovations and comply with ethical, legal and regulatory requirements. This paper explores how Dynamic Consent may provide solutions to address challenges encountered when researchers invite individuals to participate in research and follow them up over time in a continuously changing environment.MethodsAn interdisciplinary workshop jointly organised by the University of Oxford (...) and the COST Action CHIP ME gathered clinicians, researchers, ethicists, lawyers, research participants and patient representatives to discuss experiences of using Dynamic Consent, and how such use may facilitate the conduct of specific research tasks. The data collected during the workshop were analysed using a content analysis approach.ResultsDynamic Consent can provide practical, sustainable and future-proof solutions to challenges related to participant recruitment, the attainment of informed consent, participant retention and consent management, and may bring economic efficiencies.ConclusionsDynamic Consent offers opportunities for ongoing communication between researchers and research participants that can positively impact research. Dynamic Consent supports inter-sector, cross-border approaches and large scale data-sharing. Whilst it is relatively easy to set up and maintain, its implementation will require that researchers re-consider their relationship with research participants and adopt new procedures. (shrink)

Historically, for Black writers, literary fiction has been a site for transforming the discursive disciplinary spaces of political oppression. From 19th century “slave narratives” to the 20th century, Black novelists have created an impressive literary counter-canon in advancing liberatory struggles. W.E.B. Du Bois argued that “all art is political.” Many Black writers have used fiction to create spaces for political and social freedom—from the early work of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (...) (1859)—to the enduring works of the Harlem Renaissance (Toomer, Hurston, and Schuyler)—to the great revolutionary Black literature after WWII (Wright, Baldwin, Williams)—to contemporary Black writers (Toni Morrison, Edward Jones, Samuel Delany)—Black fictive space continues to be a necessary site for resistance. Black literary fiction is a vast counter-canon to mainstream literature which unquestioningly reinforces global white supremacy, capitalistic political oppressions, and the dominance/subordinance relations upon which they depend. (shrink)

The different ways in which the three medieval societies of Byzantium, Latin Christendom, and Islam institutionalized the charitable impulse present in their respective faiths reflected the fundamentally different religious values which motivated these civilizations as well as their different levels of material and intellectual development. All three societies exalted the relief of human suffering, especially the care of the sick, as a religiously sanctioned gesture; and all three invented or adopted institutional means for attaining this pious objective. The various medieval (...) counterparts of the modern “hospital”—the Byzantine nosocomeion or xenodocheion, the European hospitale, and the Islamic maristan—differed significantly, however, with respect to their organization and operation, the clientele which they served, and the ultimate intent of their charitable efforts. Accordingly, a comparison of these social welfare institutions reveals the contrasting ways in which the two Christendoms and Islam defined and applied the ideals of “piety” and “charity” during the middle ages. (shrink)

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is eroding at a time when we are racing to produce a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19. This medical right that we have long taken for granted was first sacrificed on the altar of military expediency in 1990 when the Department of Defense asked for and received from the FDA a waiver that permitted it to force an experimental anthrax vaccine on (...) the ranks of ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf. Since then, the military has pressed ahead to impose nonconsensual testing of the blood substitute PolyHeme in civilian urbanities, quietly enrolling more than 20,000 non-consenting subjects since 2005. Most Americans think that their right to give or withhold consent is protected by law, but the passing in 1996 of modifications to the Code of Federal Regulations, such as statute CFR 21 50.24, now permit investigators to conduct research with trauma victims without their consent or event their knowledge. More than a dozen studies since have used the 1996 loophole to recruit large numbers of subjects without their knowledge. The erosion of consent is the result of a U.S. medical-research system that has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent RhetoricSarah E. DempseyPeaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric. Ellen W. Gorsevski. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.pp. 262. $55.00, hardcover.The overriding emphasis on violence, militarization, and retribution within current geopolitical contexts demands that we acquire greater understandings of nonviolent communicative practices. In Peaceful Persuasion, author Ellen Gorsevski, Professor of English and Communication at Oregon State University, argues that nonviolent (...) rhetoric tends to be ignored by scholars—that its methods, strategies, and impacts are often passed over and that nonviolence is often framed as hopelessly utopian, unrealistic, and ineffective. Gorsevski situates her study of nonviolent rhetoric less within its humanistic and religious inheritance, drawing instead on a contrast with existing models of rhetoric. As a strategy for rhetorical and political action, Gorsevski takes nonviolence to be instructive of new ways to reconfigure both rhetorical studies and social movement strategy.It is important to note that Gorsevski's need to study peaceful means of relating to others is driven as much by a love of rhetorical theory as by a passion for translating an understanding of nonviolent rhetoric into strategies for activists. As such, this book provides a solid introduction to rhetorical theory, including an appendix on the connection between rhetoric and nonviolence that details what activists have to gain from each. In addition, instructors will find useful a chapter on the specifics of incorporating nonviolence into speech communication classrooms.Peaceful Persuasion's greatest contribution to rhetorical studies is the careful drawing out of the many ways that a rhetorical take on nonviolence has become increasingly necessary. To make this solid case, Gorsevski draws on four very diverse case studies of nonviolent rhetoric. In a move that is both surprising and refreshing, Gorsevski's case studies do more than provide exemplars of how critics may read nonviolence as a powerful rhetorical strategy; each helps to further delineate the key characteristics of what has been, until now, a relatively undefined area of rhetorical action.Gorsevski's gift to her readers is the ability to demonstrate the rich subtleties of nonviolence through very different contexts. The case studies [End Page 89] draw from such different sources that at first seem disorienting. Upon reflection, it becomes clearer that they greatly complicate our notions of nonviolence, redressing the disservices of previous bleary analyses that configured nonviolence only by its lack of violence rather than according to its fruitful range of seemingly contradictory strategies. The cavernous distances each study crosses illuminate the multiplicity of forms, meanings, and strategies that nonviolence may take. As such, any definition of nonviolence that I may provide in this short review does a serious disservice to the depth that Gorsevski creates through her sometimes disjointed case studies.The case studies serve at least dual purposes, as each provides an analysis that extends our understandings of nonviolence in action as it also offers instructive mini-lessons for the further development of rhetorical studies. In the first case study, Gorsevski provides a contextualized analysis of critics' interpretations of the film The Spitfire Grill, which she shows to be reflective of the "predominantly accepting orientation that rhetoric and film critics hold for the idea that humans are characterized by "innate aggression" and violence" (68). For Gorsevski, this study demonstrates that nonviolence as a lens can be applied to a range of texts just as well as any other approach to rhetoric. Gorsevski moves her analysis of nonviolent rhetoric into the geopolitical realm for her study of President of Macedonia Kiro Gligorov's historic first speech before the United Nations. She takes his speech as evidence of the usefulness of pragmatic nonviolence, which entails "noncooperation or defiance of political adversaries in order to decry a perceived injustice" (72). Gligorov's speech illustrates that nonviolence and violence are best seen less as equivalent than, rather, as operating on a sliding scale. For Gorsevski, successful use of pragmatic nonviolence may even include a measure of violence as long as it serves to reduce the escalation of further strife.Next Gorsevski explores the visual rhetoric of the gendered body of Burmese activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to show... (shrink)

The endowment of religious, charitable, and educational enterprises by the establishment of trusts in land, the income from which could be devoted to such uses, was an immensely popular form of pious expression in both medieval Christendom and the Islamic world. The motives for, and applications of such endowments differed markedly, however, between the two religious cultures. The endowment of prayers and masses for beneficiaries, living and dead, exemplified the sacramental and sacerdotal quality of pre-Reformation Christianity. This ritualistic and ecclesiastical (...) use of endowments in Latin Christian Europe and the Orthodox East, a use dependent on the existence of a sacramental system and an institutional church, contrasted sharply with the broader application of the Muslim waqf, by means of which pious individuals and groups sponsored a wide variety of charities, explicitly life-oriented and quite unconnected with a corporate clerical establishment. The infinite multiplication of private acts of charity by devout Muslims manifested the moralistic bent of Islam, which aspired to recast society according to the norms of the Qur'an and sacred law. The contrasting uses to which the two religious systems put the gifts and legacies of the faithful reflected the operation of fundamentally different religious premises, whereas the institutionalization of these premises in a shared legal fiction, the trust, assured their enforcement in society and life. (shrink)

All the passages are from the writings and translations of Thomas Taylor.

Three dialogues - The Therapon, The Alphaeus and The Platon - are written in the Platonic style. The Therapon is an imagined exchange of ideas between Socrates and his jailer during Socrates' last night on Earth: it is sub-titled On the Nature of Ideas. The Alphaeus starts with a wealthy and self-satisfied man attacking Socrates and his philosophical ways soon after he has been charged to appear before the court of Athens - but ends with dramatic changes: it is sub-titled (...) Concerning Human Happiness. The Platon explores what might have passed between Socrates and Plato during their last meeting together: it is sub-titled On Soul. (shrink)

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of African models in reconstructions is explored, focusing on materiality and agency in the past. The differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa are also highlighted, as a means to explore the nature of theory itself. Thus, this dual purposed volume is a timely intervention (...) into archaeological theory, deconstructing the taken-for-granted foundations of the ways we approach the past. (shrink)

This paper considers the so-called explanatory gap between brain activity and conscious experience. A number of different, though closely related, explanatory gaps are distinguished and a monistic account of conscious experience, a version of Herbert Feigl’s “twofold-access theory,” is advocated as a solution to the problems they are taken to pose for physicalist accounts of mind. Although twofold-access theory is a version of the mind-body identity thesis, it in no way “eliminates” conscious experience; rather, it provides a parsimonious and explanatorily (...) fruitful theory of the consciousness-body relation which faithfully preserves the nature of conscious experience while going quite far in “bridging” the various explanatory gaps distinguished below. (shrink)

This book provides the first serious, sustained philosophical investigation of the criminal prosecution of domestic violence. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding ongoing debates regarding the criminal justice system's response to domestic violence.

In Star Wars, Han Solo gives the Force no credit when he first discusses it with Luke and Obi‐Wan on the way to Alderaan. Han Solo's belief about the Force is an untrue belief. It does not conform to the reality of how the Star Wars universe operates. This chapter analyzes whether Han's belief is justified. The products of science have a role in Star Wars, but there is no indication that the process of science does. The Jedi have a (...) general grasp on scientific reasoning. From the perspective of fallibilism, Han Solo can claim he knows that no “mystical energy field” controls his destiny, while Obi‐Wan knows that such a field does exist. There is a disagreement here and, in the Star Wars universe, Obi‐Wan is right and Han is wrong. Neither of them is being inherently unreasonable, however. (shrink)

According to the Argument for Autonomous Mental Disorder, mental disorder can occur in the absence of brain disorder, just as software problems can occur in the absence of hardware problems in a computer. This article argues that the AAMD is unsound. I begin by introducing the “natural dysfunction analysis” of disorder, before outlining the AAMD. I then analyze the necessary conditions for realizer autonomous dysfunction. Building on this, I show that software functions disassociate from hardware functions in a way that (...) mental functions do not disassociate from brain functions. It follows that mental disorders are brain disorders necessarily. (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently advanced a Generalised Selected Effects Theory of biological proper function. According to Garson, his theory spells trouble for the Dysfunction Account of Disorder. This paper argues that Garson’s critique of the Dysfunction Account from the Generalised Theory fails, and that we should reject the Generalised Theory outright. I first show that the Generalised Theory does not, as Garson asserts, imply that neurally selected disorders are not dysfunctional. Rather, it implies that they are both functional and dysfunctional. (...) I argue on this basis that the Generalised Theory yields conflicting functional norms, and we that should reject it outright on these grounds. (shrink)

This paper asks when a natural disease kind is truly 'reactive' and when it is merely associated with a corresponding social kind. I begin with a permissive account of real kinds and their structure, distinguishing natural kinds, indifferent kinds and reactive kinds as varieties of real kind characterised by super-explanatory properties. I then situate disease kinds within this framework, arguing that many disease kinds prima facie are both natural and reactive. I proceed to distinguish ‘simple dependence’, ‘secondary dependence’ and ‘essential (...) dependence’ between a natural kind and its classification, and argue that a natural kind is only really reactive, in an important sense, under conditions of essential dependence. On this basis, I offer a principled hypothesis for why psychiatric kinds tend to be more metaphysically unstable than paradigm somatic disease kinds. (shrink)

Background Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR. Aim To assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE (...) in GGR. Method A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus. Study findings Thirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR. Conclusion GGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research. (shrink)

Defining Mental Disorder: Jerome Wakefield and His Critics, edited by Denis Forest and Luc Faucher, is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of medicine whose work is informed by that of Jerome Wakefield, or the disease debate in general. If you are anything like me, this book will open the door to a new depth of understanding of the harmful dysfunction analysis (HDA) and its methodical underpinnings, and an enriched appreciation of what is at stake in defining medical (...) disorder. To those confident that they understand Wakefield’s view and the surrounding debate, thinking perhaps that they do not need a refresher, I would say: perhaps you do not understand it as well as you think. Defining Mental Disorder provides much more than an overview of previously well-trodden ground. The chapters themselves, and Wakefield’s own detailed responses, help to elucidate a number of methodological nuances and peculiarities that have rarely been covered in such depth before. I was startled to learn how philosophically complex Wakefield’s position actually is, and how shallow my own understanding of it has been. It emerges as a far more nuanced and sophisticated account than I had given it credit for, and one that deserves serious reevaluation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Medical Tourism:Crossing Borders to Access Health CareHarriet Hutson Gray (bio) and Susan Cartier Poland (bio)Traveling abroad for one's health has a long history for the upper social classes who sought spas, mineral baths, innovative therapies, and the fair climate of the Mediterranean as destinations to improve their health. The newest trend in the first decade of the twenty-first century has the middle class traveling from developed countries to those (...) with emerging economies to avoid treatment delays, prohibitive costs for life-saving procedures, or simply high costs for elective surgery. Others leave to have access to assisted suicide in countries that have legalized it: Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland. This new era of globalization in health care has arrived without the benefit of international standards, government oversight, or ethical and legal review.Howard Staab, a self-employed carpenter from North Carolina, flew to India for his medically necessary heart surgery, scheduled a side trip to the Taj Mahal, and returned home to work in North Carolina. He spent a total of less than $10,000, instead of the $200,000 required from the local hospital (I, Milstein and Smith 2006).At first blush, the outsourcing of medical care to India seems to be a particular solution for a particular problem. However, the particularity of Mr. Staab is not unique. His experience is emblematic of those patients in the United States with a medical need for major and elective procedures, but who also must bear the total cost of these procedures. These middle-class, under-insured Americans go abroad.In tandem with increasingly aggressive marketing campaigns, American hospitals and companies have begun to leverage their connections in Asia to grow the medical tourism business into a major economic force. What are the consequences of this?Several authors point to the effect on the host country's population, particularly the poor, to be pushed farther down the queue to receive adequate, affordable care. Resources are applied to the foreign trade instead of building the local [End Page 193] medical infrastructure. Another potential problem is the obligation of the home-country physician to provide follow-up care. What are the legal ramifications when the procedure was illegal to begin with? Are there opportunities for redress for medical errors?These factors may be converging into a "perfect storm" for health care in the U.S., in which the potential participation of the major insurance companies in promoting offshore care will be the tipping point in the precarious structure that represents the economic currents in health care. Third-party administrators and self-funded employers may be on the cutting edge in 2009 by providing incentives to employees to travel overseas for care.I. Economic ConsiderationsConnell, John. Medical Tourism: Sea, Sun, Sand and... Surgery. Tourism Management 27: 1093–1100, 2006.As evidence of the interest of traditional tour operators in this newer twist on the industry, the author explores medical tourism as an element of the growth of world tourism. In promoting medical tourism, he urges consideration of such issues as the privatization of health care, the foundational role of technology, and uneven access to health resources.Dunn, Philip. Medical Tourism Takes Flight. H and HN: Hospitals and Health Networks: 40–44, November 2007.Writing for U.S. health care executives, Dunn emphasizes that the reality of medical tourism competes with the local medical center for patients and their insurance dollars in a significant way. He examines the possibility that U.S. insurance plans soon may offer to pay for what is currently a cash only business and that the economic impact to the local medical center could be significant or even devastating.Frontiers of Health Services Management [Selected Articles] 24 (2), Winter 2007.In "Managing Healthcare Services in the Global Marketplace" (pp. 3–18), Bruce J. Fried and Dean M. Harris consider legal, ethical, and financial implications of the international workforce. In "Globalization of Health Care" (pp. 19–30), Lynn Schroth and Ruthy Khawahja point out that the transfer of comprehensive management expertise and intellectual property from U.S. medical centers to international sites is driving the success of collaboration between U.S. and foreign health care centers. In "Is... (shrink)

During the past four decades the governance of environmental problems – the definition of issues and their political and practical resolution – has evolved to include a wider range of stakeholders in more extensive open discussions. In the introduction to this issue of Environmental Values on ‘Environment, Policy and Participation’, we outline some features of these recent developments in participatory environmental governance, indicate some key questions that arise, and give an overview of the collection of papers in this special issue.

Utilising empirical ethics analysis, we evaluate the merits of systems proposed to increase deceased organ donation in South Africa. We conclude that SA should maintain its soft opt-in policy, and enhance it with ‘required transplant referral’ in order to maximise donor numbers within an ethically and legally acceptable framework. In SA, as is the case worldwide, the demand for donor organs far exceeds the supply thereof. Currently utilising a soft opt-in system, SA faces the challenge of how to increase donor (...) numbers in a context which is imbued with inequalities in access to healthcare, multiplicitous personal beliefs and practices, distrust of organ transplant and varying levels of education and health literacy. We argue that a hard opt-in, opt-out or mandated consent system would be problematic, and we present empirical data from Gauteng Province illustrating barriers to ethically sound practice in soft consent systems. Ultimately, we argue that in spite of some limitations, a soft opt-in system is most realistic for SA because its implementation does not require extensive public education campaigns at national level, and it does not threaten to further erode trust at a clinical level. However, to circumvent some of the clinical-level barriers identified in our empirical study, we propose a contextually sensitive option for “enabling” soft opt-in through “required transplant referral”. We argue that this system is legally defensible, enhances ethical practice and could also increase donor numbers as it has in many other countries. (shrink)

This reflection item provides an edited account of human rights lawyer Harriet Wistrich’s conversation with Manvir Grewal, Visiting Lecturer and Ph.D. student, and Harriet Samuels, Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. It summarises the exchange which focused on Harriet Wistrich’s career trajectory and the many public interest law cases that she has brought on behalf her clients, mainly women, in both domestic and international forums. It also includes a condensed version of the question and answer (...) session with the audience. Questions included the broader issues around domestic violence, rape, coercive control, sex work and the nature of feminism. (shrink)

The ArgumentWritten as one book, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England has become two. One book, treating Puritanism and science, has since become “The Merton Thesis.” The other, treating shifts of interest among the sciences and problem choice within the sciences, has been less consequential. This paper proposes that neglect of one part of the monograph has skewed readers' understanding of the whole. Society and culture contributed to institutionalization of science and the directions it took, neither one exclusively. Four (...) aspects of the neglected chapters are examined: their theoretical underpinnings, the conceptions providing foundations for this part specifically and for the monograph as a whole; their comparative neglect, attributed partly to the absence of a cognitive constituency for their claims; the problem of problem choice in science in Merton's work; and the Merton monograph and later social constructionism:their differences and affinities. (shrink)

This paper presents four arguments in favour of respecting Ulysses Contracts in the case of individuals who suffer with severe chronic episodic mental illnesses, and who have experienced spiralling and relapse before. First, competence comes in degrees. As such, even if a person meets the usual standard for competence at the point when they wish to refuse treatment, they may still be less competent than they were when they signed the Ulysses Contract. As such, even if competent at time 1 (...) and time 2, there can still be a disparity between the levels of competence at each time. Second, Ulysses Contracts are important to protect people’s most meaningful concerns. Third, on the approach defended, the restrictions to people’s liberty would be temporary, and would be consistent with soft paternalism, rather than hard paternalism: the contracts would be designed in such a way that individuals would be free to change their minds, and to change or cancel their Ulysses Contracts later. Finally, even if one rejects the equivalence thesis, this is still consistent with the claim that, in particular cases, it can be as wrong to allow a harm as to do a harm. Nevertheless, controversies remain. This paper also highlights several safeguards to minimise risks. Ultimately, we argue that people who are vulnerable to spiralling deserve a way to protect their autonomy as far as possible, using Ulysses Contracts when necessary. (shrink)

Climate science denial is serious. It facilitates political procrastination and brings us ever closer to a world beset by growing food insecurity, heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and extensive los...

The archive can take many forms but all are marked by a connective sequence: archive, memory, the past, narrative. The author explores this sequence through an account of her engagement with four different types of archive, constructing a phenomenology of the archive which highlights the promises and seductions offered to the researcher. Postmodern questioning may throw in doubt older conceptions, whereby the archive is used to legitimate knowledge claims about the past of a nomological nature. However, in a context where (...) intellectuals become interpreters rather than legislators, the role of the archive as repository of inert meanings is strengthened rather than weakened; using the archive helps us to understand the dialectical nature of the relationship between past and present and our own positioning within this. (shrink)

It is the researcher's responsibility to provide accurate, complete, and unbiased verbal and written information yet, as this essay discusses, challenges to meaningful research consent abound in the communication between researcher and subject. This discussion of these challenges is far from exhaustive, but it will flag some of the potholes that researchers must anticipate on the sometimes rocky road to eliciting meaningful consent. These include, but are not limited to, inadequate scientific literacy, poorly written consent forms, and even the deployment (...) of scientific terms and seductive acronyms like CURE and MIRACL. Studies with acronyms, for example, enroll five times as many patients as those without, are more likely to be published by prestigious journals, and have higher Jadad methodologic quality scores although they are no more likely to conclude with positive findings. Other barriers to researcher-subject communication include: widely differing beliefs and customs, semiotics, socioeconomic status, iatrophobia, and dramatically different histories of treatment in the medical-research arena. (shrink)

Scientists have used models for hundreds of years as a means of describing phenomena and as a basis for further analogy. In Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science, Daniela Bailer-Jones assembles an original and comprehensive philosophical analysis of how models have been used and interpreted in both historical and contemporary contexts. Bailer-Jones delineates the many forms models can take (ranging from equations to animals; from physical objects to theoretical constructs), and how they are put to use. She examines (...) early mechanical models employed by nineteenth-century physicists such as Kelvin and Maxwell, describes their roots in the mathematical principles of Newton and others, and compares them to contemporary mechanistic approaches. Bailer-Jones then views the use of analogy in the late nineteenth century as a means of understanding models and to link different branches of science. She reveals how analogies can also be models themselves, or can help to create them. The first half of the twentieth century saw little mention of models in the literature of logical empiricism. Focusing primarily on theory, logical empiricists believed that models were of temporary importance, flawed, and awaiting correction. The later contesting of logical empiricism, particularly the hypothetico-deductive account of theories, by philosophers such as Mary Hesse, sparked a renewed interest in the importance of models during the 1950s that continues to this day. Bailer-Jones analyzes subsequent propositions of: models as metaphors; Kuhn's concept of a paradigm; the Semantic View of theories; and the case study approaches of Cartwright and Morrison, among others. She then engages current debates on topics such as phenomena versus data, the distinctions between models and theories, the concepts of representation and realism, and the discerning of falsities in models. (shrink)