The Research Excellence Framework of the Higher Education Funding Council for England is taking place in 2013, its three key elements being outputs, impact, and “quality of the research environment”. Impact will be assessed using case studies that “may include any social, economic or cultural impact or benefit beyond academia that has taken place during the assessment period.”1 Medical ethics in the UK still does not have its own cognate assessment panel—for example, bioethics or applied ethics—unlike in, for example, Australia. (...) Several researchers in medical ethics have reported to the Institute of Medical Ethics that during the internal preliminary stage of the Research Excellence Framework several medical schools have decided to include only research that entails empirical data gathering. Thus, conceptual papers and ethical analysis will be excluded. The arbitrary exclusion of reasoned discussion of medical ethics issues as a proper subject for medical research unless it is based on empirical data gathering is conceptually mistaken. “Empirical ethics” is, of course, a legitimate component of medical ethics research, but to act as though it is the only legitimate component suggests, at best, a partial understanding of the nature of ethics in general and medical ethics in particular. It also mistakenly places medicine firmly on only one side of the science/humanities “two cultures” divide instead of in its rightful place bridging the divide. Given the emphasis by the General Medical Council on medical ethics in properly preparing “tomorrow’s doctors,” we urge medical schools to find a way of using the upcoming Research Excellence Framework to highlight the expertise residing in their ethicist colleagues. We are confident that appropriate assessment will reveal work of high quality that can be shown to have social and cultural impact and benefit beyond academia, as required by the framework. (shrink)

There are differences in caregivers’ literacy and health literacy levels that may affect their ability to consent to children participating in clinical research trials. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness, and caregivers’ understandings, of the process of informed consent that accompanied their child’s participation in a dental randomized control trial (RCT). Telephone interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of ten caregivers who each had a child participating in the RCT. Pre-tested closed and open-ended questions were used, and the (...) findings were produced from an inductive analysis of the latter and a descriptive analysis of the former. Participants had limited understanding of the purpose of the RCT and rated the readability of the consent form more highly than they rated their understanding of the research. All felt that informed consent was vital, but some caregivers had not read the consent documents. Some caregivers enrolled their child in the RCT because they trusted the researchers, and the majority wanted to improve dental care for children. The informed consent process was not always effective despite high readability of the informed consent documents. Researchers must consider the health literacy of the study group, and actively engaging with caregivers to achieve meaningful informed consent may be challenging. Future research could explore participants’ perspectives of informed consent in populations with low health literacy and assess whether an underlying expectation not to comprehend health-related information may be a barrier to informed consent. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

The effective provision of psychotherapy services to individuals with intellectual disability requires consideration of ethical issues related to clinical competence, access to services, obligations to multiple parties, guardianship, and appropriate assessment practices. This article provides an overview of major ethical considerations with guidance for clarifying and resolving common ethical concerns. Psychologists are encouraged to expand access to psychotherapy services for this population while maintaining awareness of potential modifications, training needs, and boundaries of professional competence. The authors provide recommendations and resources (...) for effective and ethical treatment of psychotherapy clients with intellectual disabilities. (shrink)

Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain regarding (...) the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

This penetrating book sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. What accounts for the violence that emerges among some fundamentalist groups? The contributors to this book identify several factors: a radical dualism, in which all aspects of life are bluntly categorized as either good or evil; a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts, laws, and teachings in the most literal of terms; an extreme and totalized conversion experience; paranoid thinking; (...) and an apocalyptic world view. After examining each of these concepts in detail, and showing the ways in which they lead to violence among widely disparate groups, these engrossing essays explore such areas as fundamentalism in the American experience and among jihadists, and they illuminate aspects of the same psychology that contributed to such historical crises as the French Revolution, the Nazi movement, and post-Partition Hindu religious practice. (shrink)

This volume consists of autobiographical by the following scholars, together with pictures and autographs: Raven I. McDavid, Jr., Henry M. Hoenigswald, John B. Carroll, William G. Moulton, Archibald A. Hill, Yakov Malkiel, Charles F. Hockett, Harold B. Allen, William Bright, Einar Haugen, George S. Lane, Frederic G. Cassidy, James B. McMillan, Winfred P. Lehmann, Fred W. Householder, and Dell Hymes. A master list of references, and an index of persons conclude the volume.

Whenever we make a claim about a fictional entity, we seem to embroil ourselves in familiar problems of reference. This appearance is misleading, because what a sentence is about bears a greater resemblance to a Fregean sense than to a reference. All previous attempts to define 'about' consist of two approaches: "metalinguistic" theories of 'about', proposed by Ryle and Carnap, which fail to counterexamples wherein transparent contexts generate paradoxical consequences; and "semantic" theories of 'about' proposed by Putnam and by Goodman, (...) which fail to counterexamples wherein no term refers to that which the sentence is about. ;An untried alternative is to replace 'S is about k ' with 'S is about k for person p '. Clearly, such a definition need not confine itself to sentences, but may apply to works of art as well. A detailed examination of how one actually goes about arguing to an audience that some work of art W is about some topic, yields a definition that approximates normal usage, yet avoids many problematic notions, such as 'beliefs', 'ideas', and 'intentional states'. Necessary and sufficient truth conditions for 'W is about k for p at time T' turn out to include as major elements a causal chain leading from W to a set of "explicit thoughts" and dispositions, and the lack of an "aesthetic environment" which excludes W. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of WarRichard W Sams III remember standing in the kitchen of our home on Camp Pendleton—a United States Marine Corps base in Southern California—listening to National Public Radio (NPR) and doing dishes in the fall of 2002. President Bush announced to the world that he was considering a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on the pretext of Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Three (...) months later, as a Navy Family Physician, I deployed with a surgical company in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reflecting on the situation with a like-minded close friend, I was not sure— would this be a just war? A necessary war? In my mind, it did not rise to the level of conscientious objection, yet the rightness of invading another country with all the anticipated death and destruction was not clear.En route to Kuwait, we laid over in Spain. While fixed to a TV in a holding area, I watched the Secretary of State make a case to the United Nations (UN) and the world that removing Hussein from power would protect us from mobile anthrax labs that could kill tens of thousands. I thought to myself, Either he is absolutely right, and we are protecting our country and the rest of the free world, or he is terribly mistaken and we are embarking on a disaster.As we trained, prepared, and waited in our tents to invade, we listened to the news on “Voice of America” with a hand crank radio. Thousands of citizens from nations around the world protested. Pope John Paul II, a man well acquainted with the tragedy of war, even spoke out about the planned invasion. “War is not inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.” He admonished our leaders that war needed to be the very last option. As a man of faith, I was troubled by his resolute, thoughtful opposition to the crusade I was embarking on. As the day of the invasion approached, scud missiles flew over our camp and we scurried into bunkers, day and night, with our gas masks donned to protect us from possible WMD attacks. In March, with the announcement of a “shock and awe” missile attack on Hussein’s palace, the invasion commenced.Within a day of flying by helicopter into enemy territory to set up a surgical company, the fog of war set in. A series of mass casualties streamed in from nearby Nasiriya. We received dozens of injured enemy combatants and American soldiers. Most troubling were the civilians. An entire extended family fleeing for their lives stumbled into an Iraqi minefield meant for us: a mother dead, the men with shrapnel wounds, and an aunt lost both of her legs. Then there was the little boy. By doctrine, our leaders reassured us we would not care for children. Yet, out of instinct, the field corpsmen scooped up all injured, including children, and [End Page 170] brought them to us. The five-year-old’s legs were blown to bits. We had no pediatric supplies. The anesthesiologist heroically intubated the child’s tiny airway with a urinary catheter and placed an adult IV. The surgeons corrected the wounds the best they could. Hours later, in futility, we performed chest compressions on his tiny mangled body.A day later, the worst sandstorm in a decade struck the area. We struggled to keep the patient-filled tents erect. A Marine appeared on the scene out of the darkness (you could not see beyond your nose in the storm) exclaiming we were going to condition one—lock and load our weapons due to an imminent threat. As healthcare professionals, Geneva Conventions dictated we were to use weapons only in self-defense. We chambered our 9-millimeter pistols to defend our patients and ourselves while Marines formed a defensive perimeter. I thought to myself, Great I’m gonna be shot up and die during a freaking sandstorm in Iraq. Hours later, we were told to stand down. The threat was not from approaching enemy combatants but from shepherds running from the crossfire. I had a small nervous breakdown, sleep deprived and under duress... (shrink)

Introduction, W G Runciman Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley Friendship and the Banker?s (...) Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello Conclusions, John Maynard Smith. (shrink)

At the time of writing there appear to have been no electronic submissions to the Journal of Medical Ethics. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin electronic correspondence with a consideration of some of the ethical implications of this new form of ethical dialogue.I have posted this response to Kenneth Boyd’s editorial on Mrs Pretty and Ms B1 as this article may provoke debate far beyond the medical and ethical establishment. This issue may be of tremendous concern to patients or (...) their carers who are presently suffering in circumstances similar to those described.The electronic response forum of the BMJ has been in operation for over four years.2 An editorial in the BMJ on physician assisted suicide3 has attracted 125 responses at the time of writing. An important feature of electronic responses, particularly on items that generate a lot of debate, is that the …. (shrink)

At the time of writing there appear to have been no electronic submissions to the Journal of Medical Ethics. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin electronic correspondence with a consideration of some of the ethical implications of this new form of ethical dialogue.I have posted this response to Kenneth Boyd’s editorial on Mrs Pretty and Ms B1 as this article may provoke debate far beyond the medical and ethical establishment. This issue may be of tremendous concern to patients or (...) their carers who are presently suffering in circumstances similar to those described.The electronic response forum of the BMJ has been in operation for over four years.2 An editorial in the BMJ on physician assisted suicide3 has attracted 125 responses at the time of writing. An important feature of electronic responses, particularly on items that generate a lot of debate, is that the …. (shrink)

Plato’s Socrates holds that we always have reason to be just, since being just is essential for living a happy and successful life. In Book II of Plato’s Republic, Socrates’ main interlocutor, Glaucon, raises a vivid and powerful challenge to this claim. He presents the case of Gyges, a Lydian shepherd who possesses a ring that gives him the power of invisibility. Glaucon’s contention is that Gyges does not have reason to be just in this circumstance, since being just (...) will not promote his happiness. Thus, the argument poses the following challenge: what reason do we have to be just, particularly in circumstances where we can get away with injustice? In this essay, we describe Glaucon’s challenge, highlight its similarity to challenges offered by other skeptical figures in the history of philosophy, namely, Hobbes’ Foole and Hume’s sensible knave, and present three broad lines of response. (shrink)