During the past decade, patient participation became an important issue in the medical field, and patient participation in biomedical research processes is increasingly called for. One of the arguments for this refers to the specific kind of knowledge, called experiential knowledge, patients could contribute. Until now, participation of patients in biomedical research has been rare, and integration of patients’ experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge—in the few cases it takes place—occurs implicitly and on an ad hoc basis. This is illustrated by (...) describing and analyzing the activities of the German patient group on retinitis pigmentosa. The authors argue that to be able to optimize the use of experiential knowledge of patients in biomedical research, a systematic approach is required. Transdisciplinary research provides such an approach, systematically, explicitly, and deliberately integrating knowledge from different scientific and nonscientific sources. In this article, the concept of transdisciplinarity is elaborated upon. The authors propose a possible procedure, identify necessary conditions and skills, and evaluate the feasibility of its implementation and institutionalization. Finally, the authors introduce a recent research project to further investigate and implement transdisciplinary research in the biomedical field. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Participants are often not informed by investigators who conduct randomised, placebo-controlled acupuncture trials that they may receive a sham acupuncture intervention. Instead, they are told that one or more forms of acupuncture are being compared in the study. This deceptive disclosure practice lacks a compelling methodological rationale and violates the ethical requirement to obtain informed consent. Participants in placebo-controlled acupuncture trials should be provided an accurate disclosure regarding the use of sham acupuncture, consistent with the practice of placebo-controlled drug trials.

This Handbook documents the main trends in current research between logic and language, including its broader influence in computer science, linguistic theory and cognitive science. The history of the combined study of Logic and Linguistics goes back a long way, at least to the work of the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of this century, the subject was revitalized through the pioneering efforts of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Polish philosophical logicians such as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Around (...) 1970, the landmark achievements of Richard Montague established a junction between state-of-the-art mathematical logic and generative linguistic theory. Over the subsequent decades, this enterprise of Montague Grammar has flourished and diversified into a number of research programs with empirical and theoretical substance. This appears to be the first Handbook to bring logic-language interface to the fore. Both aspects of the interaction between logic and language are demonstrated in the book i.e. firstly, how logical systems are designed and modified in response to linguistic needs and secondly, how mathematical theory arises in this process and how it affects subsequent linguistic theory. The Handbook presents concise, impartial accounts of the topics covered. Where possible, an author and a commentator have cooperated to ensure the proper breadth and technical content of the papers. The Handbook is self-contained, and individual articles are of the highest quality. (shrink)

This paper investigates connectionism's potential to solve the frame problem. The frame problem arises in the context of modelling the human ability to see the relevant consequences of events in a situation. It has been claimed to be unsolvable for classical cognitive science, but easily manageable for connectionism. We will focus on a representational approach to the frame problem which advocates the use of intrinsic representations. We argue that although connectionism's distributed representations may look promising from this perspective, doubts can (...) be raised about the potential of distributed representations to allow large amounts of complexly structured information to be adequately encoded and processed. It is questionable whether connectionist models that are claimed to effectively represent structured information can be scaled up to a realistic extent. We conclude that the frame problem provides a difficulty to connectionism that is no less serious than the obstacle it constitutes for classical cognitive science. (shrink)

Rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence are leading to an increasing human reliance on machine decision making. Even in collaborative efforts with Decision Support Systems (DSSs), where a human expert is expected to make the final decisions, it can be hard to keep the expert actively involved throughout the decision process. DSSs suggest their own solutions and thus invite passive decision making. To keep humans actively ‘on’ the decision-making loop and counter overreliance on machines, we propose a ‘reflection machine’ (RM). This (...) system asks users questions about their decision strategy and thereby prompts them to evaluate their own decisions critically. We discuss what forms RMs can take and present a proof-of-concept implementation of a RM that can produce feedback on users’ decisions in the medical and law domains. We show that the prototype requires very little domain knowledge to create reasonably intelligent critiquing questions. With this prototype, we demonstrate the technical feasibility to develop RMs and hope to pave the way for future research into their effectiveness and value. (shrink)

A large Hilbert space is used for the calculation of the nuclear matrix elements governing the light neutrino mass mediated mode of neutrinoless double beta decay (Ovββ-decay) of76Ge,100Mo,116Cd,128Te, and136Xe within the proton-neutron quasiparticle random phase approximation (pn-QRPA) and the renormalized QRPA with proton-neutron pairing (full-RQRPA) methods. We have found that the nuclear matrix elements obtained with the standard pn-QRPA for several nuclear transitions are extremely sensitive to the renormalization of the particle-particle component of the residual interaction of the nuclear hamiltonian. (...) Therefore the standard pn-QRPA does not guarantee the necessary accuracy to allow us to extract a reliable limit on the effective neutrino mass. This behavior already known from the calculation of the two-neutrino double beta decay matrix elements, manifests itself in the neutrinoless double-beta decay but only if a large model space is used. The full-RQRPA, which takes into account proton-neutron pairing and considers the Pauli principle in an approximate way, offers a stable solution in the physically acceptable region of the particle-particle strength. In this way more accurate values on the effective neutrino mass have been deduced from the experimental lower limits of the half-lifes of neutrinoless double beta decay. (shrink)

La Philosophie de la Technique compte des centaoines de titres a l'etranger mais reste balbutiante en France. Or la technique constitue bien le milieu universel dans lequel desormais nous naissons, vivons et mourrons. Il n'est pas sur que cette technique englobante, qui innerve notre temps et notre espace, puisse encore etre consideree comme un ensemble d'outils au service de l'Homme et comme une science appliquee. L'Homme suivant toutes ses dimensions, est mis en question par la technique contemporaine. La science est (...) si essentiellement enchevetree a la technique, qui est operation (action et manipulation), qu'il n'y a plus de science pure, c'est-a-dire neutre et innocente. Voila pourquoi la Philosophie de la Technique rencontre la problematique ethique non de l'exterieur mais necessairement et essentiellement. Que dois-je faire? depend fondamentalement de ce que j'ai la capacite de faire. La technique, qui a radicalement modifie la nature et le champ du pouvoir-faire humain, individuel et collectif, exige du meme coup que la question ethique soit fondamentalement reconsideree. Ethique et Technique n'intervient donc pas comme un chapitre quelconque de la Philosophie de la Technique, mais peut-etre bien comme le coeur meme de ce nouveau champ de reflexion. (shrink)

Participation of end users in decision-making on science is increasingly practiced, as witnessed by the growing body of scientific literature on case evaluations. In the biomedical field, however, end-user participation in decision-making is rare. Some scholars argue that because patients are stakeholders and relevant experts, they could also provide important contributions to decision-making within the field of biomedical research. But what strategies could be used to effectively implement patient participation in decision-making on biomedical research? In this article, we analyze strategies (...) for patient participation and conclude that these can hardly be regarded effective because they do not ensure patients' structural influence on decision-making. We identify obstacles for effective patient participation, which seem to reflect a resilience of the current biomedical decision-making network. We subsequently elaborate on the concept of transition management in the search for clues on how to breach this resilience and change the network toward the inclusion of patients. (shrink)

Background Population based genetics studies are dependent on large numbers of individuals in the pursuit of small effect sizes. Recruiting and consenting a large number of participants is both costly and time consuming. We explored whether an online consent process for large-scale genetics studies is acceptable for prospective participants using an example online genetics study. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 42 members of the public stratified by age group, gender and newspaper readership (a measure of social status). Respondents were (...) asked to use a website designed to recruit for a large-scale genetic study. After using the website a semi-structured interview was conducted to explore opinions and any issues they would have. Responses were analysed using thematic content analysis. Results The majority of respondents said they would take part in the research (32/42). Those who said they would decline to participate saw fewer benefits from the research, wanted more information and expressed a greater number of concerns about the study. Younger respondents had concerns over time commitment. Middle aged respondents were concerned about privacy and security. Older respondents were more altruistic in their motivation to participate. Common themes included trust in the authenticity of the website, security of personal data, curiosity about their own genetic profile, operational concerns and a desire for more information about the research. Conclusions Online consent to large-scale genetic studies is likely to be acceptable to the public. The online consent process must establish trust quickly and effectively by asserting authenticity and credentials, and provide access to a range of information to suit different information preferences. (shrink)