Larry Barnes, Executive Director of the Southwest Missouri Baptist Association (SMBA), received a telephone call that no executive wants to receive. The pastor at Hilltop Baptist Church reported suspicions of embezzlement by the church bookkeeper. Whatever decision Barnes made in advising the pastor would impact Hilltop, the church members, the SMBA, and a number of stakeholders, including himself. His primary duty as Executive Director was to provide guidance and advice to pastors of SMBA churches, help them expand, and assist in (...) establishing new churches. However, did his professional responsibilities encompass this situation? If not, did he have an ethical obligation to help? What if his involvement caused legal and financial problems for the SMBA? What was the likelihood the bookkeeper and her family might sue the SMBA and Barnes? Many Hilltop Church members were personal friends of Barnes. He worried about jeopardizing hisfriendship with them, particularly if the accusations were incorrect. An equally important concern was whether Hilltop Church would continue to exist. Financial problems had plagued the church in recent years and the relationship between the pastor and members was already contentious. An embezzlement scandal could cause the 150 year old church to close its doors. Barnes had to decide whether to get involved and, if so, what to recommend as a course of action to Hilltop’s pastor. (shrink)

Larry Barnes, Executive Director of the Southwest Missouri Baptist Association (SMBA), received a telephone call that no executive wants to receive. The pastor at Hilltop Baptist Church reported suspicions of embezzlement by the church bookkeeper. Whatever decision Barnes made in advising the pastor would impact Hilltop, the church members, the SMBA, and a number of stakeholders, including himself. His primary duty as Executive Director was to provide guidance and advice to pastors of SMBA churches, help them expand, and assist in (...) establishing new churches. However, did his professional responsibilities encompass this situation? If not, did he have an ethical obligation to help? What if his involvement caused legal and financial problems for the SMBA? What was the likelihood the bookkeeper and her family might sue the SMBA and Barnes? Many Hilltop Church members were personal friends of Barnes. He worried about jeopardizing hisfriendship with them, particularly if the accusations were incorrect. An equally important concern was whether Hilltop Church would continue to exist. Financial problems had plagued the church in recent years and the relationship between the pastor and members was already contentious. An embezzlement scandal could cause the 150 year old church to close its doors. Barnes had to decide whether to get involved and, if so, what to recommend as a course of action to Hilltop’s pastor. (shrink)

Metaphysics as the foundation of science, philosophy as an exact method to discover this foundation: These are central themes in the Kant-Friesian philosophy which, at the beginning of the 20th century, Leonard Nelson, using the methods of mathematical axiomatics, further developed into interdisciplinary research programmes. Nelson carried out this research programme in his ethics but his untimely death prevented a systematic presentation of his natural philosophy and his doctrine of method. The present volume contains four transcripts of his seminars on (...) natural philosophy which he held over a period of 15 years. The transcripts, which may be taken as a comparatively complete presentation of Nelson's natural philosophy, supplement the writings published during his lifetime and convey a representative picture of his natural philosophy. // Metaphysik als Fundament der Wissenschaften, Philosophie, eine exakte Disziplin, die dieses Fundament offenlegt: Leitmotive des Kant-Fries’schen Denkgebäudes, die Leonard Nelson zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts in interdisziplinäre Forschungsprogramme umsetzt. Die dabei angewandten – an der mathematischen Axiomatik ausgerichteten – Methoden haben nichts an Aktualität eingebüßt. Kann Nelson dieses Vorhaben bezüglich seiner Ethik verwirklichen, so verhindert sein früher Tod eine systematische Darstellung seiner Naturphilosophie und Methodenlehre. Der vorliegende Band enthält vier Mitschriften von Lehrveranstaltungen Nelsons. Diese Schriften, die die zu seinen Lebzeiten veröffentlichten Arbeiten zur Naturphilosophie ergänzen und erweitern sollen, decken einen Zeitraum von ca. 15 Jahren ab und geben somit einen repräsentativen Einblick in Nelsons naturphilosophisches Schaffen. Die vorliegende Zusammenstellung naturphilosophischer Nachlassschriften darf als verhältnismäßig vollständig gelten. (shrink)

"Annual dinner and act golden gavel competition." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (194), pp. 18.

Although researchers have paid much attention to the widespread cheating by students during their college careers and the possible sources behind such unethical behaviors, there has been less attention given to the unethical behaviors of faculty. Research on the types of unethical behaviors of faculty has pointed out the unique nature of higher education and the particular pressures placed on faculty as potential drivers of such behavior. In this paper, we examine the factors and underlying cognitive processes that may drive (...) faculty to engage in such behaviors. Specifically, we identify potential drivers of faculty unethical behavior, the cognitive processes activated by these drivers, and the types of behaviors that are considered most ethically questionable among faculty as they carry out their professional roles. We conclude with research considerations and implications of faculty misconduct on the profession. (shrink)

IntroductionAcademic integrity policy that is inaccessible, ambiguous or confusing is likely to result in inconsistent policy enactment. Additionally, policy analysis and development are often undertaken as top down processes requiring passive acceptance by users of policy that has been developed outside the context in which it is enacted. Both these factors can result in poor policy uptake, particularly where policy users are overworked, intellectually critical and capable, not prone to passive acceptance and hold valuable grass roots intelligence about policy enactment.Case (...) descriptionThe case study presented in this paper describes the actions of a community of practice at a regional Australian university to deconstruct and translate ambiguous academic integrity policy into a suite of accessible academic integrity resources that were intelligible to staff and students, and which assisted academic staff to consistently enact policy. The paper narrates the formation of the CoP, the tangible and intangible value it created, the social learning practices enacted by its members, its grassroots policy work and the material resources produced from that work.Discussion and evaluationAn evaluation of the CoP was conducted using a value creation framework to explore its immediate value, potential value, applied value, realised value, and reframing value. These values were considered at each stages of the CoP’s lifespan. The evaluation was a useful process that demonstrated the wide-ranging value created by the CoP. Six insights were drawn from the evaluation which promote understanding of the value created for a university by a CoP, particularly in contributing to academic integrity culture over a sustained period of time.ConclusionsThis paper contributes to a research gap on specific examples of discretion within rule-based systems. It illustrates how academics and members of the CoP used their discretion to interpret and enact academic integrity policy within a higher education setting. Drawing from the evaluation of the CoP we argue for greater understanding of the grass-roots contribution of academic and professional staff to academic integrity policy translation and enactment. (shrink)

There is a vast literature that seeks to uncover features underlying moral judgment by eliciting reactions to hypothetical scenarios such as trolley problems. These thought experiments assume that participants accept the outcomes stipulated in the scenarios. Across seven studies, we demonstrate that intuition overrides stipulated outcomes even when participants are explicitly told that an action will result in a particular outcome. Participants instead substitute their own estimates of the probability of outcomes for stipulated outcomes, and these probability estimates in turn (...) influence moral judgments. Our findings demonstrate that intuitive likelihoods are one critical factor in moral judgment, one that is not suspended even in moral dilemmas that explicitly stipulate outcomes. Features thought to underlie moral reasoning, such as intention, may operate, in part, by affecting the intuitive likelihood of outcomes, and, problematically, moral differences between scenarios may be confounded with non-moral intuitive probabilities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study examines the types of verbal, pictorial, and multimodal metaphors in the genre of sex education picture books for young children in Mainland China. Although being an educational discourse genre that is essentially concerned with transmitting scientific facts, sex education picture books employ a range of metaphors that categorize and construe the biological knowledge of human reproduction in a way that not only facilitates young children’s understanding of scientific concepts but also instills in them particular values and moralities that (...) are socioculturally conditioned. An examination of the source domains from which the metaphors are drawn and the target domains onto which the metaphors are mapped reveals three types of metaphor, namely, personification, domestication, and cross-experience metaphors. The analysis of seven sex education picture books for pre-school children suggests that these types of metaphor are used purposefully for addressing pedagogical as well as ideological con... (shrink)

The obesity epidemic among children and adolescents in the United States continues to worsen. The most recent analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that the prevalence of overweight among children and adolescents – defined as a Body Mass Index at or above the 95th percentile on gender-specific BMI-for-age growth charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – increased significantly between 1999-2000 and 2003-2004. Over this period, the prevalence of overweight among children (...) and adolescents aged 2-19 increased 23% – from 13.9% to 17.1%. In 2003-2004, 18.8% of children aged 6-11 and 17.4% of adolescents aged 12-19 were overweight. Roughly comparable proportions of each age group were considered to be at risk of becoming overweight. (shrink)

Two posttranslational lipid modifications present on all Hedgehog (Hh) morphogens—an N‐terminal palmitate and a C‐terminal cholesterol—are established and essential regulators of Hh biofunction. Yet, for several decades, the question of exactly how both lipids contribute to Hh signaling remained obscure. Recently, cryogenic electron microscopy revealed different modes by which one or both lipids may contribute directly to Hh binding and signaling to its receptor Patched1 (Ptc). Some of these modes demand that the established release factor Dispatched1 (Disp) extracts dual‐lipidated Hh (...) from the cell surface, and that another known upstream signaling modulator called Scube2 chaperones the dual‐lipidated morphogen to Ptc. By mechanistically and biochemically aligning this concept with established in vivo and recent in vitro findings, this reflection identifies remaining questions in lipidated Hh transport and evaluates additional mechanisms of Disp‐ and Scube2‐regulated release of a second bioactive Hh fraction that has one or both lipids removed. (shrink)

This study examined the ethical issues experienced by nurses working in a small group of elderly persons’ care settings in the UK, using a survey questionnaire previously used in other countries for examining the cultural aspects of ethical issues. However ‘culture’ relates not only to ethnicity but also the organizational culture in which care is delivered. Nurses working in elderly persons’ care settings described a range of issues faced when caring for elderly terminally ill people, which illustrated the different needs (...) of patients, relatives, professionals and society. These issues related to the unique needs of elderly people (such as dementia sufferers) and could have an impact on patients’ quality of death. (shrink)

This project investigates the ethical frameworks in place for Pakistani television news journalists reporting cases of domestic violence. It also examines the provision and structure of training for Pakistani media professionals to support accurate and balanced reporting of such violence. The research comprised in-depth semi-structured interviews with a small group of television journalists. The findings reveal that there was no formalized code of ethics guiding how journalists represent incidents of this crime, its victims, or perpetrators. Moreover, it was revealed that (...) due to a paucity of formal professional development opportunities, journalists negotiate the challenges of reporting domestic violence on-the-job, resulting in instances of irresponsible reporting practices. (shrink)

Friendly persuasion, in contrast to deterrent measures like tax audits and penalties on underreported taxes, is a positive and possibly a cost effective method of increasing taxpayer compliance. However, prior studies have failed to show that friendly persuasion has a significant impact on compliance (Blumenthal et al., 2001; McGraw and Scholz, 1991). In our study, in contrast to prior studies, we examine the impact of generating and reading reasons supporting compliance as friendly persuasion on individuals' income reporting behavior as well (...) as control for gender effects. Specifically, we predict an interaction effect between friendly persuasion and gender on compliance behavior. We carried out a 2 (friendly persuasion and control) × 2 (men and women) full factorial experiment, where participants earned $30 by completing two questionnaires. Participants in the friendly persuasion group were required first to generate and second to read a list of reasons why they should comply fully. Afterwards, participants in both groups were asked to report the income they earned and pay tax on the reported income. The results show a significant main effect for gender as well as a significant interaction effect between gender and friendly persuasion on income reported. Women in the friendly persuasion group reported significantly higher income compared to men in that group. Other comparisons were not significant. Policy implications for increasing taxpayers' ethics and compliance are highlighted. (shrink)

As a philosophical position, pragmatism can be critiqued to distinguish truth only with methods that bring about desired results, predominantly with scientific enquiry. The article hopes to dismiss this oversimplification and propose that within mental health nursing, enquiry enlightened by pragmatism can be anchored to methods helping to tackle genuine human problems. Whilst pragmatists suggest one reality exists, fluctuating experiences and shifting beliefs about the world can inhabit within; hence, pragmatists propose reality has the potential to change. Moreover, pragmatism includes (...) being cognisant of what works to whom reality concerns, making reality context‐driven, with a view to understand how actions shape experiences so what is generated has usefulness. Hence, it somewhat follows pragmatism can inform mental health nursing, after all, nursing is a discipline of action, and awareness is needed in how actions produce experiences that patients find helpful. Given the principles of recovery are preferably adopted in mental health care, the paper will explore how pragmatism can help nurses move towards that goal; specifically, with patients voicing their experiences. This is because like pragmatism, recovery subscribes to hope that reality can progress, and through meaningful experiences and beliefs, patients have expertise about personal difficulties alongside how life may flourish, despite mental illness. (shrink)

This article uses computerized analysis of text, along with a close reading of text, to trace change and development in Burkitt's lymphoma research. While past researchers have focused on the way a text enters the literature, we wish to learn what happens to knowledge claims after they arrive in the published literature. In order to explain why some claims are successfully solidified into facts while others remain as isolated, unsupported claims, we rely upon the notion of the material and social (...) technology required to do successful work in a research area. (shrink)

Misophonia has been characterized as intense negative reactions to specific trigger sounds. However, recent research suggests high-level, contextual, and multisensory factors are also involved. We recently demonstrated that neurotypicals’ negative reactions to aversive sounds are attenuated when the sounds are synced with positive attributable video sources. To assess whether this effect generalizes to misophonic triggers, we developed a Sound-Swapped Video database for use in misophonia research. In Study 1, we created a set of 39 video clips depicting common trigger sounds (...) and a corresponding set of 39 PAVS temporally synchronized with the OVS videos. In Study 2, participants rated the 39 PAVS videos for their audiovisual match and pleasantness. We selected the 20 PAVS videos with best match scores for use in Study 3. In Study 3, a new group of participants observed the 20 selected PAVS and 20 corresponding OVS and judged the pleasantness or unpleasantness of each sound in the two contexts accompanying each video. Afterward, participants completed the Misophonia Questionnaire. The results of Study 3 show a robust attenuating effect of PAVS videos on the reported unpleasantness of trigger sounds: trigger sounds were rated as significantly less unpleasant when paired with PAVS with than OVS. Moreover, this attenuating effect was present in nearly every participant regardless of their score on the MQ. In fact, we found a moderate positive correlation between the PAVS-OVS difference and misophonia severity scores. Overall our results provide validation that the SSV database is a useful stimulus database to study how misophonic responses can be modulated by visual contexts. Here, we release the SSV database with the best 18 PAVS and 18 OVS videos used in Study 3 along with aggregate ratings of audio-video match and pleasantness. We also provide detailed instructions on how to produce these videos, with the hope that this database grows and improves through collaborations with the community of misophonia researchers. (shrink)

When forecasting events, multiple types of uncertainty are often inherently present in the modeling process. Various uncertainty typologies exist, and each type of uncertainty has different implications a scientist might want to convey. In this work, we focus on one type of distinction betweendirect quantitative uncertaintyandindirect qualitative uncertainty. Direct quantitative uncertainty describes uncertainty about facts, numbers, and hypotheses that can be communicated in absolute quantitative forms such as probability distributions or confidence intervals. Indirect qualitative uncertainty describes the quality of knowledge (...) concerning how effectively facts, numbers, or hypotheses represent reality, such as evidence confidence scales proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A large body of research demonstrates that both experts and novices have difficulty reasoning with quantitative uncertainty, and visualizations of uncertainty can help with such traditionally challenging concepts. However, the question of if, and how, people may reason with multiple types of uncertainty associated with a forecast remains largely unexplored. In this series of studies, we seek to understand if individuals can integrate indirect uncertainty about how “good” a model is (operationalized as a qualitative expression of forecaster confidence) with quantified uncertainty in a prediction (operationalized as a quantile dotplot visualization of a predicted distribution). Our first study results suggest that participants utilize both direct quantitative uncertainty and indirect qualitative uncertainty when conveyed as quantile dotplots and forecaster confidence. In manipulations where forecasters were less sure about their prediction, participants made more conservative judgments. In our second study, we varied the amount of quantified uncertainty (in the form of the SD of the visualized distributions) to examine how participants’ decisions changed under different combinations of quantified uncertainty (variance) and qualitative uncertainty (low, medium, and high forecaster confidence). The second study results suggest that participants updated their judgments in the direction predicted by both qualitative confidence information (e.g., becoming more conservative when the forecaster confidence is low) and quantitative uncertainty (e.g., becoming more conservative when the variance is increased). Based on the findings from both experiments, we recommend that forecasters present qualitative expressions of model confidence whenever possible alongside quantified uncertainty. (shrink)

This study examines social desirability bias in the context of ethical decision-making by accountants. It hypothesizes a negative relation between social desirability bias and ethical evaluation. It also predicts an interaction effect between religiousness and gender on social desirability bias. An experiment using five general business vignettes was carried out on 121 accountants (63 males and 58 females). The results show that social desirability bias is higher (lower) when the situation encountered is more (less) unethical. The bias has religiousness and (...) gender main effects as well as an interaction effect between these two independent variables. Women who were more religious recorded the highest bias scores relative to less religious women and men regardless of their religiousness. (shrink)

An educated healthcare professional or student is sensitive and able to make good judgements, understanding existential challenging issues. It is argued that the ideas within phenomenology and hermeneutics can function as a basis for comprehension. This article focuses on how choice of perspective and knowledge is of importance to what we do in practice. However, education does not consist of mere accumulation of knowledge and ways of explanation. We do not become competent practitioners by being able to reproduce philosophical ideas. (...) These are merely perspectives by means of which we can seek to go beyond what we take for granted, or what we assume to know, thus enabling us to take a new direction understanding problems and issues that until now may have been hidden to us. In other words, understanding is of an existential character, whereas an observing healthcare professional must be aware and open to the mental aspects of life. It is therefore important to attune ourselves to being sensitive to and aware of experiences from our lifeworld, understanding what they imply. It is argued that literature provides insight into human nature through the written depiction of real or imagined experiences. To develop such narrative imagination, it is suggested that literature should be part of the curriculum of various educations. This is relevant to healthcare professionals who thereby can get an important insight into human nature and begin to develop the self‐awareness and sensitivity to others that is so central to care. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Ellul is useful in understanding and evaluating the implications of rapidly changing technologies for human values and democracy. Ellul developed three powerful theses about technology: technological autonomy, technological determinism, and technological bluff. In this essay, the authors explicate these views of technology, and place the work of Ellul in dialogue with the ides of other important theorists of technology. Ellul’s too-often overlooked theses about technology are relevant to our present technological society.

ABSTRACT The technological revolution has created enormous opportunities for the provision of affordable, accessible, and flexible mental healthcare. Yet it also creates complexities and ethical challenges. While some of these challenges may be similar to face-to-face care, their nuance in the online milieu is different, as relationships, identities and boundaries in this setting are fluid, and there is an absence of physical presence. In this paper we consider the specific ethical complexities involved in the provision of a social networking intervention (...) for depression and problematic alcohol use involving providers and peers. We present a case in which clinicians encountered a participant who repeatedly expressed suicidal thoughts in this online forum, and reflect on how this situation was managed. In analyzing this case, we use relational ethics—which proposes that interpersonal relationships are the fulcrum for ethical decision-making and action—together with actor-network theory—which highlights the power of technology to transform and mediate social and ethical relationships. Our analysis demonstrates the need to move beyond human-centric approaches, to recognize the role of both human and non-human actors in shaping moral decisions and behavior in the provision of e-mental healthcare. (shrink)

This article examines emergency ambulance calls made by lay callers for patients found to be in cardiac arrest when the paramedics arrived. Using conversation analysis, we explored the trajectories of calls in which the caller, before being asked by the call-taker, said why they were calling, that is, calls in which callers pre-empted a reason-for-the-call. Caller pre-emption can be disruptive when call-takers first need to obtain an address and telephone number. Pre-emptions have further implications when call-takers reach the stage when (...) they are required to deliver the scripted turn ‘tell me exactly what happened’. When there has been a pre-emption earlier on, callers tend to treat the scripted turn as a request for more information and may not repeat their reason-for-the-call. This can occasion delays and important information can be lost. We identified an effective alternative strategy used by some call-takers, pre-emption repeat, which callers treat as a request for confirmation. (shrink)