Healthcare whistle blowing, despite the benefits it has brought to healthcare systems in many developed countries, remains generally regarded as a pariah activity by many of the most influential healthcare professionals and regulatory institutions. Few if any medical schools or law department health law and bioethics classes, teach whistle blowing in a formal sense. Yet without exception, public inquiries initiated by healthcare whistle blowers have validated their central allegations and demonstrated that the whistle blowers themselves were sincere in their desire (...) to implement the fundamental virtues and principles of medical ethics, bioethics and public health law. In many jurisdictions, the law, this time remarkably in advance of professional opinion, has offered legislative protection for reasonable allegations of whistleblowers made in good faith and in the public interest concerning a substantial and imminent threat to public safety. One reason for this paradoxical position, explored here, is that healthcare whistle blowing lacks a firm virtue-based theoretical bioethical and jurisprudential foundation. The hypothesis discussed is that the lack of this bioethical and jurisprudential substrate has contributed to a situation where healthcare whistle blowing suffers in terms of institutional support due to its lack of academic legitimacy. This article commences the process of redressing this imbalance by attempting to lay the theoretical foundations for healthcare whistle blowing. As a case study, this article concludes by discussing the Personal and Professional Development course at the ANU Medical School where healthcare whistle blowing is a formal part of a virtue-based curriculum that emphasises the foundational importance of conscience. Illustrative elements of that program are discussed. (shrink)

Although much recent social science and humanities work has been a revolt against simplification, this volume explores the contrast between simplicity and complexity to reveal that this dichotomy, itself, is too simplistic. John Law and Annemarie Mol have gathered a distinguished panel of contributors to offer—particularly within the field of science studies—approaches to a theory of complexity, and at the same time a theoretical introduction to the topic. Indeed, they examine not only ways of relating to complexity but complexity _in (...) practice._ Individual essays study complexity from a variety of perspectives, addressing market behavior, medical interventions, aeronautical design, the governing of supranational states, ecology, roadbuilding, meteorology, the science of complexity itself, and the psychology of childhood trauma. Other topics include complex wholes in the sciences, moral complexity in seemingly amoral endeavors, and issues relating to the protection of African elephants. With a focus on such concepts as multiplicity, partial connections, and ebbs and flows, the collection includes narratives from Kenya, Great Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, France, and the meetings of the European Commission, written by anthropologists, economists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of science, technology, and society. _Contributors._ Andrew Barry, Steven D. Brown, Michel Callon, Chunglin Kwa, John Law, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Marilyn Strathern, Laurent Thévenot, Charis Thompson. (shrink)

Innovations in Evidence and Proof' brings together leading scholars and law teachers from the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the UK to explore the latest developments in evidence scholarship.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil-god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good–there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn't the problem (...) of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil-god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good. (shrink)

Hudson has formulated two local deterministic theses and argued that both are incompatible with freedom. We argue that Hudson has half the story right. Moreover, reflection on Hudson’s theses brings out an important point for debates about freedom generally: that instead of focusing on the notion of entailment, debates about freedom should focus on the notions of explanation and sourcehood. Hudson’s theses provide an excellent case study for why the latter notions ought to take precedence over the former in (...) debates about freedom. (shrink)

This is a short paper covering my own views on the methods and reasons behind the teaching of medical ethics. All the whys and wherefores are discussed and some conclusions reached. This paper is given from a junior doctor's viewpoint but could equally apply to many others.

In this important work, Dr. Felipe Fierro offers a comprehensive view on the subject of Introduction to the Study of Law, in which he revives the use of Gnoseology, Philosophy, History and Logic as Auxiliary Sciences; and exposes how the abandonment of such has contributed to the exponential growth of Skepticism and Relativism, currently prevailing in the legal world. The above, through extensive experience in teaching Law from the Aristotelian-Thomistic platform, based on the elementary assumption that we must first (...) prove the existence of the object of study, and contrast main legal branches in topics such as: what is Law?, why is Science?, what are Law, Justice, Facultative rights and the Common Good?; supported by extensive and select bibliography. In addition, the being, nature, concept, essence and properties of the sources, fundamentals and classification are described. But important elements such as knowledge, order, principles, Jurisprudence, and Natural law, fundamental legal concepts, the legislative process, the Constitution, interpretation and others are not absent. Morality and Legal Law are obligatory markers, which although considered in their own field, are not excluded, but different as to object and method. Predominantly, Justice is exposed as one of the great values of the Law, and main theories in order to offer future lawyers the basis regarding the current Science of Law and its significance. (shrink)

This paper investigates force shift, a phenomenon in which the canonical discourse conventions, or force, associated with a clause type can be overridden to yield polar questions with the help of additional force-indicating devices. Previous studies attribute force shift to the presence of a complex question force component operating on semantic content. Based on utterance particles and particle clusters in Cantonese, we analyze force shift as resulting from compositional operations on force-bearing expressions. We propose that a simplex force, such as (...) assertion or question, denotes unanchored sentence acts, while a force-shifting particle like Cantonese _ho2_ is an anchoring function anchoring a sentence act to the speaker while querying whether or not the addressee can perform the sentence act. The proposed semantics makes predictions about _ho2_’s interactions with addressee-changing operations and imperatives, as well as about a larger family of force shift phenomena. (shrink)

The paper explores the role and meaning of maṣlaḥa and its possible appropriation in the field of Islamic legal and economic thought, as laid down by various medieval and contemporary Muslim scholars. Questions that are pertinent to the research are the following: how has maṣlaḥa been incorporated in legal reasoning and what kind of meaning does it convey; what type of economic reading does it presuppose; do ethics, law, and scriptural sources play equally important role as reference in developing the (...) concept in economic terms, are some of the questions that this paper will try to provide answer to. Further, as there is a tendency to believe that Islamic economic thought cannot be equated only with legal and juridical underpinnings, it is pertinent to pose a question if economic ideas have flourished independently from its legal framework. Maṣlaḥa in its capacity has always remained part and parcel of Islamic legal theory, and has been rarely addressed within the frame of economic thought; therefore a new reading is required to deal with the position of economic teachings within Islamic tradition. The paper consists of three sections, whereby the contributions made by Muslim medieval scholars on Islamic economics will be presented. The first chapter provides a historical overview of Islamic law and the concept of maṣlaḥa in relation to the field of Islamic economics, including Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s monumental Iḥya ‘ulūm al dīn, which presents a milestone in converging Sufi ethical teachings of Islam in accordance with the legal methodology of Islamic law. The second part aims to discern and examine the economic jurisprudence and economic theory in Islam as it is understood by some of the mainstream theoreticians of Islamic studies, advocating the view that Islamic economics is inextricably related to the gist of Islamic legal reasoning. In this section the ideas of Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr will be presented as he proposes a new reading of Islamic economics as a doctrine and not a science. The third part questions Islamic legal establishment and its normativity, the claim that legal norms have always been part of the Islamic economic reasoning. This claim rests upon the idea that Islamic legal patterns were also socially constructed, including some aspects of Islamic economic reasoning. Concluding remarks will draw upon the idea that despite the fact that Islamic legal and economic literature are based upon the religious scriptures of Islam, the Qur’an and Tradition, it is more appropriate to claim that they rest upon the ethical cosmology that surpasses purely theological concerns. (shrink)

To read literature is to read the way literature reads. René Girard’s immense body of work supports this thesis bountifully. Whether engaging the European novel, ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespeare’s plays, or Jewish and Christian scripture, Girard teaches us to read prophetically, not by offering a method he has developed, but by presenting the methodologies they have developed, the interpretative readings already available within (and constitutive of) such bodies of classical writing. In The Prophetic Law, literary scholar, theorist, and critic Sandor (...) Goodhart divides his essays on René Girard since 1983 into four groupings. In three, he addresses Girardian concerns with Biblical scripture (Genesis and Exodus), literature (the European novel and Shakespeare), and philosophy and religious studies issues (especially ethical and Jewish subject matters). In a fourth section, he reproduces some of the polemical exchanges in which he has participated with others—including René Girard himself—as part of what could justly be deemed Jewish-Christian dialogue. The twelve texts that make up the heart of this captivating volume constitute the bulk of the author’s writings to date on Girard outside of his three previous books on Girardian topics. Taken together, they offer a comprehensive engagement with Girard’s sharpest and most original literary, anthropological, and scriptural insights. (shrink)

This study describes metonymic argument alternations, in which a constructional slot can be filled by any of a set of semantic roles that index one another, and provides a diachronic corpus analysis of two such alternations in French. In the Reveal secret frame and other communication frames, the Medium can indexically replace the Speaker and the Topic can indexically replace the Information. A regression analysis shows that while topic for information metonymy is more syntactically and pragmatically restricted, medium for (...) speaker metonymy has seen an increase in usage over time across the frame. This change is related to sociocultural developments and has implications for the study of figurative language and lexical semantic change. While it is well understood that figurative mechanisms such as metonymy affect language change, here it is demonstrated that cultural shifts drive changes in metonymies themselves, with corresponding impacts for linguistic structure. (shrink)

Women are drastically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and this underrepresentation has been linked to gender stereotypes and ability related beliefs. One way to remedy this may be to challenge male bias gender stereotypes around STEM by cultivating equitable beliefs that both female and male can excel in STEM. The present study implemented a growth mindset intervention to promote children’s incremental ability beliefs and investigate the relation between the intervention and children’s gender stereotypes in an informal science (...) learning site. Participants were visitors to a science museum who took part in an interactive space science show. Participants who were exposed to a growth mindset intervention, compared to the participants in the control condition, reported significantly less gender stereotyping around STEM by reporting equitably in the stereotype awareness measure. Relatedly, participants in the control condition reported male bias gender stereotype in the stereotype awareness measure. Further, children between 5 and 8-years-old reported greater male bias stereotypes awareness and stereotype flexibility in space science compared to children between 9 and 12-years-old. Lastly, children demonstrated in-group bias in STEM ability. Male participants reported gender bias favoring males’ ability in stereotype flexibility and awareness measures, while female participants reported bias toward females’ ability in stereotype flexibility and awareness measures. These findings document the importance of a growth mindset intervention in buffering against STEM gender stereotyping amongst children, as well as the significant role a growth mindset intervention can play within an informal science learning site. (shrink)

Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity "in" music - how music expresses or represents "an' individual or "a" group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what (...) sense is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary musical practices, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity. (shrink)

Humphreys and Forde (H&F) propose that greater within- category structural similarity makes living things more difficult to name. However, recent studies show that normal subjects find it easier to name living than nonliving things when these are matched across category for potential artefacts. Additionally, at the level of single pixels, visual overlap appears to be greater for nonliving things.

ObjectiveStress can play a role in the onset and exacerbation of psoriasis. Psychological interventions to reduce stress have been shown to improve psychological and psoriasis-related outcomes. This pilot randomised study investigated the feasibility of a brief interaction with a Paro robot to reduce stress and improve skin parameters, after a stressor, in patients with psoriasis.MethodsAround 25 patients with psoriasis participated in a laboratory stress task, before being randomised to either interact with a Paro robot or sit quietly for 30 (...) min. Raman spectroscopy and trans-epidermal water loss were measured at baseline, after the stressor and after the intervention as indexes of acute skin changes. Psychological variables, including self-reported stress and affect, were also measured at the three time-points.ResultsNo statistically significant differences between the two conditions were found for any of the outcomes measured. However, effect sizes suggest significance could be possible with a larger sample size. Changes in the psychological and Raman spectroscopy outcomes across the experimental session were found, indicating the feasibility of the procedures.ConclusionThis pilot study showed that a brief interaction with a Paro robot was a feasible intervention for patients with psoriasis, but future trials should broaden the inclusion criteria to try to increase recruitment rates. Studying people who are highly stressed, depressed or who are stress-responders may increase the power of the intervention to show effects using a longer-term intervention. (shrink)

This study aims to achieve the goal of cultivating and reserving emerging professional talents in social security law, improve the curriculum and mechanism of entrepreneurship education, and improve students’ entrepreneurial willingness and entrepreneurial ability. Deep learning technology is used to study the psychological effects of entrepreneurship education for college students majoring in social security law. Firstly, the concept of entrepreneurial psychology is elaborated and summarized. A related model is designed using the theory of proactive personality and planned behavior (...) through questionnaire survey and regression analysis to explore the relationship between students’ entrepreneurial psychology and entrepreneurial intention. Secondly, an entrepreneurship education method based on deep learning is proposed, and a teaching model of multi-dimensional collaborative entrepreneurship education practice is constructed. On this basis, the deep learning algorithm combines the characteristics of the personalized recommendation algorithm to construct an efficient Problem-Based Learning learning resource recommendation algorithm. Finally, the proposed method is tested. The results show that the Significant value of students who have participated in PBL deep learning courses is less than 0.05, indicating that PBL significantly improves students’ learning ability and the ability to deal with entrepreneurial environments. The results verify the impact of entrepreneurial learning on entrepreneurial intentions. The research on PBL online learning recommendation system shows that the proposed recommendation algorithm is superior to the traditional recommendation algorithm in both roots mean square error value and mean absolute error value on both datasets. The proposed method provides a new idea of reform and innovation to cultivate social security law professionals and the cultivation of the reserve model. (shrink)

L A Selby-Bigge’s British Moralists was first published in 1897 and for over sixty years has proved an invaluable instrument in the teaching of moral philosophy in the English-speaking world. It has been out of print for a number of years. This new presentation by the Professor of Political and Social Philosophy in the University of Glasgow is most opportune.

This paper asks whether geographically localised, or ‘hyperlocal’, uses of Twitter succeed in creating peer-to-peer neighbourhood networks or simply act as broadcast media at a reduced scale. Literature drawn from the smart cities discourse and from a UK research project into hyperlocal media, respectively, take on these two opposing interpretations. Evidence gathered in the case study presented here is consistent with the latter, and on this basis we criticise the notion that hyperlocal social media can be seen as a (...) community in itself. We demonstrate this by creating a network map of Twitter followers of a popular hyperlocal blog in Brockley, southeast London. We describe various attributes of this network including its average degree and clustering coefficient to suggest that a small and highly connected cluster of visible local entities such as businesses form a clique at the centre of this network, with individual residents following these but not one another. We then plot the locations of these entities and demonstrate that sub-communities in the network are formed due to close geographical proximity between smaller sets of businesses. These observations are illustrated with qualitative evidence from interviews with users who suggest instead that rather than being connected to one another they benefit from what has been described as ‘neighbourhood storytelling’. Despite the limitations of working with Twitter data, we propose that this multi-modal approach offers a valuable way to investigate the experience of using social media as a communication tool in urban neighbourhoods. (shrink)

This article deals with the housing framework of laws, that is, constitutions. It distinguishes between constitution referring to the de jure, formal, written book of laws and codes that assume supreme authority within any structure, and constitution which defines a body of informal, conditional rules and laws that do not have supreme authority but are abided by, owing to various objective, subjective factors. Constitution reflects the gap between aspiration and actuality, and constitution attracts a higher degree of compliance and implementation. (...) Studies have indeed found a negative relationship between formal rights protection and actual rights observance. The article reveals that rights guarantees are more prone to failure than success as they depend substantially on environmental and institutional conditions. This article emphasizes a symbiosis between judicialization and constitutionalization while a policy question needs to be judicial in nature if the judiciary has to decide on it. (shrink)

Who is the 'I' that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a (...) sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of 'Voices, Bodies, Practices' are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing "voices" can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts. (shrink)

Inter‐personal morals should be understood and described in the language of duties, not rights. Rights are self‐centred, duties other‐centred. Whereas duties are primarily a moral construct, rights are primarily a legal construct. There is an important distinction between the language appropriate for inter‐personal morals, and the language appropriate for the morals of the State. The first principle of the morals of the State is that the State holds its power as trustee for the people; otherwise we would face arbitrary and (...) capricious rule. In this setting it is natural and proper to speak of rights—the rights of the citizen beneficiaries against their trustee, the State. However, inter‐personal morals and the morality of the State are inter‐dependent. Without a duty‐based personal morality, the laws which the State makes will tend more and more to be oppressive and contemptuous. And the laws of the State must themselves leave room for personal moral commitment, freely entered into, to flourish. (shrink)

In Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga develops an argument designed to show that naturalism is self-defeating. One component of this larger argument is what I call Plantinga's belief-cum-desire argument, which is intended to establish something more specific: that if the content of our beliefs does causally effect behaviour (that is to say, semantic content is not epiphenomenal), and if naturalism and current evolutionary doctrine are correct, then the probability that we possess reliable cognitive mechanisms must be either inscrutable or (...) low. This paper aims to refute Plantinga's belief-cum-desire argument. (shrink)

Sexual and reproductive health is a challenge worldwide, and much progress is needed to reach the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper presents cross-sectional data collected in Sierra Leone on sexual and gender-based violence, family planning, child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation using an innovative method of measurement: situational judgment tests, as a subset of questions within a larger survey tool. For the SJTs, respondents saw hypothetical scenarios on these themes and had to indicate how they (...) would react. The objective is to give an impression of beliefs and norms on specific behaviors, which provide insights for social and behavior change interventions. Data was collected by enumerators traveling to villages randomly selected in six districts of the country. The sample is composed of 566 respondents. Results show that FGM in particular seem to be a priority topic, in comparison to the other topics for which the norms seem to be stronger against those practices. Age differences emerged and suggest priority groups to be targeted. In terms of validity of the measurement methods, situational judgment test answers correlated positively with other items in the survey, but the magnitude of the association is often small, and sometimes not significant. Thus, more studies are needed to further explore the validity of this measure by comparing against a reference value. Using SJTs could complement other data collection tools to perform community assessment, and orient the direction of the program in its planning phase. (shrink)

This article examines the social development of Hong Kong's cultural and national identity since its return from the UK to the People's Republic of China nearly six years ago, focusing on the extent to which Hong Kong students are now inculcated in traditional Chinese music and express their devotion to the PRC through singing the national anthem. Hong Kong music teachers experience conflicts concerning their roles as music teachers and as purveyors of values education. These observations raise fundamental questions concerning (...) the sociopolitical function of values education in the music classroom. (shrink)

This second volume of essays by Professor Kelley takes the study of history as its starting point, then extends explorations into adjacent fields of legal, political, and social thought to confront some of the larger questions of the modern human sciences. The first group of papers examine the historiography of the Protestant Reformation and then of the Romantic and Victorian periods; the last section focuses on the legal tradition and its interpretation in relation to social and cultural, as well (...) as historical thought, in the period from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. Throughout, the author's interest is to analyse how people at different times have viewed their past - and reconstructed and utilised it in the service of their present concerns. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBuilding on Google's efforts to scan millions of books, this article introduces methodology using a database of annual word frequencies of the 40,000 most frequently occurring words in the American literature between 1800 and 2009. The current paper uses this methodology to replicate and identify terror management processes in historical context. Variation in frequencies of word usage of constructs relevant to terror management theory are investigated over a time period of 209 years. Study 1 corroborated previous TMT findings and (...) demonstrated that word use of constructs related to death and of constructs related to patriotism and romantic relationships significantly co-vary over time. Study 2 showed that the use of the word “death” most strongly co-varies over time with the use of medical constructs, but also co-varies with the use of constructs related to violence, relationships, religion, positive sentiment, and negative sentiment. Study 3 foun... (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its (...) feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

In Beck, focus intervention is used as an argument for reducing Hamblin’s semantics for questions to Rooth’s focus semantics. Drawing on novel empirical evidence from Mandarin and English, we argue that this reduction is unwarranted. Maintaining both Hamblin’s original semantics and Rooth’s focus semantics not only allows for a more adequate account for focus intervention in questions, but also correctly predicts that focus intervention is a very general phenomenon caused by interaction of alternatives in different dimensions.

Jacques Derrida offers his recent commentary on the early career of Paul de Man as an urgent intervention in a discussion he fears is going awry. The most pressing danger he sees in the recent revelations is that they have played into the hands of de Man’s antagonists, who are now ready to denounce the whole of his career and even deconstruction itself. Against such indiscriminate critiques Derrida hurls the epithet: totalitarian. He is attempting to reseize the initiative in the (...) discussion and to reset the terms of the debate. His agenda extends across historical, theoretical, and political questions.He wants to affirm that a radical, indeed absolute break separates the later from the earlier de Man. He also wants to show that the young de man, however firmly committed to fascist ideology and however much an accomplice of the Nazis occupying Belgium, at the same time regularly distanced himself from that ideology and even undermined its meanings. Moreover, Derrida boldly takes up the challenge that these revelations have cast on the intellectual movement he and de Man have shaped. Can deconstruction come to grips with the political and intellectual history of its own leading American proponent? And can deconstruction in the process make a distinctive contribution to the understanding of fascism and intellectuals’ participation in it? John Brenkman is associate professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of Culture and Domination . Jules David Law is assistant professor of English at Northwestern University. He is currently working on a book-length study of the metaphors of surface, depth, and reflection in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British prose. (shrink)

In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, “we have never been modern.” They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question of what forms “noncoherences” take and how (...) they are managed. The basic argument is that there is a range of styles of noncoherence or “modes of syncretism.” In small case studies, the authors identify six such modes or styles, which they term denial, domestication, separation, care, conflict, and collapse. Given that consistency and coherence seem less important now than they were once taken to be — and given that the conditions of possibility for purity are, in any case, in decline — this list and its supporting case studies, while not meant to be definitive, are offered as a way of understanding how practices that do not cohere may still function and fit together admirably. (shrink)

Informal science learning sites create opportunities for children to learn about science outside of the classroom. This study analyzed children’s learning behaviors in ISLS using video recordings of family visits to a zoo, children’s museum, or aquarium. Furthermore, parent behaviors, features of the exhibits and the presence of an educator were also examined in relation to children’s behaviors. Participants included 63 children and 44 parents in 31 family groups. Results showed that parents’ science questions and explanations were positively related (...) to children observing the exhibit. Parents’ science explanations were also negatively related to children’s science explanations. Furthermore, children were more likely to provide science explanations when the exhibit was not interactive. Lastly there were no differences in children’s behaviors based on whether an educator was present at the exhibit. This study provides further evidence that children’s interactions with others and their environment are important for children’s learning behaviors. (shrink)

Medical ethics is normally taught in a combination of three ways: through discussions of normative theories and principles; through for-and-against debating of topics; or through case studies. I want to argue that a fourth approach might be better, and should be used more: teaching medical ethics through medical law. Medical law is already deeply imbued with ethical concepts, principles and reasons, and allows the discussion of ethics through the “back door,” as it were. The two greatest advantages of the law (...) are its familiar authority, especially among the disengaged medical students who have little interest or respect for the subject of ethics; and its focus on the reality of the people and the tragedies discussed. Finally, I argue that medical law, unlike ethics, allows more efficient and more detailed MCQ assessment. (shrink)

Theory of Mind is the ability to predict and understand the mental state of another. While ToM is theorized to play a role in language, we examined whether such a mentalizing ability plays an important role in establishing shared understanding in conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in a Lego model building task in which adirectorinstructed abuilderon how to create duplicate models from a prototype that only the director could see. We manipulated whether the director could see or could not see (...) the builder’s workspace. As predicted, the Mind in the Eyes test predicted accuracy when the workspace was hidden. A high mentalizing ability was an advantage when instructing, resulting in fewer errors, but may be a disadvantage when following instructions. This research indicates that ToM plays a key role in communicating information effectively in conversation. (shrink)

Duty of care is the core ethical responsibility of healthcare workers. Getting the workforce vaccinated will provide safety to the public, protect the vulnerable population and provide a safe working environment. While most agree that healthcare workers should be prioritised in the vaccination programme, mandatory vaccination remains a complicated and contentious issue with political, legal and ethical dimensions. This study aims to determine the ethical considerations associated with mandatory vaccinations among healthcare workers. A total of 152 abstracts were identified (...) of which, 142 were excluded based on abstracts because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. The remaining ten articles were further evaluated with three articles that fit the inclusion criteria specifically discussing mandatory vaccination among healthcare workers and the ethical issues. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were used as a framework to discuss the ethical considerations which resonated both directly from the included papers, as well as more generally from the other literature associated with this search. There is limited literature on the topic of ethical considerations associated with COVID-19 mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers, as a systematic review identified only 3 papers. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were among the seven ethical considerations identified and discussed. (shrink)

Theory of Mind is the ability to predict and understand the mental state of another. While ToM is theorized to play a role in language, we examined whether such a mentalizing ability plays an important role in establishing shared understanding in conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in a Lego model building task in which a director instructed a builder on how to create duplicate models from a prototype that only the director could see. We manipulated whether the director could see (...) or could not see the builder’s workspace. As predicted, the Mind in the Eyes test predicted accuracy when the workspace was hidden. A high mentalizing ability was an advantage when instructing, resulting in fewer errors, but may be a disadvantage when following instructions. This research indicates that ToM plays a key role in communicating information effectively in conversation. (shrink)

This article asks how contexts are made in science as well as in social science, and how the making of contexts relates to political agency and intervention. To explore these issues, it traces contexting for foot-and-mouth disease and the strategies used to control the epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001. It argues that to depict the world is to assemble contexts and to hold them together in a mode that may be descriptive, explanatory, or predictive. In developing this argument, (...) it explores how contexts are assembled in a series of different descriptive and explanatory narratives in epidemiology, policy, critical social science, and social studies of science. (shrink)

This study examines the use of an explicit, reflective method for teaching the difference and relationship between scientific theories and laws to ninth-grade students. Students reflected individually and then as a whole class on theories and laws using a Venn diagram, both before and after reading short articles describing features of theories and laws that provided an explicit challenge to their naïve prior conceptions. In small groups, they chose a theory or law, researched it, constructed a poster, and did (...) a gallery walk. Examination of students’ Venn diagrams and answers to a single question from VNOS-C given as both a pre- and post-test showed that prior to the lesson, all students except for one held more naïve views of both the difference between theories and laws and the nature of scientific theories. After the lesson, more than a third of them had improved their conceptions to more informed, and nearly a quarter understood that there is not a hierarchical relationship between scientific theories and laws. (shrink)

Interest in science and math plays an important role in encouraging STEM motivation and career aspirations. This interest decreases for girls between late childhood and adolescence. Relatedly, positive mentoring experiences with female teachers can protect girls against losing interest. The present study examines whether visitors to informal science learning sites differ in their expressed science and math interest, as well as their science and math stereotypes following an interaction with either a male or female educator. Participants were visitors to (...) one of four ISLS in the United States and United Kingdom. Following an interaction with a male or female educator, they reported their math and science interest and responded to math and science gender stereotype measures. Female participants reported greater interest in math following an interaction with a female educator, compared to when they interacted with a male educator. In turn, female participants who interacted with a female educator were less likely to report male-biased math gender stereotypes. Self-reported science interest did not differ as a function of educator gender. Together these findings suggest that, when aiming to encourage STEM interest and challenge gender stereotypes in informal settings, we must consider the importance of the gender of educators and learners. (shrink)

Although the teaching of medical ethics and law in medical education is an old story that has been told many times in medical literature, recent studies show that medical students and physicians lack confidence when faced with ethical dilemmas and medico-legal issues. The adverse events rates and medical lawsuits are on the rise whereas many medical errors are mostly due to negligence or malpractices which are preventable. While it is true that many medical schools teach their students medical law and (...) ethics, there are wide variations in what is being taught because there is no universally agreed syllabus. Yet the knowledge of medical law and ethics is closely relevant to the medical profession and that failure in abiding the law may result in serious civil or even criminal consequences. While this paper does not propose to lay detailed analysis of the relevant areas of law or ethics, it proposes to cover some legal areas so as to highlight and bring to attention the need for a medical law and ethics course. This article also considers the problems faced and recommendation as to future directions to be taken with respect to teaching medical law and ethics. It concludes with a suggested course outline for the teaching of medical law and ethics. (shrink)