Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Giving Voice to Values as a Professional Physician: An Introduction to Medical Ethics by Ira Bedzow (2019, Routledge) is a short and accessible volume that introduces practical ethical decision mak...

Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely. Women in Science Now examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the (...) journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. She presents groundbreaking studies in social psychology and organizational behavior that are informing novel approaches for combating historic and ongoing inequities. Through a combined focus on personal experiences and social-science research, this timely book provides both a path toward greater gender equity and an inspiring vision of science and scientists. (shrink)

Contemporary biomedical ethics and environmental ethics share a common ancestry in Aldo Leopold's and Van Rensselaer Potter's initial broad visions of a connected biosphere. Over the past five decades, the two fields have become strangers. Public health ethics, a new subfield of bioethics, emerged from the belly of contemporary biomedical ethics and has evolved over the past 25 years. It has moved from its traditional concern with the tension between individual autonomy and community health to a wider focus on social (...) justice and solidarity. Public health has a broad focus that includes individual, community, and environmental health. Public health ethics attends to these broad commitments reflected in the increasing concern with the connectedness of health of individuals to the health of populations, to the health of animals, to the health of the environment; it is well situated to reconnect all three “fields” of ethics to promote a healthier planet. (shrink)

Teaching competency in bioethics has been a concern of the field since its start. In 1976, The Hastings Center published the first report on the teaching of contemporary bioethics. Graduate programs culminating in an MA or PhD were not needed at the time, concluded the report. “In the future, however,” the report speculated, “the development and/or changing social priorities may at some point allow, or even require, the creation of new academic structures for graduate education in bioethics.” Although that future (...) might be upon us, the creation of a terminal degree in bioethics has its detractors. Scholars have debated whether bioethics is a discipline with its own methods and theoretical grounding, a multidisciplinary field bringing various professional perspectives to bear on particular types of problems, a set of problem-solving skills to resolve moral disagreements, or something else entirely. Whether or not efforts to develop the methods and theory of bioethics have matured to the point that it is now a discipline in the strictest sense, new bioethics training programs have appeared at all postsecondary levels. In this essay, we examine the number and types of U.S. programs and degrees in this growing field. (shrink)

As has become tradition, executive directors of United States’ presidential bioethics committees offer reflections about their experience shortly after the orderly shutdown of the commission staff. After the records are filed according to government records regulations; after all the staff members, who are hired into temporary positions that must be renewed every two years, have secured permanent employment; after preparations are made to ensure that the next commission staff (should there be one) has a budget and standard operating procedures in (...) order to begin its work in a timely manner; after the lights are turned out for the last time, the executive director makes the final climb up the stairs into the sunlight and reflects on the whirlwind. There is much about my work with the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that deserves comment, but one aspect of the commission that has been especially valuable to me is its work to educate the nation on bioethical issues. This is, moreover, a contribution in which the commission staff was central, and it is one that, as an ethics educator myself, I will cherish deeply. (shrink)

The attempt to critique the profession of clinical ethics consultation by establishing the impossibility of ethics expertise has been a red herring. Decisions made in clinical ethics cases are almost never based purely on moral judgments. Instead, they are all-things-considered judgments that involve determining how to balance other values as well. A standard of justified decision-making in this context would enable us to identify experts who could achieve these standards more often than others, and thus provide a basis for expertise (...) in clinical ethics consultation. This expertise relies in part on what Richard Zaner calls the “expert knowledge of ethical phenomena”. (shrink)

Alan Westin’s work Privacy and Freedom remains foundational to the field of privacy, and Westin is frequently cited for his definition of privacy as control over personal information. However, Westin’s full definition of privacy is much more complex than this statement, describing four states of privacy (solitude, intimacy, anonymity, and reserve) that one achieves through physical or psychological means. The “claim” of privacy involves negotiating a balance between a desire for disclosure and social participation and a desire for withdrawal into (...) one of the “states” of privacy. Influencing this adjustment process are social norms (and surveillance to enforce social norms), environmental conditions, and the curiosity of others. In this Article, I draw upon this complexity in order to reread Westin’s definition of privacy as a claim of control over personal information and use this rereading to understand how the law should protect and promote privacy in the twenty-first century. I argue that the law should focus on securing meaningful privacy choices rather than on individual control over personal information. Meaningful choice requires that our informational infrastructure, and the social practices that it enables, make states of privacy available for choice along with the means of attaining them. To enable such meaningful individual choice, we need to shift our attention from a focus on individuals to a more systemic focus on our public norms and built infrastructure. Otherwise we risk protecting a narrow understanding of individual control, while ignoring a more general and systematic erosion of privacy. (shrink)

We historically and conceptually situate distributed cognition by drawing attention to important similarities in assumptions and methods with those of American ?functional psychology? as it emerged in contrast and complement to controlled laboratory study of the structural components and primitive ?elements? of consciousness. Functional psychology foregrounded the adaptive features of cognitive processes in environments, and adopted as a unit of analysis the overall situation of organism and environment. A methodological implication of this emphasis was, to the extent possible, the study (...) of cognitive and other processes in the natural (real world) contexts in which they occur. We therefore emphasize commonalities and differences between functional psychology and D-Cog. One purpose of the comparison is to consider the extent to which criticisms directed at functional psychology are relevant to D-Cog. We also examine the relation between functional psychology and philosophical pragmatism and conclude that D-Cog's conceptual framework would be strengthened through more explicit adoption of philosophical pragmatism, consistent with the eventual trajectory of functional psychology. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues was created by President Obama in 2009 to identify and promote policies and practices that ensure scientific research, health care delivery, and technological innovation are conducted in socially and ethically responsible manners. The bioethics commission is an independent and thoughtful group of experts who advises the President and, in so doing, strives to educate the nation on bioethical issues. As part of the effort to promote policies and practices ensuring the ethical (...) conduct of research, innovation, and health care delivery, the bioethics commission staff, in consultation with commission members, has used the bioethics commission reports to develop pedagogical materials for traditional and nontraditional educational settings. The goal is to use contemporary issues addressed by the bioethics commission to support teaching of bioethics ideas, principles, and theories across the major areas of study and practice. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 61-63.

A major obstacle to broad support of clinical ethics consultation is suspicion regarding the nature of the moral expertise it claims to offer. The suspicion seems to be confirmed when the field fails to make its moral expertise explicit. In this vacuum, critics suggest the following:Clinical ethics consultation's legitimacy depends on its ability to offer an expertise in moral matters.Expertise in moral matters is knowledge of a singular moral truth which applies to everyone.The claim that a clinical ethics consultant can (...) offer knowledge of a singular moral truth in virtue of her professional training is absurd, false, or gravely immoral.Therefore,The field is illegitimate. (shrink)

We present a case for defining objectivity as responsibility. We do not attempt to offer new arguments on epistemological issues such as relativism or the fact-value distinction. Instead, we construct a conception of objectivity utilizing analyses from Deweyan pragmatism, feminist theory, and science studies, organizing them around the concept of responsibility. This conception of objectivity can serve as a tool to guide the process of inquiry; by suggesting that participants reflect on the question "how can this inquiry be made more (...) responsible?" it provides a guide for those struggling with the question of how to be more objective. (shrink)

For over 100 years, the field of contemporary public health has existed to improve the health of communities and populations. As public health practitioners conduct their work – be it focused on preventing transmission of infectious diseases, or prevention of injury, or prevention of and cures for chronic conditions – ethical dimensions arise. Borrowing heavily from the ethical tools developed for research ethics and bioethics, the nascent field of public health ethics soon began to feel the limits of the clinical (...) model and began creating different frameworks to guide its ethical challenges. Several public health ethics frameworks have been introduced since the late 1990s, ranging from extensions of principle-based models to human rights and social justice perspectives to those based on political philosophy. None has coalesced as the framework of choice in the discipline of public health. This paper examines several of the most-known frameworks of public health ethics for their common theoretical underpinnings and values, and suggests next steps toward the formulation of a single framework. (shrink)

Abram Brummett and Christopher Ostertag offer critiques of my argument that clinical ethics consultants have expertise but are not “ethics experts”. My argument begins within our less-than-ideal world and asks what a justification of a clinical ethics consultation recommendation might look like under those conditions. It is a challenge to what could be called an “inflationary” position on ethics expertise that requires agreement on or rational proof of metaethical facts about the values at stake in clinical ethics consultation. Brummett and (...) Ostertag critique three distinct steps in the argument. Two of those I have a brief answer for, and an assessment of the third demonstrates that Brummett and Ostertag do not consider the premise upon which I based my account. Instead, they assert a counter-premise without argument, which at best results in a stalemate between our two accounts. However, the reasons supporting my premise still seem to me to be stronger, so I am in the end unconvinced by their critiques. (shrink)

Confronting any science studies or learning sciences researcher in the 21st century is the reality of interdisciplinary science. New hybrid fields1 collaboratively build new concepts, combine models from two or more disciplines and forge inter-reliant relationships among specialists with different skill sets to solve new problems. This paper emerges from our recognition that inescapable psychological factors, including identity dynamics, must be described and analyzed in order to better understand the social and cognitive practices specific to interdisciplinary science. In analysis of (...) the foundations and opportunities for an... (shrink)

Bélisle-Pipon et al. recently reported on challenges they encountered in adopting an equity-based rather than equality-based framework for research participation payments. We encountered a similar need in a project that developed tools and resources to support trustworthy data practices in the field of participatory science. While typical approaches employ a fairness-as-equality model, where all participants receive equal pay for equal work, we drew on social justice principles to develop a fairness-as-equity framework for our collaboration with environmental justice practitioners. We allocated (...) different levels of payments to environmental justice practitioners engaged in community-led projects and conventional practitioners engaged in institution-led projects. We share this case as a successful example of what Bélisle-Pipon et al. called “a plea for exceptionalism” in paying research participants in ethically appropriate ways. (shrink)

The ethical (and philosophical) issues arising in citizen science are fascinating, challenging, and potentially pathbreaking in that they force us to reconsider the conceptual and regulatory catego...

Rational Intuition explores the concept of intuition as it relates to rationality through mediums of history, philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology.

For the first time, the revised Common Rule specifies that public health surveillance activities are not research. This article reviews the historical development of the public health surveillance exclusion and implications for other foundational public health practices.

Cognitive science currently offers models of cognition that depart substantively from those of information processing models and classical artificial intelligence, while it embraces methods of inquiry that include case-based, ethnographic, and philosophical methods. To illustrate, five overlapping approaches that constitute departures from classical representational cognitive science are briefly discussed in this paper: dynamical cognition, situated cognition, embodied cognition, extended mind theory, and integrative cognition. Critical responses to these efforts from members of the self-proclaimed cognitive science orthodoxy are also summarized. The (...) paper then discusses ethical and epistemological implications arising from the “new” cognitive science and from critical responses to it and considers the broader importance of this literature for theoretical and philosophical psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of emotional and affectively toned discourse in biomedical engineering researchers’ accounts of their problem solving practices. Drawing from our interviews with scientists in two laboratories, we examine three classes of expression: explicit, figurative and metaphorical, and attributions of emotion to objects and artifacts important to laboratory practice. We consider the overall function of expressions in the particular problem solving contexts described. We argue that affective processes are engaged in problem solving, not as simply tacked onto (...) reasoning but as integral to it. The examples we present illustrate the close relation of emotion to problem solving and experimentation; they also implicate social and cultural dimensions of emotion expression. The analysis underscores a need to consider emotional expression to be intimately and importantly tied to the cognitive achievements and social negotiations of laboratory practices. (shrink)

Movement of leukocytes from peripheral blood into tissues, also called leukocyte extravasation, is absolutely essential for immunity in higher organisms. Over the past decade, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in white blood cell extravasation during both normal immune surveillance and the generation of protective immune responses has taken a great leap forward with the discovery of the chemokine gene superfamily. Chemokines are low-molecular-weight cytokines whose major collective biological activity appears to be that of chemotaxis of both specific and (...) overlapping subsets of leukocytes. They are therefore likely to play a critical role in the directed movement of leukocytes from the bloodstream into tissue. These molecules are almost exclusively secreted and act as extracellular messengers for the immune system. However, emerging data also show that various members of the chemokine gene superfamily exert other biological effects outside the immune system. All nucleated cells and all tissues examined to date are capable of expressing at least some chemokines, and it seems likely therefore that by the time all the chemokines are identified, and all their biological functions elucidated, we will find that, as a family, these molecules perform an extracellular messenger role in all tissues and systems of the body. BioEssays 1999;21:17–28. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

We describe our efforts to address theoretical opportunities and methodological challenges that arose in the context of our ethnographic investigation of research labs in four different fields of bioengineering science. The multiyear study compared the common and specific features of four sites of interdisciplinary practice and aimed to analyze personal and collective goals, problem formulations, methods, technologies, and social organization within each lab. In the second phase of the study we sought to inform curriculum development for biomedical engineering from the (...) ethnographic study, with the broader goal of positioning students to engage in the kind of thinking scientists actually do. Evaluating thinking in action posed considerable challenges, and required us to develop an approach to assessing the extent to which students enrolled in the new course were “thinking like a biomedical engineer.” Our principal point of emphasis for this chapter is that honest confrontation of the challenges of ethnographic study of science practice must lead to caution, yet that ethnographic study of science enables innovative adaptations of methods and can yield vital insights into psychological dimensions of science, including interdisciplinary science. (shrink)

The question of whether clinical ethics consultants may engage in patient advocacy in the course of consultation has not been addressed, but it highlights for the field that consultants? allegiances, and the boundaries of appropriate professional practice, must be better understood. I consider arguments for and against patient advocacy in clinical ethics consultation, which demonstrate that patient advocacy is permissible, but not central to the practice of consultation. I then offer four recommendations for consultants who engage in patient advocacy, and (...) consider the implications of this issue for the field.1. (shrink)

Reviews the role of intuition or an analogous concept within several divergent philosophical systems and argues that the salient feature common to various accounts of intuition is its non-inferential status. As such, it is argued to be highly relevant to contemporary theory. The paper offers several examples of points of compatibility with contemporary theory, including perception of social affordances, the apprehension linguistic rules and the construction of social norms. In claiming specific ways in which the concept of intuition is relevant (...) to contemporary theoretical psychology, the paper moves toward developing a more comprehensive and historically informed framework for intuition than is currently offered. It also underscores the historical underpinnings of contemporary debates. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In their article “The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments,” Ray and Cooper (2024) invite us to prioritize environmental health...

The cognitive revolution in the 1950s and 1960s led researchers to view the human mind--like a computer--as an information-processing system that encodes, represents, and stores information and is constrained by limits on hardware and software. The emergence of new behavioral, computational, and neuroscience methodologies, has deeply expanded psychologists' understanding of the workings of the infant, child, and adult mind. One result is that research has focused on mechanisms of change, over developmental time, in the information-processing mind.In this book, Lisa (...) Oakes, Cara Cashon, Marianella Casasola, and David Rakison bring together the recent findings and theories about the origins and early development of the information-processing mind, and provide insight into the future directions in the study of infant perception and cognition. The contributors represent a wide-range of research areas in the study of infant perception and cognition, who emphasize the use of diverse methodological techniques to address key questions about development. Their chapters demonstrate how the combination of historical perspectives on the information-processing approach to cognition and recent advances in behavioral, computational, and neuroscience approaches to cognition has contributed to our understanding of how abilities ranging from visual attention to face processing to object categorization have developed during infancy. Across this broad range of topics, it is clear that much of our modern understanding of infant perceptual and cognitive development emerges from the foundation of classic information-processing models of development, such as that of Leslie B. Cohen. The recent advances illustrated in this book show how researchers have built on this foundation to uncover the mechanisms that drive developmental change. (shrink)

From accessible and affordable health care to old or new reproductive technologies, human or animal research, and beyond, the justice and well‐being of our society depends on the ability of key groups—such as scientists and health care providers—along with members of the public to identify the key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and respectfully, and together find the most defensible ways forward.The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and The Hastings Center are committed to improving (...) the ethical literacy of the American public in the domain of bioethics. But what are the best educational practices to spur and support these sorts of societal conversations? And where are the greatest gaps in our collective knowledge of how best to inspire and increase moral understanding, analytical thinking in the moral domain, and professional integrity? (shrink)