To what extent does payment method (managed care vs. out of pocket) influence the likelihood that an independent practitioner will assign a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis to a client? When a practitioner does diagnose, how does payment method influence the specific choice of a diagnostic category? Independent practitioners responded to a vignette describing a fictitious client with symptoms of depression or anxiety. In half of the vignettes, the fictitious client intended to pay (...) via managed care; in the other half, the fictitious client intended to pay out of pocket. Payment method had a very significant impact on diagnosis such that relative to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to receive diagnoses and more likely to receive adjustment disorder diagnoses in particular. We discuss implications involving informed consent and other ethical issues. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how condom manufacturers and their marketers have failed to adequately promote their product to the male homosexual population (gays). Inasmuch as the AIDS syndrome constitutes a major life-threatening danger and that gays appear to be particularly vulnerable, failure to aggressively promote a known preventive such as condoms to gays constitutes negligent homicide.The method used here defines what is traditionally viewed as a viable target market, analyzes the major elements of marketing with regard (...) to gays, and examines the neglect of condom promotion by their manufacturers. (shrink)

Are psychotherapy clients who pay via health insurance more likely to receive Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV], American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses than identical clients who pay out of pocket? Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004) indicates that when psychologists consider a mildly depressed or anxious client, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous study to include clients whose symptoms are even less severe. Independent practitioners (...) responded to vignettes of clients whose profiles deliberately included subclinical impairment and a high level of functioning. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay via managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out of pocket. As in the earlier study, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that relative to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned DSM-IV diagnoses. In addition, a noteworthy percentage of participants assigned diagnoses regardless of payment method. Ethical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004; Pomerantz & Segrist, 2006) indicates that when psychologists consider a client with symptoms of depression or anxiety, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous research to consider clients with symptoms of social phobia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychologists in independent practice responded to vignettes of clients whose descriptions deliberately included subclinical impairment. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay (...) via managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out-of-pocket. Confirming previous studies, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that compared to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses. Ethical implications relate to informed consent, accuracy and truthfulness in diagnosis, and psychologists' integrity. (shrink)

In their self-understanding, expert committees solely draw on scientific knowledge to provide policy advice. However, we try to show, first, on the basis of material related to the German Radiation Protection Commission that much of their work consists in active model building. Second, expert advice is judged by criteria that diverge from standards used for judging epistemic research. In particular, the commitment to generality or universality is replaced by the criterion of specificity, and the value of precision gives way to (...) epistemic robustness. Third, non-epistemic considerations are included in the reasoning—albeit hesitantly. Manageability and social robustness, understood as compatibility with widespread value attitudes in society, affect the content of the recommendations. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

This paper raises the question of the prominence and use of statistical graphs in science, and argues that their use in problem solving analysis can best be understood in an ‘interactionist’ frame of analysis, including bio-emotion, culture, social organization, and environment as elements. The frame contrasts both with philosophical realism and with social constructivism, which posit two variables and one way causal flows. We next posit basic differences between visual, verbal, and numerical media of perception and communication. Graphs are thus (...) seen as key interactive sites where different media are transformed into more interpretable forms. Examples are taken from Limnology where numbers are transformed into graphs to find patterns in them, and thus, by implication in the environmental materials from which the numerical measurements were taken. Their revisualization by passes a human cognitive limitation, for the direct analysis — interpretation of lists and tables of numbers, visual imaging being a cognitive strength. Sense of problem, conceptual repertoire, and social relations are seen to direct this pattern search and interpretive process. (shrink)

Experiments are generally thought of as actions or operations undertaken to test a scientific hypothesis in settings detached from the rest of society. In this paper a different notion of experiment will be discussed. It is an understanding that has been developed in the classical tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology since the 1890s, but has so far remained unexplored. This sociological understanding of experiment does not model itself strictly on the natural sciences. Rather, it implies a process of (...) societal self-experimentation without a fixed setting of a sociological experimenter. The paper discusses this notion of experiment in relation to the recursive dependency of the application and the production of sociological knowledge. It is contended that this concept of a self-experimental society offers theoretical insights that could well prove fruitful for a sociological concept of experiment beyond the realm of the laboratory. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

We prove a number of results about countable Borel equivalence relations with forcing constructions and arguments. These results reveal hidden regularity properties of Borel complete sections on certain orbits. As consequences they imply the nonexistence of Borel complete sections with certain features.

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

The topic of professionalism has dominated the content of major academic medicine publications during the past decade and continues to do so. The message of this current wave of professionalism is that medical educators need to be more attentive to the moral sensibilities of trainees, to their interpersonal and affective dimensions, and to their social conscience, all to the end of skilled, humanistic physicians. Urgent calls to address professionalism from such groups as the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American (...) Board of Internal Medicine, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, among others. In fact, at the 2004 annual meeting of the AAMC six separate presentations addressed professionalism with such titles as "Evaluating Humanism and Professionalism," Professionalism: Expectation, Education, Evaluation," or "Toward Assessing Professional Behaviors of Medical Students through Peer Observations". Professionalism, then, has become part of the current academic medicine parlance, used by administrators, clinical faculty, residency programs, and professional organizations with an expectation of shared meanings and goals. All of these stakeholders focus on what has become a consistent list of attributes deemed to be the essence of professionalism, which usually include variations on altruism, duty, excellence, honor and integrity, accountability, and respect. In fact, most of the scholarly work to date has been listing, describing, decrying, and measuring/evaluating it. In this collection of essays, we don’t argue with these attributes. Instead, we ask questions of the discourse from which they arise, how the specialized language of academic medicine disciplines has defined, organized, contained, and made seemingly immutable a group of attitudes, values, and behaviors subsumed under the label "professional" or "professionalism." This collection aims to be a critical text, one that questions the profession’s beliefs about the nature of its work and how such beliefs are enacted in medical education, particularly as they fuel the professionalism discourse. In addition, we will scrutinize how the discourse is enacted in both the formal and hidden curriculum, and in the larger medical environment. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 63 Heft: 6 Seiten: 1176-1182.