Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method, but this practice continues to be controversial because of its potential to compromise the protection of human subjects. Some critics question whether researchers should be allowed to offer money at all, citing concerns about commodification of the research subject, invalidation of study results, and increased risks to subjects. Other critics are comfortable with the idea of monetary payments but question how much researchers can pay their subjects, citing concerns about (...) undue inducement, crowding out, and monetary exploitation. Focusing only on the amount researchers can pay their subjects, this paper argues that the federal regulations and guidelines should implement a standard payment formula. It argues for a wage payment model, and critically examines three candidates for a base wage: the nonfarm production wage, the FLSA minimum wage, and a living wage. (shrink)

The trend toward increased levels of business interconnectedness in the value chain has clouded the issue of responsibility for business practices. Firms havehistorically denied responsibility for many questionable practices by suggesting that such acts were committed somewhere else in the value chain and that, because they are separated by an arm’s length transaction, they are not responsible. Emerging evidence suggests that in light of the interconnected and networked business environment, the arm’s length defense is growing less effective. We discuss the (...) practical realities that firms are facing in the highly networked environment and offer examples of each. We also offer practical guidance about each example within a total responsibility management framework. (shrink)

Activists’ investigations of animal cruelty expose the public to suffering that they may otherwise be unaware of, via an increasingly broad-ranging media. This may result in ethical dilemmas and a wide range of emotions and reactions. Our hypothesis was that media broadcasts of cruelty to cattle in Indonesian abattoirs would result in an emotional response by the public that would drive their actions towards live animal export. A survey of the public in Australia was undertaken to investigate their reactions and (...) responses to. The most common immediate reaction was feeling pity for the cattle. Women were more likely than men to feel sad or angry. Most people discussed the media coverage with others afterwards but fewer than 10 % contacted politicians or wrote to newspapers. We conclude that the public were emotionally affected by the media coverage of cruelty to cattle but that this did not translate into significant behavioral change. We recommend that future broadcasts of animal cruelty should advise the public of contact details for counseling and that mental health support contacts, and information should be included on the websites of animal advocacy groups to acknowledge the disturbing effect animal cruelty exposes can have on the public. (shrink)

Undercover filming is a method commonly used by animal activist groups to expose animal cruelty and it is important to consider the effects of publically releasing video footage of cruel practices on the viewers’ mental health. Previously, we reported that members of the Australian public were emotionally distressed soon after viewing media broadcasts of cruelty to Australian cattle exported for slaughter in Indonesia in 2011. To explore if there were any long term impacts from exposure to media on this issue, (...) a self-selecting group of 15 people who were exposed to a documentary exposé of the cruelty were re-interviewed 12 months later. Nearly all recalled their strong initial reaction to the footage. Approximately one half of the respondents who initially had had a strong emotional reaction to the footage reported negative reactions that were still strong even after this period of time. They reported potential triggers for these feelings. Of the rest, some managed to internalise their feelings. Approximately one half of respondents were unaware of continued live export exposés, suggesting less prominent media coverage. Despite the aversion and repulsion reported after viewing the initial coverage, most respondents said they would choose to watch another broadcast of animal cruelty and nearly all supported undercover investigations as a means of revealing cruelty to animals. We conclude that many people viewing footage of cruelty to animals will have long term memory of this, but that they would prefer to be informed about the issues and not be protected from them. (shrink)

This project evaluates the impact of the National Science Foundation's policy to promote education in the responsible conduct of research. To determine whether this policy resulted in meaningful RCR educational experiences, our study examined the instructional plans developed by individual universities in response to the mandate. Using a sample of 108 U.S. institutions classified as Carnegie “very high research activity”, we analyzed all publicly available NSF RCR training plans in light of the consensus best practices in RCR education that were (...) known at the time the policy was implemented. We found that fewer than half of universities developed plans that incorporated at least some of the best practices. More specifically, only 31% of universities had content and requirements that differed by career stage, only 1% of universities had content and requirements that differed by discipline; and only 18% of universities required some face-to-face engagement from all classes of trainees. Indeed, some schools simply provided hand-outs to their undergraduate students. Most universities had plans that could be satisfied with online programs such as the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative's RCR modules. The NSF policy requires universities to develop RCR training plans, but provides no guidelines or requirements for the format, scope, content, duration, or frequency of the training, and does not hold universities accountable for their training plans. Our study shows that this vaguely worded policy, and lack of accountability, has not produced meaningful educational experiences for most of the undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral trainees funded by the NSF. (shrink)

Offering cash payments to research subjects is a common recruiting method but there is significant debate about whether and in what amount such payments are appropriate. This paper is concerned with exploitation and whether there should be a lower limit on the amount researchers can pay their subjects. When subjects participate in research as a way to make money, fairness requires that researchers pay them a fair wage. This call for the establishment of a lower limit meets resistance in two (...) places: (1) denial that the payments offered by researchers are wages for participation; and (2) concern about undue inducement. This paper critically examines these arguments for and against a lower limit. It shows that the need for a lower limit cannot be avoided by adopting a non-wage payment model and that concerns about undue inducement are unjustified in all trials except those that present greater than minimal risk. This analysis suggests the following compromise position: there should be an unconditional lower limit on payment amounts so that researchers cannot offer less than a fair wage, and when researchers cannot satisfy this limit because fairness requires a problematically large payment, then researchers should offer no payment at all. (shrink)

This paper challenges the fitness of Angela Ballantyne's proposed theory of exploitation by situating her ‘fair risk account’ in an ongoing dialogue about the adequacy conditions for benchmarks of fairness. It identifies four adequacy conditions: (1) the ability to focus on level rather than type of benefit; (2) the ability to focus on micro-level rather than macro-level fairness; (3) the ability to prevent discrimination based on need; and (4) the ability to prescribe a certain distribution as superior to all others. (...) While the fair risk account satisfies the first condition, this paper argues that it has difficulty satisfying the last three conditions. Ballantyne's proposal includes several new and promising features, but in order for the fair risk account to be useful in identifying and preventing exploitation, Ballantyne must either clarify and augment her theory or challenge the relevance of the adequacy conditions it fails to meet. (shrink)

: The transplantation of adult human neural stem cells into prenatal non-humans offers an avenue for studying human neural cell development without direct use of human embryos. However, such experiments raise significant ethical concerns about mixing human and nonhuman materials in ways that could result in the development of human-nonhuman chimeras. This paper examines four arguments against such research, the moral taboo, species integrity, "unnaturalness," and human dignity arguments, and finds the last plausible. It argues that the transfer of human (...) brain or retinal stem cells to nonhuman embryos would not result in the development of human-nonhuman chimeras that denigrate human dignity, provided such stem cells are dissociated. The article provides guidelines that set ethical boundaries for conducting such research that are consonant with the requirements of human dignity. (shrink)

Past work has demonstrated that people’s moral judgments can influence their judgments in a number of domains that might seem to involve straightforward matters of fact, including judgments about freedom, causation, the doing/allowing distinction, and intentional action. The present studies explore whether the effect of morality in these four domains can be explained by changes in the relevance of alternative possibilities. More precisely, we propose that moral judgment influences the degree to which people regard certain alternative possibilities as relevant, which (...) in turn impacts intuitions about freedom, causation, doing/allowing, and intentional action. Employing the stimuli used in previous research, Studies 1a, 2a, 3a, and 4a show that the relevance of alternatives is influenced by moral judgments and mediates the impact of morality on non-moral judgments. Studies 1b, 2b, 3b, and 4b then provide direct empirical evidence for the link between the relevance of alternatives and judgments in these four domains by manipulating (rather than measuring) the relevance of alternative possibilities. Lastly, Study 5 demonstrates that the critical mechanism is not whether alternative possibilities are considered, but whether they are regarded as relevant. These studies support a unified framework for understanding the impact of morality across these very different kinds of judgments. (shrink)

Philosophers have lately seized upon Sperling's partial report technique and subsequent work on iconic memory in support of controversial claims about perceptual experience, in particular that phenomenology overflows cognitive access. Drawing on mounting evidence concerning postdictive perception, I offer an interpretation of Sperling's data in terms of cue-sensitive experience which fails to support any such claims. Arguments for overflow based on change-detection paradigms (e.g. Landman et al., 2003; Sligte et al., 2008) cannot be blocked in this way. However, such paradigms (...) are fundamentally different from Sperling's and, for rather different reasons, equally fail to establish controversial claims about perceptual experience. (shrink)

This book applies Augustine's thought to current questions of teaching and learning. The essays are written in an accessible style and is not intended just for experts on Augustine or church history.

Orthodox interpretations of Sperling‘s partial report paradigm support the idea that there is substantially more in our streams of consciousness than we can attend to or recall. I propose an alternative, postdictive interpretation which fails to support any such conclusion. This account is defended at greater length in my ‗Perception and iconic memory‘. Here I focus on the role ascribed to attention by the rival interpretations. I argue that orthodox accounts fail to assign a plausible role to attention. In contrast, (...) I suggest a novel way in which heterodox, postdictive account can assign attention a plausible role. We should therefore prefer such accounts over their orthodox rivals. Consequently, Sperling‘s paradigm fails to probe the true extent of conscious awareness unfettered by limitations on attention or memory. (shrink)

Recent books by Paul Johnston, D. Z. Phillips, Philip Shields, and B. R. Tilghman all depict Wittgenstein as centrally concerned with ethics, but they range from representing his main works as expressing and advocating a particular religious-ethical outlook to arguing that his work has no ethical content but aims primarily to clarify such logical distinctions as that between ethical and empirical judgments. All four books raise the question about the moral philosopher's proper role, and each suggests a rather different (...) answer. Via the discussion of these books, I argue that Wittgenstein's stress on diversity in the ways of human life, his notion of conceptual grammar, the idea of a perspicuous representation, his lifelong involvement with art and his suggestions about its connection with morality, and his preoccupation with aspect-seeing-all suggest new possibilities of rehabilitating the historically recurrent idea that the philosopher may be a moral sage. (shrink)

A Martian reading contemporary work on perception might be forgiven for thinking that humans had only one sense: vision. Witness the title of one popular recent collection: Vision and mind: selected readings in the philosophy of perception. Our obsession with sight is stifling. It leads to distorted vision-based models of the other senses, and it means that the distinctive puzzles raised by non-visual modalities are routinely neglected. With this pioneering and long-overdue collection of essays on auditory perception, Nudds and O’Callaghan (...) aim to start correcting this state of affairs. They deserve much praise, not least for their own substantial contributions and splendid introduction. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Discussions of socioeconomic liability and compensation must necessarily start from an understanding of the socioeconomic, legal, and scientific basis for identifying, assessing, managing, and apportioning blame for hazards related to innovations. Public discussions about the nature of the liability challenge related to genetically modified (GM) crops and other modified organisms have focused less on direct, traditional health, public safety, technical, or environmental failures (e.g., innovations that generate hazards directly for users or indirectly to bystanders) and more on socioeconomic concerns, such (...) as comingled product that offends product quality standards. This article examines the theoretical and legal underpinnings of the current risk analysis framework used in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and uses it to assess two areas of significant controversy—the release of herbicide-tolerant canola and flax varieties in Western Canada. The article offers lessons for the management of liabilities arising from the introduction of GM crops. (shrink)

The FDA's new table of surrogate endpoints used for drug approvals is an important step forward for overseeing the use of biomarkers in clinical trials. Nevertheless, we present several ways in which the table can be improved.

This study explored attention and interpretation biases in processing facial expressions as correlates of theoretically distinct self-reported anger experience, expression, and control. Non-selected undergraduate students completed cognitive tasks measuring attention bias, interpretation bias, and Spielberger’s State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory. Attention bias toward angry faces was associated with higher trait anger and anger expression and with lower anger control-in and anger control-out. The propensity to quickly interpret ambiguous faces as angry was associated with greater anger expression and its subcomponent of anger (...) expression-out and with lower anger control-out. Interactions between attention and interpretation biases did not contribute to the prediction of any anger component suggesting that attention and interpretation biases may function as distinct mechanisms. Theoretical and possible clinical implications are discussed. (shrink)