This paper recommends that experimental analysts of language development abandon for the purposes of experimental inquiry both the term "language" and the concept it designates. In support of this recommendation, the paper dis cusses the multiple meanings of "language," the proposal that "language" refers to behavior, the implicit acceptance by behavior analysts of psycholinguistic thought despite their ostensible rejection of it, and the nature of language as a subject matter. In addition, the nature of common-sense psychology, the domain of behavior (...) analysis, the formal nature of Chomskyan linguistics, and the rela tion between psychology and behavior analysis are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an argument about the location of psychological structure. It argues that psychological structure can be found in the domain of acts. The paper begins by arguing that all natural domains have concrete and abstract tiers. The concrete tier consists of concrete particulars that exist in time and space, and the abstract tier consists of classes, elements and relations that underlie the concrete tier. Having described the general nature of natural domains, the paper argues that acts are (...) the concrete particulars of interest to psychology and further, that the classes, elements and relations of the abstract tier constitute behavior's structure. Rudimentary knowledge of psychological structure is available ahead of systematic inquiry, and it connects well with the more advanced knowledge given in the operant paradigm. The paper concludes that this connection gives behavior analysts a way to run their argument from the concrete particulars of daily experience step-by-step through the successive levels of abstraction represented in the operant paradigm. (shrink)

Beyond Behaviorism explores and contrasts means and ends psychology with conventional psychology -- that of stimuli and response. The author develops this comparison by exploring the general nature of psychological phenomena and clarifying many persistent doubts about psychology. Dr. Lee contrasts conventional psychology (stimuli and responses) involving reductionistic, organocentric, and mechanistic metatheory with alternative psychology (means and ends) that is autonomous, contextual, and evolutionary.

This paper offers some comments about the subject matter of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (1957). It first presents an argument against the common misconception that Verbal Behavior is about language. It then discusses the nature of verbal behavior as a subdivision of op?rant .behavior. Following that, the paper identifies three aspects of the concept of verbal behavior that need some clarification. Finally, the paper concludes by pointing out that the significance of Verbal Behavior lies most centrally in its effort to (...) offer a better way of talking about one part of psychology's subject matter. (shrink)

Taking the regime established by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a foundation, the purpose of this article is twofold. First, it examines how the international biodiversity regime integrates the private property paradigm into its toolbox for conservation and sustainability and then critically evaluates the shortcomings of the intellectual property mechanism. Second, it argues that the increasing ubiquity of open access emerging technologies should lead the international community to carefully assess the benefits for conservation research of reverting to a framework (...) that places biodiversity within the global commons. The impasse between global commons advocates and the intellectual property status quo obscures the underlying problematic of the “commodity fiction” of biodiversity and increasing use of digital sequence information likely exacerbates power asymmetries. One remedy explored here is an alternative to these two approaches that dislodges rather than discards the concept of private property. Drawing inspiration from Polanyi and building on May (2010), the article shows how a hybrid approach bridging a public and private conception of genetic resources and traditional knowledge could more effectively and equitably distribute benefits to countries and communities providing resources of value to industry. (shrink)

Current methods to capture, analyse and present the audience participation of broadcast events are increasingly carried out using social media. Uptake of such technology tools has so far been poor amongst older adults, and it has the worrying effect of excluding the demographic from participation. Our work explores whether a common desire to interact with debates can be tapped with technology with a very low barrier to entry, to both support better engagement with broadcast debates and encourage greater use of (...) social media. This paper describes experiments where older adults interact with a BBC radio debate programme: The Moral Maze. As a result, we obtained common interaction patterns which then are used to define recommendations for software-supported interaction with debates based on theories of argumentation. Our goal is to combine research on computational models of argument and user-driven research on human-centred computing in a project with the potential for high-profile impact in addressing older adults inclusion in the digital economy. (shrink)

Minority female youth are significantly affected by the HIV epidemic. The purpose of this pilot study was to explore sexual behavior practices, disclosure of HIV status, attitudes about disclosure, and knowledge of HIV disclosure laws among female youth with HIV. Findings suggest that the majority of YWH studied have been sexually active since their HIV diagnosis, although the nature and extent of sexual activity varied. Rates of nondisclosure to sexual partners varied based on the type of question asked, but at (...) least some of the YWH in this sample reported sexual activity with a partner who was unaware of the participant’s HIV status. YWH appear to be more likely to disclose before, as opposed to after, sexual activity. Although most YWH believe disclosure to sexual partners is important for a variety of reasons, many reasons exist for nondisclosure, including fear of rejection and limited communication skills. The majority of YWH in this sample were aware of the potential legal ramifications of nondisclosure although fear of legal repercussions was not the most important factor related to disclosure. These findings favor the implementation of HIV disclosure interventions over the enactment of HIV criminalization laws as a strategy for reducing HIV transmission. (shrink)

Introduction: Uncertainty is omnipresent in cancer care, including the ambiguity of diagnostic tests, efficacy and side effects of treatments, and/or patients' long-term prognosis. During second opinion consultations, uncertainty may be particularly tangible: doubts and uncertainty may drive patients to seek more information and request a second opinion, whereas the second opinion in turn may also affect patients' level of uncertainty. Providers are tasked to clearly discuss all of these uncertainties with patients who may feel overwhelmed by it. The aim of (...) this study was to explore how oncologists communicate about uncertainty during second opinion consultations in medical oncology.Methods: We performed a secondary qualitative analysis of audio-recorded consultations collected in a prospective study among cancer patients who sought a second opinion in medical oncology. We purposively selected 12 audio-recorded second opinion consultations. Any communication about uncertainty by the oncologist was double coded by two researchers and an inductive analytic approach was chosen to allow for novel insights to arise.Results: Seven approaches in which oncologists conveyed or addressed uncertainty were identified: specifying the degree of uncertainty, explaining reasons of uncertainty, providing personalized estimates of uncertainty to patients, downplaying or magnifying uncertainty, reducing or counterbalancing uncertainty, and providing support to facilitate patients in coping with uncertainty. Moreover, oncologists varied in their choice of words/language to convey uncertainty.Discussion: This study identified various approaches of how oncologists communicated uncertain issues during second opinion consultations. These different approaches could affect patients' perception of uncertainty, emotions provoked by it, and possibly even patients' behavior. For example, by minimizing uncertainty, oncologists may consciously steer patients toward specific medical decisions). Future research is needed to examine how these different ways of communicating about uncertainty affect patients. This could also facilitate a discussion about the desirability of certain communication strategies. Eventually, practical and evidence-based guidance needs to be developed for clinicians to optimally inform patients about uncertain issues and support patients in dealing with these. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Living Organ DonationLaura Altobelli, Sherri Bauman, Janice Flynn, Andy Heath, Joseph Jacobs, Tim Joos, Amy K. Lewensten, Donna L. Luebke, Sarah A. McDaniel, Donald Olenick, Laurie E Post, Vicky Young, Blake Adams, Anonymous One, Michael Sauls, Christine Wright, Shannon D. Wyatt, and Cara Yesawich• An Altruistic Living Donor’s Story• Surgery for the Soul• Kidney Donation Story• The Essence of Giving—A Transplant Story• Love—the Risk Worth Taking• My Donation (...) Journey• A Life For A Life: My Gift To My Dad• Lessons Learned: The Realities of Living Organ Donation• Sarah’s List Exchange Experience• Accelerated Living Donation• Liver Donor Nightmare• Adrift After Donation• Getting Our Child Off Dialysis• A Living Donor’s Journey• The Spare Kidney• Living Donors are People Too• The Gift of Life—Walking by Faith• Journey of an Altruistic, Non–designated Living DonorCopyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

How to engage farmers that have limited formal education is at the foundation of environmentally-sound and equitable agricultural development. Yet there are few examples of curricula that support the co-development of knowledge with farmers. While transdisciplinary and participatory techniques are considered key components of agroecology, how to do so is rarely specified and few materials are available, especially those relevant to smallholder farmers with limited formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The few training materials that exist provide appropriate methods, such as (...) compost making, but do not explain relationships and synergies between nutrition, social inequalities, climate change and agroecology. Some food sovereignty and agroecology courses aim at popular political education for those with more formal education. Here we describe the process of development of an innovative curriculum, which integrates agroecology, nutrition, climate change, gender and other dimensions of social equity across 2 weeks of training explicitly for smallholders in southern Africa with limited formal education. The curriculum is highly participatory; we use concepts in popular education, transformative and experiential-based learning, and theatre. It is also integrative; we link agroecology with climate change, human and soil nutrition, gender, and related components of social equity. Developed in partnership with Malawian farmers, community development experts and academics from five countries, the curriculum was piloted with 520 smallholder farming households in Malawi and Tanzania, and evaluated using qualitative techniques. Clashes of language, cultural norms, and terminology were as great of a challenge as agreeing on and conveying technical information, to weave into a coherent whole. However, farmers who participated in the curriculum training demonstrated high interest, comprehension of material and interest in immediate application to their lives. (shrink)

How to engage farmers that have limited formal education is at the foundation of environmentally-sound and equitable agricultural development. Yet there are few examples of curricula that support the co-development of knowledge with farmers. While transdisciplinary and participatory techniques are considered key components of agroecology, how to do so is rarely specified and few materials are available, especially those relevant to smallholder farmers with limited formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The few training materials that exist provide appropriate methods, such as (...) compost making, but do not explain relationships and synergies between nutrition, social inequalities, climate change and agroecology. Some food sovereignty and agroecology courses aim at popular political education for those with more formal education. Here we describe the process of development of an innovative curriculum, which integrates agroecology, nutrition, climate change, gender and other dimensions of social equity across 2 weeks of training explicitly for smallholders in southern Africa with limited formal education. The curriculum is highly participatory; we use concepts in popular education, transformative and experiential-based learning, and theatre. It is also integrative; we link agroecology with climate change, human and soil nutrition, gender, and related components of social equity. Developed in partnership with Malawian farmers, community development experts and academics from five countries, the curriculum was piloted with 520 smallholder farming households in Malawi and Tanzania, and evaluated using qualitative techniques. Clashes of language, cultural norms, and terminology were as great of a challenge as agreeing on and conveying technical information, to weave into a coherent whole. However, farmers who participated in the curriculum training demonstrated high interest, comprehension of material and interest in immediate application to their lives. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare systemic inequities shaped by social determinants of health (SDoH). Public health agencies, legislators, health systems, and community organizations took notice, and there is currently unprecedented interest in identifying and implementing programs to address SDoH. This special issue focuses on the role of medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) in addressing SDoH and racial and social inequities, as well as the need to support these efforts with evidence-based research, data, and meaningful partnerships and funding.

Perceptual learning involves an improvement in perceptual judgment with practice, which is often specific to stimulus or task factors. Perceptual learning has been shown on a range of visual tasks but very little research has explored chromatic perceptual learning. Here, we use two low level perceptual threshold tasks and a supra-threshold target detection task to assess chromatic perceptual learning and category effects. Experiment 1 investigates whether chromatic thresholds reduce as a result of training and at what level of analysis learning (...) effects occur. Experiment 2 explores the effect of category training on chromatic thresholds, whether training of this nature is category specific and whether it can induce categorical responding. Experiment 3 investigates the effect of category training on a higher level, lateralized target detection task, previously found to be sensitive to category effects. The findings indicate that performance on a perceptual threshold task improves following training but improvements do not transfer across retinal location or hue. Therefore, chromatic perceptual learning is category specific and can occur at relatively early stages of visual analysis. Additionally, category training does not induce category effects on a low level perceptual threshold task, as indicated by comparable discrimination thresholds at the newly learned hue boundary and adjacent test points. However, category training does induce category effects on a supra-threshold target detection task. Whilst chromatic perceptual learning is possible, learnt category effects appear to be a product of left hemisphere processing, and may require the input of higher level linguistic coding processes in order to manifest. (shrink)

Conscientious objections (CO) can be disruptive in a variety of ways and may disadvantage patients and colleagues who must step-in to assume care. Nevertheless, nurses have a right and responsibility to object to participation in interventions that would seriously harm their sense of integrity. This is an ethical problem of balancing risks and responsibilities related to patient care. Here we explore the problem and propose a nonlinear framework for exploring the authenticity of a claim of CO from the perspective of (...) the nurse and of those who must evaluate such claims. We synthesized the framework using Rest’s Four Component Model of moral reasoning along with tenets of the International Council of Nursing’s (ICN) Code of Ethics for Nurses and insights from relevant ethics and nursing ethics literature. The resulting framework facilitates evaluating potential consequences of a given CO for all involved. We propose that the framework can also serve as an aid for nurse educators as they prepare students for practice. Gaining clarity about the sense in which the concept of conscience provides a defensible foundation for objecting to legally, or otherwise ethically, permissible actions, in any given case is critical to arriving at an ethical and reasonable plan of action. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this systematic review is to examine cooling intervention research in outdoor occupations, evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions, and offer recommendations for future studies. This review focuses on outdoor occupational studies conducted at worksites or simulated occupational tasks in climatic chambers. -/- Methods This systematic review was performed in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were searched to identify original research on intervention studies published (...) in peer‐reviewed journals that aimed at reducing heat stress or heat‐related illness from January 2000 to August 2020. -/- Results A systematic search yielded a total of 1042 articles, of which 21 met the inclusion criteria. Occupations with cooling intervention studies included agriculture (n = 5), construction (n = 5), industrial workers (n = 4), and firefighters (n = 7). The studies focused on multiple types of cooling interventions cooling gear (vest, bandanas, cooling shirts, or head‐cooling gel pack), enhanced heat dissipation clothing, forearm or lower body immersion in cold water, water dousing, ingestion of a crushed ice slush drink, electrolyte liquid hydration, and modified Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommendations of drinking water and resting in the shade. -/- Conclusion Current evidence indicates that using multiple cooling gears along with rest cycles may be the most effective method to reduce heat‐related illness. Occupational heat‐related illnesses and death may be mitigated by targeted cooling intervention and workplace controls among workers of vulnerable occupational groups and industries. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.

This study identified and compared the attitudes of visitors toward zoo-housed little penguins, their enclosure and visitor experience that may influence the way visitors behave toward little penguins at two Australian zoos. Visitor attitudes were assessed using an anonymous questionnaire, targeting visitor beliefs, and experiences, where visitors were randomly approached at the penguin exhibit after they had finished viewing the penguins. Visitors were given two options to complete the questionnaire, on an iPad during their zoo visit or online (URL sent (...) via email) after their zoo visit. A total of 638 participants (495 at Melbourne Zoo and 143 at Taronga Zoo) completed the questionnaire, 42% were completed onsite during their zoo visit and 58% were completed online after their zoo visit. Most participants were living in Australia, non-zoo members, female, previously or currently owned a pet, aged between 26 and 35 years and had a University degree. Results showed that the attitude dimensions of visitors were consistent between the two zoos which indicates that these measures of attitudes were stable over time and location. Overall, visitors at both zoos had positive attitudes toward little penguins, penguin welfare, the enclosure, and visitor experience. However, whether these positive attitudes and positive visitor experience influenced the way visitors behaved toward the penguins remains unclear. There were some differences in visitor attitudes toward the perceived “aggressiveness” and “timidness” of little penguins, “negative penguin welfare”, “experience with the penguins”, “learning”, “visual barriers” and the way visitors rated their overall experience at the penguin enclosure. While the reasons for the differences in visitor attitudes and visitor experience between the zoos were not clear, some factors such as penguin behavior and enclosure design, may have been attributable to these differences. Also, a relationship was found between visitor attitudes and how visitors rated the welfare of penguins, the enclosure and visitor experience at the enclosure; more positive visitor attitudes were associated with higher ratings of penguin welfare, the enclosure and visitor experience. The practical implications of these results for zoos is unclear because the differences in visitor attitudes were numerically small. This requires further comparisons between zoos or enclosures that are more markedly different than the penguin enclosures in the present study and further research on how visitors assess zoo animals, enclosures and visitor experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Living Organ DonationLaura Altobelli, Sherri Bauman, Janice Flynn, Andy Heath, Joseph Jacobs, Tim Joos, Amy K. Lewensten, Donna L. Luebke, Sarah A. McDaniel, Donald Olenick, Laurie E Post, Vicky Young, Blake Adams, Anonymous One, Michael Sauls, Christine Wright, Shannon D. Wyatt, and Cara Yesawich• An Altruistic Living Donor’s Story• Surgery for the Soul• Kidney Donation Story• The Essence of Giving—A Transplant Story• Love—the Risk Worth Taking• My Donation (...) Journey• A Life For A Life: My Gift To My Dad• Lessons Learned: The Realities of Living Organ Donation• Sarah’s List Exchange Experience• Accelerated Living Donation• Liver Donor Nightmare• Adrift After Donation• Getting Our Child Off Dialysis• A Living Donor’s Journey• The Spare Kidney• Living Donors are People Too• The Gift of Life—Walking by Faith• Journey of an Altruistic, Non–designated Living DonorCopyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

La façon dont la négligence envers l’enfant est conceptualisée dans les recherches de pointe a un impact notable sur l’organisation des services et les pratiques professionnelles auprès des familles touchées par cette problématique au Québec. Il apparaît donc important de décrire le portrait des parents que ces recherches de pointe génèrent. Cet article examine la structure épistémologique, théorique et méthodologique qui sous-tend la production de ce type de savoir en s’appuyant sur une analyse qualitative d’articles récents publiés dans l’une des (...) plus importantes revues internationales dans le domaine. Les résultats montrent que les recherches de pointe produisent des connaissances sur la négligence envers l’enfant qui excluent plus ou moins radicalement le point de vue des parents et des enfants directement impliqués dans ces situations. (shrink)

La façon dont la négligence envers l’enfant est conceptualisée dans les recherches de pointe a un impact notable sur l’organisation des services et les pratiques professionnelles auprès des familles touchées par cette problématique au Québec. Il apparaît donc important de décrire le portrait des parents que ces recherches de pointe génèrent. Cet article examine la structure épistémologique, théorique et méthodologique qui sous-tend la production de ce type de savoir en s’appuyant sur une analyse qualitative d’articles récents publiés dans l’une des (...) plus importantes revues internationales dans le domaine. Les résultats montrent que les recherches de pointe produisent des connaissances sur la négligence envers l’enfant qui excluent plus ou moins radicalement le point de vue des parents et des enfants directement impliqués dans ces situations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Living Organ DonationLaura Altobelli, Sherri Bauman, Janice Flynn, Andy Heath, Joseph Jacobs, Tim Joos, Amy K. Lewensten, Donna L. Luebke, Sarah A. McDaniel, Donald Olenick, Laurie E Post, Vicky Young, Blake Adams, Anonymous One, Michael Sauls, Christine Wright, Shannon D. Wyatt, and Cara Yesawich• An Altruistic Living Donor’s Story• Surgery for the Soul• Kidney Donation Story• The Essence of Giving—A Transplant Story• Love—the Risk Worth Taking• My Donation (...) Journey• A Life For A Life: My Gift To My Dad• Lessons Learned: The Realities of Living Organ Donation• Sarah’s List Exchange Experience• Accelerated Living Donation• Liver Donor Nightmare• Adrift After Donation• Getting Our Child Off Dialysis• A Living Donor’s Journey• The Spare Kidney• Living Donors are People Too• The Gift of Life—Walking by Faith• Journey of an Altruistic, Non–designated Living DonorCopyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Culturally Responsive Teaching in Music Education: From Understanding to Application by Vicky R. Lind and Constance L. McKoyEric ShiehVicky R. Lind and Constance L. McKoy, Culturally Responsive Teaching in Music Education: From Understanding to Application (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016).In the book’s penultimate chapter, titled “Community,” we encounter a teacher who agrees to a student’s request to start a mariachi band and gets “more than he bargained for.”1 (...) We hear from a teacher who seeks a greater understanding of the context for her Black students and finds herself the only White person in many of the community events she attends. We learn about a teacher who has her marching band, predominantly comprised of Latinx students, march in annual Korean and Black community parades in the city and why she does this. What to make of these stories—inspiring, provocative, suffused with honesty? I found myself restless to share these narratives with my own teaching colleagues, to ask not simply “What do you see happening here?” but also “Where would something like this take us?”What is notable about Vicky Lind and Constance McKoy’s achievement here is that they have given us a very full book and one that provides many different points of entry—stories and theories and activities and questions—through which to engage with ideas of culturally responsive teaching. In just under 150 [End Page 210] pages with index and references, the book encompasses four chapters that review various academic traditions connected to culturally responsive teaching, concludes with three chapters that relay narratives and vignettes from K-12 music teachers, and includes throughout lists of reflection questions and teaching strategies. The primary audience is pre-service and in-service K-12 music teachers. If a key requirement for culturally responsive teaching is continuous reflection over the impacts our pedagogies have on our students and ourselves as teachers, this book’s wide-ranging engagement is indeed a welcome one.What I offer here in terms of review, then, is first a consideration of the book’s various components and where they might lead us. Second, I bring its ideas of cultural responsiveness into dialogue with ideas more commonly found in anti-racist and social justice approaches to education—traditions the book does not directly engage with but which certainly have a place in conversations around it. This is a particularly relevant time, I suggest, to engage with questions of cultural responsiveness alongside perhaps more politically-minded approaches: this book will be read, I hope, by teachers grappling with our age of renewed and visible racial struggle, increased forced migration, and cultural insecurity.The first half of the book is explicitly dedicated to “understanding” culturally responsive teaching. Its chapters present a historical overview of its conceptual development, explicate the centrality of culture and cultural competence to teaching, and discuss the connection between music and identity in young people. The authors center their conceptualization of culturally responsive teaching around Geneva Gay’s framework, outlined in her Culturally Responsive Teaching, as “using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.”2 “Effective,” here, is understood broadly and includes academic competence, self-efficacy, social critique, and the freedom to be “ethnically expressive.”3In laying this foundation, the authors negotiate thoughtfully a number of tensions inherent in this work that are too often simplified in the classroom. They recognize, for example, the need to acknowledge culture as a category through which human experience is mediated, but also one that too easily gives way to stereotyping. When discussing issues of music and identity they remind readers that musical identities are multiple and suggest that musical identities might be viewed as both “bottom-up” and “top-down”—constructed through a variety of ongoing experiences as much as they are constituted by national or ethnic affiliation.4 They also do not shy from language such as “high expectations” and “academic competence” when discussing the need for comprehensive and supportive classrooms, despite the uneasiness with which these terms often sit in arts education and alongside purposes of engendering social critique... (shrink)

Anthropology diffracted : originary humanicity -- Just figures?: forensic clairvoyance, mathematics, and the language question -- Enumerating language : "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" -- Natural convers(at)ions : or, what if culture was really nature all along? -- (Con)founding "the human" : rethinking the incest taboo -- Culpability and the double-cross : Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty.

This comprehensively updated and expanded revision of the successful second edition continues to provide detailed coverage of the ever-growing range of research topics in vision. In Part I, the treatment of visual physiology has been extensively revised with an updated account of retinal processing, a new section explaining the principles of spatial and temporal filtering which underlie discussions in later chapters, and an up-to-date account of the primate visual pathway. Part II contains four largely new chapters which cover recent psychophysical (...) evidence and computational model of early vision: edge detection, perceptual grouping, depth perception, and motion perception. The models discussed are extensively integrated with physiological evidence. All other chapters in Parts II, III, and IV have also been thoroughly updated. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and created deep rifts in society. It has thrust us into deep ethical thinking to help justify the difficult decisions many will be called upon to make and to protect from decisions that lack ethical underpinnings. This paper aims to highlight ethical issues in six different areas of life highlighting the enormity of the task we are faced with globally. In the context of COVID-19, we consider health inequity, dilemmas in triage and allocation of (...) scarce resources, ethical issues associated with research, ethical considerations relating to tracing apps, and exit strategies such as immunity passports and COVID-19 vaccines. Finally, we consider environmental issues in light of COVID-19. The paper also offers some ethical reflection on these areas as many parts of the world contemplate the recovery phase. (shrink)