A course focusing on ethical issues in physics has been taught to undergraduate students at Eastern Michigan University since 1988. The course covers both responsible conduct of research and ethical issues associated with how physicists interact with the rest of society. Since most undergraduate physics majors will not have a career in academia, it is important that a course such as this address issues that will be relevant to physicists in a wide range of job situations. There is a wealth (...) of published work that can be drawn on for reading assignments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of WartimeOksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Oleksandr DudinFunding. Oksana Sulaieva, MD, PhD is supported by the Loyola University Chicago–Ukrainian Catholic University Bioethics Fellowship Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (D43TW011506).After 500 days of the unjust war initiated by the Russians, we look back to reflect on the challenges our medical laboratory faced during these early days. (...) On the morning of February 24th, we were awakened by the dreadful roar of sirens, the sound of which filled us with adrenaline and anxiety. Although our team had considered the risks of Russian military aggression and thus updated our emergency plan at the beginning of 2022, the first day of the war revealed that nobody was truly ready for the bombing, air alarms, tanks on the streets of towns and cities, violence and murders of civilians. That morning the city’s transportation system collapsed, and the flow of cars cluttered all the roads as people were trying to leave the city and escape the upcoming atrocities and death. Serious and disquieted people hurried along the streets—some people rushed to shelters, and others went to the military registration and enlistment offices to fight against Russian aggressors for the life, independence, and sovereignty of Ukraine.We hurried to work, committed to performing our duties. Our medical laboratory serves more than 750 hospitals in Ukraine. Despite fear and uncertainty, we walked to the lab, taking our children and alarm case1 with documents and essential things. Months later, people asked us why we went to the laboratory instead of leaving the city or even the country. At that moment, our [End Page 155] professional duties were an anchor linking us to each other against fear and panic. Our responsibility to provide patients and physicians with the results of blood testing, pathology, and molecular reports outweighed our fears of the war. We had to complete the testing of all the samples delivered to the laboratory to provide our customers—who include children, pregnant women, diabetic and cancer patients—with data essential for identifying accurate diagnoses and effective treatments. So we spent the first days of the war in the laboratory. At the same time, we had obligations and responsibilities to our staff as well. We had to consider how to manage our employees’ protection along with continuous laboratory services provided under endless air alarms and bombings. Many healthcare facilities in eastern regions and around Kyiv were affected by missiles or completely destroyed. Of our sixty laboratory offices around Ukraine, ten were damaged or abandoned due to occupation. Several of our fleet cars were also damaged and riddled with bullets. Many employees in the regional offices in Melitopol, Kherson, Mariupol, Chernihiv, and in suburbs of Kyiv such as Bucha and Irpin lost their homes as a result of massive military operations or occupation. Dozens of our employees joined the Ukrainian armed forces to defend civilians and fight against aggressors. Many others became volunteers, involved in blood donation, medical care for the wounded, cooking, and serving the troops. And still, we had to continue our work and protect our staff at the same time. We also helped each other by sharing our goods, medication, homes, cars, warmth, and support. Some pathologists stayed at the workplace for several days moving between pathology stations, microscopes and shelters, and sleeping on the floor but continuing to work.Our main challenge was the regular terroristic attacks on healthcare facilities situated far away from the front line, which in fact, violated international humanitarian law regarding respect for human rights during armed conflicts. During the first weeks of the war, the magnitude of military aggression, massive bombing, and air attacks undermined the healthcare system and endangered laboratory staff and patients. We prioritized protective measures. Some of our laboratory staff and facilities were evacuated from Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine. The partial relocation of our laboratory to Lviv was also driven by the displacement of several million Ukrainians to the western part of the country.We were able to arrange relatively safe accommodations for our laboratory employees and their families in Lviv. Under strikes and alarms, our... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute detailed ethnographic material to broaden the scope of what we mean by reproductive technology. Technology can be defined not only by a series of laboratory techniques (such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer) that are drafted into the daily management of the animal body, but also by a range of on-farm management strategies and working routines, as well as the cultural dispositions, social networks and tacit knowledge of the actors (...) involved. RT is communicated to lay operators and disseminated amongst semi-professional figures such as breed experts, herd inspectors and technical consultants. The practical contexts in which reproductive knowledge is popularized and applied provide ample scope for local negotiations, resistance and conflict. Professional knowledge about breed-improvement is personalised and appropriated by operators and plays a role in power relations and the exercise of personal charisma as well as being specific to context, in particular the nuances of pre-existing relationships of trust, friendship, kinship or hierarchy. No wonder then that many ambivalences and compromises coexist in the practice of applying ‘reproductive knowledge’ to breed selection. (shrink)

The global distribution of laboratory mouse strains is valued for ensuring the continuity, validity and accessibility of model organisms. Mouse strains are therefore assumed mobile and able to travel. We draw on the concept of ‘animal mobilities’ to explain how attending to laboratory mice as living animal, commodity and scientific tool is shaping how they are transported through contemporary scientific infrastructures and communities. Our paper is framed around exploring how animal strains travel, rather than animals, as we show (...) that it is only through understanding strain mobility that we can explain how and why live animal movement can be replaced by germinal products. The research is based on qualitative fieldwork in 2018 and 2019 that included 2 weeks ethnography and interviews with key informants involved in the movement of laboratory animals. The empirical analysis discusses practices that relate to managing biosecurity and animal welfare concerns when moving laboratory animal strains. In closing we reflect more broadly on the contemporary ‘ethico-onto-epistemological’ entanglement that shapes who or what travels to support laboratory science data-making practices, and the intensity of care ‘tinkering’ practices that facilitate the movement. We explain how a laboratory animal strain exceeds its value solely as a mobile and thus exchangeable commodity, illustrated in how values that relate to animal sentience and infection-risk supports its material transformation. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly common for non-sentient germinal products – embryos and gametes - to replace live sentient animals when being moved. (shrink)

Management has the opportunity to promote self-serving accounting practices, such as earnings management, when management can effectively avoid oversight by the audit committee. This article investigates the effects of financial knowledge and dispositional trust on the ability of audit committee members to recognize management attempts to avoid full disclosure to the board and potentially deceive board members. The results of a controlled laboratory experiment with 40 experienced audit committee member participants indicate that: Audit committee members (...) with less financial knowledge are more likely to accept insufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are more knowledgeable audit committee members; Audit committee members with less financial knowledge are more likely to reject sufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are more knowledgeable audit committee members; and Audit committee members that place higher levels of trust in others are more likely to accept insufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are less trusting committee members. (shrink)

The majority of people show persistent poor performance in reasoning about “stock-flow problems” in the laboratory. An important example is the failure to understand the relationship between the “stock” of CO2 in the atmosphere, the “inflow” via anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and the “outflow” via natural CO2 absorption. This study addresses potential causes of reasoning failures in the CO2 accumulation problem and reports two experiments involving a simple re-framing of the task as managing an analogous financial budget. In Experiment 1 (...) a financial version of the task that required participants to think in terms of controlling debt demonstrated significant improvements compared to a standard CO2 accumulation problem. Experiment 2, in which participants were invited to think about managing savings, suggested that this improvement was fortuitous and coincidental rather than due to a fundamental change in understanding the stock-flow relationships. The role of graphical information in aiding or abetting stock-flow reasoning was also explored in both experiments, with the results suggesting that graphs do not always assist understanding. The potential for leveraging the kind of reasoning exhibited in such tasks in an effort to change people's willingness to reduce CO2 emissions is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Background A biobank is a structure which collects and manages biological samples and their associated data. The collected samples will then be made available for various uses. The sharing of those samples raised ethical questions which have been answered through specific rules. Thus, a Biobank functioning under tight ethical rules would be immensely valuable from a scientific and an economic view point. In 2009, Côte d’Ivoire established a biobank, which has been chosen to house the regional biobank of Economic Community (...) of West African States countries in 2018. To ensure optimal and efficient use of this biobank, the scientific community must be aware of its existence and its role. It was therefore necessary to evaluate the knowledge of laboratories staff on the role and activities of a biobank. Methods This descriptive study was done by questioning staff from laboratories working on human’s health, animals or plants. The laboratories were located in southern Côte d’Ivoire. Results A total of 205 people completed the questionnaire. Of these 205 people, 34.63% were biologists, 7.32% engineers, 48.78% technicians and 9.27% PhD students. The average length of work experience was 10.11 ± 7.83 years. In this study, 43.41% of the participants had never heard of biobanking. Only 48.78% of participants had a good understanding of the role of a biobank. Technicians and PhD students were less educated on the notion of biobank. Conclusion The level of knowledge of laboratory staff about biobanking needs to be improved. Training on the role, activities and interests of the biobank is important. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute detailed ethnographic material to broaden the scope of what we mean by reproductive technology. Technology can be defined not only by a series of laboratory techniques that are drafted into the daily management of the animal body, but also by a range of on-farm management strategies and working routines, as well as the cultural dispositions, social networks and tacit knowledge of the actors involved. RT is communicated to lay operators (...) and disseminated amongst semi-professional figures such as breed experts, herd inspectors and technical consultants. The practical contexts in which reproductive knowledge is popularized and applied provide ample scope for local negotiations, resistance and conflict. Professional knowledge about breed-improvement is personalised and appropriated by operators and plays a role in power relations and the exercise of personal charisma as well as being specific to context, in particular the nuances of pre-existing relationships of trust, friendship, kinship or hierarchy. No wonder then that many ambivalences and compromises coexist in the practice of applying ‘reproductive knowledge’ to breed selection. (shrink)

This paper investigates how reports concerning a given country’s prospects affect investment decisions in two stylized, artificial organizational settings. We designed a role-game laboratory experiment, where subjects were asked to make investment decisions for two types of fictitious companies from the same country. We found that when available reports included positive country prospects, subjects strategized more on investments regardless of the characteristics of their organization. When reports included negative prospects, however, certain organizational peculiarities influenced the subjects’ interpretations, with decision-makers (...) opting for more prudent plans when managing a more traditional company. Cognitive maps of decision makers showed that subjects considered investment strategies as a means to fulfil a company’s role expectations regarding appropriate decisions. Notwithstanding all caveats due to the artificial and simplified nature of our experimental setting, our findings indicate the need for more research on the effect of reports and prospect analysis on strategic decisions of companies, especially when business prospects are uncertain. (shrink)

Automatic preferences can influence a decision maker’s choice before any relevant or meaningful information is available. We account for this element of human cognition in a computational model of problem solving that involves active trial and error and show that automatic biases are not just a beneficial or detrimental property: they are a tool that, if properly managed over time, can give rise to superior performance. In particular, automatic preferences are beneficial early on and detrimental at later stages. What is (...) more, additional value can be generated by a timely rebiasing, i.e., a calculated reversal of the initial automatic preference. Remarkably, rebiasing can dominate not only debiasing but also continuously unbiased decision making. This research contributes to the debate on the adaptiveness of automatic and intuitive biases, which has centered primarily on one-shot controlled laboratory experiments, by simulating outcomes across extended time spans. We also illustrate the value of the novel intervention of adopting the opposite automatic preference—something organizations can readily achieve by changing key decision makers—as opposed to attempting to correct for or simply accepting the ubiquity of such biases. (shrink)

We test competing theoretical perspectives of family firm governance in two separate studies by investigating whether family firm control moderates the detrimental effect of a management training ground on internal auditor objectivity and on the external auditor’s decision to rely on the internal audit function. In Study 1, we assess the objectivity of internal auditors working under an IAF that serves as a MTG or non-MTG and located in a family or non-family firm. A key result of Study 1 (...) is the mitigating role of family firm control, as we find that the objectivity of internal auditors is reduced when the IAF serves as a MTG but only in non-family firms. When the IAF is located in a family-controlled firm, the objectivity of internal auditors is unaffected by the opportunity to be promoted into management positions outside of the IAF. In Study 2, we utilize a controlled laboratory experiment with experienced Big 4 auditors as participants and examine their decision to rely on an IAF when it serves as a MTG. Our analyses indicate that external auditors reduce their reliance on non-family firm IAFs that are also MTGs and their decision is fully mediated by the perceived objectivity of non-family firm internal auditors. In contrast, external auditors’ reliance on family firm IAFs and their perceptions of internal auditor objectivity are unaffected under a MTG regime. The results of Studies 1 and 2 provide support for the alignment perspective of family firms. (shrink)

Management has the opportunity to promote self-serving accounting practices, such as earnings management, when management can effectively avoid oversight by the audit committee. This article investigates the effects of financial knowledge and dispositional trust on the ability of audit committee members to recognize management attempts to avoid full disclosure to the board and potentially deceive board members. The results of a controlled laboratory experiment with 40 experienced audit committee member participants indicate that: (1) Audit committee (...) members with less financial knowledge are more likely to accept insufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are more knowledgeable audit committee members; (2) Audit committee members with less financial knowledge are more likely to reject sufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are more knowledgeable audit committee members; and (3) Audit committee members that place higher levels of trust in others are more likely to accept insufficient client explanations for accounting judgments than are less trusting committee members. (shrink)

Environmental, health, and safety management systems have become common in research settings to improve laboratory safety through systematic observation and self-regulation. However, there is scant empirical evidence assessing whether these surveillance and inspection systems meet their intended objectives. Using data from safety inspections in research laboratories at a large university, we investigate whether conducting inspections, and recording and reporting findings back to the formally responsible actors (i.e., principal investigator scientists) lead to the improvement of regulatory compliance. Our analyses (...) identify a population of well-funded, high-status, tenured researchers whose non-compliant practices persist. Our interviews with environmental, health, and safety personnel suggest that higher-status actors disengage from the regulatory system, the compliance officers, and the system’s feedback process by their variable recognition and acknowledgment of relevant regulations, attention to the inspection reports, and responses to the feedback concerning repair of the unsafe situation. This study extends previous literature on regulatory compliance by providing evidence for the role of power and status in explaining actor-level non-compliant behavior. (shrink)

Cortisone, initially known as ‘compound E’ was the medical sensation of the late 1940s and early 1950s. As early as April 1949, only a week after Philip Hench and colleagues first described the potential of ‘compound E’ at a Mayo Clinic seminar, the New York Times reported the drug’s promise as a ‘modern miracle’ in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Given its high profile, it is unsurprising that historians of medicine have been attracted to study the innovation of cortisone. It (...) arrived at the end of a decade of ‘therapeutic revolutions’, kicked off by penicillin transforming the treatment of bacterial infections and ending with hopes of a revolution in the treatment of non-infectious, chronic inflammatory diseases. Despite these studies of cortisone’s introduction, few historians have taken the story forward and considered how cortisone was adopted and adapted into clinical practice. This article tells the longer of how the drug and its derivatives were taken from research laboratories and integrated into clinical practice; what has in recent decades become known as translational medicine. In exploring cortisone’s first decade in Britain, we focus specifically on its role in the treatment of RA. Our approach is always to consider cortisone’s use in the context of other treatments available to clinicians, and at local and national institutional settings. We do not discuss the many other therapeutic uses of cortisone, which ranged for topical applications for skin diseases to the management of cancers, especially childhood leukaemia, nor do we discuss its close analogue ACTH—AdenoCorticoTropic Hormone. We think there are lessons in our study for TM policies today. (shrink)

Cortisone, initially known as ‘compound E’ was the medical sensation of the late 1940s and early 1950s. As early as April 1949, only a week after Philip Hench and colleagues first described the potential of ‘compound E’ at a Mayo Clinic seminar, the New York Times reported the drug’s promise as a ‘modern miracle’ in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Given its high profile, it is unsurprising that historians of medicine have been attracted to study the innovation of cortisone. It (...) arrived at the end of a decade of ‘therapeutic revolutions’, kicked off by penicillin transforming the treatment of bacterial infections and ending with hopes of a revolution in the treatment of non-infectious, chronic inflammatory diseases. Despite these studies of cortisone’s introduction, few historians have taken the story forward and considered how cortisone was adopted and adapted into clinical practice. This article tells the longer of how the drug and its derivatives were taken from research laboratories and integrated into clinical practice; what has in recent decades become known as translational medicine. In exploring cortisone’s first decade in Britain, we focus specifically on its role in the treatment of RA. Our approach is always to consider cortisone’s use in the context of other treatments available to clinicians, and at local and national institutional settings. We do not discuss the many other therapeutic uses of cortisone, which ranged for topical applications for skin diseases to the management of cancers, especially childhood leukaemia, nor do we discuss its close analogue ACTH—AdenoCorticoTropic Hormone. We think there are lessons in our study for TM policies today. (shrink)

Cortisone, initially known as ‘compound E’ was the medical sensation of the late 1940s and early 1950s. As early as April 1949, only a week after Philip Hench and colleagues first described the potential of ‘compound E’ at a Mayo Clinic seminar, the New York Times reported the drug’s promise as a ‘modern miracle’ in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Given its high profile, it is unsurprising that historians of medicine have been attracted to study the innovation of cortisone. It (...) arrived at the end of a decade of ‘therapeutic revolutions’, kicked off by penicillin transforming the treatment of bacterial infections and ending with hopes of a revolution in the treatment of non-infectious, chronic inflammatory diseases. Despite these studies of cortisone’s introduction, few historians have taken the story forward and considered how cortisone was adopted and adapted into clinical practice. This article tells the longer of how the drug and its derivatives were taken from research laboratories and integrated into clinical practice; what has in recent decades become known as translational medicine. In exploring cortisone’s first decade in Britain, we focus specifically on its role in the treatment of RA. Our approach is always to consider cortisone’s use in the context of other treatments available to clinicians, and at local and national institutional settings. We do not discuss the many other therapeutic uses of cortisone, which ranged for topical applications for skin diseases to the management of cancers, especially childhood leukaemia, nor do we discuss its close analogue ACTH—AdenoCorticoTropic Hormone. We think there are lessons in our study for TM policies today. (shrink)

Dorion Sagan observes that pioneering ethologist Jakob von Uexküll tends to be read in contrasting ways, as a “humble naturalist” pre-empting current research in biosemiotics, animal perception and agency; and as a “biologist-shaman,” gesturing to a transcendental realm where the life-worlds of animals interconnect in a vast symphony of nature. In both cases the tools of the laboratory are thought to generate complete pictures of the invertebrates that Uexküll studies, in unity with their environments. As Giorgio Agamben points out, (...) these experiments form part of an abstract mechanism that produces the human, by isolating instinctual life as an object for study and management from social and ethical modes of existence. What these readings neglect to consider is that Uexküll imagines his experiments through a Picture Book frame. We argue that for Uexküll there is always something fabulous and child-like about the enterprise of reconstructing the subjective environments of the small animals he works with. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler, we propose the Picture Book as a particular technics, or tertiary memory, that cultivates modes of attention that are associated with childhood and are open to the emergence of partial objects and relations. Considered through the Picture Book frame, the Umwelten of insects and other small animals are no longer fixed but are drawn and redrawn in partial expressive ways, through the uncanny picturing – or what Brian Massumi would call “semblances” – of different configurations of animal, technology, human relations. By considering the Picture Book as a technic for ecological thought and imagination, our paper will explore how the small creatures that Uexküll describes might enable the emergence of new ethical sensibilities and relations. (shrink)

With the powerful analyses and resources they enable, digital humanities tools have captivated researchers from many different fields who want to use them to study science. Digital tools, as well as funding agencies, research communities, and academic administrators, require researchers to think carefully about how they conceptualize, manage, and store data, and about what they plan to do with that data once a given project is over. The difficulties of developing strategies to address these problems can prevent new researchers from (...) sticking with digital tools and flummox even experienced researchers. To help overcome the data hurdle, we present five principles to help researchers, novice and experienced alike, conceptualize and plan for their data. We illustrate the use of those principles with two digital projects from the history of science, the Embryo Project and the Marine Biological Laboratory History Project, and their associated HPS Repository for data. The principles apply beyond the digital realm, so those who collect and manage data by more traditional means will also find them useful. (shrink)

Scientific and medical practice both relate to and differ from each other, as do discussions of how to handle decisions under uncertainty in the laboratory and clinic respectively. While studies of science have pointed out that scientific practice is more complex and messier than dominant conceptions suggest, medical practice has looked to the rigour of scientific and statistical methods to address clinical uncertainty. In this article, we turn to epistemological studies of the laboratory to highlight how clinical practice (...) already has strategies for dealing with messiness. We draw on Hans-Jo ̈rg Rheinberger’s Toward a History of Epistemic Things, in which he invokes the metaphor of a spider’s web to explain the role of tacit practices in experimental biochemistry for helping practitioners manage messiness. We argue that diagnostic practices in clinical medicine employ similar, albeit codified, procedures to evaluate epistemic significance, ensure sensitivity to the unforeseen, and allow focused grounds for action. We consider three practices: (a) the pre-set structure of medical records, ensuring broad coverage in initial anamnesis, (b) the use of lists of differential diagnoses and ongoing ‘anchoring and adjusting’ as inquiry progresses, and (c) shared decision-making as an occasion to synthesize empirical evidence and reopen inquiry for potential missed information. We end by suggesting that while philosophy of medicine may learn from laboratory epistemology, the sciences may learn something from medical practice. (shrink)

This article elaborates a local history of zoo feeding practices in order to shed light on the construction of knowledge at the zoo, its intersection with laboratory developments in life sciences, and the nature of zoo sciences. It relies on the case studies of two of the oldest zoological gardens in the world-the Jardin des Plantes Ménagerie in Paris (1793) and the London Zoological Gardens (1828)-both of which formed parts of major scientific institutions, thereby facilitating research on the dialogue (...) between zoo knowledge and life sciences. The article argues that zoos developed around an experimental paradigm that consisted of testing on animals the (nutritional) variables of their survival within a highly constrained institutional framework. From the interwar period, the empirical nature of the zoo feeding economy was marked by slow and uneven changes, associated with the development of nutritional sciences as well as internal hygiene, pathology, and veterinary programmes. Despite transfers and networks of people, methods, experiments, concepts, and animals between zoos and life sciences laboratories, the former remained too impure as a research site to act as an extension of the latter. Zoos, however, needed external laboratories to support themselves with the scientific legitimacy that their “biopolitical modernisation” (Chrulew) required. In addressing programmatic changes as well as their impact upon the animals, this paper argues that trial-and-error experiments are constitutive of the zoo, contributing towards the definition of the nature of both zoo management and zoo sciences. (shrink)

Little attention has been paid to the role which impression management (IM) of genuine and substantial talents and commitment plays in the careers of female and male managers seeking promotion. IM studies have largely investigated the supervisor/subordinate relationship, often with samples of business students in laboratory settings. In the Cranfield Centre for Developing Women Business Leaders, we have focused on the use of IM by practising managers. In this paper, we examine previous literature for indications that gender may (...) be important in explaining differences in IM behaviours. We then report findings from a survey and a qualitative study, showing that gender, especially combined with age and job level, is a differentiating factor in managers' inclinations to use particular IM behaviours. Many women (and some men too) seem uncomfortable with using IM. Women do not always want to play "the organizational game" by the male-constructed unwritten rules, but prefer to trust good management and systems fairness for just rewards. Younger and junior level women managers often recognize that IM may be a useful tool but reject its use for themselves. Women seem to prefer to rely on extra high performance and commitment for visibility to their seniors rather than the networking, ingratiation and self-promotion strategies used more by males. An important consequence is that as ambitious young males use job-focused IM in addition to self and manager-focused strategies, this is likely to leave young women at a considerable disadvantage for promotion, if the strategies are successful. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, fatigue research marked an area of conflicting scientific, industrial, and cultural understandings of working bodies. These different understandings of the working body marked a key site of political conflict during the growth of industrial capitalism. Many fatigue researchers understood fatigue to be a physiological fact and allied themselves with Progressive-era reformers in urging industrial regulation. Opposed to these researchers were advocates of Taylorism and scientific management, who held that fatigue was a mental event and (...) that productivity could be perpetually increased through managerial efficiency. Histories of this conflict typically cease with the end of the First World War, when it is assumed that industrial fatigue research withered away. This article extends the history of fatigue research through examining the activities of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory in the 1920s and 1930s. The Laboratory developed sophisticated biochemical techniques to study the blood of exercising individuals. In particular, it found that exercising individuals could attain a biochemically “steady state,” or equilibrium, and extrapolated from this to assert that fatigue was psychological, not physiological, in nature. In contrast to Progressive-era research, the Laboratory reached this conclusion through laboratory examination, not of industrial workers, but of Laboratory staff members and champion marathon runners. The translation of laboratory research to industrial settings, and the eventual erasure of physiological fatigue from discussions of labor, was a complex function of institutional settings, scientific innovation, and the cultural meanings of work and sport. (shrink)

Factory floors throughout the global economy are rapidly transforming themselves into potentially fertile laboratories for research in the cognitive sciences. The information revolution has challenged our understanding of perception and cognition. Innovations in information technologies have also provided us with new methods and environments for the study of cognition. On the business and economic front, information technology is supporting the development of new corporate information systems-Enterprise Systems-that will revolutionize the decision-making, reporting and reward environments in corporations. These systems are pervasive (...) and transforming. At all levels, employees will be presented with potentially unlimited amounts of accurate, real-time information and will be expected to use that information effectively. The possibilities for research, especially for modeling the learning and decision-making processes, are unparalleled. Research conducted in these environments offers extraordinary opportunities to address research questions formerly requiring limited synthetic environmental situations. Data collected in firms as they deploy enterprise information systems can be more extensive and accurate and more easily quantified than data from traditional synthetic experiments. Research programs in these settings can also address more complex problems of human interaction and collaborativity. This article describes the aspects of enterprise systems that will be of greates interest to cognitive scientists. It also outlines the nature of potential collaboration between economists and cognitive scientists and offers a list of outstanding questions for systems design and development. (shrink)

We use a lab experiment to examine whether and how leaders influence workers’ (un)ethical behavior through financial reporting choices. We randomly assign the role of leaders or workers to subjects, who can choose to report an outcome via automatic or self-reporting. Self-reporting allows for profitable and undetectable earnings manipulation. We vary the leaders’ ability to choose the reporting method and to punish workers. We show that workers are more likely to choose automatic reporting when their leader voluntarily does so and (...) can assign punishment. Even workers who choose self-reporting tend to cheat less when their leader chooses automatic reporting. Nonetheless, most leaders do not opt for automatic reporting in the first place: they often choose self-reporting and punish workers who rather choose automatic reporting. Collectively, our results reveal a dual effect of leadership on ethical behaviors in organizations: workers behave more ethically if their leader makes ethical choices, but often leaders do not make ethical choices in the first place. Hence, leading by example can backfire. (shrink)

What comprises ‘data’ varies from one institution to another based on the information which is deemed important by individual institutions. To effectively and efficiently produce, collect, and retain data, an organization develops specific defining characteristics of data to meet its informational needs. Procedures to maintain and retain knowledge among laboratory members and principal investigators will allow for improved efficiency of data collection. Optimization of communication, maintenance of inventories, record keeping, and updating relevant training programs are all critical to supporting (...) the quality and integrity of a particular organization’s data. Concurrent revisions to such procedures will ensure that the definition of data as well as the means by which it is collected and maintained remain appropriate to the needs of the individual organization. (shrink)

Knowledge hiding is known to have negative consequences on organizational performance. The existing literature mainly focuses on the identification of antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding. The studies pertaining to the top management role in creating a culture that stops concealing knowledge within an organization are limited. To fill that gap, the paper empirically address the knowledge sharing culture and to explore the management support to avoid knowledge hiding culture in an organization. This study based on an empirical (...) study carried out in a United Kingdom-based laboratory within a high-tech global corporation, in which the atmosphere appeared conducive to knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer appeared voluntary and spontaneous. The paper seeks to address why members of the case organization is reluctant about knowledge hiding among themselves. The study reveals that the management role is important in creating a culture that help discourage employees to withhold knowledge. The paper identifies the actions that top management takes to stop concealing knowledge within an organization. This study has provided several contributions. The findings of the study may be useful to managers and practitioners. For managers, this paper presents some important organizational factors that can be nurtured to avoid a knowledge-hiding culture in the organization. They can also take the management actions of the case organization as lessons to create a culture that encourage their employees to avoid knowledge hiding behavior. (shrink)

The present study focuses on the observation of learning processes as they emerge in the context of conversations among two students in three successive tasks designed to foster conceptual change in proportional reasoning. The three tasks were set according to a pre-test treatment post-test paradigm. In the pre-test and the post-test tasks, the two students solved individually several items in the presence of an experimenter. In the treatment task, the two students worked as a dyad to solve similar items; they (...) used a balance to check their conclusions and subsequently continued solving the items when the weighing did not match their expectations. We adopt a micro-genetic approach and develop new analytical tools to observe what happened in the conversation (both socially and cognitively). Throughout the three successive tasks, we observed the interplay between tools, peers, experimenter, and task demands and how they are managed through the rules of conversation. We identified four processes that involved the emergence of new high-order strategies from coordinated actions distributed among peers, the guidance of the experimenter in coordinating actions, and ways the participation in solving a previous task was actualized in a successive one. (shrink)

[Although research in wildlife management is repeating the history of agriculture, unlike agricultural research, which employs scientific means for economic ends, the ends of wildlife research are judged in terms of aesthetic satisfactions as governed by “good taste.” Wild animals and plants are economically valuable only in the sense that human performers and works of art are: the means are of the brain, but the ends are of the heart. Wildlife management has forged ahead of agriculture in recognizing (...) the invisible interdependencies in the biotic community. Moreover, it has admitted its inability to replace natural equilibria and its unwillingness to do so even if it could. Because many animals do not exhibit their natural behavior under laboratory conditions, researchers are dependent on observation in the wild. The difficulties involved in isolating variables are especially clear in the study of the natural cycle. It is a problem which seems to defy the experimental method.]. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of advantageous comparisons and professional commitment in earning management rationalization. Our study adopted a laboratory between-subject experimental design with 139 accounting students. The results show that advantageous comparisons and professional commitment affect the rationalization of earning management actions. Moreover, compared to participants with high levels of professional commitment, those with low levels of professional commitment view earning management as a more appropriate action when they are engaged in earning management and (...) viewing the egregious example of that action. This finding is important because it explains how personal psychological factors affect the ethical cognitive processes of accountants. This study complements the lack of previous studies and argues that the propensity to compare acts of delinquency depends on an individual's commitment to their profession. We also emphasize the importance of investigating this issue outside of the US context. The results of this study may be helpful to managers, practitioners, academics, and accounting researchers with a better understanding of the potential impact of exposure to earning management practices and an individual’s professional commitment to earning management behaviour. Further, based on this study, all stakeholders may be better positioned to suggest possible remedies and mitigate these behaviours. (shrink)

BackgroundThe widespread sharing of biological and biomedical data is recognised as a key element in facilitating translation of scientific discoveries into novel clinical applications and services. At the same time, twenty-first century states are increasingly concerned that this data could also be used for purposes of bioterrorism. There is thus a tension between the desire to promote the sharing of data, as encapsulated by the Open Data movement, and the desire to prevent this data from ‘falling into the wrong hands’ (...) as represented by ‘dual use’ policies. Both frameworks posit a moral duty for life sciences researchers with respect to how they should make their data available. However, Open data and dual use concerns are rarely discussed in concert and their implementation can present scientists with potentially conflicting ethical requirements.DiscussionBoth dual use and Open data policies frame scientific data and data dissemination in particular, though different, ways. As such they contain implicit models for how data is translated. Both approaches are limited by a focus on abstract conceptions of data and data sharing. This works to impede consensus-building between the two ethical frameworks. As an alternative, this paper proposes that an ethics of responsible management of scientific data should be based on a more nuanced understanding of the everyday data practices of life scientists. Responsibility for these ‘micromovements’ of data must consider the needs and duties of scientists as individuals and as collectively-organised groups.SummaryResearchers in the life sciences are faced with conflicting ethical responsibilities to share data as widely as possible, but prevent it being used for bioterrorist purposes. In order to reconcile the responsibilities posed by the Open Data and dual use frameworks, approaches should focus more on the everyday practices of laboratory scientists and less on abstract conceptions of data. (shrink)

The importance of viruses as model organisms is well-established in molecular biology and Max Delbrück's phage group set standards in the DNA phage field. In this paper, I argue that RNA phages, discovered in the 1960s, were also instrumental in the making of molecular biology. As part of experimental systems, RNA phages stood for messenger RNA (mRNA), genes and genome. RNA was thought to mediate information transfers between DNA and proteins. Furthermore, RNA was more manageable at the bench than DNA (...) due to the availability of specific RNases, enzymes used as chemical tools to analyse RNA. Finally, RNA phages provided scientists with a pure source of mRNA to investigate the genetic code, genes and even a genome sequence. This paper focuses on Walter Fiers’ laboratory at Ghent University (Belgium) and their work on the RNA phage MS2. When setting up his Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Fiers planned a comprehensive study of the virus with a strong emphasis on the issue of structure. In his lab, RNA sequencing, now a little-known technique, evolved gradually from a means to solve the genetic code, to a tool for completing the first genome sequence. Thus, I follow the research pathway of Fiers and his ‘RNA phage lab’ with their evolving experimental system from 1960 to the late 1970s. This study illuminates two decisive shifts in post-war biology: the emergence of molecular biology as a discipline in the 1960s in Europe and of genomics in the 1990s. (shrink)

The importance of viruses as model organisms is well-established in molecular biology and Max Delbrück’s phage group set standards in the DNA phage field. In this paper, I argue that RNA phages, discovered in the 1960s, were also instrumental in the making of molecular biology. As part of experimental systems, RNA phages stood for messenger RNA, genes and genome. RNA was thought to mediate information transfers between DNA and proteins. Furthermore, RNA was more manageable at the bench than DNA due (...) to the availability of specific RNases, enzymes used as chemical tools to analyse RNA. Finally, RNA phages provided scientists with a pure source of mRNA to investigate the genetic code, genes and even a genome sequence. This paper focuses on Walter Fiers’ laboratory at Ghent University and their work on the RNA phage MS2. When setting up his Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Fiers planned a comprehensive study of the virus with a strong emphasis on the issue of structure. In his lab, RNA sequencing, now a little-known technique, evolved gradually from a means to solve the genetic code, to a tool for completing the first genome sequence. Thus, I follow the research pathway of Fiers and his ‘RNA phage lab’ with their evolving experimental system from 1960 to the late 1970s. This study illuminates two decisive shifts in post-war biology: the emergence of molecular biology as a discipline in the 1960s in Europe and of genomics in the 1990s. (shrink)

By the time George Wilton Field concluded his work at the marine laboratory his initial scientific concerns had forced him directly into local politics. He pleaded with little success with the community of South Kingstown, and with no success with the town of Narragansett, to create and maintain a permanent breach:Is it not possible for the acute business sense and the broad philanthropy of the community to sweep aside petty, local, and personal jealousies which are now blocking practical progress (...) for the establishment of a permanent breach at Point Judith Pond? It is truly criminal neglect which permits fifteen hundred acres of valuable water-farming area to lie practically idle and rapidly deteriorate with each passing year.... In the opinion of the writer the Point Judith Pond and those of similar type could be made the seat of oyster, clam, crab, herring, white perch, and striped bass fisheries.30In the summer of 1899 Field was invited to teach a summer course on echinoderms at the MBL in Woods Hole, and to conduct summer research in a laboratory of the U.S. Fish Commission, also located at Woods Hole. When the summer was over, he remained there. Whether he had intentions of returning to resume his position in Rhode Island is unclear. At this point all correspondence with the Agricultural Experiment Station ceases, and Field's last report is a brief statement in the annual report of the experiment station for 1900 wherein he laments the variety of experiments he has not been able to carry to conclusion, such as a study of the artificial fertilization of water analogous to the method of chemically fertilizing the land for crops.The correspondence reveals that the enthusiasm Field brought to Point Judith Pond in 1896 was gradually sapped by his own fragile health, by three years' exposure to the local politics surrounding the southern Rhode Island fishing industry, and by a college administration determined to remove the stench of his invertebrates. He sought a refuge in the sheltered world of pure research at the U.S. Fish Commission Laboratory, where he set out to investigate the “Origin of Sex” using, as his animal models, squid and toadfish.On November 14, 1899, the Board of Managers of the college ordered the director of the experiment station to dispose of the marine laboratory at Point Judith Pond.31 How long the laboratory at Buttonwood Point survived in the institutional memory of the University of Rhode Island is open to question. The current Graduate School of Oceanography, in the event, traces its history back to 1937, not 1896.Nevertheless, Field and his one-room marine station established a precedent of land-grant marine research that other state colleges would follow, including Rhode Island itself, which reestablished its marine station, this time permanently, at South Ferry in 1937. In his brief research career in Rhode Island, George Wilton Field had discovered the same coastal attributes that would lead later to the creation of one of the world's major marine research centers at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.And, in a measure of triumph for his work, little more than a year after Field left for Woods Hole and his laboratory was dismantled, the town of South Kingstown voted the funds necessary to begin the construction of a permanent breachway.32 Whether Field's scientific reasoning and the conclusions of his marine research played any part in finally deciding the thirty-year-old debate in the affirmative will probably never be known. What is evident is that Field had no patience for those who could not see the results of his research as clearly as he could himself. (shrink)

BackgroundInstitutions, funding agencies and publishers are placing increasing emphasis on good research data management (RDM). RDM lapses in medical science can result in questionable data and cause the public’s confidence in the scientific community to crumble. A fledgling medical school in a young university in Singapore has mandated every funded research project to have a data management plan (DMP). However, researchers’ adherence to their DMPs was unknown until the school embarked on routine data auditing. We hypothesize that research (...) data auditing improves RDM awareness, compliance and reception in the school.MethodsWe conducted surveys with research PIs and researchers before and after data auditing to evaluate differences in self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception. As it is mandatory to deposit research data in a central data repository system in the school, we tracked data deposition by each laboratory from 2 weeks before to 3 months after data auditing as a marker of actual RDM compliance.ResultsResearch data auditing had an overall positive effect on self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception for both research PIs and researchers. Research PIs agreed more that RDM was important to scientific reproducibility, were more aware of proper RDM, had higher RDM strength in their laboratories and were more compliant with the DMP. Both research PIs and researchers believed data auditing helped them to be more compliant with data deposition in the repository. However, data auditing had no significant impact on laboratories’ data deposition rates over time, which could be due to the short sampling period.ConclusionsResearch PIs and researchers generally felt that data auditing was effective in improving RDM practices. It helped to evaluate their RDM practices objectively, propose corrective actions for RDM lapses and spread awareness of the university’s data management policies. Our findings corroborated other studies in medical research, geosciences, engineering and ethics that data auditing promotes good RDM practices. Hence, we recommend research institutions worldwide to adopt data auditing as a tool to reinforce research integrity. (shrink)

: Widespread collection and use of identifiable information can promote social goods while, at the same time, infringing on personal privacy. Information systems are developing within the context of a fundamental transformation in the organization, delivery, and financing of health care. Changes in the health care system include rapid development of employer-sponsored health coverage, managed care organizations, and integrated delivery systems. These complex, multifaceted arrangements for delivering and paying for health care require ever-more-sophisticated information systems that facilitate extensive sharing of (...) personal data. Systemic flows of sensitive health information occur both vertically and horizontally among employers, hospitals, insurers, laboratories, and suppliers. Beyond this complex web of vertical and horizontal sharing are the multiple demands for information management, quality assurance, research, governmental regulation, and public health. Theoretical problems exist with the law and ethics of informational privacy. The traditional method of exercising control over personal health information is through informed consent. Informed consent, however, within a modern health information infrastructure becomes highly complex. In this kind of environment, the doctrine of informed consent is flawed and does not provide sufficient control over personal information to assure adequate protection of privacy. (shrink)

Over the past decades commercial and academic market researchers have studied consumers through a range of different methods including surveys, focus groups, or interviews. More recently, some have turned to the growing field of neuroscience to understand consumers. Neuromarketing employs brain imaging, scanning, or other brain measurement technologies to capture consumers’ responses to marketing stimuli and to circumvent the “problem” of relying on consumers’ self-reports. This paper presents findings of an ethnographic study of neuromarketing research practices in one neuromarketing consultancy. (...) Our access to the minutiae of commercial neuromarketing research provides important insights into how neuromarketers silence the neuromarketing test subject in their experiments and presentations and how they introduce the brain as an unimpeachable witness. This enables us conceptually to reconsider the role of witnesses in the achievement of scientific credibility, as prominently discussed in science and technology studies. Specifically, we probe the role witnesses and silences play in establishing and maintaining credibility in and for “commercial research laboratories.” We propose three themes that have wider relevance for STS researchers and require further attention when studying newly emerging research fields and practices that straddle science and its commercial application. (shrink)

This article analyses the relationship between the Belgian government and the national Nuclear Research Centre (SCK CEN) in the renegotiation of the mission and organization of Big Science in Belgium. While the founding decades of nuclear laboratories are often characterized by ever-increasing budgets and the establishment of large infrastructure, I show that downsizing or transforming Big Science demanded a new form of politics on the organization of science. Drawing on archival material, this article will demonstrate how the mission and (...) class='Hi'>management of SCK CEN were critically followed by a variety of stakeholders. Furthermore, the Belgian government explicitly aimed to allow corporate principles to guide the reorganization of the research centre by hiring consultants from Arthur Andersen. This episode in the history of nuclear research invites historians of science to reflect upon both the politics of Big Science in an era in which its original principles were fundamentally questioned and the historical development of new norms and expectations attached to this phenomenon. (shrink)

The present study focuses on the observation of learning processes as they emerge in the context of conversations among two students in three successive tasks designed to foster conceptual change in proportional reasoning. The three tasks were set according to a pre-test treatment post-test paradigm. In the pre-test and the post-test tasks, the two students solved individually several items in the presence of an experimenter. In the treatment task, the two students worked as a dyad to solve similar items; they (...) used a balance to check their conclusions and subsequently continued solving the items when the weighing did not match their expectations. We adopt a micro-genetic approach and develop new analytical tools to observe what happened in the conversation . Throughout the three successive tasks, we observed the interplay between tools, peers, experimenter, and task demands and how they are managed through the rules of conversation. We identified four processes that involved the emergence of new high-order strategies from coordinated actions distributed among peers, the guidance of the experimenter in coordinating actions, and ways the participation in solving a previous task was actualized in a successive one. (shrink)