Nanotechnology will allegedly have a revolutionary impact in a wide range of fields, but has also created novel concerns about health, safety and the environment (HSE). Nanotechnology regulation has nevertheless lagged behind nanotechnology development. In 2004 the International Organization for Standardization established a technical committee for producing nanotechnology standards for terminology, measurements, HSE issues and product specifications. These standards are meant to play a role in nanotechnology development, as well as in national and international nanotechnology regulation, and will therefore have (...) consequences for consumers, workers and the environment. This paper gives an overview of the work in the technical committee on nanotechnology and discusses some challenges with regard to legitimacy in such work. The paper focuses particularly on stakeholder involvement and the potential problems of scientific robustness when standardising in such early stages of the scientific development. The intention of the paper is to raise some important issues rather than to draw strong conclusions. However, the paper will be concluded with some suggestions for improving legitimacy in the TC 229 and a call for increased public awareness about standardisation in the field of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Modern society is characterised by rapid technological development that is often socially controversial and plagued by extensive scientific uncertainty concerning its socio-ecological impacts. Within this context, the concept of ‘responsible research and innovation’ is currently rising to prominence in international discourse concerning science and technology governance. As this emerging concept of RRI begins to be enacted through instruments, approaches, and initiatives, it is valuable to explore what it is coming to mean for and in practice. In this paper we draw (...) attention to a realm that is often backgrounded in the current discussions of RRI but which has a highly significant impact on scientific research, innovation and policy—namely, the interstitial space of international standardization. Drawing on the case of nanoscale sciences and technologies to make our argument, we present examples of how international standards are already entangled in the development of RRI and yet, how the process of international standardization itself largely fails to embody the norms proposed as characterizing RRI. We suggest that although current models for RRI provide a promising attempt to make research and innovation more responsive to societal needs, ethical values and environmental challenges, such approaches will need to encompass and address a greater diversity of innovation system agents and spaces if they are to prove successful in their aims. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFilm clips are widely used in emotion research due to their relatively high ecological validity. Although researchers have established various film clip sets for different cultures, the few that exist related to Chinese culture do not adequately address positive emotions. The main purposes of the present study were to establish a standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips that could elicit more categories of reported positive emotions compared to the existing databases and to expand the available film clips that can (...) be used as neutral materials. Two experiments were conducted to construct the database. In experiment 1, 111 film clips were selected from more than one thousand Chinese movies for preliminary screening. After 315 participants viewed and evaluated these film clips, 39 excerpts were selected for further validation. In experiment 2, 147 participants watched and rated these 39 film clips, as well as another 8 excerpts chosen from the existing databases, to compare their validit... (shrink)

The process of standardising reduced forms in English, such as clippings and informal forms, used in academic chat discourse is the focus of this article. Textchat data from an introductory MA linguistics course run by a university in Sweden involving non-native English-speaking students and their native English-speaking teachers is analysed to identify if any forms are standardised. Topic-specific forms are seen to be standardised as much as are high frequency forms, although few have been standardised. It is the students above (...) all who lead the process, and the teachers do not have much influence even if they use a different reduction. (shrink)

In 1942 a coalition of twenty scientific societies formed the Conference on the Supply of Experimental Animals in an attempt to pressure the Medical Research Council to accept responsibility for the provision of standardised experimental animals in Britain. The practice of animal experimentation was subject to State regulation under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, but no provision existed for the provision of animals for experimental use. Consequently, day-to-day laboratory work was reliant on a commercial small animal market which (...) had emerged to sustain the hobby of animal fancying. This paper explores how difficulties encountered in experimental practice within the laboratory led to the problematisation of biomedical science’s reliance upon a commercial market for animals during the inter-war period. This is shown to have produced a crisis within animal reliant experimental science in the early 1940s which enabled the left-wing Association of Scientific Workers to cast science’s reliance on a free market as economically inefficient and a threat to the reliability of British research. It is argued that the development of standard experimental animals in Britain was, therefore, embedded within the wider cultural, societal, political and economic national context of the time. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse how standardisation influences home care work practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents a qualitative interview‐based case study from the elderly care sector in a Danish council. The interviews reveal care workers and administrative staffs' interpretation of how the implementation of IT and standards affects their work situation. Findings from the case study are supported by a large‐scale quantitative study regarding organisational transformations in the elderly care sector.FindingsThe paper discusses how standardisation, in the form (...) of implementation of IT‐systems and categorization tools, influences the potential for development of competencies. The findings show that an engaged practice is difficult to maintain when working under circumstances characterized by lack of time and a requirement for standardisation and documentation.Originality/valueThe study provides insight into the divergence between standards and the importance of relying on experience‐based knowledge and value rational skills in relation to care work. The paper stresses the point that standards are necessary to coordinate workflow activities and support decision making. Nevertheless, it is shown that when reification dominates, the degree of standardisation will lend itself to an instrumental practice not supportive of growing competencies within the field of care giving. (shrink)

This article shows how funding research on Alzheimer's disease became a priority for the British Medical Research Council in the late 1970s and 1980s, thanks to work that isolated new pathological and biochemical markers, and showed that the disease affected a significant proportion of the elderly population. In contrast to histories that focus on the emergence of new and competing theories of disease causation in this period, I argue that concerns over the use of different assessment methods ensured the MRC's (...) immediate priority was standardising the ways in which researchers identified and recorded symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in potential research subjects. I detail how the rationale behind the development of standard assessment guidelines was less about arriving at a firm diagnosis and more about facilitating research by generating data that could be easily compared across the disciplines and sites that constitute modern biomedicine. Drawing on criticism of specific tests in the MRC's guidelines, which some psychiatrists argued were "middle class biased", I also show that debates over standardisation did not simply reflect concerns specific to the fields or areas of research that the MRC sought to govern. Questions about the validity of standard assessment guidelines for Alzheimer's disease embodied broader concerns about education and social class, which ensured that distinguishing normal from pathological in old age remained a contested and historically contingent process. (shrink)

This paper examines how death is managed in a larger regional hospital within the Norwegian health‐care. The central focus of my paper concerns variations in how healthcare personnel enact death and handle the dead patient. Over several decades, modern standardised hospital death has come under critique in the western world. Such critique has resulted in changes in the standardisation of hospital deaths within Norwegian health‐care. In the wake of the hospice movement and with greater focus on palliative care, doors (...) have gradually been opened and relatives of the deceased are now more often invited to participate. I explore how the medical practice around death along with the procedure manual of post‐mortem care at Trondheim University Hospital has changed. I argue that in the late‐modern context, standardisation of hospital death is a multidimensional affair, embedded in a far more comprehensive framework than the depersonalised medico‐legal. In the late‐modern Norwegian hospital, interdisciplinary negotiation and co‐operation has allowed a number of different agendas to co‐exist, without any ensuing loss of the medical power holder's authority to broker death. I follow Mol's notion of praxiographic orientation of the actor–network approach while exploring this medical practice. (shrink)

Computational models of affect (CMAS), in their most common form, cannot take into account the qualitative (phenomenal) dimension of affect itself. Their expressivity can be extended, thus promoting the much sought-after standardization in the most theory-neutral way, using OWL (Web Ontology Language) and machine learning techniques. OWL is an expressive formal language, as well as an established open standard, and can be used to describe the models, possibly including qualitative entities at the fundamental level. The supervised machine learning techniques allow (...) the direct learning and application of models described as OWL ontologies. Thanks to human supervision (e.g. using datasets labeled by a human user), they can take into account the qualitative dimension of affect when the models warrant it. To further promote the aforementioned standardization, the task of classifying texts according to their affective content (known in computer science as "sentiment analysis") can be recommended as a way to assess the performance of the models. It is a multifaceted task, in which usually divergent fields as philosophy, psychology and computer science meet. Moreover, since it is a very current task in computer science, there are many resources available to facilitate the development of a standard benchmark for CMAS. (shrink)

In highly routinised service encounter interactions, communication is often guided by service scripts that are the material embodiment of institutional expectations of how the service interaction is to be conducted. However, counter to common belief that scripted communication is well-controlled and homogeneous in its execution, observation of actual talk reveals interesting patterns and variations that reflect the ways in which participants make meaning of and perform their respective roles within the interaction towards achieving the overall goal of the service communication. (...) Applying the analysis of speech functions and sequential order of talk in audio-recorded verbal exchanges between servers and customers at the service counter of a fast-food restaurant, acts in the fast-food service interaction are interpreted and explained in relation to management-prescribed service script, servers’ script-in-use and customers’ script within an institutional discourse framework. Findings from the study have important implications for service management and training as it addresses the tension between the practices on the ground and those sanctioned by the organisation. (shrink)

Émettons le postulat que nos activités, nos pratiques et nos conduites sont enracinées dans le social, dont elles racontent les événements par les mises en scène de la vie. L’action, individuelle autant que collective, étant le vecteur des caractéristiques historiques, sociologiques, politiques, économiques, philosophiques, culturelles et esthétiques de la société.Le fonctionnement..

Standardisation is increasingly seen as a means to insert ethics in innovation processes. We examine the institutionalisation of responsible innovation in de jure standardisation as this is an important but unexplored research area. In de jure standardisation, stakeholders collaborate in committees to develop standards. We adopt the anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity, and responsiveness responsible innovation framework as our theoretical lens. Our study suggests that responsible standardisation processes should embody forms of these four dimensions. We investigate the institutionalisation (...) of these dimensions and identify 96 factors that can motivate, hinder, or facilitate responsible standardisation. Factors were found through in-depth interviews with managers of a standard developing organisation. These are subsequently validated/rejected using surveys completed by committee representatives. The results suggest that the social desirability of standards is not self-evident. This study could pave the way for future research on responsible standardisation processes, complementing research on legitimacy, responsible innovation, and standardisation. (shrink)

Steroid use in professional sports continues to receive much media attention in the United States. The predominant response to the use of steroids in professional sports is negative. Much of the opposition to steroid use focuses on the critical importance of fair play in American society. To the degree that steroids provide some players with an unfair advantage, the use of steroids is said to undermine fair play. This paper provides an analogical analysis of SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) coaching services, (...) and the manner in which these services similarly undermine ?fair play? in college admissions competition. Ultimately, our national commitment to fair play is context?specific. If one looks closely, it further reveals the troubling possibility that fair play as a core value is not a core value at all, but little more than an empty mantra. (shrink)

This article draws upon recent theorising of the ‘becoming topological’ of space– specifically, how new social spaces are constituted through relations rather than physical locations – to explore how standardised data, and specifically test data, have influenced teachers’ work and learning. We outline the varied ways in which teacher practices at a primary school in Queensland, Australia, were actively constituted through processes of ‘tracking data’ and ‘keeping data on-track’, and how teachers were simultaneously being disciplined, or ‘tracked’, by these very (...) same data. Our analyses suggest that what appear to be more ‘technical’ activities and tasks of ‘using’ data are, in fact, actively constituted modes of governance, enabled through and deployed by ongoing practices of comparison and topological respatialisation. (shrink)

In the public interest: autonomy and resistance to methods of standardising nurses’ advice and practices from a health call centre in Perth, Western Australia The history of nursing is replete with examples of nurses battling for autonomy over their education, knowledge and work practices. The latest battleground is HealthDirect, Australia's first medial call centre, where nurses are required to meet externally imposed clinical standards while satisfying legal and financial obligations. These objectives are arguably achieved when nurses assess callers’ health problems (...) via computerised algorithms that determine an appropriate plan of action. That way, nurses’ subjective responses to callers are ruled out. To ensure nurses comply with the standard processes, calls are monitored randomly and surreptitiously in formal and informal ways. This paper explores how nurses respond to standard procedures and surveillance, in order to argue that nurses’ input partially drives reform processes. Nurses continue to seek autonomy over the advice they give and how their work is evaluated but are constrained by structural power relations. (shrink)

1. Biomedical sciences are fast-growing fields with unprecedented speed of research outputs, especially in the quantities of papers. Philosophers aiming to study ongoing biomedical changes face cha...

The _why_ and the _how_ of knowledge production are examined in the case of the transnational cooperation between the directors of observatories in the Far East who drew up unified typhoon-warning codes in the period 1900–1939. The _why_ is prompted by the socioeconomic interests of the local chambers of commerce and international telegraphic companies, although this urge has the favourable wind of Far Eastern meteorologists’ ideology of voluntarist internationalism. The _how_ entails the persistent pursuit of consensus (on ends rather than (...) means) in international meetings where non-binding resolutions on codes and procedures are adopted. The outcome is the co-production of standardised knowledge, that is, the development of a series of processes and practices that co-produce both knowledge and ideas about the social order in a force field characterised by negotiations and power struggles. (shrink)

The Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR) is a commonly used measure of hospital mortality that is standardised for age, comorbidities and other factors. By tradition, this statistic has always excluded patients classified as ‘palliative’. The HSMR has never been validated as a reliable measure of quality of care, and it can be very hard to interpret, partly due to difficulties with defining and applying the term ‘palliative’. In this paper, we review the Canadian experience with the palliative status flag, and (...) explain why it is so difficult to define and apply consistently. We also highlight some potential concerns about clinicians labelling inpatients as ‘palliative’ during their admission. Finally, we propose an organisational ethics framework, and six specific suggestions for hospitals to use when publishing statistics such as the HSMR. (shrink)

(1985). How Accurately can Primary School Teachers Predict the Scores of their Pupils in Standardised Tests of Attainment? A Study of some non‐Cognitive Factors that Influence Specific Judgements. Educational Studies: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 41-60.

Research within the H2020 PROGRESSIVE project has identified good practices in user co-production strategies and methodologies. Early findings from research in the PROGRESSIVE project were shared with relevant stakeholders outside the consortium for consultation and review. The outcomes of that initial investigation highlighted the need to focus on the objectives, processes, and methods used in user and older people co-production. This guide adapts these insights and makes them relevant specifically for standardisation in ICT for active and healthy ageing. This (...) guide was approved by representatives of the PROGRESSIVE project on 22 February 2018. The consortium has requested comments from interested stakeholders in an enquiry from 1 March to 30 April 2018. The PROGRESSIVE guide was approved on 5 June 2018. (shrink)

A capacity model of mindfulness is adopted to differentiate the cognitive faculty of mindfulness from the metacognitive processes required to cultivate this faculty in mindfulness training. The model provides an explanatory framework incorporating both the developmental progression from focussed attention to open monitoring styles of mindfulness practice, along with the development of equanimity and insight. A standardised technique for activating these processes without the addition of secondary components is then introduced. Mindfulness-based interventions currently available for use in randomised control trials (...) introduce components ancillary to the cognitive processes of mindfulness, limiting their ability to draw clear causative inferences. The standardised technique presented here does not introduce such ancillary factors, rendering it a valuable tool with which to investigate the processes activated in mindfulness practice. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the interesting juxtaposition of patient involvement within a standardised Enhanced Recovery After Surgery care programme (ERAS). We address our aim by examining the work and strategies of nursing staff caring for patients during postoperative recovery from surgery, exploring how these two potentially competing priorities might effectively co‐exist within a hospital ward. This was a qualitative exploratory study, with data generated through 42 semi‐structured interviews with patients and nurses who had (...) taken part in an ERAS programme in one of three hospital wards in the United Kingdom, adopting a reflexive thematic approach to data analysis. We shine a light on the work undertaken by patients and nurses during the navigation of postoperative recovery, identifying strategies of collaboration and negotiation during this journey. Furthermore, we also identify and consider patients engaged in peer‐peer support during postoperative recovery. This paper adds to the existing literature and current ways of thinking in relation to the quest for standardised, clinically effective care balanced with the aspirations for individualised, patient‐centred care. This paper also helps inform thinking about the use of care pathways in relation to service delivery, considering how best to initiate and deploy best practice aimed at safe and effective postoperative recovery. (shrink)

The article focuses on the implementation of a socio-technical device aimed at integrating services for older adults living with loss of functional autonomy in France. It unfolds in three parts. The first introduces the theories of innovation, the second presents the innovative model of integrated services, and the last part deals with the relationship that practitioners have with socio-technical devices that make up the innovation in the French context. It will be seen that this report is carried out in an (...) epistemic tension between a philic representation of these devices, which are supposed to bring about an expected renewal of professional and managerial practices, and a phobic representation, projecting on the innovation different fantasies as to their more or less explicit totalitarian character. Despite this tension, the real challenge is that of the coherence- as perceived by adopters of the innovation- between the principles underlying the innovation and the real will of its political promoters. (shrink)

This brief report presents the global problem of the shortfall of donor corneal tissue for transplantation, a potential root cause (‘ick factor’ language), and a potential solution (modification of ‘ick factor’ language). Specifically, use of the term ‘eye donation’ is a potential hurdle to ocular tissue donation as it can stimulate the ‘ick factor.’ Verbiage such as ‘ocular (eye tissue)’ could be a method of providing terminology that is less emotive than ‘eye donor’ or ‘eye donation.’ The field of transplantation (...) has experienced terminology shifts over time; for example, ‘cadaver’ has been replaced with ‘deceased donor,’ ‘harvest’ has been replaced with ‘recover,’ and ‘life support’ has been replaced with ‘ventilated.’ Notably, only a small number of regions worldwide are using ‘ocular’ terminology, yet it could be an important step to enhancing the informed consent process and improving donation rates, potentially increasing transplant and optimising patient quality of life for those with treatable blindness. (shrink)

The ‘international’ electrical units, initially defined by the International Electrical Congress of Chicago in 1893, represented a major step forward in international electrical standardisation. Yet they were flawed both theoretically and technically, were adopted inconsistently in different countries and were soon subject to criticism and revision. This paper addresses the extent to which the international units—notwithstanding their flaws—were in fact adequate for the needs of engineering, commerce and science at the time, and concludes that the practical position was actually (...) very satisfactory. It also addresses how the international electrical units came in to being, in the context of alternative philosophies of the nature of the standardisation process—that it can be essentially central or local. The central influence on the international units was the series of international electrical congresses of the late nineteenth century, which I conclude were a highly unsatisfactory mechanism, responsible for many of the weaknesses in the resulting standards. In contrast, I argue that it was local influences, the networks of scientists and standards laboratories that defined and maintained the standards, which gave them their strength.Keywords: International; Standardisation; Electrical units; Ohm; Congress. (shrink)

The integrity of biomedical research depends heavily on the quality of research data collected. In turn, data quality depends on processes of data collection, a task undertaken by frontline research staff in many research programmes in Africa and elsewhere. These frontline research staff often have additional responsibilities including translating and communicating research in local languages, seeking informed consent for study participation and maintaining supportive relationships between research institutions and study participants and wider communities. The level of skills that fieldworkers need (...) to undertake these responsibilities clearly affects the quality of data collected, the ethics of research ‘on the ground’ and the short and long term acceptability of research.We organised an international workshop in Kenya in July 2014 to discuss the role of frontline staff in scientific research. A total of 25 field managers from 9 African countries and the UK met for 2.5 days to discuss the relationship between data quality and institutional performance management systems and how they affect career progression and supportive supervision policies of research frontline staff.From this workshop, and supporting an expanding literature on the role of fieldworkers in international health research, participants agreed that fieldworkers’ roles present them with practical and ethical challenges that their routine training does not adequately prepare them for. We argue that the common and complex challenges facing fieldworkers should in part be addressed through increased investment and collaborative agreements across types of research institutions in Africa. We call for standardization of core elements of training for this critically important cadre of research staff who perform similar roles and encounter similar challenges in many African settings. Although many valuable training elements are offered in institutions, there is a need to develop broader, more grounded and innovative strategies to address complex realities for fieldworkers, and support the integrity and ethics of health research in these settings. (shrink)

This article problematizes the way of thinking schooling in discourse of sign system, which involves opposition, and double gesture of inclusion/exclusion. Drawing on two fundamental texts of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu, this article puts forward the seemingly passive Non-Word and Non-Self to resist the hierarchy ordering of conceptions and man, and to undo duality of binary opposition. It links the history of assessment and PISA to the rethinking of evidence and sign in contemporary movements. The second (...) section proposes teaching as wandering (you, 游), the transcendence into Non-Self with response to men’s natural inquiry, but not artificially manipulating and shaping man by privileging certain knowledge, value, and thoughts over other. Instead of making categories of race, gender, and normal/abnormal, Taoist provides a way of reconsider the self operating on assessing, standardizing, normalizing, correcting and predicting others in school accountability. It is built on the ontology of considering individual as belonging to an ultimate sameness, the oneness. The article concludes with underlying assumption that students are subjected to change, and their difference must be eliminated through standard test. It further questions tactics of reason that educational reform face in the current regime of school accountability. (shrink)

This article problematizes the way of thinking schooling in discourse of sign system, which involves opposition, and double gesture of inclusion/exclusion. Drawing on two fundamental texts of Taois...

News media coverage on education plays a ?uniquely important role in shaping public opinion?, can influence educational policy, and can affect and concern teachers. Yet, research examining how teachers have been represented in the news is scarce. What is particularly scarce are investigations with a historical dimension. The study reported in this paper is offered as a contribution towards rectifying the deficit and pointing the way towards one of a number of avenues of research that other scholars in the field (...) could take for various contexts (including different countries) and time periods. It is part of a much larger study whose aim was to provide a historical analysis of The West Australian newspaper?s representation of teachers in its reporting of five major educational developments in the State of Western Australia that were the subject of sustained coverage at various times between 1987 and 2007. The specific topic which is the focus of the analysis presented in this paper is ?standardized testing? (shrink)

Many writers have commented on the heterogeneity of the socially responsible investment (SRI) movement. However, few have actually tried to understand and explain it, and even fewer have discussed whether the opposite – standardisation – is possible and desirable. In this article, we take a broader perspective on the issue of the heterogeneity of SRI. We distinguish between four levels on which heterogeneity can be found: the terminological, definitional, strategic and practical. Whilst there is much talk about the definitional (...) ambiguities of SRI, we suggest that there is actually some agreement on the definitional level. There are at least three explanations which we suggest can account for the heterogeneity on the other levels: cultural and ideological differences between different regions, differences in values, norms and ideology between various SRI stakeholders, and the market setting of SRI. Discussing the implications of the three explanations for the SRI market, we suggest that there is reason to be sceptical about the possibilities of standardisation if not standardisation is imposed top-down. Whether this kind of standardisation is desirable or not, we argue, depends on what the motives for it would be. To the extent that standardisation may facilitate the mainstreaming of SRI, it could be a good thing – but we entertain doubts about whether mainstreaming really requires standardisation. (shrink)

La Base de français médiéval (BFM) fait partie des corpus de français médiéval (9e-15e s.) les plus anciens et les plus utilisés par les linguistes diachroniciens et plus largement par tous ceux qui s’intéressent à l’histoire du français. Elle est le fruit d’une collaboration entre linguistes-philologues et spécialistes de la méthode textométrique implémentée dans la plateforme TXM. L’article présente un état des lieux du corpus BFM2022 focalisé sur la représentativité et l’interopérabilité des données. Il illustre l’apport des outils numériques pour (...) l’équilibrage des données et présente la stratégie de standardisation multi-niveau (structure textuelle, références, métadonnées, annotations) ayant permis à la Base de s’intégrer à des corpus diachroniques plus étendus pour des recherches en diachronie longue. (shrink)

Cet article propose d’examiner la manière dont les pratiques médicales informelles utilisant les cellules humaines ont été réunies en une technologie intégrée sur deux décennies. Dans ce processus, les débats de la bioéthique constituent un dispositif d’épreuves permettant d’unifier ces pratiques disparates sous le label commun de « thérapie cellulaire ». En établissant des articulations possibles entre la production matérielle d’un savoir médical et ses inscriptions institutionnelles, le travail de requalification bioéthique s’effectue suivant trois registres. Tout d’abord, les controverses bioéthiques (...) assignent un label médical à des technologies qui n’existent alors que sous la forme de projet articulé à des pratiques de laboratoire . Ensuite, elles définissent des entités du vivant en objet technique, par exemple en dissociant les cellules souches de l’embryon. Enfin, elles introduisent des catégories distinctes de pratiques à partir d’une même technique. En ce sens, la bioéthique constitue un standard politique, inextricable de l’action publique en matière de biotechnologies. Suivre la construction sociale des objets biologiques conduit à établir un modèle de standardisation des innovations biomédicales et à promouvoir une sociologie pragmatique basée sur la genèse des standards.This article focuses on how informal medical practices using human cells had been joined together in the shape of integrated technology for two decades. The debates of bioethics are part of this constant process ; they intervene as a test plan enabling to qualify these disparate practices to which they relate by the name of cell therapies. By establishing possible links between the material production of medical knowledge and its institutional inscriptions, the work of bioethics re-qualification is carried out according to three levels. First, bioethics controversies assign a medical label to technologies which do not exist except in the form of projects articulated through laboratory practices . Second, they define entities of the living as technical object, for example, by dissociating the stem cells from an embryo. Lastly, they introduce distinct categories of practices coming from the same technical roots. In this sense, bioethics constitutes a political standard, inextricable from public action in biotechnologies. Tracking the social construction of biological objects leads to establish a standardization pattern of biomedical innovations and to promote a pragmatics sociology based on the standards genesis. (shrink)

Environmental organisations have been active since the early 1960s in putting environmental issues on the political agenda and in strengthening the environmental consciousness of the public. The struggle has been successful in the sense that there is now a strong demand for practical solutions among all kinds of actors. It is, however, difficult for states and political actors to manage environmental problems by traditional forms and instruments, due to the complex character of the problems. Therefore, environmental organisations take their own (...) initiatives to participate in policy-making by developing new forms, within new arenas, with the help of new instruments. Special attention is paid to the possibilities of identifying and developing constructive roles in relation to other actors and institutions as well as the capacity to organise standardisation projects and to mobilise and make use of power resources such as symbolic capital and knowledge. In order to interpret characteristics and implications of standardisation strategies, I draw on the ecological modernisation perspective. Empirically, I refer to the role of Swedish environmental organisations in standardisation projects such as eco-labelling. (shrink)

Inspired by Fragments of a Hologram Rose, a 1977 science fiction short story by William Gibson, this 3D narrative work explores the violent stories of standardisation embedded in 3D composite objects. The full story is accessible online at: https://beyondresolution.info/Shredded-Hologram-Rose.

A paradox seems to exist in educational policy and practice in England and Wales. On the one hand, numerous references to promote community are made in the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum, and throughout the curricula. On the other, trends to increase accountability and standardisation through competition seem antithetical to ideals of community. I consider both the challenges and opportunities that exist for fostering community in contemporary school contexts.

The standardised randomised clinical trial (RCT) has been exceedingly popular in medical research, economics, and practical policy making. Recently, RCTs have faced criticism. First, it has been argued by John Worrall that we cannot be certain that our sample is not atypical with regard to possible confounding factors. I will argue that at least in the case of medical research, we know enough about the relevant causal mechanisms to be justified to ignore a number of factors we have good reason (...) not to expect to be disruptive. I will also argue against an argument provided by Nancy Cartwright and Eileen Munro that RCTs should not be taken to deductively infer probabilistic causal claims, but ampliatively. The paper will end on a discussion of evidence hierarchies and a defence of the stance of evidence-based medicine that RCTs are the best available method to assess a treatment’s efficacy. (shrink)

Many research fields concerned with the processing of information contained in human faces would benefit from face stimulus sets in which specific facial characteristics are systematically varied while other important picture characteristics are kept constant. Specifically, a face database in which displayed expressions, gaze direction, and head orientation are parametrically varied in a complete factorial design would be highly useful in many research domains. Furthermore, these stimuli should be standardised in several important, technical aspects. The present article presents the freely (...) available Radboud Faces Database offering such a stimulus set, containing both Caucasian adult and children images. This face database is described both procedurally and in terms of content, and a validation study concerning its most important characteristics is presented. In the validation study, all frontal images were rated with respect to the shown facial expression, intensity of expression, clarity of expression, genuineness of expression, attractiveness, and valence. The results show very high recognition of the intended facial expressions. (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and diplomacy (...) were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

Recent attempts to develop and apply digital ethics principles to address the challenges of the digital transformation leave organisations with an operationalisation gap. To successfully implement such guidance, they must find ways to translate high-level ethics frameworks into practical methods and tools that match their specific workflows and needs. Here, we describe the development of a standardised risk assessment tool, the Principle-at-Risk Analysis (PaRA), as a means to close this operationalisation gap for a key level of the ethics infrastructure at (...) many organisations – the work of an interdisciplinary ethics panel. The PaRA tool serves to guide and harmonise the work of the Digital Ethics Advisory Panel at the multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA in alignment with the principles outlined in the company’s Code of Digital Ethics. We examine how such a tool can be used as part of a multifaceted approach to operationalise high-level principles at an organisational level and provide general requirements for its implementation. We showcase its application in an example case dealing with the comprehensibility of consent forms in a data-sharing context at Syntropy, a collaborative technology platform for clinical research. (shrink)