By Jocelyn Kaiser
Science 25 September 2015:
Vol. 349 no. 6255 p. 1475
DOI: 10.1126/science.349.6255.1475
As DNA sequencing gets cheaper, more and more organizations, companies, and countries are amassing computer server–busting amounts of human DNA data, typically for studies of the links between genes, lifestyle factors and disease risk. Science's informal survey found at least 17 biobanks that hold—or plan to hold—genomic data on 75,000 or more people who have volunteered to share their health information for research. The data range from scans of common mutations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to the protein-coding portions (exomes) to whole genome sequences. Here we have highlighted many of these efforts taking shape across the globe.
The entire article is here.
Monday, October 5, 2015
The Efficacy of Empathy Training: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
By Emily van Berkhout and John M. Malouff
Journal of Counseling Psychology, Jul 20 , 2015
Abstract
High levels of empathy are associated with healthy relationships and prosocial behavior; in health professionals, high levels of empathy are associated with better therapeutic outcomes. To determine whether empathy can be taught, researchers have evaluated empathy training programs. After excluding 1 outlier study that showed a very large effect with few participants, the meta-analysis included 18 randomized controlled trials of empathy training with a total of 1,018 participants. The findings suggest that empathy training programs are effective overall, with a medium effect (g = 0.63), adjusted to 0.51 after trim-and-fill evaluation for estimated publication bias. Moderator analyses indicated that 4 factors were statistically significantly associated with higher effect sizes: (a) training health professionals and university students rather than other types of individuals, (b) compensating trainees for their participation, (c) using empathy measures that focus exclusively on assessing understanding the emotions of others, feeling those emotions, or commenting accurately on the emotions, and (d) using objective measures rather than self-report measures. Number of hours of training and time between preintervention assessment and postintervention assessment were not statistically significantly associated with effect size, with 6 months the longest time period for assessment. The findings indicate that (a) empathy training tends to be effective and (b) experimental research is warranted on the impact of different types of trainees, training conditions, and types of assessment.
The entire article is here.
Journal of Counseling Psychology, Jul 20 , 2015
Abstract
High levels of empathy are associated with healthy relationships and prosocial behavior; in health professionals, high levels of empathy are associated with better therapeutic outcomes. To determine whether empathy can be taught, researchers have evaluated empathy training programs. After excluding 1 outlier study that showed a very large effect with few participants, the meta-analysis included 18 randomized controlled trials of empathy training with a total of 1,018 participants. The findings suggest that empathy training programs are effective overall, with a medium effect (g = 0.63), adjusted to 0.51 after trim-and-fill evaluation for estimated publication bias. Moderator analyses indicated that 4 factors were statistically significantly associated with higher effect sizes: (a) training health professionals and university students rather than other types of individuals, (b) compensating trainees for their participation, (c) using empathy measures that focus exclusively on assessing understanding the emotions of others, feeling those emotions, or commenting accurately on the emotions, and (d) using objective measures rather than self-report measures. Number of hours of training and time between preintervention assessment and postintervention assessment were not statistically significantly associated with effect size, with 6 months the longest time period for assessment. The findings indicate that (a) empathy training tends to be effective and (b) experimental research is warranted on the impact of different types of trainees, training conditions, and types of assessment.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Merge Away!!!
By Art Caplan
The Health Care Blog
Originally posted September 14, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
The Times and every other commentator who has weighed in including the AMA has warned that diminished competition is not good for taxpayers or consumers. They want the Justice Department to take a long hard look at these latest mergers to insure that consumers are not stuck with higher premium costs as many parts of the country turn into markets with only one insurance provider.
The critics are wrong. Blocking these deals is a terrible idea. The mergers should be allowed to continue. In fact they should proceed until there is only one private insurer left. Only, at that point should the government step in, declare the last company standing to be required to merge with Medicare thereby letting the free market produce what many reformers have only been able to dream of—a single payer system.
The entire article is here.
The Health Care Blog
Originally posted September 14, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
The Times and every other commentator who has weighed in including the AMA has warned that diminished competition is not good for taxpayers or consumers. They want the Justice Department to take a long hard look at these latest mergers to insure that consumers are not stuck with higher premium costs as many parts of the country turn into markets with only one insurance provider.
The critics are wrong. Blocking these deals is a terrible idea. The mergers should be allowed to continue. In fact they should proceed until there is only one private insurer left. Only, at that point should the government step in, declare the last company standing to be required to merge with Medicare thereby letting the free market produce what many reformers have only been able to dream of—a single payer system.
The entire article is here.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Neural Foundation of Morality
Roland Zahn, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, & Jorge Moll
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)
2015, Pages 606–618
Moral behavior is one of the most sophisticated human abilities. Many social species behave altruistically toward their kin, but humans are unique in their ability to serve complex and changing societal needs. Cognitive neuroscience has started to elucidate specific brain mechanisms underpinning moral behavior, emotion, and motivation, emphasizing that these ingredients are also germane to human biology, rather than pure societal artifacts. The brain is where psychosocial learning and biology meet to produce the rich individual variability in moral behavior. This article discusses how cognitive neuroscience improves the understanding of this variability and associated suffering in neuropsychiatric conditions.
The entire article is here.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)
2015, Pages 606–618
Moral behavior is one of the most sophisticated human abilities. Many social species behave altruistically toward their kin, but humans are unique in their ability to serve complex and changing societal needs. Cognitive neuroscience has started to elucidate specific brain mechanisms underpinning moral behavior, emotion, and motivation, emphasizing that these ingredients are also germane to human biology, rather than pure societal artifacts. The brain is where psychosocial learning and biology meet to produce the rich individual variability in moral behavior. This article discusses how cognitive neuroscience improves the understanding of this variability and associated suffering in neuropsychiatric conditions.
The entire article is here.
Friday, October 2, 2015
What Is Quantum Cognition, and How Is It Applied to Psychology?
By Jerome Busemeyer and Zheng Wang
Current Directions in Psychological Science
June 2015 vol. 24 no. 3 163-169
Abstract
Quantum cognition is a new research program that uses mathematical principles from quantum theory as a framework to explain human cognition, including judgment and decision making, concepts, reasoning, memory, and perception. This research is not concerned with whether the brain is a quantum computer. Instead, it uses quantum theory as a fresh conceptual framework and a coherent set of formal tools for explaining puzzling empirical findings in psychology. In this introduction, we focus on two quantum principles as examples to show why quantum cognition is an appealing new theoretical direction for psychology: complementarity, which suggests that some psychological measures have to be made sequentially and that the context generated by the first measure can influence responses to the next one, producing measurement order effects, and superposition, which suggests that some psychological states cannot be defined with respect to definite values but, instead, that all possible values within the superposition have some potential for being expressed. We present evidence showing how these two principles work together to provide a coherent explanation for many divergent and puzzling phenomena in psychology.
The entire article is here.
Current Directions in Psychological Science
June 2015 vol. 24 no. 3 163-169
Abstract
Quantum cognition is a new research program that uses mathematical principles from quantum theory as a framework to explain human cognition, including judgment and decision making, concepts, reasoning, memory, and perception. This research is not concerned with whether the brain is a quantum computer. Instead, it uses quantum theory as a fresh conceptual framework and a coherent set of formal tools for explaining puzzling empirical findings in psychology. In this introduction, we focus on two quantum principles as examples to show why quantum cognition is an appealing new theoretical direction for psychology: complementarity, which suggests that some psychological measures have to be made sequentially and that the context generated by the first measure can influence responses to the next one, producing measurement order effects, and superposition, which suggests that some psychological states cannot be defined with respect to definite values but, instead, that all possible values within the superposition have some potential for being expressed. We present evidence showing how these two principles work together to provide a coherent explanation for many divergent and puzzling phenomena in psychology.
The entire article is here.
You're not irrational, you're just quantum probabilistic
Science Daily
Originally posted September 15, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Their work suggests that thinking in a quantum-like way¬--essentially not following a conventional approach based on classical probability theory--enables humans to make important decisions in the face of uncertainty, and lets us confront complex questions despite our limited mental resources.
When researchers try to study human behavior using only classical mathematical models of rationality, some aspects of human behavior do not compute. From the classical point of view, those behaviors seem irrational, Wang explained.
For instance, scientists have long known that the order in which questions are asked on a survey can change how people respond--an effect previously thought to be due to vaguely labeled effects, such as "carry-over effects" and "anchoring and adjustment," or noise in the data. Survey organizations normally change the order of questions between respondents, hoping to cancel out this effect. But in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, Wang and collaborators demonstrated that the effect can be precisely predicted and explained by a quantum-like aspect of people's behavior.
The entire article is here.
Originally posted September 15, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Their work suggests that thinking in a quantum-like way¬--essentially not following a conventional approach based on classical probability theory--enables humans to make important decisions in the face of uncertainty, and lets us confront complex questions despite our limited mental resources.
When researchers try to study human behavior using only classical mathematical models of rationality, some aspects of human behavior do not compute. From the classical point of view, those behaviors seem irrational, Wang explained.
For instance, scientists have long known that the order in which questions are asked on a survey can change how people respond--an effect previously thought to be due to vaguely labeled effects, such as "carry-over effects" and "anchoring and adjustment," or noise in the data. Survey organizations normally change the order of questions between respondents, hoping to cancel out this effect. But in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, Wang and collaborators demonstrated that the effect can be precisely predicted and explained by a quantum-like aspect of people's behavior.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals
By Richard Smith
J R Soc Med. 2006 Apr; 99(4): 178–182.
doi: 10.1258/jrsm.99.4.178
Peer review is at the heart of the processes of not just medical journals but of all of science. It is the method by which grants are allocated, papers published, academics promoted, and Nobel prizes won. Yet it is hard to define. It has until recently been unstudied. And its defects are easier to identify than its attributes. Yet it shows no sign of going away. Famously, it is compared with democracy: a system full of problems but the least worst we have.
When something is peer reviewed it is in some sense blessed. Even journalists recognize this. When the BMJ published a highly controversial paper that argued that a new `disease', female sexual dysfunction, was in some ways being created by pharmaceutical companies, a friend who is a journalist was very excited—not least because reporting it gave him a chance to get sex onto the front page of a highly respectable but somewhat priggish newspaper (the Financial Times). `But,' the news editor wanted to know, `was this paper peer reviewed?'. The implication was that if it had been it was good enough for the front page and if it had not been it was not. Well, had it been? I had read it much more carefully than I read many papers and had asked the author, who happened to be a journalist, to revise the paper and produce more evidence. But this was not peer review, even though I was a peer of the author and had reviewed the paper. Or was it? (I told my friend that it had not been peer reviewed, but it was too late to pull the story from the front page.)
The entire article is here.
J R Soc Med. 2006 Apr; 99(4): 178–182.
doi: 10.1258/jrsm.99.4.178
Peer review is at the heart of the processes of not just medical journals but of all of science. It is the method by which grants are allocated, papers published, academics promoted, and Nobel prizes won. Yet it is hard to define. It has until recently been unstudied. And its defects are easier to identify than its attributes. Yet it shows no sign of going away. Famously, it is compared with democracy: a system full of problems but the least worst we have.
When something is peer reviewed it is in some sense blessed. Even journalists recognize this. When the BMJ published a highly controversial paper that argued that a new `disease', female sexual dysfunction, was in some ways being created by pharmaceutical companies, a friend who is a journalist was very excited—not least because reporting it gave him a chance to get sex onto the front page of a highly respectable but somewhat priggish newspaper (the Financial Times). `But,' the news editor wanted to know, `was this paper peer reviewed?'. The implication was that if it had been it was good enough for the front page and if it had not been it was not. Well, had it been? I had read it much more carefully than I read many papers and had asked the author, who happened to be a journalist, to revise the paper and produce more evidence. But this was not peer review, even though I was a peer of the author and had reviewed the paper. Or was it? (I told my friend that it had not been peer reviewed, but it was too late to pull the story from the front page.)
The entire article is here.
Ethics Won't Be A Big Problem For Driverless Cars
By Adam Ozimek
Forbes Magazine
Originally posted September 13, 2015
Skeptics of driverless cars have a variety of criticisms, from technical to demand based, but perhaps the most curious is the supposed ethical trolley problem it creates. While the question of how driverless cars will behave in ethical situations is interesting and will ultimately have to be answered by programmers, critics greatly exaggerate its importance. In addition, they assume that driverless cars have to be perfect rather than just better.
(cut)
Patrick Lin asks “Is it better to save an adult or child? What about saving two (or three or ten) adults versus one child?” But seriously, how often do drivers actually make this decision? Accidents that provide this choice seem pretty rare. And if I am wrong and we’re actually living in a world rife with trolley problems for drivers, it seems likely that bad human driving and foresight probably creates many of them. Having driverless cars that don’t get distracted, don’t speed dangerously, and can see 360 degrees will make it less likely that split second life and death choices need to be made.
The entire article is here.
Forbes Magazine
Originally posted September 13, 2015
Skeptics of driverless cars have a variety of criticisms, from technical to demand based, but perhaps the most curious is the supposed ethical trolley problem it creates. While the question of how driverless cars will behave in ethical situations is interesting and will ultimately have to be answered by programmers, critics greatly exaggerate its importance. In addition, they assume that driverless cars have to be perfect rather than just better.
(cut)
Patrick Lin asks “Is it better to save an adult or child? What about saving two (or three or ten) adults versus one child?” But seriously, how often do drivers actually make this decision? Accidents that provide this choice seem pretty rare. And if I am wrong and we’re actually living in a world rife with trolley problems for drivers, it seems likely that bad human driving and foresight probably creates many of them. Having driverless cars that don’t get distracted, don’t speed dangerously, and can see 360 degrees will make it less likely that split second life and death choices need to be made.
The entire article is here.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
New Threats to Academic Freedom
Francesca Minerva
Bioethics, (2014): 28(4); 157–162
Here is an excerpt:
In the first few days following online publication, we were deluged with an average of 30 death threats and hate emails a day. Many blogs and online newspapers reported the news and thousands of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ users shared the links and commented on the articles.
The discussion, largely in public rather than in academic journals, did not focus exclusively on the arguments of the paper but also on the authors. Perhaps attesting to an underlying current of sexism, the personal attacks were largely directed at me: I am a young woman and young women are supposed to have babies, not to argue in favour of after-birth abortion. This disparity got to the point that some newspapers even neglected to mention that the paper was co-authored, indicating me as the only author.
The different treatment of Singer’s and Tooley’s work on the same topic on the one hand,
and our paper on the other shows how the Web has changed the way academic ideas circulate. It is useful to highlight at least three aspects of this change:
1) The Internet has significantly speeded up the dissemination of academic ideas to the general public. Up to twenty years ago, access to academic work was almost exclusively through academic books and hard copy academic journals. Nowadays, many academic journals maintain an online version which is easily and quickly accessible. Journalists can read academic papers and write a piece for an online newspaper, which may be shared by millions of users on other websites, or Blogs, and social network sites.
The entire paper is here.
Bioethics, (2014): 28(4); 157–162
Here is an excerpt:
In the first few days following online publication, we were deluged with an average of 30 death threats and hate emails a day. Many blogs and online newspapers reported the news and thousands of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ users shared the links and commented on the articles.
The discussion, largely in public rather than in academic journals, did not focus exclusively on the arguments of the paper but also on the authors. Perhaps attesting to an underlying current of sexism, the personal attacks were largely directed at me: I am a young woman and young women are supposed to have babies, not to argue in favour of after-birth abortion. This disparity got to the point that some newspapers even neglected to mention that the paper was co-authored, indicating me as the only author.
The different treatment of Singer’s and Tooley’s work on the same topic on the one hand,
and our paper on the other shows how the Web has changed the way academic ideas circulate. It is useful to highlight at least three aspects of this change:
1) The Internet has significantly speeded up the dissemination of academic ideas to the general public. Up to twenty years ago, access to academic work was almost exclusively through academic books and hard copy academic journals. Nowadays, many academic journals maintain an online version which is easily and quickly accessible. Journalists can read academic papers and write a piece for an online newspaper, which may be shared by millions of users on other websites, or Blogs, and social network sites.
The entire paper is here.
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