Ethics of Admission, Pt. II: Undergraduates and the Brass Ring

By Jane Robbins
Inside Higher Ed
Originally posted February 26, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

But what about students? Is it worth the chance at the brass ring? One could say there is no choice but get on the merry-go-round—and that is certainly what they are being told. But if we know that many will not get a shot because of where they are placed or when they got on or whether, metaphorically, they lack the height compared to the one behind them to reach the ring, is the current approach wrong—in both the incorrect and immoral senses of the word?

The inevitable is, of course, happening: people are beginning to question the value of a college degree for them as individuals. This is why, counterintutively, the push for the current wage data approach to value is completely wrong-headed and also, I think unethical. It is the individual that has been lost in the wholesale approach to commodity credentials and wage comparison, a particularly perverse kind of educational “channeling.” In the service of whose interests is, for example, the tireless emphasis on STEM and the disparagement of arts? Who will care when large percentages with STEM credentials can’t find jobs, experience depressed wages because there are so many of them, and find themselves with no transferable skills or habits of mind when technology moves on? If it is going to be difficult to find a job anyway, one should at least have followed one’s own interests. Education should allow you to choose your work, not vice versa.

On the constant merry-go-round, we seem to have forgotten that college, or any other education at any level except technical and some forms of professional education, is not to get a job, and certainly not to get a particular job. That is what trade school is for. We should be encouraging students who want a particular job -- a vocation -- to train elsewhere, perhaps with the idea of getting more and broader education at a later time.

The rest of the blog post is here.

It's time for psychologists to put their house in order

BMC Psychology pledges 'to put less emphasis on interest levels' and publish repeat studies and negative results

By Keith Laws
The Guardian, Notes & Theories
Originally published February 27, 2013

In 2005, the epidemiologist John Ioannidis provocatively claimed that "most published research findings are false". In the field of psychology – where negative results rarely see the light of day – we have a related problem: there is the very real possibility that many unpublished, negative findings are true.

Psychologists have an aversion to some essential aspects of science that they perceive to be unexciting or less valuable. Historically, the discipline has done almost nothing to ensure the reliability of findings through the publication of repeat studies and negative ("null") findings.

Psychologists find significant statistical support for their hypotheses more frequently than any other science, and this is not a new phenomenon. More than 30 years ago, it was reported that psychology researchers are eight times as likely to submit manuscripts for publication when the results are positive rather than negative.

Unpublished, "failed" replications and negative findings stay in the file-drawer and therefore remain unknown to future investigators, who may independently replicate the null-finding (each also unpublished) - until by chance, a spuriously significant effect turns up.

The entire story is here.

Why Failing Med Students Don’t Get Failing Grades

By Pauline Chen
The New York Times
Originally published February 28, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

Medical educators have long understood that good doctoring, like ducks, elephants and obscenity, is easy to recognize but difficult to quantify. And nowhere is the need to catalog those qualities more explicit, and charged, than in the third year of medical school, when students leave the lecture halls and begin to work with patients and other clinicians in specialty-based courses referred to as “clerkships.” In these clerkships, students are evaluated by senior doctors and ranked on their nascent doctoring skills, with the highest-ranking students going on to the most competitive training programs and jobs.

A student’s performance at this early stage, the traditional thinking went, would be predictive of how good a doctor she or he would eventually become.

But in the mid-1990s, a group of researchers decided to examine grading criteria and asked directors of internal medicine clerkship courses across the country how accurate and consistent they believed their grading to be.

The entire story is here.

Protecting Patient Privacy and Data Security

By Julie K. Taitsman, Christi Macrina Grimm, and Shantanu Agrawal
The New England Journal of Medicine - Perspective
February 27, 2013
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1215258

Here is one portion of the article.

STEPS TO PROTECT AND SECURE INFORMATION WHEN USING MOBILE DEVICES*

• Install and enable encryption
• Use a password or other user authentication
• Install and activate wiping, remote disabling, or both to erase data on lost or stolen devices
• Disable and do not install or use file-sharing applications
• Install and enable a firewall to block unauthorized access
• Install and enable security software to protect against malicious applications, viruses, spyware, and  malware-based attacks
• Keep security software up to date
• Research mobile applications before downloading
• Maintain physical control of mobile devices
• Use adequate security to send or receive health information over public Wi-Fi networks
• Delete all stored health information on mobile devices before discarding the devices

* Recommended by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

The entire article is here.

Thanks to Gary Schoener for this article.

Ethics in the age of acceleration

By Vivek Wadhwa
The Washington Post
Originally posted July 13, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

Advances in technology are changing who we are and what we are. Today’s bio-engineered devices and exoskeletons are just a start. Over time, they will become larger components of our bodies, playing more critical roles. As the Glenn case on human-machine mergers shows, modern-day business practices lack an understanding of changes in technology.

But this is the tip of the iceberg. Preeta Bansal says that law and ethics, too, lag behind advances in technology. Bansal is the former White House general counsel and senior policy Advisor and prior to that served as Solicitor General of the state of New York. For example, she asks, how will existing rules of liability be applied when a self-driving car, such as the autonomous vehicle Google is designing, hits a pedestrian? Will robotic devices with attributes of human sentience be subject to criminal laws – either as victims or perpetrators? To what extent will individuals have the right to control the collection, maintenance, dissemination, and accessibility of private information?

The entire story is here.

It's Hard to Gross Out a Libertarian

The NYU psychologist on sex and the culture war
By Jim Epstein
Originally published on February 26, 2013


 

“Morality isn’t just about stealing and killing and honesty, it’s often about menstruation, and food, and who you are having sex with, and how you handle corpses,” says NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who is author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics.

Inadequate Ethics Training Leaves Young Scientists Unprepared for "Ethical Emergencies"

By Beryl Benderly
Science Careers Blog
Originally published July 14, 2013

Difficult ethical issues can present significant challenges to graduate students and early-career scientists, but few receive adequate training and guidance in dealing with these problems, agreed a panel of experts at the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) 2012 in Dublin. Formal training in ethics was unknown in science before 1990, when it became a requirement in the United States, said Nicholas Steneck of the University of Michigan, who is a consultant to the Federal Office of Research Integrity. In recent years, he continued, interest has increased in other countries as well. Concepts of ethics and responsible research vary among countries and disciplines, however, the speakers agreed, and there is no uniformity in the content of training even within countries. And, although various initiatives are underway in a variety of nations, nowhere is training sufficient to the needs of young researchers, the panelists said.

The competitive pressures that young scientists face today are much more severe than in the past and can make ethical problems more acute, said Maria Leptin of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in Germany and the Initiative for Science in Europe. Today's intense competition greatly increases incentive to produce the maximum number of publications and to have one's name on as many papers as possible.

The entire story is here.

Ethics of 2 cancer studies questioned

India studies funded by Gates Foundation, National Cancer Institute draw scrutiny

By Bob Ortega
The Republic
Originally posted February 15, 2013

For more than 12 years, as part of two massive U.S-funded studies in India, researchers tracked a large group of women for cervical cancer but didn’t screen them, instead monitoring them as their cancers progressed. At least 79 of the women died.

One study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, did not adequately inform more than 76,000 women taking part about their alternatives for getting cervical-cancer screening; and those women did not give adequate informed consent, according to the Office of Human Research Protection, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The other study, funded by the Gates Foundation, is under review by the Food and Drug Administration, according to Kristina Borror, the OHRP’s director of compliance oversight. That study has raised similar concerns regarding 31,000 women who were tracked but not routinely screened or treated for cervical cancer.

Both studies continue today, though researchers for both told The Arizona Republic they have begun to offer screening to the women.

While the two studies differ in important respects, both included large numbers of women placed in “control groups” who were offered free visits with health-care workers, but who, until recently,were not screened for cervical cancer. Instead, researchers met with and tracked these women to monitor how many would develop cervical cancer and die, so their death rates could be compared with those of women who were being screened and treated for free.

The entire story is here.

Evaluations of Dangerousness among those Adjudicated Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

Edited by Christina M. Finello, JD, PhD
American Psychology Law Society
Winter 2013 News

In many states, following an indeterminate period of hospitalization, individuals adjudicated Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (hereafter called “acquittees” despite different international legal terminology) are typically discharged under conditional release with provisions for ongoing monitoring and recommitment (Packer & Grisso, 2011). Studies have identified factors associated with conditional release, recommitment, and reoffending in this population. However, few studies have evaluated whether risk assessment measures could assist in predicting recommitment to forensic hospitals.

A number of static factors may be associated with decisions to retain or conditionally release acquittees. For example, Callahan and Silver (1998) found that female acquittees, those with diagnoses other than Schizophrenia and those who committed non-violent offenses, were released most often. Additionally, low psychopathy and older age during one’s first criminal offense increased the likelihood of release (Manguno-Mire, Thompson, BertmanPate, Burnett, & Thompson, 2007). Dynamic and protective variables also influence decisions of retention versus release. For example, researchers identified that acquittees’ treatment compliance and responsiveness, substance use, risk of violence, and availability of structured activities in the community are relevant to release decisions (McDermott, Edens, Quanbeck, Busse, & Scott, 2008; Stredny, Parker, & Dibble, 2012).

Decisions regarding release versus retention involve determinations of future dangerousness (Jones v. United States, 1983), highlighting the relevance of violence risk assessment measures. However, available data do not indicate a strong relationship between scores on risk assessment measures and dispositional decisions. For example, McKee, Harris, and Rice (2007) observed that scores on the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG; Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 1998) predicted clinicians’ recommendations for retention versus transfer from a maximum security facility, but did not predict the ultimate decisions. Côté, Crocker, Nicholls, and Seto (2012) reported that, with the exception of previous violence, presence of major mental illness, substance use problems, active symptoms of major mental illness, and unresponsiveness to treatment - the factors of the Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-20 (HCR-20; Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997) identified by researchers - corresponded poorly (if at all) with those raised by evaluators in review hearings.

The entire article can be found here.