Jamie DeCoster, Erin A. Sparks, Jordan C. Sparks, Glenn G. Sparks, and Cheri W. Sparks
Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning
Researchers commonly explore their data in multiple ways before choosing the analyses they will present in the final versions of their papers. While this improves the chances of finding publishable results, it introduces an “opportunistic bias,” such that the reported effects are stronger or otherwise more supportive of the researcher’s theories than they would be without the exploratory process. Scientists across many disciplines are increasing their concern about how these biases are affecting the quality of research. After discussing why this occurs, we describe the research practices that create opportunistic biases, consider the impact of opportunistic biases on scientific research, and present a multifaceted solution to ameliorate these effects.
The entire article is here.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Modernizing Human Subjects Research Protections: Informed Consent for Genetic Research
Written by Nicolle Strand
blog.bioethics.gov
September 24, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Despite these challenges, the Commission emphasized the importance of obtaining fully informed consent from all participants. Being asked to provide informed consent about the use of their data, the Commission argued, conveys respect to participants, separate and apart from their interest in preventing the unauthorized use or disclosure of their data. In other words—there is value to informed consent in and of itself, as it respects autonomy and personhood.
The entire blog post is here.
Note: The blog posts are short. These are excellent resources from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
blog.bioethics.gov
September 24, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Despite these challenges, the Commission emphasized the importance of obtaining fully informed consent from all participants. Being asked to provide informed consent about the use of their data, the Commission argued, conveys respect to participants, separate and apart from their interest in preventing the unauthorized use or disclosure of their data. In other words—there is value to informed consent in and of itself, as it respects autonomy and personhood.
The entire blog post is here.
Note: The blog posts are short. These are excellent resources from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
Monday, September 28, 2015
VA watchdog shelves 36,000 complaints, draws ire from whistleblowers
By Donovan Slack
USA TODAY
Originally published September 23, 2015
The chief watchdog at the Department of Veterans Affairs investigates less than 10 percent of the nearly 40,000 complaints it receives annually about problems at the agency, even when they concern potential harm to veteran health, Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday said Tuesday.
The Office of Inspector General, which is responsible under federal law for rooting out mismanagement and abuse at the agency, simply doesn't have the resources, Halliday said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
"There is a serious discrepancy between the size of our workforce and the size of our workload," Halliday said. She said her office has roughly 650 professional staff members while the agency they investigate has more than 350,000 employees and a budget greater than $160 billion. "The OIG is not right-sized to respond to all the complaints that we currently receive."
The entire article is here.
USA TODAY
Originally published September 23, 2015
The chief watchdog at the Department of Veterans Affairs investigates less than 10 percent of the nearly 40,000 complaints it receives annually about problems at the agency, even when they concern potential harm to veteran health, Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday said Tuesday.
The Office of Inspector General, which is responsible under federal law for rooting out mismanagement and abuse at the agency, simply doesn't have the resources, Halliday said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
"There is a serious discrepancy between the size of our workforce and the size of our workload," Halliday said. She said her office has roughly 650 professional staff members while the agency they investigate has more than 350,000 employees and a budget greater than $160 billion. "The OIG is not right-sized to respond to all the complaints that we currently receive."
The entire article is here.
Your Right to Die Isn’t Enough
By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig
The New Republic
Originally published July 15, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Some opponents of assisted suicide legislation are concerned that, with assisted suicide on the table, exhausted doctors and cash-strapped families might coerce ill family members into taking this cheap, quick way out rather than suffering through further treatments and payments for terminal illness. Others worry that legal assisted suicide will transform culture in such a way that the option to die will eventually be interpreted as an obligation to do so after a certain point, creating a slippery slope from legal to de-facto compulsory. Still others fear that euthanasia advocates don’t appropriately take into account the possibility of spontaneous remission, and worry that readiness to end the lives of terminally ill patients would foreclose the possibility of recovery for those with the potential for it, however slim.
There is little evidence that legal euthanasia contributes to the coercion of the poor, and numbers on spontaneous remission can usually be adduced for any given terminal disease, which helps prevent the what-if objection from gaining much traction. Yet there is reason to worry about a slippery slope forming between the legal but rare option of euthanasia for the terminally ill and the haphazard elective suicide of persons with no real physical illness. At this moment, for example, a 24-year-old Belgian woman is awaiting assisted suicide for no reason other than her unhappiness. She won’t be the first: a friend of hers who also suffered from depression was euthanized for that condition less than two years ago, following in the footsteps of numerous people with sad life experiences or momentary shocks who, thanks to Belgian law, sought death instead of treatment.
The entire article is here.
The New Republic
Originally published July 15, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Some opponents of assisted suicide legislation are concerned that, with assisted suicide on the table, exhausted doctors and cash-strapped families might coerce ill family members into taking this cheap, quick way out rather than suffering through further treatments and payments for terminal illness. Others worry that legal assisted suicide will transform culture in such a way that the option to die will eventually be interpreted as an obligation to do so after a certain point, creating a slippery slope from legal to de-facto compulsory. Still others fear that euthanasia advocates don’t appropriately take into account the possibility of spontaneous remission, and worry that readiness to end the lives of terminally ill patients would foreclose the possibility of recovery for those with the potential for it, however slim.
There is little evidence that legal euthanasia contributes to the coercion of the poor, and numbers on spontaneous remission can usually be adduced for any given terminal disease, which helps prevent the what-if objection from gaining much traction. Yet there is reason to worry about a slippery slope forming between the legal but rare option of euthanasia for the terminally ill and the haphazard elective suicide of persons with no real physical illness. At this moment, for example, a 24-year-old Belgian woman is awaiting assisted suicide for no reason other than her unhappiness. She won’t be the first: a friend of hers who also suffered from depression was euthanized for that condition less than two years ago, following in the footsteps of numerous people with sad life experiences or momentary shocks who, thanks to Belgian law, sought death instead of treatment.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Emotional and Utilitarian Appraisals of Moral Dilemmas Are Encoded in Separate Areas of the Brain
Cendri A. Hutcherson, Leila Montaser-Kouhsari, James Woodward, & Antonio Rangel
The Journal of Neuroscience, 9 September 2015, 35(36): 12593-12605
doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3402-14.2015
Abstract
Moral judgment often requires making difficult tradeoffs (e.g., is it appropriate to torture to save the lives of innocents at risk?). Previous research suggests that both emotional appraisals and more deliberative utilitarian appraisals influence such judgments and that these appraisals often conflict. However, it is unclear how these different types of appraisals are represented in the brain, or how they are integrated into an overall moral judgment. We addressed these questions using an fMRI paradigm in which human subjects provide separate emotional and utilitarian appraisals for different potential actions, and then make difficult moral judgments constructed from combinations of these actions. We found that anterior cingulate, insula, and superior temporal gyrus correlated with emotional appraisals, whereas temporoparietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex correlated with utilitarian appraisals. Overall moral value judgments were represented in an anterior portion of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Critically, the pattern of responses and functional interactions between these three sets of regions are consistent with a model in which emotional and utilitarian appraisals are computed independently and in parallel, and passed to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex where they are integrated into an overall moral value judgment.
Significance statement
Popular accounts of moral judgment often describe it as a battle for control between two systems, one intuitive and emotional, the other rational and utilitarian, engaged in winner-take-all inhibitory competition. Using a novel fMRI paradigm, we identified distinct neural signatures of emotional and utilitarian appraisals and used them to test different models of how they compete for the control of moral behavior. Importantly, we find little support for competitive inhibition accounts. Instead, moral judgments resembled the architecture of simple economic choices: distinct regions represented emotional and utilitarian appraisals independently and passed this information to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for integration into an overall moral value signal.
The entire article is here.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 9 September 2015, 35(36): 12593-12605
doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3402-14.2015
Abstract
Moral judgment often requires making difficult tradeoffs (e.g., is it appropriate to torture to save the lives of innocents at risk?). Previous research suggests that both emotional appraisals and more deliberative utilitarian appraisals influence such judgments and that these appraisals often conflict. However, it is unclear how these different types of appraisals are represented in the brain, or how they are integrated into an overall moral judgment. We addressed these questions using an fMRI paradigm in which human subjects provide separate emotional and utilitarian appraisals for different potential actions, and then make difficult moral judgments constructed from combinations of these actions. We found that anterior cingulate, insula, and superior temporal gyrus correlated with emotional appraisals, whereas temporoparietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex correlated with utilitarian appraisals. Overall moral value judgments were represented in an anterior portion of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Critically, the pattern of responses and functional interactions between these three sets of regions are consistent with a model in which emotional and utilitarian appraisals are computed independently and in parallel, and passed to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex where they are integrated into an overall moral value judgment.
Significance statement
Popular accounts of moral judgment often describe it as a battle for control between two systems, one intuitive and emotional, the other rational and utilitarian, engaged in winner-take-all inhibitory competition. Using a novel fMRI paradigm, we identified distinct neural signatures of emotional and utilitarian appraisals and used them to test different models of how they compete for the control of moral behavior. Importantly, we find little support for competitive inhibition accounts. Instead, moral judgments resembled the architecture of simple economic choices: distinct regions represented emotional and utilitarian appraisals independently and passed this information to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for integration into an overall moral value signal.
The entire article is here.
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach
Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51): Springer International Publishing.
Here is an excerpt:
First, the good, the bad, and the neutral. As we have seen, morality as coopera-tion predicts that people will regard speciļ¬c types of cooperative behaviour—behaviour that solves some problem of cooperation—as morally good. Thus, people will regard helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, and respecting property, as morally good. And they will regard failing to cooperate—by neglecting your family, betraying your group, cheating, being cowardly, rebelling against authority, being unfair, and stealing—as morally bad. The theory also predicts that behaviour that has nothing to do with cooperation—nonsocial behaviour or competition in zero-sum games (‘all’s fair in love and war’)—will be regarded as morally neutral.
Second, universality and diversity. Morality as cooperation also predicts that—because these problems are universal features of human social life—these cooperative behaviours will be considered morally good in every human culture, at all times and in all places. There will be no cultures where morality is about something other than cooperation—say, aesthetics or nutrition. And there will be no cultures where helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, respecting property, and so on are considered morally bad. However, the theory does not predict that moral systems will everywhere be identical. On the contrary, the prediction is that, to the extent that different people and different societies face different portfolios of prob-lems, different domains of morality will loom larger—different cultures will prioritise different moral values. For example, differences in family size, frequency of warfare, or degree of inequality may lead to differences in the importance attached to family values, bravery, and respect.
Third, uncharted territory. Morality as cooperation predicts that as yet poorly understood aspects of morality will also turn out to be about cooperation.
The entire article is here.
Here is an excerpt:
First, the good, the bad, and the neutral. As we have seen, morality as coopera-tion predicts that people will regard speciļ¬c types of cooperative behaviour—behaviour that solves some problem of cooperation—as morally good. Thus, people will regard helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, and respecting property, as morally good. And they will regard failing to cooperate—by neglecting your family, betraying your group, cheating, being cowardly, rebelling against authority, being unfair, and stealing—as morally bad. The theory also predicts that behaviour that has nothing to do with cooperation—nonsocial behaviour or competition in zero-sum games (‘all’s fair in love and war’)—will be regarded as morally neutral.
Second, universality and diversity. Morality as cooperation also predicts that—because these problems are universal features of human social life—these cooperative behaviours will be considered morally good in every human culture, at all times and in all places. There will be no cultures where morality is about something other than cooperation—say, aesthetics or nutrition. And there will be no cultures where helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, respecting property, and so on are considered morally bad. However, the theory does not predict that moral systems will everywhere be identical. On the contrary, the prediction is that, to the extent that different people and different societies face different portfolios of prob-lems, different domains of morality will loom larger—different cultures will prioritise different moral values. For example, differences in family size, frequency of warfare, or degree of inequality may lead to differences in the importance attached to family values, bravery, and respect.
Third, uncharted territory. Morality as cooperation predicts that as yet poorly understood aspects of morality will also turn out to be about cooperation.
The entire article is here.
Friday, September 25, 2015
The Effect of Probability Anchors on Moral Decision Making
By Chris Brand and Mike Oaksford
Abstract
The role of probabilistic reasoning in moral decision making has seen relatively little research, despite having potentially profound consequences for our models of moral cognition. To rectify this, two experiments were undertaken in which participants were presented with moral dilemmas with additional information designed to anchor judgements about how likely the dilemma’s outcomes were. It was found that these anchoring values significantly altered how permissible the dilemmas were found when they were presented both explicitly and implicitly. This was the case even for dilemmas typically seen as eliciting deontological judgements. Implications of this finding for cognitive models of moral decision making are discussed.
The entire research is here.
Abstract
The role of probabilistic reasoning in moral decision making has seen relatively little research, despite having potentially profound consequences for our models of moral cognition. To rectify this, two experiments were undertaken in which participants were presented with moral dilemmas with additional information designed to anchor judgements about how likely the dilemma’s outcomes were. It was found that these anchoring values significantly altered how permissible the dilemmas were found when they were presented both explicitly and implicitly. This was the case even for dilemmas typically seen as eliciting deontological judgements. Implications of this finding for cognitive models of moral decision making are discussed.
The entire research is here.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
The murky morality of biobanking
By Sarah Wild
Mail & Guardian
Originally published September 6, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Yet biobanks are not mentioned in South Africa’s National Health Act of 2003, which governs human tissue usage, for therapies or research. Department of health deputy director general Terence Carter told the Mail & Guardian that workshops are planned to plug holes in the current law and regulations, and that ethicists will be included in these discussions.
This is “a scientific tissue issue, but also a major ethical issue, so we are bringing together the experts in ethics as well as cell technologies and genetics”, Carter said.
A major question in this area is the notion of consent, and what it means to give informed consent.
“Informed consent has different applications,” says the deputy dean of law at the University of South Africa, Professor Melodie Slabbert. “[You have] medical treatments on the one hand, such as between doctor and patient, and research between research participant and researcher on the other … Consent has specific legal requirements for it to be regarded lawful and valid consent.”
The entire article is here.
Mail & Guardian
Originally published September 6, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Yet biobanks are not mentioned in South Africa’s National Health Act of 2003, which governs human tissue usage, for therapies or research. Department of health deputy director general Terence Carter told the Mail & Guardian that workshops are planned to plug holes in the current law and regulations, and that ethicists will be included in these discussions.
This is “a scientific tissue issue, but also a major ethical issue, so we are bringing together the experts in ethics as well as cell technologies and genetics”, Carter said.
A major question in this area is the notion of consent, and what it means to give informed consent.
“Informed consent has different applications,” says the deputy dean of law at the University of South Africa, Professor Melodie Slabbert. “[You have] medical treatments on the one hand, such as between doctor and patient, and research between research participant and researcher on the other … Consent has specific legal requirements for it to be regarded lawful and valid consent.”
The entire article is here.
Why it’s time to legalise doping in athletics
By Julian Savulescu
The Conversation
Originally posted August 28, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Those athletes who are clean face a significantly doped field, and a climate of denial. They face a perverse dilemma: they must choose to either live with the disadvantage and accept the probable financial losses as a result, or to join the cheaters. If they do that, they face the risk of complete ruin as a scapegoat if they are caught. US runner Justin Gatlin, for example, has complained that previous doping bans have led to biased and unfair coverage of his performances.
It is not as though sport is somehow bereft of human struggle or magnificence. The only thing that is bad about sport today is that some athletes are getting a small advantage that others aren’t, and people are regularly getting tossed out or brought under a cloud by rules that are unfit for purpose.
The entire article is here.
The Conversation
Originally posted August 28, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Those athletes who are clean face a significantly doped field, and a climate of denial. They face a perverse dilemma: they must choose to either live with the disadvantage and accept the probable financial losses as a result, or to join the cheaters. If they do that, they face the risk of complete ruin as a scapegoat if they are caught. US runner Justin Gatlin, for example, has complained that previous doping bans have led to biased and unfair coverage of his performances.
It is not as though sport is somehow bereft of human struggle or magnificence. The only thing that is bad about sport today is that some athletes are getting a small advantage that others aren’t, and people are regularly getting tossed out or brought under a cloud by rules that are unfit for purpose.
The entire article is here.
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