Overall Lifelong Fortune: A Critique of the Intrinsic Potential Account

It seems clear that a fortunate life for a human being is very different from a fortunate life for a dog. But it is not clear what the appropriate measure is for determining whether a life is fortunate or not. Jeff McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account and defends the Intrinsic Potential Account of overall lifelong fortune. In this article, I argue that the Intrinsic Potential Account fails. More specifically, I will argue that it is vulnerable to numerous counterexamples; fails for the same basic reason that McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account; and is insensitive to a consideration that is morally significant.     

Examining the potential exploitation of UNOS policies

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list was designed as a just and equitable system through which the limited number of organs is allocated to the millions of Americans in need of a transplant. People have trusted the system because of the belief that everyone on the list has an equal opportunity to receive an organ and also that allocation is blind to matters of financial standing, celebrity or political power. Recent events have revealed that certain practices and policies have the potential to be exploited. The policies addressed in this paper enable those on the list with the proper resources to gain an advantage over other less fortunate members, creating a system that benefits not the individual most in medical need, but the one with the best resources. These policies are not only unethical but threaten the balance and success of the entire UNOS system. This paper proposes one possible solution, which seeks to balance the concepts of justice and utility.     

Examining the Potential Exploitation of UNOS Policies

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list was designed as a just and equitable system through which the limited number of organs is allocated to the millions of Americans in need of a transplant. People have trusted the system because of the belief that everyone on the list has an equal opportunity to receive an organ and also that allocation is blind to matters of financial standing, celebrity or political power. Recent events have revealed that certain practices and policies have the potential to be exploited. The policies addressed in this paper enable those on the list with the proper resources to gain an advantage over other less fortunate members, creating a system that benefits not the individual most in medical need, but the one with the best resources. These policies are not only unethical but threaten the balance and success of the entire UNOS system. This paper proposes one possible solution, which seeks to balance the concepts of justice and utility.

     

The Many Meanings of Religiousness: A Policy-Capturing Approach

ABSTRACT This article reports the results of two policy-capturing studies that investigated individual differences in the meaning of religiousness. Policy capturing requires judges to respond to a large number of hypothetical scenarios or profiles that differ along a number of potentially relevant cues or attributes. Multiple regression analyses are then conducted to ascertain which cues are influencing each judge's responses. For both studies, 100 profiles were developed describing hypothetical individuals who differed on 10 cues thought to influence perceptions of religiousness (e.g., church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy), and judges rated each profile on a 9-point religiousness scale. Judges in Study 1 were 27 Roman Catholic and Protestant college students. Policy-capturing analyses identified clear individual differences in the cues that afifected judgments of religiousness, and in the self-insight of the students into their personal policies. To test whether these findings reflected the youth or religious maturity of the sample, the study was replicated with a sample of 22 Catholic and Protestant clergy. Similar results were found in Study 2. In both samples, individual policy capturing did a significantly better job of predicting judgments of religiousness than did self-described policies or policies created by averaging across judges. Together these findings underscore the diversity of religious meanings and the need for further idiographic investigations in the psychology of religion.     

Quelques éléments de comparaison entre les politiques «d’intégration» de l’allemagne, du canada, de la france, de la grande bretagne, de l’italie et des pays-bas

In this article the author compares integration policies in some European countries and Canada. Despite the varying political or ideological wordings and histories all countries reviewed face similar social problems in the integration of migrants. Because public authorities act with pragmatism and without any strict theoretical model, policies are more comparable that one might suppose, although sometimes differences are marked. The article first points out the similarities in the policies of each country. Cultures and languages of origin, migrants’ associations, and unemployment are discussed briefly, as well as trianing of public servants, and struggle against racism, and urban segregation. A second section shows clear distinctions between the countries’ policies in two respects: politicization and relationships between searchers and policy-makers. The author then discusses several initiatives to improve integration using pre-existing programmes in other countries as examples. These include: welcome programmes for new immigrants, preschool programmes, dropout prevention programmes, globally conceived urban projects, as well decentralization of local authority, active local participation, and strong links with research work. The article concludes by supporting the thesis that no efficient integration policy can succeed if it does not strengthen the overall social link.     

The Fairness Principle,Reward, and Altruistic Behavior

The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between reward and altruism. It was hypothesized that the altruistic behavior of someone who has been asked for help will occur only after the person asking for help has been evaluated. As a result, if the situation of a person asking for help is perceived as less fortunate, help will be given even if no proportional award is received in return, according to a principle based on need that makes people feel they should help the needy. Results show that when the participants received an unfair award, they tended to offer much bigger donations only in the condition in which the other was perceived as less fortunate.     

Family Policy Initiatives in Latin America: The Case of Colombia and Ecuador

Family policy initiatives in Colombia and Ecuador have targeted primarily families living in poverty. This paper discusses some of the major policy initiatives oriented to improve the living conditions of economically disadvantaged families in both countries. We argue that, even though governments recognize the importance of family policies, existing policies and programs for families living in poverty do not directly focus on family issues. They represent more implicit than explicit family policies. We analyze some of the issues that may hinder the development, implementation, and evaluation of family policies in Colombia and Ecuador. Such issues stem from political and economic instability, legislation, changing family demographics, as well as coordination among agencies that develop, implement, and evaluate policies. We discuss challenges related to family policies in both countries and recommendations to improve existing policy initiatives.     

Missing data techniques for structural equation modeling

As with other statistical methods, missing data often create major problems for the estimation of structural equation models (SEMs). Conventional methods such as listwise or pairwise deletion generally do a poor job of using all the available information. However, structural equation modelers are fortunate that many programs for estimating SEMs now have maximum likelihood methods for handling missing data in an optimal fashion. In addition to maximum likelihood, this article also discusses multiple imputation. This method has statistical properties that are almost as good as those for maximum likelihood and can be applied to a much wider array of models and estimation methods.     

Are Healthy Eating Policies Consistent with Public Reason?

States are increasingly implementing policies aimed at changing people's dietary habits, such as fat taxes, food bans, and nudges. In this article, we ask whether healthy eating policies are consistent with public reason, the view that state laws and policies should be justified on the basis of reasons that all citizens can accept at some level of idealisation despite their different conceptions of the good. What we intend to explore is an ‘if…, then…’ line of thought: if one is committed to public reason, then may one consistently endorse healthy eating policies? First, we illustrate multiple ways in which contemporary societies are characterised by a reasonable pluralism concerning conceptions of health and values attached to eating practices. Second, we critically assess the implications of three main conceptions of the structure of public reason, i.e. ‘shareability’, ‘intelligibility’ and ‘accessibility’, for the public justifiability of healthy eating policies. We conclude that healthy eating policies are only consistent with public reason under the ‘accessibility’ conception, i.e. if they are based on reasons grounded in shared epistemic and moral evaluative standards, as long as such reasons reflect a reasonable balance of political values and do not overly prioritise or neglect any of these values.     

Protecting and respecting the vulnerable: existing regulations or further protections?

Scholars and policymakers continue to struggle over the meaning of the word “vulnerable” in the context of research ethics. One major reason for the stymied discussions regarding vulnerable populations is that there is no clear distinction between accounts of research vulnerabilities that exist for certain populations and discussions of research vulnerabilities that require special regulations in the context of research ethics policies. I suggest an analytic process by which to ascertain whether particular vulnerable populations should be contenders for additional regulatory protections. I apply this process to two vulnerable populations: the cognitively vulnerable and the economically vulnerable. I conclude that a subset of the cognitively vulnerable require extra protections while the economically vulnerable should be protected by implementing existing regulations more appropriately and rigorously. Unless or until the informed consent process is more adequately implemented and the distributive justice requirement of the Belmont Report is emphasized and operationalized, the economically disadvantaged will remain particularly vulnerable to the harm of exploitation in research.     

An Excel macro for transformed and weighted averaging

An Excel macro is presented for averaging spreadsheet data. The macro has several special features: (1) The data are weighted by the inverse variance of each datum to decrease the contribution-of noisy outliers. (2) There is a provision for a power or a log transform of the data before averaging. The rationale for transforming the data before averaging is discussed (3) The output includes the average value, its standard error, and the reduced chi-square that measures the goodness of fit (4) The standard error is corrected by a heterogeneity factor based on the reduced chi-square The averaging of data is rarely done properly, and the intent of this article is to clarify the issues and provide a tool that allows researchers to improve their averaging techniques.     

Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies?

The purpose of this article is to encourage and help inform active discussion of authorship policies among members of scientific societies. The article explains the history and rationale of the influential criteria for authorship developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, examines questions about those criteria that emerge from authorship policies adopted by several U.S. medical schools, and summarizes the arguments for replacing authorship with the contributor-guarantor model. Finally, it concludes with a plea for scientific societies to play a prominent role in the ongoing debates about authorship and the alternatives as part of their efforts to encourage ethical conduct among their members. Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication.     

On the fragility of medical virtue in a neoliberal context: the case of commercial conflicts of interest in reproductive medicine

Social, political, and economic environments play an active role in nurturing professional virtue. Yet, these environments can also lead to the erosion of virtue. As such, professional virtue is fragile and vulnerable to environmental shifts. While physicians are often considered to be among the most virtuous of professional groups, concern has also always existed about the impact of commercial arrangements on physicians’ willingness and capacity to enact their professional virtues. This article examines the ways in which commercial arrangements have been negotiated to secure medical virtue from real or perceived threats of erosion. In particular, we focus on the concern surrounding conflicts of interest arising from commercial arrangements that have developed as a result of neoliberal economic and social policies. The deregulation of medical markets and privatization of services have produced new commercial relationships that are often misunderstood by patients, publics, and physicians themselves. ‘Conflicts of interest’ policies have been introduced in an attempt to safeguard ethical conduct and medical practice. However, a number of virtue ethicists have critiqued these policies as inadequate for securing virtue. We examine the ways in which commercial arrangements have been seen to impact upon medical virtue, both historically and in the context of modern medicine (using the example of fertility services in Australia). We then describe and critique current efforts to restore clinical virtue through both conflict of interest policies and through virtue ethics. Finally, we suggest some possible ways of addressing the corrosive effects of neoliberalism on medical virtue.     

Bayesian Model Averaging for Propensity Score Analysis

This article considers Bayesian model averaging as a means of addressing uncertainty in the selection of variables in the propensity score equation. We investigate an approximate Bayesian model averaging approach based on the model-averaged propensity score estimates produced by the R package BMA but that ignores uncertainty in the propensity score. We also provide a fully Bayesian model averaging approach via Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling (MCMC) to account for uncertainty in both parameters and models. A detailed study of our approach examines the differences in the causal estimate when incorporating noninformative versus informative priors in the model averaging stage. We examine these approaches under common methods of propensity score implementation. In addition, we evaluate the impact of changing the size of Occam’s window used to narrow down the range of possible models. We also assess the predictive performance of both Bayesian model averaging propensity score approaches and compare it with the case without Bayesian model averaging. Overall, results show that both Bayesian model averaging propensity score approaches recover the treatment effect estimates well and generally provide larger uncertainty estimates, as expected. Both Bayesian model averaging approaches offer slightly better prediction of the propensity score compared with the Bayesian approach with a single propensity score equation. Covariate balance checks for the case study show that both Bayesian model averaging approaches offer good balance. The fully Bayesian model averaging approach also provides posterior probability intervals of the balance indices.     

Recent Transformations in China's Economic,Social, and Education Policies for Promoting Innovation and Creativity

The purpose of this study is to review major Chinese policies related to creativity education. We first identify and describe the role of innovation and creativity in economic and social development policies over the past 20 years, then analyze how the call for enhanced Chinese innovation and creativity was actualized in corresponding education policies. The article concludes with an analysis of issues surrounding Chinese education policy toward creativity and several directions for future research in this area.     

From single-channel recordings to brain-mapping devices: the impact of electroencephalography on experimental psychology

Since its discovery in 1920, the electroencephalogram (EEG) has become a widely used tool in experimental psychology. Although originally the merits of the method were seen first of all in an improvement of medical diagnostics it was soon understood by psychologists that EEG can also be used to study psychic processes in healthy participants. This article summarizes important events in the history of EEG research that laid the ground for this development, as fast Fourier transformation to analyze the spontaneous activity and signal averaging to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The article shows how general technological developments were the prerequisite for these methodological improvements in EEG research and how they inspired new research questions. Key discoveries that proved unequivocally that psychic processes do become manifest in EEG signals are briefly reviewed, and the emerging paradigm of cognitive psychophysiology, which is closely linked to the development of EEG research, is described.     

The problem may be more difficult to solve than it appears: a reply to zelaznik

Zelznik (1978) and I agree that his comment applies only to Experiment 1 of my series of three experiments, and I note that the weight of my argument was based on the other two experiments. Although agreeing with his analysis of the problem in Experiment 1, I note that the recommended solution may introduce a new problem in the course of eliminating the old one. It is fortunate that my conclusion can rest on converging operations and is not tied to the particular paradigm in question.     

Social comparison activity under threat: downward evaluation and upward contacts

Social comparison processes include the desire to affiliate with others, the desire for information about others, and explicit self-evaluation against others. Previously these types of comparison activity and their corresponding measures have been treated as interchangeable. We present evidence that in certain groups under threat, these comparison activities diverge, with explicit self-evaluation made against a less fortunate target (downward evaluation), but information and affiliation sought out from more fortunate others (upward contacts). These effects occur because downward evaluation and upward contacts appear to serve different needs, the former ameliorating self-esteem and the latter enabling a person to improve his or her situation and simultaneously increase motivation and hope. Implications for the concept, measurement, and theory of social comparison are discussed.     

Cost analysis of the utilization of new vascular grafts

A cost analysis of the utilization of new expensive vascular grafts is performed, applying the methodology of decision analysis to the theoretical case of a sixty year old male patient undergoing femoropopliteal grafting for limb threatening ischemia. The problem is presented graphically as a decision tree, uncertainties are quantified in terms of probabilities and end outcomes are evaluated in monetary terms. This informations is then utilized to calculate cost values associated with alternative actions. Based on initial cumulative patency figures of the new more expensive grafts and the known performance of the older grafts, the initial high expense for the new grafts is justified economically, if the saphenous vein is not available. This analysis, apart from giving an answer to a specific clinical problem, can be viewed as a general model for cost analysis of surgical procedures.     

Adverse implications for university teaching concealed in economically driven policies

Modern universities represent large economic operations fueled by funds that are increasingly derived from student tuition as government subsidies shrink. Student recruitment and retention are now mainly driven by the need for the dollars that students pay into the system. Policy that is responsive to these pressing economic realities, promulgated at all institutional levels, promotes professional behavior that encourages student retention while allowing this to occur through subtle sacrifice of the traditional essence of the university. A multiphase analysis relates the institution's economically driven policies on retention to their classroom implications and to other effects on the behavior of the teaching faculty.