"尿布与啤酒"对医学科研的启示

简单介绍了基于文本的揭示文献间关联的两种方法,即相关文献和非相关文献的知识发现的方法,并对这两种方法在医学科研中的作用进行了阐述.     

国际学术交流中的诡道:AIDS病毒发现权之争

关于艾滋病病毒发现权之争的著述在国外已有许多,但国内对这一事件从科学史角度的研究还不多见.本研究试图在艾滋病的最初发现,病源学研究,以及病毒发现之争的起因等方面进行回顾的基础上,对美国科学家和美国政府在这一事件中的一些做法和表现,从美国当代国家科学发展战略观的角度进行解读,并通过历史分析求得有益的启示.     

Delimiting the concept of research: an ethical perspective

It is important to be able to offer an account of which activities count as scientific research, given our current interest in promoting research as a means to benefit humankind and in ethically regulating it. We attempt to offer such an account, arguing that we need to consider both the procedural and functional dimensions of an activity before we can establish whether it is a genuine instance of scientific research. By placing research in a broader schema of activities, the similarities and differences between research activities and other activities become visible. It is also easier to show why some activities that do not count as research can sometimes be confused with research and why some other activities can be regarded only partially as research. Although the concept of research is important to delimit a class of activities which we might be morally obliged to promote, we observe that the class of activities which are regarded as subject to ethical regulation is not exhausted by research activities. We argue that, whether they be research or not, all the activities that are likely to affect the rights and interests of the individuals involved and impact on the rights and interests of other individuals raise ethical issues and might be in need of ethical regulation.     

Reasoning through doing. Epistemic mediators in scientific discovery

The recent epistemological and cognitive studies concentrate on the concept of abduction, as a means to originate and refine new ideas. Traditional cognitive science and computational accounts concerning abduction aim at illustration discovery and creativity processes in terms of theoretical and “internal” aspects, by means of computational simulations and/or abstract cognitive models. I will illustrate in this paper that some typical internal abductive processes are involved in scientific reasoning and discovery (for example through radical innovations). Nevertheless, especially concrete manipulations of the external world constitute a fundamental passage in science: by a process of manipulative abduction it is possible to build prostheses (epistemic mediators) for human minds, by interacting with external objects and representations in a constructive way. In this manner it is possible to create implicit knowledge through doing and to produce various opportunity to find, for example, anomalies and fruitful new risky perspectives. This kind of embodied and unexpressed knowledge holds a key role in the subsequent processes of scientific comprehension and discovery.     

THE HYBRIDITY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE: A RESPONSE TO LEONARDO AMBASCIANO

This article responds to Leonardo Ambasciano's review of The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800–2000 by Kocku von Stuckrad. It criticizes a narrative that presents naturalism and science as the ultimate system of knowledge. Contesting this rhetoric, the article underscores the plurality and hybridity of knowledge systems, which is the main topic of the book under review.     

Rationalism and empiricism: A new perspective

Though classical and twentieth-century versions of empiricism and rationalism fail in their aims, as does the Kantian attempt at a compromise between those views, there are residues of those views that play important roles in the scientific enterprise. Those residue, and their scientific roles, are examined in this paper.     

The science of religious beliefs

Why have humans, throughout history and across cultures, shown a strong tendency to believe in the existence of superhuman intentional agents and attached this belief to notions of morality, misfortune, and the creation of the world? The answer emerging from the cognitive science of religion appears to be that explicit beliefs are informed and constrained by the natural and cross-culturally recurrent operation of implicit cognitive systems. Successful god concepts resonate with the expectations of these implicit systems but also have attention-demanding and inferentially-rich properties that allow their integration into various areas of human concern. Theological concepts may deviate from these natural cognitive moorings but require special cultural scaffolding, such as Whitehouse's two Modes of Religiosity, to do so and constitute additions to, rather than replacements of the religious beliefs supported by implicit cognitive systems.     

阿尔茨海默病的研究及其药物开发历程

阿尔茨海默病是目前导致人类死亡的第四大疾病,针对该病的新药开发成为医药领域的竞争焦点。从医学史的视角介绍了德国医生、神经病理学家阿尔茨海默的生平及主要合作者;归纳和总结阿尔茨海默病及其发现的百年史,阐述该病的病理特征和胆碱能损伤假说、β淀粉样蛋白级联假说、τ蛋白异常修饰假说等发病假说;比较了美国国立卫生研究院自20世纪70年代以来对癌症、艾滋病以及阿尔茨海默病的经费资助情况。通过大量数据,揭示世界各国医药企业近年来对阿尔茨海默病药物研制的挫折与艰辛,特别是这期间药物开发屡次失败的历史。     

DNA patents and scientific discovery and innovation: Assessing benefits and risks

This paper focuses on the question of whether DNA patents help or hinder scientific discovery and innovation. While DNA patents create a wide variety of possible benefits and harms for science and technology, the evidence we have at this point in time supports the conclusion that they will probably promote rather than hamper scientific discovery and innovation. However, since DNA patenting is a relatively recent phenomena and the biotechnology industry is in its infancy, we should continue to gather evidence about the effects of DNA patenting on scientific innovation and discovery as well the economic, social, and legal conditions relating to intellectual property in biotechnology. We should give the free market, the courts, researchers, and patent offices a chance to settle issues related to innovation and discovery, before we seek legislative remedies, since new laws proposed at this point would lack adequate foresight and could do more harm than good. However, we should be open to new laws or regulations on DNA patents if they are required to in order to deal with some of the biases and limitations of the free market.     

A geometric principle of indifference

That one's degrees of belief at any one time obey the axioms of probability theory is widely regarded as a necessary condition for static rationality. Many theorists hold that it is also a sufficient condition, but according to critics this yields too subjective an account of static rationality. However, there are currently no good proposals as to how to obtain a tenable stronger probabilistic theory of static rationality. In particular, the idea that one might achieve the desired strengthening by adding some symmetry principle to the probability axioms has appeared hard to maintain. Starting from an idea of Carnap and drawing on relatively recent work in cognitive science, this paper argues that conceptual spaces provide the tools to devise an objective probabilistic account of static rationality. Specifically, we propose a principle that derives prior degrees of belief from the geometrical structure of concepts.     

Science, Values and the Human Dimensions

The presented paper substantiates the principle that values are an immanent component of science and any rational cognitive activity. This principle belongs to the European cultural tradition starting from the book of Genesis of the Old Testament, the values of certainty in the antique Greek philosophy and Francis Bacon's coincidence of knowledge and power. Values in science form complicated structures inconnection with different types of knowledge including “the knowledge that”, empirical evidence, various types of generalizations or rules, methods, directions, algorithms, “the knowledge how”, “the knowledge why” or other types of knowledge. Since the assignments of different types of values are the products of a decision-making, it is useful to distinguish many types of decision-making, especially semantic decision-making, information decision-making and decision-making with distinctly pragmatic dimensions. The values assignable to scientific activities and their results also include their social recognition, respect and prestige granted to knowledge and bearers of knowledge by society and social groups or communities. Knowledge generation and the rational and justified application of the achieved and acceptable impacts are also connected with decision-making procedures, values and criteria of social acceptance. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The barbarism of reflection: A Vichian perspective on the nuclear arms race

Abstract

This article explores how the I—Thou relation described by Martin Buber can be important in the therapeutic effect of psychotherapy relationships. It also discusses the characteristics that Buber viewed as essential to interhuman encounter, both as helpful aspects of a psychotherapy relationship in themselves and as guidelines for increasing the likelihood of the occurrence of I—Thou relations.     

Progressing from programmatic to discovery research: a case example with the overjustification effect

Scientific research progresses along planned (programmatic research) and unplanned (discovery research) paths. In the current investigation, we attempted to conduct a single-case evaluation of the overjustification effect (i.e., programmatic research). Results of the initial analysis were contrary to the overjustification hypothesis in that removal of the reward contingency produced an increase in responding. Based on this unexpected finding, we conducted subsequent analyses to further evaluate the mechanisms underlying these results (i.e., discovery research). Results of the additional analyses suggested that the reward contingency functioned as punishment (because the participant preferred the task to the rewards) and that withdrawal of the contingency produced punishment contrast.