Social and Ethical Interactions with Nano: Mapping the Early Literature

There is a rapidly expanding field of research on social and ethical interactions with nano-scaled sciences and technologies. An important question is: What does social and ethical research actually mean when it is focussed on technological applications that are largely hypothetical, and a field of science spread out across multiple disciplines and lacking unification? This paper maps early literature in the field of research as a way of answering this question. Our aim is to describe how this field is developing in response to its difficult task, and particularly, to comment on the topics of focus and where there is potential for future development. We present four topical categories, labelled Governance, Perception, Science and Philosophy, and use these as a tool to both map the field and to analyse its development. We find a majority of literature currently focused on issues of governance and perception, and offer suggestions for why this might be so. We then discuss cross-category themes of definition, novelty and interdisciplinarity, highlighting diverse positions and a problematic lack of direct debate. Our conclusion is that the field would benefit from more interaction, cross-referencing and creative research across traditional fields of inquiry.     

Marriages and psychological distress among adult offspring of divorce: a Norwegian study

The study compares the likelihood of getting married and of getting divorced among the adult offspring of divorced parents versus the adult offspring of parents who remain married (total N = 37,230). It also compares levels of psychological distress in the two groups (total N= 22,898). Data derive from The Nord‐Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) and population registries from Norway. Individuals with divorced parents tended to delay marriage or not marry at all. However, among those who married, there were more divorces among the offspring of divorced parents than among offspring of parents who were still married. Offspring of divorce tended to marry other offspring of divorce. These marriages were at especially high risk of dissolution. Parental divorce was particularly influential as a risk factor during the first years of marriage. Both parental divorce and the individuals’ own divorce were risk factors for psychological distress.     

Prognosis in medicine: An analysis of its meaning and rôles

The medical concept of prognosis is analysed into its basic constituents: patient data, medical intervention, outcome, utilities and probabilities; and sources of utility and probability values are discussed. Prognosis cannot be divorced from contemplated medical action, nor from action to be taken by the patient in response to prognostication. Regrettably, the usual decision-theoretic approach ignores this latter aspect. Elicitation of utilities, decision contemplation and prognostic counselling interweave, diagnostics playing a subsidiary role in decision-oriented clinical practice. At times the doctor has grounds for withholding information. As this is known to the patient, prognostic counselling becomes a conflict-prone and rationality-thwarting activity. The meaning of standard phrases such as “prognosis of a disease”, “the prognosis of this patient”, “the prognosis is unknown”, is examined.