Spiritual Development and Cultural Context in the Lives of Women Adult Educators for Social Change

This paper reports the results of a qualitative research study where the purpose was to examine the spiritual development of a multicultural group of women adult educators who are teaching for social justice and are motivated to do so because of their spiritual commitments. Findings reveal 4 themes of spiritual development. It may be described as a spiral process of moving beyond and re-membering spiritual values and symbols of the culture of origin, it includes a deepening awareness and honoring of the Lifeforce, it facilitates authentic identity development, and it requires social action.     

Verisimilitude and the Dynamicsof Scientific Research Programmes

Some peculiarities of the evaluation of theories within scientific research programmes (SRPs) and of the assessing of rival SRPs are described assuming that scientists try to maximise an ‘epistemic utility function’ under economic and institutional constraints. Special attention is given to Lakatos' concepts of ‘empirical progress’ and ‘theoretical progress’. A notion of ‘empirical verisimilitude’ is defended as an appropriate utility function. The neologism ‘methodonomics’ is applied to this kind of studies. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

人类干细胞研究的伦理学争论

关于干细胞研究的伦理学争论越来越成为热门话题。2000年8月23日,美国卫生研究所颁布了涉及人类多能胚胎干细胞研究的指南。指南允许联邦政府资助的研究者进行干细胞研究,但是按照布什总统2001年8月9日的决定,政府只资助有限制的干细胞研究。而在英国、法国、日本、澳洲、以及其他国家,干细胞研究不仅在私人的实验室里而且也在政府的实验室里进行着。无论如何,人类干细胞研究应该按照一定规范谨慎进行。     

制约研究生科研选题的几点因素

研究生的科研选题的意义是十分重要的,除了作为培养未来的科研人才的一条有效途径以外,研究生的科研方向代表着目前各研究领域的最基础部分,但是,由于学生自身的各种主观因素以及学校和社会的多种客观因素导致了目前的局面：只有好的愿望达不到好的目的。要推动整个社会的科技进步,需要更深入更长远对人才的培养问题进一步思考。     

Some ethical concerns about counselling research

The whole approach of counselling researchers to ethics may be assumed to have been improving in recent years, especially with the BACP research guidelines (Bond, 2004 Bond, T. 2004. Ethical guidelines for researching counselling and psychotherapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 4(2): 4–9. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]), with its focus on trustworthiness and on the researcher engaging with ethical issues. In this paper we share our concerns about the background to ethical decision making for researchers today followed by our specific concerns for counselling researchers namely: why do counselling research at all?; research that hurts participants; the impact of research on the therapeutic process; restrictive notions around what is data; the politics of funding and informed consent revisited.     

幽门螺杆菌相关性胃炎的时空特征研究

研究幽门螺杆菌导致胃黏膜病理损伤表现的多样性与年龄的关系。进行胃镜检查的患者,排除其它脏器疾病,测定尿素酶表达程度,观察黏膜损伤情况并取病理。结果是不同程度尿素酶表达的幽门螺杆菌感染性胃炎表现不同的病理特征;年龄、幽门螺杆菌感染时间及生活事件是相互作用的原因。幽门螺杆菌特征性慢性感染过程及其致病方式使胃黏膜的病理变化有了多样性,高尿素酶表达的幽门螺杆菌引起的增生性病灶乃至隆起性病变的机会随年龄增加及胃黏膜的病理变化而增长。     

Proportionality, Just War Theory and Weapons Innovation

Just wars are supposed to be proportional responses to aggression: the costs of war must not greatly exceed the benefits. This proportionality principle raises a corresponding ‘interpretation problem’: what are the costs and benefits of war, how are they to be determined, and a ‘measurement problem’: how are costs and benefits to be balanced? And it raises a problem about scope: how far into the future do the states of affairs to be measured stretch? It is argued here that weapons innovation always introduces costs, and that these costs cannot be determined in advance of going to war. Three examples, the atomic bomb, the AK-47 and the ancient Greek catapult, are given as examples. It is therefore argued that the proportionality principle is inapplicable prospectively. Some replies to the argument are discussed and rejected. Some more general defences of the proportionality principle are considered and also rejected. Finally, the significance of the argument for Just War Theory as a whole is discussed.     

Piercing the Veil: Ethical Issues in Ethnographic Research

It is not unusual for researchers in ethnography (and sometimes Institutional Review Boards) to assume that research of “public” behavior is morally unproblematic. I examine an historical case of ethnographic research and the sustained moral outrage to the research expressed by the subjects of that research. I suggest that the moral outrage was legitimate and articulate some of the ethical issues underlying that outrage. I argue that morally problematic Ethnographic research of public behavior can derive from research practice that includes a tendency to collapse the distinction between harm and moral wrong, a failure to take account of recent work on ethical issues in privacy; failure to appreciate the deception involved in ethnographers’ failure to reveal their role as researchers to subjects and finally a failure to appropriately weigh the moral significance of issues of invasion of privacy and inflicted insight in both the research process and subsequent publication of research.