Ethical issues at the university-industry interface: A way forward?

This paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest.Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies.     

For the greater goods? Ownership rights and utilitarian moral judgment

People often judge it unacceptable to directly harm a person, even when this is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome, such as saving five other lives. We demonstrate that similar judgments arise when people consider damage to owned objects. In two experiments, participants considered dilemmas where saving five inanimate objects required destroying one. Participants judged this unacceptable when it required violating another’s ownership rights, but not otherwise. They also judged that sacrificing another’s object was less acceptable as a means than as a side-effect; judgments did not depend on whether property damage involved personal force. These findings inform theories of moral decision-making. They show that utilitarian judgment can be decreased without physical harm to persons, and without personal force. The findings also show that the distinction between means and side-effects influences the acceptability of damaging objects, and that ownership impacts utilitarian moral judgment.     

Anthropocentric by Default? Attribution of Familiar and Novel Properties to Living Things

Humans naturally and effortlessly use a set of cognitive tools to reason about biological entities and phenomena. Two such tools, essentialist thinking and teleological thinking, appear to be early developmental cognitive defaults, used extensively in childhood and under limited circumstances in adulthood, but prone to reemerge under time pressure or cognitive load. We examine the nature of another such tool: anthropocentric thinking. In four experiments, we examined patterns of property attribution to a wide range of living and non‐living objects, manipulating time pressure, response type, and property (either novel or familiar) in a total of 471 participants. Results showed no tendency toward increased similarity‐based attribution patterns indicative of anthropocentric thinking under time pressure. However, anthropocentric thinking was consistently observed for unfamiliar properties. These findings suggest that anthropocentric thinking is not a developmentally persistent cognitive default, but rather a cognitive strategy deliberately employed in situations of uncertainty.     

Interference control in adolescents with Mild-to-Borderline Intellectual Disabilities and/or behavior disorders

The aim of this study was to investigate interference control in adolescents with Mild to Borderline Intellectual Disability (MBID) by addressing two key questions. First, as MBID is often associated with comorbid behavior disorders (BD), we investigated whether MBID and BD both affect interference control. Second, we studied whether interference control deficits are associated to problems in everyday executive functioning. Four groups of adolescents with and without MBID and/or BD performed the Eriksen flanker task, requiring participants to respond to a central target while ignoring interfering flanking stimuli. Their teachers rated behavior on the Behavior Rating Inventory Executive Function (BRIEF). We found pronounced effects of MBID but not BD on flanker interference control. In contrast, we observed pronounced effects of BD, but not MBID, on the BRIEF. In addition, flanker interference scores and BRIEF scores did not correlate. These results are taken to suggest that adolescents with MBID are characterized by deficits in interference control that do not become manifest in ratings of everyday executive functioning. In contrast, adolescents with BD are not characterized by deficits in interference control but do show elevated ratings of deficits in everyday executive function.     

Factor structure of the construct of adaptive behavior in children with and without intellectual disability

Although the presence of significant limitations in adaptive behavior constitutes one of the three necessary criteria for diagnosing intellectual disability, adaptive behavior structure has always been the subject of considerable controversy among researchers. The main goal of this study is to extend previous research results that provide further support to a multidimensional structure of conceptual, social, and practical skills compared to the unidimensional structure. One-factor and 3-correlated factors models as measured by 15 observable indicators were analyzed by means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), as well as their relationships with one second-order factor (i.e., adaptive behavior). To that end, 388 children with and without intellectual disabilities were assessed with the Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale (DABS). Results of CFA indicated that the 3 first-order factors solution provides the best fit to the data. Reliability and validity of the multidimensional model were also analyzed through different methods such as the composite reliability and the average variance extracted. Finally, implications of these findings and possible directions for future research are discussed.     

Ecological issues of justice

In the first part of this article the author explores the implications for justice of the wider range of parties holding moral standing that environmental ethics has recently disclosed. These implications concern the equitable treatment of future generations and nonhuman creatures, and are relevant both to policies, such as approaches to global warming, and procedures, which may need to be revised to give an equitable voice to unrepresented interests. Later the author considers some radical implications of regarding humanity as stewards of the planetary environment, a view defended in his recent book Creation, Evolution and Meaning. If all adult humans have this role, but many are prevented from discharging it by poverty and related constraints, then those who are thus disempowered need to be empowered to exercise this role. This requirement of equity would arise not from their moral patienthood but from what is involved in respecting them as moral agents. Some approaches to tackling global warming are considered in this connection.     

International Human Rights and National Discretion

This paper argues that the EuropeanCourt of Human Rights couldserve as a model for an international court ofhuman rights to be builtupon the United Nations Committee on HumanRights. It argues that theconcerns states might have over the surrenderof a significant portion oftheir national sovereignity might be lessenedif such an internationalcourt were to incorporate the margin ofappreciation doctrine employed bythe European Court of Human Rights. Thisdoctrine is intended to respectthe customs and traditions of sovereign statesin dealing with humanrights issues, while maintaining that somerights such as the right not tobe tortured will be considered as basic andwill stand independently ofthe customs and traditions of sovereignstates.     

What survivors see: Creative condemnations of total institutionalization

This paper presents a 2013–2016 research project that documented the history of the Huronia Regional Centre from the perspectives of survivors. Located in Ontario Canada, Huronia housed children with intellectual disabilities until its closure in 2009, and is now notorious for its violent history. Our research collective visited Huronia in 2014 to take pictures of the space, and used those photographs in scrapbook art created in monthly workshops. This paper presents pages selected from survivors' scrapbooks to illustrate key spatial conditions and affective experiences of a total institution. Analysis of these images shows that models of institutionalization are designed to produce violence against the institutionalized. Given the collective's commitment to an arts-informed methodology, this paper serves as a clear condemnation of every version of institutionalization. First, this paper situates its argument in geographic and sociological research that has taken up Goffman's concept of the total institution. Next, it lays out a methodological approach that included photovoice adapted for intellectually disabled institutional survivors. Finally, it presents and analyzes key images of art that survivors produced with support in workshop settings—with a focus on photography taken in facility buildings and on facility grounds.