Tag: empirical research

Bioethics Blogs

Can we trust research in science and medicine?

Readers of the Practical Ethics Blog might be interested in this series of short videos in which I discuss some of the major ongoing problems with research ethics and publication integrity in science and medicine. How much of the published literature is trustworthy? Why is peer review such a poor quality control mechanism? How can we judge whether someone is really an expert in a scientific area? What happens when empirical research get polarized? Most of these are short – just a few minutes. Links below:

Why most published research probably is false

The politicization of science and the problem of expertise

Science’s publication bias problem – why negative results are important

Getting beyond accusations of being either “pro-science” or “anti-science”

Are we all scientific experts now? When to be skeptical about scientific claims, and when to defer to experts

Predatory open access publishers and why peer review is broken

The future of scientific peer review

Sloppy science going on at the CDC and WHO

Dogmas in science – how do they form?

* Please note: this post will be cross-published with the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.

Bioethics Blogs

Can We Trust Research in Science and Medicine?

By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp)

Readers of the JME Blog might be interested in this series of short videos in which I discuss some of the major ongoing problems with research ethics and publication integrity in science and medicine. How much of the published literature is trustworthy? Why is peer review such a poor quality control mechanism? How can we judge whether someone is really an expert in a scientific area? What happens when empirical research get polarized? Most of these are short – just a few minutes. Links below:

Why most published research probably is false

The politicization of science and the problem of expertise

Science’s publication bias problem – why negative results are important

Getting beyond accusations of being either “pro-science” or “anti-science”

Are we all scientific experts now? When to be skeptical about scientific claims, and when to defer to experts

Predatory open access publishers and why peer review is broken

The future of scientific peer review

Sloppy science going on at the CDC and WHO

Dogmas in science – how do they form?

* Please note: this post will be cross-published with the Practical Ethics blog.

Bioethics Blogs

Making the theoretical practical: Engaging undergraduate students in research methods by Hannah Mohammad

I am currently an undergraduate student in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King’s College London. The Department’s UG program offers students the opportunity to study social aspects of health and medicine in a multi-disciplinary context with close collaboration between the social sciences, life sciences and biomedicine. In addition, a great emphasis is put on methods training to equip students to carry out their own empirical research projects.

Already in first year, the Research Practice and Design Studio course taught us theories and practices required for qualitative and quantitative research. However, in our undergraduate bubble, these late Tuesday afternoon sessions seemed somewhat distant from conducting actual research. In order to address this perceived disconnect, our course instructor, Dr Laurie Corna decided to adopt a problem-based learning approach that allowed us students to be positioned as emerging researchers whilst learning theoretically about a range of issues central to quantitative and qualitative research designs.

A new research methods course was designed around a series of case-based learning activities that culminated in students conducting their own mixed-methods research. Students’ assignments for the course involved working in teams of two on applying and executing various aspects of the research process in relation to the predefined topic “Physical activity in the city of London”.[1] That is, we learned how to articulate research questions, identify ethical problems, write a research proposal and develop related interview topic guides as well as survey questionnaires. Once we had conducted our research, we were tasked to present our findings in the form of a poster during a “Research Showcase” and create a final report on the research project.

Bioethics Blogs

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: The Ethical Dilemma of Youth Politics, written by Andreas Masvie

This essay was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2017

Written by University of Oxford Student, Andreas Masvie

The West in general, and perhaps Europe in particular, tend to celebrate youth politics as a vital force of democracy. This is reflected in the current literature on youth politics, which appears to be almost exclusively descriptive (e.g. ‘What is the level of youth politics in country X?’) or positively normative (e.g. ‘How can country X heighten engagement in youth politics?’). Various youth councils and parliaments are encouraged and empowered by government as well as civil society, both at local and national level. This is also the case internationally. The UN, for instance, demands that youth politics be stimulated: “[Such] engagement and participation is central to achieving sustainable human development.”[1] I will approach the rationale of this collective celebration as a syllogism, defining ‘youth politics’ as organized political engagement of people aged 13–25:

P1 Youth politics increases the level of political engagement;

P2 Political engagement promotes democratic vitality and sustainability; thus

C1 Youth politics promotes democratic vitality and sustainability.

In this paper I am interested in challenging P2. Does the increased political engagement due to youth politics promote democratic vitality and sustainability? For the sake of argument, I will posit the trueness of P1. When it comes to P2: it would be difficult to argue that all forms of political engagement promote democratic vitality and sustainability (e.g. authoritarian neo-Nazism or revolutionary Communism). Hence, I shall take it for granted that P2 is constrained to activities and policies compatible with democracy.

Bioethics Blogs

7th Annual Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Conference

The Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Workgroup and the WMU Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine Program in Medical Ethics, Humanities & Law is proud to announce the 7th Annual Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Conference

September 14-15, 2017
Kalamazoo, Michigan

Overview: Proponents of medical humanities contend that the humanistic dimensions of medicine and health are a critical component of those disciplines; not only do these dimensions help us to understand the very nature of medicine and health, their apprehension allows caregivers to relate to their patients, to treat those patients with respect and dignity, and to provide more holistic and empathetic care.

The 7th Annual Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Conference is committed to the creative, dynamic, interdisciplinary explorations of the range of themes within the broad theme of medical humanities. This highly interdisciplinary conference draws participants from a wide range of backgrounds, including those from academic, creative, and medical communities.

Keynotes: This year’s conference Keynote speakers will be Dr. Jay Baruch and Professor Katie Watson.

Abstracts: Abstracts will be considered in the following categories:

Oral Presentations: 20 minute presentations by one or two authors
Panel discussions: 60 minute presentations by a panel of speakers (generally 3-5). Panel discussions are expected to be interdisciplinary and explore a single topic from multiple perspectives.
Workshops: 60-90 minute presentations with a focus on audience interaction and the creation of some artwork. Previous successful workshops have included mentored drawing, poetry writing, performance dance, etc.
Posters/Visual Arts: Displays of visual arts, and performances (including dance, musical, theatre, etc.)

Bioethics Blogs

When Neuroethicists Become Labmates

By Timothy Brown and Margaret Thompson

Timothy Brown is a doctoral student and research assistant at the University of Washington (UW). He works with the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering’s (CSNE) Neuroethics Trust, where he explores the broader moral and societal implications of neural engineering and neural technology use. Through the CSNE’s support, he is also embedded in the UW’s BioRobotics Lab, where he investigates issues of autonomy and agency that arise for people with motor disorders who use next-generation, neurally-controlled deep-brain stimulators to manage their symptoms.

Margaret Thompson is a doctoral student in the BioRobotics Laboratory in the Electrical Engineering department at University of Washington, Seattle; she is also president of the Student Leadership Council at the CSNE. She received her Master’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington in 2016 and her Bachelor’s in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 2014. She researches side-effect mitigation methods for deep brain stimulation, as well as how human subjects learn to use brain-computer interfaces over months to years at a time.

Maggie Thompson and Tim Brown are graduate students at the University of Washington—Maggie studies electrical engineering, and Tim studies philosophy (in particular, neuroethics). They are both members of the Biorobotics Laboratory—a multidisciplinary lab investigating the interface between human bodies and machines. Tim serves as the lab’s “embedded ethicist” through the support of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE).

Together, Maggie and Tim work on projects related to deep brain stimulators (or DBS, where electrodes implanted in key areas of the brain apply enough current to treat various disorders) and brain computer interfaces (or BCI, where changes in the brain are read by sensors and used to control a computer system).

Bioethics Blogs

Special Issues! The Publics of Public Health in Africa | Anthropological Interrogations of Evidence-Based Global Health by Anna Zogas

I’d like to highlight a pair of Special Sections in the early 2017 issues of Critical Public Health. The first is “The Publics of Public Health in Africa,” guest edited by Ann H. Kelly, Hayley MacGregor, and Catherine M. Montgomery. The second is “Anthropological Interrogations of Evidence-Based Global Health,” guest edited by Elsa L. Fan and Elanah Uretsky. Here are the abstracts for the articles in both sections!

The Publics of Public Health in Africa

The publics of public health in Africa (open access)
Ann H. Kelly, Hayley MacGregor & Catherine M. Montgomery

Excerpt: How do we understand the public character of public health in contemporary Africa? What are the parameters of community engagement in health care delivery, medical research and disease control programmes? To what extent is public health in Africa a project led by African Governments? Through what political processes and deliberative practices can African publics influence the priorities of research in health sciences and interventions which aim in broad terms to improve the health of such publics? Drawing insight from empirical research conducted with African scientists, nurses, community members, clinical trialists and policy-makers, this special section examines the multiple ways in which the publiccomes into being around public health provisioning and investigation in sub-Saharan Africa, its role and political reach. Collectively, these papers show how contestation and negotiation around different ideas about who the public is and what being public means can lead to the emergence of conflicting understandings, with implications for who and what is seen to represent the public interest, and for the acceptance of research and other interventions.

Bioethics Blogs

Dominic Wilkinson, Death or Disability: The Carmentis Machine and Decision-Making for Critically Ill Children, Oxford University Press, 2013

Dominic Wilkinson, a neonatal physician and medical ethicist, has written a searching, moving, and philosophically sophisticated book about the ethics of life and death decision making in the neonatal intensive care unit. Although I will devote much of this review to criticism, I want to say at the outset that Death or Disability represents interdisciplinary work at its very best. Wilkinson’s exposition is both rich in detail and uncompromising in its ethical analysis. He spares the reader none of the clinical, psychological, and moral complexities and uncertainties of the decisions made daily in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

I especially recommend this book to moral philosophers and practical ethicists worried that their debates on issues like time-relative interests and non-identity are ingrown and academic. Wilkinson explains the relevance of these and other seemingly arcane issues to the real, wrenching decisions that parents, physicians, and the larger society must make about the treatment of newborns at risk of very severe impairment.

After briefly outlining the structure of the book and some of its complex arguments, I will focus on three of the few areas where Wilkinson’s thorough, painstaking analysis strikes me as incomplete: the role of impersonal considerations in decisions about continuing or ending the lives of impaired neonates; the implications of the time-relative interest account Wilkinson adopts for balancing potentially conflicting interests in the neonate’s survival; and the role of physicians in helping to make neonatal treatment decisions under the threshold framework Wilkinson proposes.

The book begins with two prologues about imagined visits to learn the fate of a sickly neonate: one to the Roman Temple of Carmentis in 30 AD, the other to The Carmentis Machine in 2030.

Bioethics Blogs

Perspectives in learning; Incorporating discussion materials and activities on ethics into science curriculum.

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has released over 60 educational resources that can be used as tools to teach students, researchers, clinicians, and other professionals to recognize and address ethical aspects of their work and understand how deliberation can inform ethical decision-making. These resources draw from the Bioethics Commission’s reports, and while all reports produced to date have been topic-specific, bioethics education and improving bioethics literacy has been a constant thread throughout the Bioethics Commission’s work.

The Commission’s most recent report, Bioethics for Every Generation, outlines a variety of models that can be used to teach ethics, and emphasizes that ethics education is about preparing students how to think ethically, rather than what to think. Bioethics for Every Generation also emphasizes that ethical questions and topics can be incorporated into existing courses, such as biology, chemistry, social studies and history courses, among others.

Frank Strona, the Bioethics Commission’s Senior Communications Analyst and Adjunct Faculty with National University’s Department of Health Sciences recently had an opportunity to sit down and interview Steven Kessler, Instructor of Biology and Microbiology at Santa Rosa Junior College in Petaluma, CA and former Visiting Fellow with the Bioethics Commission, discusses how incorporating bioethics into his science curriculum has affected his students and his work as a science educator.

FRANK STRONA: Tell us about how you have used bioethics to enhance traditional science education.

STEVEN KESSLER: I incorporate bioethical issues into my traditional science classes in a number of ways. The most satisfying way is to spend an entire class period delving deeply into one or two (if they are related) issues.

Bioethics Blogs

The 2016 Kavli Futures Symposium: Ethical foundations of Novel Neurotechnologies: Identity, Agency and Normality

By Sean Batir (1), Rafael Yuste (1), Sara Goering (2), and Laura Specker Sullivan (2)

Image from Kavli Futures Symposium

(1) Neurotechnology Center, Kavli Institute of Brain Science, Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

(2) Department of Philosophy, and Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195

Detailed biographies for each author are located at the end of this post

Often described as the “two cultures,” few would deny the divide between the humanities and the sciences. This divide must be broken down if humanistic progress is to be made in the future of transformative technologies. The 2016 Kavli Futures Symposium held by Dr. Rafael Yuste and Dr. Sara Goering at the Neurotechnology Center of Columbia University addressed the divide between the humanities and sciences by curating an interdisciplinary dialogue between leading neuroscientists, neural engineers, and bioethicists across three broad topics of conversation. These three topics include conversations on identity and mind reading, agency and brain stimulation, and definitions of normality in the context of brain enhancement. The message of such an event is clear: dialogue between neurotechnology and ethics is necessary because the novel neurotechnologies are poised to generate a profound transformation in our society.

With the emergence of technology that can read the brain’s patterns at an intimate level, questions arose about the implications for how these methods could reveal the core of human identity – the mind. Jack Gallant, from UC Berkeley, reported on a neural decoder that can identify the visual imagery used by human subjects (1).