Ethical Assessment Research Articles

Guilt, Shame and Academic Misconduct

Moral and self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame can function as internal negative experiences that punish or deter bad behaviour. Individual differences exist in people’s tendency to experience guilt and shame. Being disposed to experience guilt and/or shame may predict students’ expectations of their emotional reactions to engaging in immoral behaviour in the form of academic misconduct, and thus dissuade students from intending to engage in this behaviour. In this study, students’ (n = 459) guilt and shame proneness, their expectations of feeling guilt and shame if they engaged in academic misconduct, and their intentions to engage in academic misconduct were measured. Three of the four facets of the guilt and shame proneness scale [GASP: Guilt–Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame–Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE)] had significant negative correlations with academic misconduct intentions, and these relationships were mediated by anticipating shame and guilt related to engaging in academic misconduct. These results suggest that for some students expecting to experience negative moral emotions when engaging in academic misconduct may protect them from breaching ethical assessment rules.

The welfare of brain organoids

One of the most urgent challenges arising in bioethics has been the ethical assessment of the use of brain organoids, largely because of the possibility of sentience and the potential that if they can feel, then they might suffer. But while there is a growing literature on the possibility of sentience in brain organoids and why we should take a precautionary approach towards them, there is very little guidance on what it would mean to protect their welfare. In this paper, we address this omission by exploring the question of what the welfare of an organoid might be like, and how we could scientifically assess this question. As we will show, these are difficult questions to answer, given the current lack of empirical data on many of the important features of brain organoids, but we will provide some principled empirically-informed speculation on possible answers, as well as suggestions for future research directions.

Rapid Bioethical Assessment for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Host Genetic Study in Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia: Towards a Context-Specific Ethical Approach.

Rapid Ethical Assessment (REA) is a rapid qualitative study anticipated to understand the ethical sphere of the research setting prior to recruiting study subjects. This study assessed the communities' knowledge about tuberculosis (TB) and research, understand the social arrangements advisable for recruiting research participant and appraised the information provision and consent process. The study was conducted in Amhara region, Ethiopia from 5th-30th January 2021. Google-based survey, face-to-face in-depth interview and focus group discussion were carried out to collect the data from researchers, data collectors, health professionals, TB program officers. A structured questionnaire was administered to assess the knowledge of TB patients and healthy controls about TB, research, gene, (co)evolution and consent process. Over 71% of researchers were not satisfied with the current consent process, and 82.7% of researchers agreed that the best interest of the research participants was not adequately addressed in the current research practices in ANRS. TB patients and healthy controls misunderstood research and its goals. Participants advised the researchers to approach the community with the assistance of health extension workers (HEW) or religious/local leaders. Combined use of verbal and written based information provision at individual participant level is the preferred way for information provision. The adherence of researchers to standard information provision and consent process was very low. Healthy controls and TB patients have low level of knowledge and awareness about research, ethics and genomic research-related common terms. Hence, public education is required to strengthen the research ethics in the region.

Традиция Н. Готорна в творчестве И.С. Тургенева: «Постоялый двор» и «Дом о семи фронтонах»

The article deals with the problem of Turgenev’s perception of works written by Hawthorn. For the Russian writer, the period between the 1840–50s turned out to be a time of crisis in artistic manner, which was associated with the writer's movement towards the genre of the novel and the complication of the type of writing. The novel The House of Seven Gables with its genre synthesis and bright socio-ethical orientation attracted Turgenev. Having become acquainted with Hawthorne's novel, he created the story The Inn based on the circumstances and traditions of Russian life. The closeness of the two works can be seen already at the level of titles, which express the essence of the aspirations of the heroes and their position in the world. In addition to the commonality of conceptual names, the similarity between the novel and the story is also manifested in their expositions. It was the first pages of The House of Seven Gables that served Turgenev as creative material and the center for the design of the dramatic story The Inn. There is an obvious similarity in the use of a contrasting description when depicting the past and present of the house of Colonel Pinchen and the “estate” of Naum Ivanov, with the help of which an ethical assessment of the events is built. The owners of these houses are equally dissimilar: on the one hand, an aristocrat, “an eminent and influential gentleman” with an “inflexible will”, on the other, a modest tiller of the land, but skillful and dexterous. Turgenev repeats this opposition in his own way, deducing the peasant, the smart peasant Akim and the practical and prudent tradesman Naum as the main characters. Turgenev and Hawthorne clearly emphasize social inequality, which develops into an ethical conflict, and both authors show that the differences in the position and status of the heroes are inversely proportional to their personal merits.

Translational Bioethics and Health Privacy.

Translational bioethics expands the scope of research ethics to include multidisciplinary analyses of the societal implications of new translational science discoveries. Novel health privacy issues are raised by the collection, use, and disclosure of extensive and diverse big data for research on precision medicine. Similar privacy concerns surround the use of artificial intelligence to analyze vast troves of clinical records to improve patient outcomes. Embedding bioethics scholars with translational scientists can improve the technical analyses and timeliness of bioethical inquiries, but they complicate the task of producing independent and rigorous ethical assessments.

Social License to Operate-Why Public Perception Matters for Horse Sport-Some Personal Reflections.

What is a social license to operate (SLO)? Why would this concept matter for horse sport? In perhaps its simplest form, "social license to operate" is the public's perception of an industry or activity. It is a challenging concept to fully grasp because it does not arrive as a document given by a government agency. Yet it is every bit as important-perhaps more so. Does the industry in question operate with transparency? Does the public believe in the integrity of the stakeholders who are most likely to benefit from the activity? Do people believe there is legitimacy in the scrutinized industry or discipline? Industries who operate with impunity, during our current era of 24-7-365 scrutiny do so at their own risk. It is no longer acceptable to say, "but we've always done it this way." It is no longer acceptable to say, "if we just educate the naysayers, they'll understand our position." Our horse industry will have a challenging time in the current environment convincing stakeholders that horses are "happy athletes" if we are merely avoiding blatantly abusive practices. The public, as well as a large percentage of equestrian stakeholders, want to be convinced that we truly believe "horse welfare shall be paramount." This is not merely a hypothetical, ethical assessment exercise. This is real; this is a threat; and the horse industry should consider themselves put on notice.

Kestävän kehityksen periaatteet kielenoppimisen arvioinnissa

Sustainable development is included in curricula in many countries – from primary to tertiary education, as well as in teacher training. Its principles also encompass language teaching, e.g., through enhancing equality of languages, multilingualism and multiculturalism. Several ethical issues are linked to sustainable development goals, which can be considered part of language teaching and assessment. Based on questionnaire data, this article addresses language teachers’ views on sustainable development and its connection to assessment of language learning. The results show that language teachers (N=29) do not recognize the link between assessment and teaching practices that follow sustainable development principles. Engagement and peer assessment seemed to be a way to support sustainable development principles in language teaching. Further, the results indicate that language teachers need more information about the effects of ethical assessment on supporting language learning and social sustainability.

An ethics assessment list for geoinformation ecosystems: revisiting the integrated geospatial information framework of the United Nations

ABSTRACT To achieve sustainable development goals, georeferenced data and geographic information systems play a crucial role. Yet, the way in which these data and systems are summoned upon rests on positivist assumptions which overlook both epistemological and ethical concerns. This is epitomized by the integrated geospatial information framework (IGIF) of the United Nations, which, from the perspective of sustainable development, aims to provide guidance for the management of geoinformation and related tools, considering these as mirrors of the physical world. In this respect, the article has three main goals. First, it delivers an epistemological and ethical critique of the IGIF, by highlighting its internal tensions. Second, it suggests how the IGIF and similar geoinformation initiatives can benefit from an ethical reflection that allows to conduct georeferenced practices in a fair(er) way. Third, it designs an ethics assessment list for self-evaluating the ethical robustness of geoinformation initiatives as ecosystems.

The fourth ethical comment towards COVID-19 (three years later). Trust and faith: social and moral profile of vaccination

The summarizing up the semantic and systemic results should comprise the next phase to provide insights into COVID-19 pandemic and consider it as a modern epidemic and humanitarian crisis on global level. The journal Infection and Immunity regularly and consistently present the results of ethically viewed legal framework of the pandemic and the administrative regulation of the public health system. Analysis and ethical assessment of the situation covers a wide range of issues, including the provision and operational adaptation of the regulatory framework, the problems of medical care, the processes and conditions for developing diagnostics, treatment and prevention, as well as all aspects related to the organization and implementing vaccination. Three previous ethical comments presented in 20202022 during the pandemic were devoted to these issues. Current study within the framework of the fourth ethical commentary follows directly from the data obtained while evaluating and analysing real-world experience on vaccination in the context of a regional cluster the CIS member states, presented in the previous article. The perceived need and obvious significance of the study is to highlight objective factors of vulnerability in the vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the response spectrum to form trust/or distrust to vaccination in various sectors of society, depending on a set of social and moral factors, including those coupled to a religious denomination. The data obtained are of paramount importance to find the moral ways to support and stabilize a responsible attitude with the aim to protect moral, social and physical health in emergency situations.

Moral Emotions and Unnamed Wrongs: Revisiting Epistemic Injustice

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, I argue that victims can impart their partial understanding of the wrong they suffer to others who are not similarly situated by eliciting moral emotions such as pity that are tied to broad notions of justice and fairness.

Procedural and participatory ethics: community-based evaluation in practice

This article argues that it can be beneficial for institution-based, procedural ethics review of evaluation design in the planning stage to be followed by community-based oversight of ethical issues in the field. Deferring to an institutional review board (IRB) for ethical assessment when a project is underway can be impractical for community-based projects that are designed to be responsive to local needs and interests, especially when community leaders expect to have a meaningful say in determining what is the right thing to do. This article discusses a 2-year project in New Zealand, where community leaders and the project funder formed a project steering group to, among other things, provide ethical oversight. Ethical issues that arose during the project and the steering group’s role in considering the most suitable response are discussed and linked to literature about participatory ethics.

Always take a look back. Ethics in post-conflict archaeology

AbstractThis reaction to the Paul Newson and Ruth Young paper entitled ‘Post-conflict ethics, archaeology and archaeological heritage. A call for discussion’ (Archaeological dialogues, 2022) supports the call for a discussion regarding archaeological ethics in post-conflict zones. Following the agreement on the fuzzy border between the state of ‘conflict’ and ‘post-conflict’, it reflects on the continuity between these two. Furthermore, the reaction adds an additional issue to the discussion, which is the ethical ground of ‘being above the conflict’. Applying a ‘holistic ethic’ approach, it reflects on the ethical assessment of archaeological practices performed by Russian archaeologists in the zones that were damaged during conflict, escalated due to the actions of the Russian government. A series of examples are shown to consider the complexity of ethical judgements in this particular case. Last but not least, the reaction claims that in some cases ethical judgements are possible and effective due to the convergence of numerous factors.

Trusted Smart Statistics and the need for new ethical principles

The changing environment in a datafied society pushes the statistical world into a long-distance race where the final line is never reached because the path is continuously moving along the way. Many countries all over the world are searching for new approaches, new tools, skills and new possible roles for the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs). Horizontal issues are essential to address properly these changes. The first one is the access to Big Data (including Internet of Things – IoT) and the legislative framework and ethical principles related to such access. The second one is to communicate these principles to the citizens and to inform about the statistical treatment of the data from these new sources. The pandemic situation has increased even more the use of these data and opened questions on their uses. Some members of the European Statistical System (ESS) have already elaborated different ethical codes and even ethical assessment tools, which could be overlapped or/and complement the European Statistics Code of practice (ESCP). In parallel, under different projects and groups in the ESS and in the European Commission (related with the EU Data Strategy) some principles have been proposed along with recommendations, some fall under ethical behaviour. The European Statistics Code of Practice has just been updated in 2017, however, this changing environment is demanding new rules and principles that could be incorporated in the Code or even in an amended Regulation 223/2009 on European Statistics. In this paper we analyse the existing ethical principles for Big Data uses (in a broad sense) and under different scenarios and compare them with the current statistical principles. We will try to go even further and think into the future about what kind of principles we would need if we add new roles to the NSIs.

From EU Robotics and AI Governance to HRI Research: Implementing the Ethics Narrative

In recent years, the European Union has made considerable efforts to develop dedicated strategies and policies for the governance of robotics and AI. An important component of the EU’s approach is its emphasis on the need to mitigate the potential societal impacts of the expected rise in the interactive capacities of autonomous systems. In the quest to define and implement new policies addressing this issue, ethical notions have taken an increasingly central position. This paper presents a concise overview of the integration of this ethics narrative in the EU’s policy plans. It demonstrates how the ethics narrative aids the definition of policy issues and the establishment of new policy ideas. Crucially, in this context, robotics and AI are explicitly understood as emerging technologies. This implies many ambiguities about their actual future impact, which in turn results in uncertainty regarding effective implementation of policies that draw on the ethics narrative. In an effort to develop clearer pathways towards the further development of ethical notions in AI and robotics governance, this paper understands human-robot interaction (HRI) research as a field that can play an important role in the implementation of ethics. Four different complementary pathways towards ethics integration in (HRI) research are proposed, namely: providing insights for the improvement of ethical assessment, further research into the moral competence of artificial agents, engage in value-based design and implementation of robots, and participation in discussions on building ethical sociotechnical systems around robots.

Evidence-guided approach to portfolio-guided teaching and assessing communications, ethics and professionalism for medical students and physicians: a systematic scoping review

ObjectivesGuiding the development of longitudinal competencies in communication, ethics and professionalism underlines the role of portfolios to capture and evaluate the multiple multisource appraisals and direct personalised support to clinicians....

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis of patients with skin cancer: a systematic review protocol

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has changed aspects of patient care in the many scheduled medical activities, restricted access to healthcare facilities, and affected the diagnosis and organisation of patients with other...

Technology ethics assessment: Politicising the ‘Socratic approach’

AbstractThat technologies may raise ethical issues is now widely recognised. The ‘responsible innovation’ literature – as well as, to a lesser extent, the applied ethics and bioethics literature – has responded to the need for ethical reflection on technologies by developing a number of tools and approaches to facilitate such reflection. Some of these instruments consist of lists of questions that people are encouraged to ask about technologies – a methodology known as the ‘Socratic approach’. However, to date, these instruments have often not adequately acknowledged various political impacts of technologies, which are, I suggest, essential to a proper account of the ethical issues they raise. New technologies can make some people richer and some people poorer, empower some and disempower others, have dramatic implications for relationships between different social groups and impact on social understandings and experiences that are central to the lives, and narratives, of denizens of technological societies. The distinctive contribution of this paper, then, is to offer a revised and updated version of the Socratic approach that highlights the political, as well as the more traditionally ethical, issues raised by the development of new technologies.

How to embed ethics into laboratory research

ABSTRACT Health-related innovation in biotechnology requires anticipating potential bioethical implications. In this article, we present a strategy to embed ethics in a group of early-stage researchers performing research in gene therapy and regenerative medicine in the laboratory phase. We conducted a series of focus group meetings with early-stage researchers who work in biotechnology laboratories. The objective was to reflect on the bioethical challenges of their own work and to promote the integration of research ethics with laboratory practice. The activity was assessed with questionnaires completed by the researchers before and after the meetings, and the analyses of the focus groups’ content. As a result of the focus group series, all participants changed their perspectives about ethical issues regarding their planned research, developed the ability to reflect and debate on research ethics and had increased awareness of ethical issues in their own research activities. Half of them made changes in their research work. The study provides a concrete strategy to embed ethics and to strengthen responsibility in laboratory research. It is a strategy that allows to perform ethics reflection “on site” and in “real time” and complements the classic strategy of ethics assessment of the research protocol before starting the research procedure.

The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now by Henry Shue

<i>The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now</i> by Henry Shue

How to Defend Mandatory Immunization Against Vaccine Hesitancy and Vaccine Refusal? An Ethical Assessment

One of the basic ethical principles in medical practice is to respect personal autonomy. However, it is a widely accepted view that when it comes to health problems that concern not only the individual but also the society, especially in epidemics of infectious diseases, individual autonomy can be violated by prioritizing the benefit of the community. This view is based on the scientific fact that epidemics can only be controlled by immunizing all susceptible individuals. However, whether all susceptible individuals can be compelled to be immunized remains a matter of debate around the world. Especially in the last three years, during the worldwide Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a significant part of the society has been hesitant about being vaccinated, and some have argued that vaccines should be rejected altogether. In the face of the situation outlined above, the question of "should immunization be mandatory?" has become more important than ever to be able to answer the question in a way that will ensure as broad consensus as possible. In this review article; it was discussed under which conditions mandatory immunization could be justified in terms of ethics and thus, it was aimed to contribute to the solution of the vital problem created by the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy and rejection in terms of public health. To this aim, first of all, the need to clarify some concepts was mentioned. Afterwards, the arguments "must be compulsory", "should be optional", and "should not be done to anyone" were evaluated with their justifications and it was determined that the argument that immunization should be mandatory could be justified in terms of ethics. In the article, it was argued that the conflicts of "individual freedom X community benefit" and "personal autonomy X community benefit" did not exist in today's actual conditions, but it was stated that an individual with the knowledge of reality experiences a tension in the face of not putting this knowledge into practice. It was emphasized that in order to overcome this tension, consolidation of the theoretical background and also consideration of the macro determinants of vaccine hesitancy and rejection in practice were necessary. What needs to be done to re-establish trust in the medical institution was listed, and it was argued that the question of how to implement mandatory immunization could only be answered in a healthy way through a transformation process that will be implemented through a social dialogue.