Ethical Caution Research Articles

Innovative Approaches in Citizenship Education Research: Conceptual Perspectives and Ethical Cautions

This article is devoted to the analysis of innovative approaches in citizenship education research taking into account conceptual perspectives and ethical cautions. The conceptual, axiological, and ethical basis of such innovative frameworks as digital citizenship education and artificial intelligence application for the development of responsible citizenship is elaborated. These innovations revolutionized the theory and practice of citizenship education, causing the use of new approaches and pedagogical methods as well as change in learning environments simultaneously adding new modalities and domains into objectives of citizenship education.

Datafied Brains and Digital Twins: Lessons From Industry, Caution For Psychiatry

This paper asks what sorts of ethical caution ought to attach to increasingly data-driven approaches to understanding the brain. This is taken to be an important question especially owing to a likely near future of neuromonitoring and neuromodulation devices with applications in psychiatry. The paper explores this by i) sketching the concept of ‘digital twin,’ ii) drawing a schematic picture of ‘brain datafication’ in general, and iii) developing a means of understanding some challenges present in datafication through the lens of digital twins. One central concern arises from the role algorithmic processing of neural recordings plays in terms of neuroscientific objectivity, with knock on effects for psychiatric ethics. Essentially, this is owing to a way in which algorithmic processing in brain data construction appears to be deductive in character, but is in fact based on a particular scheme of inductive inference. The challenges explored urge ethical caution as they concern epistemological gaps in data-centered neuroscientific progress, as well as knock-on effects for psychiatry.

Beauvoir’s Concept of “Decline”

This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its plausibility and its ethical and political promise. Though I maintain that the concept is largely plausible, and that it helps us to envision social justice for the aged, I also note certain limitations, and these lead me to suggest philosophical and ethical caution as to its range of application. Briefly, both in theory and in practice, Beauvoir appears to questionably conflate the decline of the phenomenological subject with that of a younger adult version of the psychological self or structure of the personality. Through examinations of Beauvoir’s account of dementia and her paternalism towards her dying mother and the declining Jean-Paul Sartre, I suggest how her concept of decline may fall short, but also how her rich phenomenological descriptions point the way to a pluralistic approach to ageing as a social justice issue.

Experimental infections in humans-historical and ethical reflections.

Vaccine efficacy and prophylactic treatment of infections are tested best when the vaccinated or treated individual is challenged through deliberate infection with the respective pathogen. However, this trial design calls for particular ethical caution. Awareness of the history of challenge trials is indispensable, including trials that were problematic or even connected to abuse. We briefly introduce historical aspects of experimental infections in humans and the ethical debate around them and give estimates of the numbers of volunteers participating in human experimental infection models. Challenge models can offer a great chance and benefit for the development of medical interventions to fight infectious diseases, but only when they are appropriately controlled and regulated.

Ethical dangers of facial phenotyping through photography in psychiatric genomics studies

Psychiatric genomics research protocols are increasingly incorporating tools of deep phenotyping to observe and examine phenotypic abnormalities among individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. In particular, photography and the use of two-dimensional...

Collecting insects to conserve them: a call for ethical caution

Abstract Insect sampling for the purpose of measuring biodiversity – as well as entomological research more generally – largely assumes that insects lack consciousness. Here, we briefly present some arguments that insects are conscious and encourage entomologists to revisit their ethical codes in light of them. Specifically, we adapt the Three Rs, guidelines proposed in 1959 by WMS Russell and RL Burch that have become the dominant way of thinking about the ethics of using animals in research. The Three Rs specify the need to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in research, yet have received little attention in entomological circles, which is perhaps unsurprising given that Russell and Burch explicitly excluded invertebrates from their purview. As a specific case, we consider issues of suffering and bycatch in the use of Malaise traps for insect sampling. While we do not claim that entomologists have an obligation to adopt the Three Rs framework wholesale, we do suggest that there is reason to adopt it in a modified form to mitigate moral risk especially in the context of conservation.

The possible worlds of global health research: An ethics-focused discourse analysis

Representations of the world enable global health research (GHR), discursively constructing sites in which studies can legitimately take place. Depoliticized portrayals of the global South frequently obscure messy legacies of colonialism and motivate technical responses to health problems with political and economic root causes. Such problematic representations of the world have not yet been rigorously examined in relation to global health ethics, a major site of scholarly effort towards GHR that promotes justice and fairness. We carried out a discourse analysis of four guidance documents relevant to the ethical practice of GHR, purposively selecting texts covering different genres (UN documents and journal articles) and prominent GHR foci (HIV and clinical trials). In light of increasing acknowledgement of the lessons Indigenous health scholarship holds for global health ethics, the four analyzed texts also included a set of principles developed to support Indigenous nation-building. Three of four documents featured global disparities as reasons for ethical caution. These inequalities appeared without explanation or causes, with generation of new scientific knowledge following as a logical response to such disparities. The fourth – Indigenous health-focused – document clearly identified 'colonialism' as a reason for both inequities in society, and related harmful research practices. Solutions to disparities in this text did not necessarily involve cutting-edge research, but focused instead on empowerment and responsiveness to community priorities and needs. These contrasting representations of the world were accomplished in ways that depended on texts' 'participants', or the people they represented; specific vocabularies or language usages; intertextual relationships to prior texts; and overall objectives or intentions of the author(s). Our results illustrate how ethics and other guidance documents serve as an important terrain for constructing, naturalizing or contesting problematic representations of the world of GHR.

‘I’m not going to cross that line, but how do I get closer to it?’ A hedge fund manager’s perspective on the need for ethical training and theory for finance professionals

Drawing on a finance professional’s reflections on his ethical education as an economics undergraduate, Chartered Financial Analyst, and top-tier MBA graduate, this article considers the framing of, and need for philosophy in, ethical training for finance professionals. Role-playing is emphasized as helpful for developing a mature ethical approach, and theory is seen as desirable after the fact, to plan improved future action. The article problematizes an orientation in professional programs that primarily gears the teaching of ethics toward those students perceived to be least ethical. This orientation seems to underlie both the education the financial professional received and current public interest in ‘more ethics’ in professional programming. As an alternative, the article reframes finance students and professionals as ethical actors whose primary dilemma (and need for theory in ethical training) concerns not how to avoid ethical transgressions, but how to better optimize the duty to self in order to avoid excessive ethical caution that interferes with achieving the greatest good for the greatest number.

The ethical primacy of advertising rhetoric

What is the relationship between advertising and morals (this one as an object of ethical reflection)? Advertising does not depend on morality, but it can be moral or immoral. If advertising uses speech power to become effective, it is a rhetorical or a persuasive speech art requiring an ethical caution, because the goals are determined and do not justify the means. Advertising takes an ethical dimension, especially when it follows a cunning, fallacious or deceptive strategy. The topic of ethics is, sic et simpliciter, rational, dialectical and reflexive. Ethical issues are, as a rule, aporias. Thus, this paper focuses on a critical analysis of ethics in advertising and communication. The methodology is reflected in the conceptualization and questioning of advertising ethics as an aesthetic of rhetorical speech.

Ethical Cautions for Nurses

associate professor at the Yale University School of Nursing in New Haven, CT, and co-coordinator of Ethical Issues

Sex selection and preimplantation genetic diagnosis

Sex selection and preimplantation genetic diagnosis

Ethical cautions in the use of outcomes for resource allocation in the managed care environment of mental health

Increasingly, resources are being allocated through competitive contracting based on outcome data. This context for outcome research renews ethical concern about the nature of outcome data in the field of mental health. The epistemology of mental illness creates special concerns regarding outcome measurement. Ethical cautions specific to six types of outcome measurement are reviewed: utilization, clinician reports, patient reports, objective measures of diagnostic entities, objective measures of functioning and multifactor research. Brief guidelines are offered for addressing ethical cautions. Also discussed are the difficulty in defining good outcomes and a social obligation to future generations that may be better addressed through process measurements.

DIALOGUE ON BIOFEEDBACK (50 minuts, color,1974). Produced by the Veterans Administration and available on free loan to hospitals, university departments, and appropriate professional irganizations from the Central Office Film Library (037B1), VA Central Office, 810 Vermont Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20420. Available for $246.46 from the Motion Picture Service, Room 1081-S, Department of Agriculture, 14th and Independence, Washington, D.C. 20250

HOSPITAL & COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY To my great surprise, the Behavioral Avoidance Test was not described. While this measure certainly has its problems,1 it is the chief behavioral method used following desensitization for assessing the change in behavior related to the phobic object. Given the behavioral orientation of this therapeutic area, the editor’s omission of it is unfortunate. Practitioners may find Butterfield’s chapter on instrumentation useful, even though it includes only minimal information on where to buy the devices, and only the most general information on their reliability, durability, and cost. I am seriously disturbed, however, that, in the section on electric shock, the only expression of concern for the clients has to do with possible physical damage to them. Nothing is said about ethics or informed consent. The practitioner interested in using electric shock devices should consult Butterfield’s more recent article on this topic,2 both for the ethical cautions included there, and for a more extended discussion of apparatus and current characteristics.