Intuitive Attractiveness Research Articles

From a decentralized clinical trial to a decentralized and clinical-trial-in-a-box platform: Towards patient-centric and equitable trials.

Despite the intuitive attractiveness of bringing research to participants rather thanmaking them come to central study sites, widespread decentralized enrollment has not been common in clinical trials. The need for clinical research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with innovations in technology, led us to use a decentralized trial approach in our Phase 2 COVID-19 trial. We used real-time acquisition and transmission of health-related data using home-based monitoring devices and mobile applications to assess outcomes. This approach not only avoids spreading COVID-19but it also can support inclusion of participants in more diverse socioeconomic circumstances and in rural settings. Our team developed and deployed a decentralized trial platform to support patient engagement and adverse event reporting. Clinicians, engineers, and informaticians on our research team developed a Clinical-Trial-in-a-Box tool to optimally collect and analyze data from multiple decentralized platforms. Applying the decentralized model in Long COVID, using digital health technology and personal devices integrated with our telehealth platform, we share the lessons learned from our work, along with challenges and future possibilities.

Being Responsible and Holding Responsible: On the Role of Individual Responsibility in Political Philosophy

This paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of ‘self-creative responsibility’ as an alternative to the standard view and shows how central elements on which this account is founded has been prominently defended in the history of Western political thought but are comparatively neglected in contemporary political theory. Relying on this account, the paper argues that society should hold persons responsible when, and only when, doing so enables them to lead responsible lives, and only on the condition that doing so does not infringe other persons’ equivalently valuable ability to lead responsible lives. The account of self-creative responsibility, the paper concludes, plausibly captures the intuitive attraction of holding responsible while respecting the value of being responsible.

The Empirical Case for Moral Beauty

ABSTRACTAlthough formative of modern value theory, the moral beauty view—which states that moral virtue is beautiful and moral vice is ugly—is now mostly neglected by (analytic) philosophers. The two contemporary defences of the view mostly capitalize on its intuitive attractiveness, but to little avail: such considerations hardly convince sceptics of what is nowadays a rather unpopular view. Historically, the view was supported by thought experiments; and although these greatly increase its plausibility, they also raise empirical questions, which they leave unanswered. Here, I offer a novel defence of the moral beauty view, capitalizing on empirical evidence and arguing via an inference to the best explanation.

On the Inadmissibility of Some Historical Information

I argue—from a Humean perspective—for the falsity of what I call the “Admissibility of Historical Information Thesis” (AHIT). According to the AHIT, propositions that describe past events are always admissible with respect to propositions that describe future events. I first demonstrate that this thesis has some counter‐intuitive implications and argue that a Humean can explain the intuitive attractiveness of the AHIT by arguing that it results from a wrong understanding of the concept of chance. I then demonstrate how a Humean “best system” analysis of chance predicts the existence of inadmissible historical information and discuss the implications of this conclusion to the debate between Humeans and non‐Humeans.

Global equality of resources and the problem of valuation

The principle that every individual on the planet has a claim to an equal share of Earth’s natural resources has an intuitive attraction. Yet the Principle of Natural Resource Equality is not without its problems. This article focuses on the problem of valuation. Unless and until its adherents are able to develop an adequate theoretical mechanism for determining the comparative value of two or more bundles of natural resources the principle lacks applicability and persuasive force. Three adequacy constraints on such a mechanism are presented and then applied to a theorisation of the Principle of Natural Resource Equality that I have already expounded elsewhere: Global Equality of Resources. In each case I try to argue that Global Equality of Resources could satisfy the adequacy constraint, provided that both this theory and the relevant constraint are properly understood.

Questioning screening

Death rates from cancer are falling in almost all countries. It is tempting to attribute these encouraging trends equally to, screening, early detection and better treatments. There is a great deal of scientific research being invested in these endeavours and all are rigorously scrutinised. Screening has an intuitive attraction and is often emotionally championed to be “the responsible thing to do”. Recent work has questioned the scope and role of screening in three major fields of Women’s Health namely cervical cytology, mammography and ovarian cancer detection. If gynaecologists are to be advocates for women’s health then they must be sure that correct, evidence-based information is distributed. What was true about screening 7 years ago is not necessarily true today and the present “facts” may not be true in the future. Vested interests in the promotion of screening do exist and the well-woman visit needs to be able to prove that all its steps are in the woman’s interests. This article raises new evidence about screening and argues for the evaluation in all screening on a benefits/harms ratio and then the choice being agreed by the care-giver and patient. As the evidence changes, so do our prejudices come under scrutiny. Are we prepared to objectively review our position in the light of new data?Keywords: Cervical cytology; Mammography; Ovarian cancer screening

Why a Trade-Off? The Relationship between the External and Internal Validity of Experiments

Much of the methodological discussion around experiments in economics and other social sciences is framed in terms of the notions of internal and external validity. The standard view is that internal validity and external validity stand in a relationship best described as a trade-off. However, it is also commonly held that internal validity is a prerequisite to external validity. This article addresses the problem of the compatibility of these two ideas and analyzes critically the standard arguments about the conditions under which a trade-off between internal and external validity arises. Our argument stands against common associations of internal validity and external validity with the distinction between field and laboratory experiments and assesses critically the arguments that link the artificiality of experimental settings done in the laboratory with the purported trade-off between internal and external validity. We conclude that the idea of a trade-off or tension between internal and external validity seems, upon analysis, far less cogent than its intuitive attractiveness may lead us to think at first sight.

Assessment of health‐related quality of life and patient benefit as outcome measures for clinical trials in hepatocellular carcinoma

AbstractAim: The purpose of the study was to determine the feasibility and validity of using health‐related quality of life (HRQL) and patient benefit as outcome measures in a phase II trial of octreotide long acting release (LAR) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC); and, to determine aspects of HRQL that were most impaired and aspects that changed.Methods: Sixty‐three patients with advanced HCC were treated with octreotide LAR. HRQL was assessed monthly with the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – Hepatobiliary Questionnaire (FACT‐Hep) and the Patient Disease and Treatment Assessment Form (Patient DATA Form). Benefit was assessed directly by asking subjects at 1 month about change from baseline using the Patient Benefit Form. Convergent, discriminative and predictive validity were assessed by testing a priori hypotheses.Results: Seventy‐three percent completed a baseline assessment of HRQL. Compliance decreased over time. Fatigue, energy, anxiety, pain, insomnia, and emotional well‐being were the most impaired aspects of HRQL on the Patient DATA Form. Convergent validity was supported by 52 of 57 hypothesized correlations. Predictive validity was supported by associations between survival and four aspects of HRQL. Patients' direct assessments of benefit for common symptoms were moderately associated with changes in their scores on the Patient DATA Form.Conclusion: Use of the FACT Hep and Patient DATA Form is feasible in trials of advanced HCC. The validity of the direct measure of patient benefit was questionable, despite its intuitive attraction. Fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, and impaired emotional well‐being were prominent, are probably under‐recognized in practice, and are worthy of future research.

Grammetrics and Cognitive Semantics: Metaphorical and force dynamic aspects of verse-syntax counterpoint

The phenomenon of verse-syntax heteromorphy, frequently described in terms of enjambement or run-on lines, is investigated in its structural and functional aspects. Investigating the basis for the tradition of conceiving the phenomenon as a kind of counterpoint, this structural analogy, being found to hold an intuitive attraction, is analysed with a view to its functional implications: what does it imply for the contrapuntal phenomenon in terms of perception/performance to be conceived in terms of different scenarios of force-dynamic emphasis on its structurally constitutive terms? The four basic scenarios of run-on, enjambement, vemficational pseudosyntax and garden path versification are thus analysed. Next, the investigation turns to focus on the theoretical implications of different conceptions of syntactic movement as observed to relate to different conceptions of verse-linear space. An emergent pattern of conceptual mind-body continuity is discussed with a constant view, on the one hand, to the phenomenal specifics of verse-syntax counterpoint and, on the other, the deeper phenomenological significance to be drawn from analysing this structure. The phenomenon is finally found as being meaningful, articulating basic experience, in a broader existential perspective.

The burdens of public justification: constructivism, contractualism, and publicity

The publicity of a moral conception is a central idea in Kantian and contractarian moral theory. Publicity carries the idea of general acceptability of principles through to social relations. Without publicity of its moral principles, the intuitive attractiveness of the contractarian ideal seems diminished. For it means that moral principles cannot serve as principles of practical reasoning and justification among free and equal persons. This article discusses the role of the publicity assumption in Rawls’s and Scanlon’s contractualism. I contend that a regard for publicity and a moral conception’s potential to provide a public basis for justification and agreement account for much of the evolution of Rawls’s account of justice after A Theory of Justice. I also discuss whether contractualism can provide a basis for justification and general agreement under the social conditions that it endorses. I contend that it cannot, and conclude with a discussion showing why this should not be a problem for contractualism. Despite appearances, contractualism is a distinctive form of contractarianism, substantially different from Rawls’s position and the social contract tradition out of which it evolved.

Deprivation amplification revisited; or, is it always true that poorer places have poorer access to resources for healthy diets and physical activity?

BackgroundIt has commonly been suggested (including by this author) that individual or household deprivation (for example, low income) is amplified by area level deprivation (for example, lack of affordable nutritious food or facilities for physical activity in the neighbourhood).DiscussionThe idea of deprivation amplification has some intuitive attractiveness and helps divert attention away from purely individual determinants of diet and physical activity, and towards health promoting or health damaging features of the physical and social environment. Such environmental features may be modifiable, and environmental changes may help promote healthier behaviors. However, recent empirical examination of the distribution of facilities and resources shows that location does not always disadvantage poorer neighbourhoods. This suggests that we need: a) to ensure that theories and policies are based on up-to-date empirical evidence on the socio-economic distribution of neighbourhood resources, and b) to engage in further research on the relative importance of, and interactions between, individual and environmental factors in shaping behavior.SummaryIn this debate paper I suggest that it may not always be true that poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to lack health promoting resources, and to be exposed to more health damaging resources. The spatial distribution of environmental resources by area socioeconomic status may vary between types of resource, countries, and time periods. It may also be that the presence or absence of resources is less important than their quality, their social meaning, or local perceptions of their accessibility and relevance.

On Higher-Order and Free-Floating Chances

Marc Lange ([2006]) considers what I call free-floating chances-objective chances that obtain at a given time despite the fact that their values are not determined by the laws of nature together with the full history of non-chancy facts up to that time. I offer an intuitive example of this phenomenon, and use it to argue that free-floating chances are indeed possible. Their possibility violates three quite widely held principles about chances: the lawful magnitude principle, the principle that chances evolve by conditionalization and a version of David Lewis' principal principle. I argue that we should reject common formulations of each of these principles, though I offer revised understandings of each which retain much of the intuitive attractiveness of the originals and are consistent with the possibility of free-floating chances. I conclude by arguing that, while considerations of free-floating chances are important, they will not sustain the extravagant conclusions Lange attempts to draw from them.

A First Cut Evaluation of the Impact of Industry Cash Flows on Hedge Fund Alpha

The current consensus that industry growth, as evidenced by massive cash flows and the proliferation of hedge funds, must lead to substantially lower returns across the wide spectrum of strategies clearly has both some intuitive attractiveness and some academic support. Yet only a more careful analysis can help determine whether it is really valid in practice or simply too sweeping to contain useful insights. In this brief article, the author summarizes work recently completed to address this issue in some more depth. A first cut analysis of manager alpha across several strategies or groups of strategies does suggest that there may have been more negative impact from cash flows in the absolute return space than in the area of semi-directional or managed futures strategies. This makes general sense when one observes that there are more conceivable limits to the number of trading opportunities available in the absolute return space than in other segments of the hedge fund industry. Yet even there, one should recognize that this analysis has identified interesting alpha trends, but has not focused on explaining them in an exhaustive and systematic manner. It would therefore be very interesting to conduct additional research, focused first on a more detailed definition of manager alpha and second on the explanation of changes in these levels of alpha, when these have evidently occurred.

The risks of a networked military

Lost in the welter of daily crises—Serbian atrocities, Chinese espionage, North Korean nuclear programs, and Iraqi intransigence—is the big story about American defense policy. Away from the headlines, as the United States designs a security policy for the twenty-first century, two basic facts of long-term consequence have emerged. The first is that present and foreseeable defense budgets are simply not large enough simultaneously to support the current tempo of military operations worldwide, the high level of training and readiness that makes American skill at warfare second to none, and the modernization of the current arsenal. The second fact is less widely recognized, but just as certain, and it has important implications for how we deal with the first. Notions of an information technology–driven “revolution in military affairs” (IT-RMA) are now deeply embedded in American defense planning. But despite their intuitive attractiveness, these ideas are dangerously misguided. American national security planners, informed by an influential group of academics and retired military officers, are pushing a dramatically new vision of conflict in the twenty-first century. These visionaries argue that the combination of advances in information computer processing, microelectronics, surveillance, and precision weapons technologies will permit a fundamentally new way of war. After reviewing the challenges for ensuring national security in the next century, the blue-ribbon National Defense Panel, for example, endorsed an aggressive transformation of the American military. The IT-RMA, it concluded, permits and demands a new force structure that “radically alter[s] the way in which we project power,” reducing reliance on

How to Defeat Opposition to Moore

What modal relation must a fact bear to a belief in order for this belief to constitute knowledge of that fact? Externalists have proposed various answers, including some that combine externalism with contextualism. We shall find that various forms of externalism share a modal conception of open to serious objections. Fortunately, the undeniable intuitive attractiveness of this conception can be explained through an easily confused but far preferable notion of safety. The denouement of our reflections, finally, will be to show how replacing sensitivity with safety makes it possible to defend plain Moorean common sense against the spurious advantages over it claimed by skeptical, tracking, relevant-alternative, and contextualist accounts.

Newcomb's Problem, Prisoners' Dilemma, and collective action

Among various cases that equally admit of evidentialist reasoning, the supposedly evidentialist solution has varying degrees of intuitive attractiveness. I suggest that cooperative reasoning may account for the appeal of apparently evidentialist behavior in the cases in which it is intuitively attractive, while the inapplicability of cooperative reasoning may account for the unattractiveness of evidentialist behaviour in other cases. A collective causal power with respect to agreed outcomes, not evidentialist reasoning, makes cooperation attractive in the Prisoners' Dilemma. And a natural though unwarranted assumption of such a power may account for the intuitive appeal of the one-box response in Newcomb's Problem.

The audio interface

This essay is concerned with the idea that “dtimbral behaviour” is as much a part of the identity of an instrument as is the timbre itself. The nature and importance of the interface between daudio-feedback (particularly the role of timbral behaviour) and dartistic gesture is examined against the historical background of the authors involvement in the development and introduction of one of the major electronic musical instruments of recent years, the DX7 FM synthesiser. Starting from an early intuitive and naive attraction to the “dvelocity sensitivity” parameter and the dBC1 breath controller, an attempt is made to apply some understanding by the examination of FM as a tool for timbral modeling and the special role of the dmodulation index. More generalised issues surrounding the idea of timbral behaviour are then developed which relate to the interface between timbral behaviour and instrumental artistic gesture, (pitch and effort), and which can be applied both to today's electronic music and the manufa...

The consulting teacher model: risks and opportunities.

The consulting teacher model is receiving increasing attention in state departments of education and local school districts. It offers possibilities for improving educational service in the mainstream to mildly handicapped children and other children at risk and is consonant with the current regular/special education initiative being promoted by the federal government. It also is consistent with reform strategies urging creation of master teachers. Because of its intuitive attractiveness, a risk exists that the model will be implemented prematurely on a statewide level. Among the likely and undesirable side-effects of hasty implementation are ineffective caseload management, conversion of the model into yet another tutoring model, premature replacement of the resource model, inadequate training of both regular and special educators, neglect of financial and program evaluation, and insufficient funding support from regular education. To increase the odds of successful implementation, states must accommodate multiple goals for the model, create administrative incentives that do not undermine it, and assure adequate preparation of teachers as consulting teachers. Without sufficient attention, resources, and planning, the consulting teacher model will fail to achieve its potential.

Privacy as a value and as a right

Privacy as a value and as a right

An analysis of Hansson's dyadic deontic logic

Recently, Bengt Hansson presented a paper about dyadic deontic logic,2 criticizing some purely axiomatic systems of dyadic deontic logic and proposing three purely semantical systems of dyadic deontic logic which he confidently called dyadic standard systems of deontic logic (DSDL1–3). Here I shall discuss the third by far most interesting system DSDL3 which is operating with preference relations. First, I shall describe this semantical system (Sections 1.1–1.3). Then I shall give an axiomatic system (Section 1.4) which is proved to be correct (Section 2) and complete (Section 3) with respect to Hansson's semantics. Finally, in face of these results Hansson's semantics will be discussed from a more intuitive standpoint. After emphasizing its intuitive attractiveness (Section 4.1) I will show that two objections often discussed in connection with preference relations do not apply to it (Section 4.2 and 4.3); more precisely, I will show that the connectedness condition for preference relations can be dropped and that, in a sense, it is not necessary to compare two possible worlds differing in infinitely many respects. (What exactly is meant by this, will become clear later on.) Yet there is a third objection to Hansson's semantics which points to a real intuitive inadequacy of DSDL3. A way of removing this inadequacy, which corresponds to Hansson's own intuitions as well as to familiar metaethical views, is suggested, but not technically realized (Section 4.4). In the last section (section 4.5) I shall briefly show that DSDL3 is decidable, as expected.