Matter Of Luck Research Articles

Strategy and Methodology in the Synthesis of Multicomponent Molecular Solids: The Quest for Higher Cocrystals.

Crystal engineering is the art and science of making crystals by design. Crystallization is inherently a purifying phenomenon. Bringing together more than one organic compound into the same crystal always needs deliberate action. Cocrystals are important because they offer a route to the controlled modulation of crystal properties. The route to cocrystal synthesis was opened up with the heterosynthon concept, which considers the complementary recognition of chemical groups from different molecules. Using this concept, binary cocrystals of enormous variety have been generated, even as crystal engineering has evolved into a form of solid-state supramolecular synthesis. Introducing a third component (a component is somewhat arbitrarily defined as an organic substance that is a solid at room temperature, mostly with the idea of excluding solvates) in a stoichiometric manner requires substantially greater effort and a careful balance of intermolecular interactions-their strengths, directional properties, and distance falloff characteristics. The first systematic ternary cocrystal synthesis was reported around 15 years ago. Drawing in a fourth component in stoichiometric amounts is exceedingly difficult, and we reported such syntheses in 2016. To date, a limited number of ternary cocrystals have been realized (around 120 in all, with a half from our group) and an even smaller number of quaternary cocrystals (around 30, all from our group, barring one). It is impressive that our experiments largely yielded the intended higher cocrystal (three- or four-component) with very small traces of contaminating binaries and pure compounds. A fifth or sixth component may be brought into the solid in the manner of a solid solution in that these components are situated at one of the sites of the quaternary cocrystal. To date, five components have not been included stoichiometrically within the same crystal. This is still an open challenge. The merit in synthesizing (higher) cocrystals is that one can systematically engineer property modularity: Each component is associated with a distinct property. This is important in the pharmaceutical industry, where each component can, in principle, confer a different, desirable property-drug action, solubility, or permeability. However, difficult synthetic targets are also addressed in chemistry simply because they are there. The intellectual satisfaction in making something that is very difficult to make renders the enterprise worthwhile in itself, and new chemistry usually gets uncovered in the process. The development of synthetic organic chemistry can undoubtedly be credited to various reliable methods for chemical transformations, and many difficult total syntheses were achieved by employing these methods over two centuries of research. In contrast, supramolecular synthesis (of multicomponent cocrystals and other assemblies) is in no way at a similar level of sophistication because the subject is still relatively young. Our group and others have reported the synthesis of many higher cocrystals with reliable, reproducible, and robust design strategies. There is a general perception that the isolation of some of these cocrystals is a matter of luck! The crux of this Account is that far from being a serendipitous matter, higher cocrystals may only be made with a judicious combination of strategy and methodology-the essence of synthesis.

Free Will, Values, and Narrative Selfhood

Robert Kane’s libertarian theory of freedom is frequently attacked in the free will literature by the “luck objection”. Alfred Mele’s articulation of the objection is a very influential formulation as it captures the spirit of Kane’s critics and their complaint with Kane’s view. Mele argues that without a contrastive explanation that highlights aspects of the agent their free choices are reducible to luck. I argue that the lack of a contrastive explanation does not establish that there is no explanation for self-forming actions. Building on the explanation that Kane offers in his rebuttal, I claim that there are neglected dimensions to Kane’s view that, when put together, mitigate the force of the objection. These elements are value experiments, teleological intelligibility and liberium arbitrium voluntatis. I claim that through adopting a narrative view of the self, we can place value experiments in a broader teleological framework that allows us to see self-forming choices are not just a matter of luck.

Creación y validación de una nueva escala para medir cultura de seguridad del paciente en el medio hispano hablante

ObjectiveCreation and validation of a new in-house synthetic scale to measure patient safety culture. Material and methodCross-sectional and descriptive study in which the results of the assessment of the level of safety culture in health and non-health professionals of a university hospital are collected using a new in-house synthetic scale as a measurement tool. It is called ‘Questionnaire on patient safety culture in a Spanish speaking environment’. The construction process was carried out in six phases: Bibliographic search; Validation of the structure and content of the questionnaire by a group of experts in patient safety using a nominal group technique; Assumptions verification and exploratory factor analysis; Pilot test to ensure its compression by a convenience sample of expert professionals; Modification of version 1.1 after the relevant analyses and analysis of the reliability of the questionnaire. ResultsThe final version of the questionnaire had nine items, grouped into three factors a priori: Hospital Management support in patient safety, Perception of Safety, and Expectations and actions of the Managers/Supervisors that favour safety. The items were structured using a 5-point Likert scale. A general assessment item on patient safety at the Centre was also included, as well as five open questions to identify actions on patient safety undertaken by the Centre. Finally, the possibility of making observations in a section of free text was included. The comprehension analysis did not recommend, in any case, the revision of the wording or modification of the items. The Spearman and Pearson indices were similar, which allowed us to assume the linearity in the relationships proposed. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was satisfactory in all cases, which guaranteed the normal distribution of the variables. The sample was adequate to perform the factorial analysis. Both the Bartlett’ sphericity test and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index showed sample quality to perform the analysis. The recommendation of the exploratory factor analysis that advised eliminating 1 item was followed. Specifically, item 9 was eliminated: ‘It is only a matter of luck that in my Centre no more errors occur that affect patients’. The analysis of our scale has shown that all the factorial loads were greater than 0.5, which indicates good explanatory capacity of the item for the Dimension. In total, the scale manages to explain more than 60% of the perception by professionals in patient safety, considering an acceptable loss of information. ConclusionsA new and validated in-house scale has been created to measure patient safety culture in the Spanish speaking healthcare environment.

Market Selection in Large Economies: A Matter of Luck

Within a general equilibrium model with a continuum of traders, we investigate the Market Selection Hypothesis (MSH) - markets select traders with more accurate beliefs. We find, contrary to known results for economies with (only) finitely many traders, that risk attitudes affect survival and that markets might select against traders with accurate beliefs. Remarkably, even in these cases, asymptotic equilibrium prices reflect accurate beliefs. Thus, unlike known violations of MSH, we corroborate Freedman’s conjecture that market selection forces induce rational expectations.

Market selection in large economies: A matter of luck

In a general equilibrium model with a continuum of traders and bounded aggregate endowment, I investigate the market selection hypothesis that markets favor traders with accurate beliefs. Contrary to known results for economies with (only) finitely many traders, I find that risk attitudes affect traders' survival and that markets can favor “lucky” traders with incorrect beliefs over “skilled” traders with accurate beliefs. My model allows for a clear distinction between luck and skills, and it shows that market selection forces induce efficient prices even when accurate traders do not survive in the long run.

Feeling Lucky: The Serendipitous Nature of Field Education

Field education and the supervision that occurs during this process cements learning and enhances preparedness for a career in social work. Graduate readiness for social work practice is however a contested subject in New Zealand with recent criticism focusing on the adequacy of social work education. This paper reports on findings from focus groups with 27 faculty members and 35 students from eight Schools of Social Work in New Zealand which explored aspects of the taught and learned curriculum. Overall, students and faculty revealed some dissatisfaction with the taught curriculum on supervision that occurs on campus prior to the placement experience. Many students reported irregularity of placement supervision and associated quality supervision with being lucky. We propose a series of recommendations to address these concerns, emphasizing that students should be able to consistently access effective placement supervision rather than consider this a matter of luck.

Tabaré Etcheverry, un breve cantar

Parece entremezclarse, como lo anuncia en uno de sus textos, una cuestión de suerte en la popularidad, o no, de Tabaré ETCHEVERRY. Sobres fines de la década del 70, en el Uruguay, Etcheverry puede pensarse como una especie de bisagra en la cual se amalgaman dos períodos decisivos en la música uruguaya. Comienza a operarse un cambio significativo en la concepción de la canción que unirá a figuras tan disímiles como Los Olimareños, Leo Maslíah, Carlos Cresci e incluso un grupo que inició apuntando a un público infantil, Canciones para no dormir la siesta. El presente trabajo, fruto de una investigación en curso, pretende dar cuenta de aspectos biográficos de José Francisco Etcheverry Tort (1945-1978) y su vinculación con la canción en el Uruguay, su concepción estética, así como de cuestiones políticas que, entre otras cosas, fraguaron una cierta leyenda negra sobre este cantautor.***Tabaré Etcheverry, um breve cantar***Parece se misturar, como ele anuncia em um de seus textos, uma questão de sorte na popularidade, ou não, do cantor e compositor Tabaré ETCHEVERRY. O final dos anos 70, no Uruguai, atua como uma espécie de dobradiça em que dois períodos decisivos são amalgamados em nossa música. Começa a sofrer uma mudança significativa na concepção da música que, agora, vai unir figuras tão diferentes como: Los Olimareños, Leo Maslíah, Carlos Cresci e até mesmo um grupo que começou a atingir a audiência das crianças, Canções para não cochilar. O presente trabalho, fruto de uma pesquisa em curso, tenta dar conta dos aspectos biográficos de José Francisco Etcheverry Tort (1945-1978) e da sua conexão com a música no Uruguai, sua concepção estética, bem como questões políticas que, entre outras coisas, gerou uma certa lenda negra sobre esse cantor e compositor.

Luck in Forensic Psychiatry

Luck in forensic psychiatry may mean a fair treatment for the affected person, safety for the society and satisfying work for the clinician. There has been great progress in forensic psychiatry. A high quality forensic treatment consists of a professional attitude, which preserves the personal integrity and identity. The principles of RNR (Risk-Need-Responsivity) are essential. There are very promising treatment approaches like the "Good lives model" or the "Community Reinforcement Approach" (CRA-Concept), which consider the personal aims and the pursuit of happiness of the patient as a starting point and resource. The most recent legislative changes will probably cause a shorter duration of stay in forensic clinics and will require a more intense and well connected aftercare. The risk of a relapse is not a matter of luck. It can be calculated and reduced. However, further research is needed to improve effectiveness of the follow-up care.

ENVIRONMENTAL LUCK AND THE STRUCTURE OF UNDERSTANDING

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I will call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of (at least a traditional conception of) knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding.

Finding the way into a global industry

PurposeGatekeepers in social research are regularly taken for granted in the associated methods literature, yet they constitute an interesting social phenomenon in themselves as powerful and normally unpaid agents of research access. Questions relating to the recruitment of potential gatekeepers and to the nature of the rewards that they might seek are under-considered and locating key gatekeepers is often characterised (perhaps inadvertently) as a matter of luck or happenstance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a multi-sited ethnography based on maritime industry conferences held annually in Europe and Asia. The two authors attended 18 of these conferences either as regular delegate or as a speaker. In these conferences, they maintained fieldnotes and formally and informally interviewed participants both face to face and e-mail.FindingsEvery year executives come together at commercially organised conferences focussed upon human resource management in the shipping industry. At these events, major global players discuss a programme of issues related to the business of recruiting and training seafarers. However, these international conferences are both much more and much less than they seem. They are crucial in establishing reputational capital and provide researchers with key venues for negotiating research access.Originality/valueThis paper argues that unlike most conferences, these can only be seen as “field configuring events” to a very limited extent but that they nonetheless serve an important purpose in securing symbolic, and more significantly reputational, capital for both individual delegates and interested academics. The paper further argues that resourceful researchers can mobilise such capital in their favour in negotiating research access contributing new ideas to the literature on gatekeepers and on research access.

Can Self-Forming Actions Dispel Worries about Luck?

Libertarian theories of freedom and responsibility face a worry about luck: if an action is undetermined, the action cannot be legitimately attributed to the agent; instead the action is a matter of luck, and so the agent is not responsible for the action. Robert Kane defends libertarianism by appealing to self-forming actions (“SFAs”). These actions are undetermined because the agent is attempting to act on two conflicting motives, but the agent is responsible for the outcome if she is responsible for having those motives. If the agent “endorsed” both motives in earlier SFAs, Kane argues that we can hold the agent responsible for both motives, and hence responsible for the later SFA. We will further develop others’ arguments that Kane’s appeal to earlier SFAs to explain responsibility for a later SFA is unsatisfactory. We then raise a second objection to Kane’s use of SFAs. On one formulation of an SFA, the agent does three things: she exerts two efforts of will to make opposing choices, and she also acts on one of them. On another formulation of an SFA, the agent does just two things: she exerts two efforts of will to make opposing choices. One of those efforts turns out to be successful, but that success doesn’t require any further intervention from the agent. We distinguish two worries involving luck, a problem of resultant luck and a problem of constitutive luck, and show that neither model of SFAs solves both problems.

Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism by Katherin A. Rogers

Reviewed by: Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism by Katherin A. Rogers Eileen Sweeney Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism. By Katherin A. Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 248. $74.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-874397-2. Katherin Rogers is no stranger to the topic of Anselm and his account of free choice. Her previous book Anselm on Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2008) was dedicated to an exposition of Anselm’s account of the will. While the earlier book did bring Anselm’s view into dialogue with some contemporary arguments and positions, its main focus was Anselm as an historical figure and understanding his views. The present book takes an “Anselmian” position, one grounded in Anselm’s original arguments but that is Rogers’s own, stated in contemporary terms and in response to contemporary debates. She calls it “Anselmian” so as to make explicit its historical roots, its presuppositions, and its entailments. Importantly, Rogers wants to recognize and use, rather than sweep under the rug, “Anselm’s own theist perspective” (3). This is important because it makes explicit the way Anselm’s views are connected to his theism. Rogers points out that all the positions on free will—libertarian, compatibilist, and determinist—have their own grounding intuitions and presuppositions, analogous to Anselm’s theism, and that those need to be outed so that the discussion is as complete as possible. “Intuitions” grounding those views “may be,” as she puts it, “significantly colored by their background worldview” (6). This is true not just for Anselm and other theists but also for thinkers like Daniel Dennett, who frames the questions of whether and what sort of free will we have around the question, “Why do we want free will?” A theist and an Epicurean will answer that question differently. The point is that as philosophers puzzle over narrowly drawn questions, they are motivated by but not transparent about the intuitions that drive them toward defending or critiquing a position on a more minor issue. Further, Rogers argues that since so many arguments about free choice use the conceit of a “controller,” it is simply clearer and easier to use the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient God performing this function [End Page 614] rather than an imagined figure, and thus to make the point incompatibilists like to make more effectively. (Rogers does not argue that elaborate sci-fi creations about mad-scientist controllers are distractions from the issue we actually care about, but she might have.) Rogers also makes the important point that contemporary discussions tend to blur the distinction between “Should we hold you responsible?” and “Are you responsible?” If there is no way your responsibility can be truly assessed, then the questions become elided. Bringing in God as “an ideal observer” can help distinguish these questions: while we may not be able to know, God could. It is important as a way of pointing out (though Rogers does not quite put it this way) that what we really want to know is, are we responsible? And I take it she wants to try to answer that question instead of just moving to the pragmatic question. The book is divided into two basic parts: chapters 1 through 4 explain the basic elements of the Anselmian view, and chapters 5 through 8 defend the Anselmian view from contemporary objections to libertarianism. Rogers defends the Anselmian view against the objections Alfred Mele makes against “internalism,” views that “[focus] on the structure of the immediate choice” (33). She argues that the Anselmian view succeeds against this kind of criticism better than Robert Kane’s version of libertarianism. She takes on Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilism, which attempts to show that we can be responsible even without being able (ultimately) to choose otherwise. She devotes two chapters to what she calls the “luck” problem of libertarianism. If the agent’s choice is undetermined when he might have chosen otherwise and nothing in his past or character dictates that choice, then it seems the choice is a matter of luck. David Hume makes this sort of argument, though Rogers responds to Mele, Peter van Inwagen, and those who have made and criticized libertarian...

The Obligation Dilemma

I motivate a dilemma to show that nothing can be obligatory for anyone regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism (the falsity of determinism) is true. The deterministic horn, to which prime attention is directed, exploits the thesis that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise. Since determinism precludes such freedom, it precludes obligation too. The indeterministic horn allows for freedom to do otherwise but assumes the burden of addressing whether indeterministically caused choices or actions are too much of a matter of luck to be obligatory for anyone. I critically discuss a response to the deterministic horn that invokes the distinction between alternatives compatible with determinism (weak alternatives) and those incompatible with determinism (strong alternatives).

Luck’s Extended Reach

Something is a matter of luck if it is beyond our control. In this paper, I argue for the primary thesis that luck can undermine varieties of obligation, such as moral and prudential obligation, as well as judgments that are best from an agent’s own point of view. Among the considerations invoked to defend this thesis is a prevalent form of libertarianism, event-causal libertarianism. Arguments for the primary thesis that call on event-causal libertarianism raise concerns with this variety of libertarianism.

Another Report of Acalculous Cholecystitis in a Greek Patient with Infectious Mononucleosis: A Matter of Luck or Genetic Predisposition?

We here report a case of a young, male patient who presented with jaundice and was diagnosed with acalculous cholecystitis during the course of a primary Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection. The coexistence of cholestatic hepatitis and acalculous cholecystitis in patients with infectious mononucleosis is extremely uncommon and only few cases can be found in the literature. Moreover, almost one-fourth of the total reports of this rare entity are coming from Greece. Whether this is a result of physicians' high index of suspicion due to previous reports or a consequence of genetic predisposition is an issue that deserves further investigation in the future. More studies are required in order to clarify the pathophysiological and genetic backgrounds that connect acalculous cholecystitis and EBV infection.

Origin and Evolution of the Cometary Reservoirs

Comets have three known reservoirs: the roughly spherical Oort Cloud (for long-period comets), the flattened Kuiper Belt (for ecliptic comets), and, surprisingly, the asteroid belt (for main-belt comets). Comets in the Oort Cloud were thought to have formed in the region of the giant planets and then placed in quasi-stable orbits at distances of thousands or tens of thousands of AU through the gravitational effects of the planets and the Galaxy. The planets were long assumed to have formed in place. However, the giant planets may have undergone two episodes of migration. The first would have taken place in the first few million years of the Solar System, during or shortly after the formation of the giant planets, when gas was still present in the protoplanetary disk around the Sun. The Grand Tack (Walsh et al. in Nature 475:206–209, 2011) models how this stage of migration could explain the low mass of Mars and deplete, then repopulate the asteroid belt, with outer-belt asteroids originating between, and outside of, the orbits of the giant planets. The second stage of migration would have occurred later (possibly hundreds of millions of years later) due to interactions with a remnant disk of planetesimals, i.e., a massive ancestor of the Kuiper Belt. Safronov (Evolution of the Protoplanetary Cloud and Formation of the Earth and the Planets, 1969) and Fernandez and Ip (Icarus 58:109–120, 1984) proposed that the giant planets would have migrated as they interacted with leftover planetesimals; Jupiter would have moved slightly inward, while Saturn and (especially) Uranus and Neptune would have moved outward from the Sun. Malhotra (Nature 365:819–821, 1993) showed that Pluto’s orbit in the 3:2 resonance with Neptune was a natural outcome if Neptune captured Pluto into resonance while it migrated outward. Building on this work, Tsiganis et al. (Nature 435:459–461, 2005) proposed the Nice model, in which the giant planets formed closer together than they are now, and underwent a dynamical instability that led to a flood of comets and asteroids throughout the Solar System (Gomes et al. in Nature 435:466–469, 2005b). In this scenario, it is somewhat a matter of luck whether an icy planetesimal ends up in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud (Brasser and Morbidelli in Icarus 225:40–49, 2013), as a Trojan asteroid (Morbidelli et al. in Nature 435:462–465, 2005; Nesvorný and Vokrouhlický in Astron. J. 137:5003–5011, 2009; Nesvorný et al. in Astrophys. J. 768:45, 2013), or as a distant “irregular” satellite of a giant planet (Nesvorný et al. in Astron. J. 133:1962–1976, 2007). Comets could even have been captured into the asteroid belt (Levison et al. in Nature 460:364–366, 2009). The remarkable finding of two “inner Oort Cloud” bodies, Sedna and 2012 $\mbox{VP}_{113}$ , with perihelion distances of 76 and 81 AU, respectively (Brown et al. in Astrophys. J. 617:645–649, 2004; Trujillo and Sheppard in Nature 507:471–474, 2014), along with the discovery of other likely inner Oort Cloud bodies (Chen et al. in Astrophys. J. Lett. 775:8, 2013; Brasser and Schwamb in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 446:3788–3796, 2015), suggests that the Sun formed in a denser environment, i.e., in a star cluster (Brasser et al. in Icarus 184:59–82, 2006, 191:413–433, 2007, 217:1–19, 2012b; Kaib and Quinn in Icarus 197:221–238, 2008). The Sun may have orbited closer or further from the center of the Galaxy than it does now, with implications for the structure of the Oort Cloud (Kaib et al. in Icarus 215:491–507, 2011). We focus on the formation of cometary nuclei; the orbital properties of the cometary reservoirs; physical properties of comets; planetary migration; the formation of the Oort Cloud in various environments; the formation and evolution of the Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk; and the populations and size distributions of the cometary reservoirs. We close with a brief discussion of cometary analogs around other stars and a summary.

FOLK INTUITIONS AND THE NO-LUCK-THESIS

ABSTRACTAccording to the No-Luck-Thesis knowledge possession is incompatible with luck – one cannot know that p if the truth of one's belief that p is a matter of luck. Recently, this widespread opinion was challenged by Peter Baumann, who argues that in certain situations agents do possess knowledge even though their beliefs are true by luck. This paper aims at providing empirical data for evaluating Baumann's hypothesis. The experiment was designed to compare non-philosophers’ judgments concerning knowledge and luck in one case that Baumann takes to be in favor of his claim and other cases where, according to him, absence of knowledge coincides with luck. The results show that the cases do not differ in a significant way between each other with respect to verdicts regarding knowledge and luck. In all cases subjects were more reluctant to judge that the ‘Gettierized’ belief is knowledge and more likely to judge that it is true by luck in comparison to a belief that is an uncontroversial instance of knowledge. However, the negative relationship between knowledge and luck ascriptions predicted by the No-Luck-Thesis was almost absent. The data raise some doubts about the No-Luck-Thesis, but the reasons for doubt are different than what Baumann expected.

Conclusive Reasons and Epistemic Luck

What is it to have conclusive reasons to believe a proposition P? According to a view famously defended by Dretske, a reason R is conclusive for P just in case [R would not be the case unless P were the case]. I argue that, while knowing that P is plausibly related to having conclusive reasons to believe that P, having such reasons cannot be understood in terms of the truth of this counterfactual condition. Simple examples show that it is possible to believe P on the basis of reasons that satisfy the counterfactual, and still get things right about P only as a matter of luck. Seeing where this account of conclusive reasons goes wrong points to an important distinction between having conclusive reasons and relying on reasons that are in point of fact conclusive. It also has wider consequences for whether modal principles like sensitivity and safety can rule out the pernicious kind of epistemic luck, or the kind of luck that interferes with knowledge.

Get lucky: situationism and circumstantial moral luck

Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are blameworthy or praiseworthy for our actions in those circumstances. We argue that such situationist moral luck, as a variety of circumstantial moral luck, exemplifies a distinct and interesting type of moral luck. Further, there is a case to be made that situationist moral luck is perhaps more worrying than some other well-discussed cases of (supposed) moral luck.

Potential Agonistic Courtship and Mating Behavior between Two Adult Giant Anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla)

Abstract The reproductive behavior of giant anteaters is rarely seen and, as a consequence, hard to study. Most of the few reports that exist are based on observations in captivity. In July 2014, we witnessed what could be Myrmecophaga tridactyla courtship and mating behavior in Goias State, Brazil. Although the couple showed aggressive mating behavior, the offspring was able to stay on its mother's back throughout the entire ritual. This report clarifies how, behaviorally, wild giant anteaters mate and suggests that aggressiveness can be present during courtship at least when the female is carrying an offspring. This kind of observation is very difficult to obtain; without long-term monitoring studies, it simply becomes a matter of luck.