Philosophy & Ethics

About a month ago, we had another instance in a series of discredited scientific studies, that latest one in the medical field. The short version here is that Dr Timothy Kuklo, who worked for the U.S. Army, wrote a paper about a bone-growth product called “Infuse”, claiming that it was very effective for treating the traumatic bone injuries that many soldiers have been coming home with. He had some co-authors on the paper, including Dr Romney Andersen. Except the co-authors had nothing to do with the paper, and didn’t know it existed until Dr Andersen heard about it and started an…

The National Children's Study is an ideal opportunity to get valuable information about pregnant women's health, the most underrepresented population in clinical research, say ethicists at Duke University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities.  The new national study aims to follow children from conception to adulthood. Although the Institute of Medicine began recommending that pregnant women be included in clinical trials 15 years ago, pregnant women remain excluded from trials for many reasons, primarily ethical concerns raised in the balance between…

Medical doctors often like to characterize themselves as scientists, and many others in the public are happy to join them in this. I submit, however, that such a characterization is an error. It is not a slur on the profession or its practitioners to say this, particularly once one understands that science is not the only, or only worthy, or even the most prominent form of reasoned inquiry that people can and do engage in. Furthermore, it is not a slur to say something that is simply true. Classifying things is always a tricky matter, because there will often be outliers[1] that manage to…

After a big kerfuffle in March over whether a researcher violated a confidentiality agreement with JAMA, the journal has eased off a bit with an editorial laying out the new policy for reporting conflict of interest. As I noted in a post in March, Dr. Jonathan Leo alerted JAMA editors to a conflict of interest in an article published last year, which JAMA addressed several months later in a correction and apology published this spring. The problem was that Leo went to the NY Times and BMJ because he thought JAMA's lengthy delay in replying meant they weren't going to do anything, so JAMA…

I have pondered writing about the transhumanism movement for a while, and the opportunity has finally landed on my desktop when I read a brief article by Kyle Munkittrick of the Institute for Emerging Ethics&Technologies. The article is in the form of a FAQ expressly addressing the question of whether aging is a moral good, and in it Munkittrick briefly explains and (thinks that he) refutes some of the standard arguments against transhumanism. Let’s take a look. To begin with, what is transhumanism? It is a type of futurist philosophy aimed at transforming the human species…

DNA : When Is A Code Not A Code ?Stephen C. Meyer is an intelligent design advocate and a co-founder of the Discovery Institute. The core argument of Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature in a Cell, written in advocacy of  intelligent design, is this: DNA is a code and a computer instruction is a code.   Since computer code requires an intelligent designer, and DNA is a code, it follows that DNA is a product of, or is controlled by, an intelligent designer. This argument has no foundation if one does not accept its basic premises: that DNA is a code that a computer instruction is a…

Contemplating Eudaimonea Some recent discussions here have prompted me to comment on the ideas of happiness and eudaemonia, which are considerations of note in my work. In fact, I’m currently writing a chapter that dares to call itself “The final word on Eudaimonia,” but unless the discussion here turns out to be the most inspirational ever, I’m sure this title will change. I submit my notes sans conclusions complet, I hope you find them eudaemonic... “Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.” - The Conquest of…

Philosophers have the embarrassing habit of apologizing for formal logic. Mathematicians don’t bother because they don’t care -- they’re just interested in the pretty pretty symbols and waste no part of their lives checking to see if their activities actually mean anything. But philosophers worry about everything, and the more obvious a thing or its explanation might be, the more worrisome it becomes to them. And since a particularly large part of philosophy in the last 140 years has specifically centered itself around the importance of formal logic -- which is “obviously” important -- this…

Despite the glib use with which people invoke the idea of freedom. Freedom is a scary concept. The ability to do absolutely anything one wishes is simply overwhelming. Of course, in practice this isn’t really what we mean by freedom. Instead we immediately begin putting restrictions on it so that it isn’t simply chaos. Of course, we can’t behave in anyway that is outside the bounds of our physical bodies. We can’t simply will ourselves to fly. We can’t simply hold our breath indefinitely. So there are some obvious boundaries that every creature encounters when considering its “freedom”. This…

If you read internet science in 2006, you'd have thought former president George W. Bush's limitations of use of embryonic stem cell lines had killed science.  In reality, embryonic stem cell research only received $15 million in US funding when the restrictions were imposed and it grew to billions per year during his presidency so some of that rhetoric was designed simply to engage in cultural spin and mobilize votes for Democrats. With a Democrat president and a bulletproof majority in the Senate, culturally-inclined science bloggers can now instead focus on religion and maybe the few…