One of the things I’m asked most often by non-philosopher, non-bioethics types is “what exactly is that you do during the day?” The answer, by and large, is that I read and write. My reading can be pretty diverse and—at times—obscure. Below are a handful of the things I read this week.
Dewey, John. 1929. Experience and Nature. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 1–100
My supervisor-to-be and I were talking about American philosophy late last week, when I revealed to him that I’d not read any of John Dewey’s work. Jonathan, a gung-ho pragmatist, recommended I get stuck in to Experience and Nature. So I did. It is—in Jonathan’s own words—turgid, but there are gems.[1]
Grande, David, Sarah E Gollust, Maximilian Pany, Jane Seymour, Adeline Goss, Austin Kilaru, and Zachary Meisel. 2014. “Translating Research for Health Policy: Researchers’ Perceptions and Use of Social Media.” Health Affairs. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0300.
A paper about the trends in social media use among health and healthcare researchers. Nothing particularly stunning in the conclusions: apparently, older academics don’t like social media much, and in general the healthcare sector are a bit apprehensive about communicating via Twitter.
There’s an interesting tidbit tucked in the bottom of Table 1, however. There was a drop-off in female use of social media in this sector that appears divergent from male use. There isn’t any mention of gender differences in the study, but it certainly seems to stand out.
Moya-Anegón, Félix, and Víctor Herrero-Solana. 2013. “Worldwide Topology of the Scientific Subject Profile: a Macro Approach in the Country Level.” PLoS One 8 (12). Public Library of Science: e83222. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083222.
Moya-Anegón and Herrero-Solana present a cluster analysis of publications across different countries. They found three clusters of research and, matching them against country outputs, posited a geographic distribution of research interests.
I thought their discussion could be a bit more robust, however, and would like to see some more work done on the why of particular research outputs in countries. The Eastern Bloc, for example, lost a lot of its talent in the life sciences during the Lysenko Affair; a murderous head of Russian science killing of advocates of gene theory is going to cramp a country’s style in genetics. Building these complex stories into robust and current data would be an excellent addition to the field.
Glass, Jonathan D, Nicholas M Boulis, Karl Johe, Seward B Rutkove, Thais Federici, Meraida Polak, Crystal Kelly, and Eva L Feldman. 2012. “Lumbar Intraspinal Injection of Neural Stem Cells in Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: Results of a Phase I Trial in 12 Patients.” Stem Cells 30 (6). Wiley Online Library: 1144–51.
Read as part of a post Kelly and I are putting together. More on that soon.
Resnik, David B. 2013. “H5N1 Avian Flu Research and the Ethics of Knowledge.” Hastings Center Report 43 (2). Wiley Online Library: 22–33. doi:10.1002/hast.143.
I’m writing a paper about—surprise, surprise—dual-use, and in no small part am responding to David’s treatment of the so-called “ethics of knowledge.” This, and a range of other papers that I haven’t listed here, were background to that piece.
Sobel, D. 1994. “Full Information Accounts of Well-Being.” Ethics 104 (4): 784–810.
There’s a lot of philosophy out there, and I’m doing my best to make sure that my own accounts of ethics aren’t just reinventing other people’s concerns. If they are, I’d rather just cite them and save the scholarly space for something that’s more contribution-y. Sobel has some interesting stuff on how we account for our own and other’s wellbeing; it’s particularly pertinent for anyone working in economics or social policy (me).
Mableson, Hayley E, Anna Okello, Kim Picozzi, and Susan Christina Welburn. 2014. “Neglected Zoonotic Diseases—the Long and Winding Road to Advocacy.” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 8 (6): e2800. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0002800.
Great little article on the action—or lack thereof—of international agencies and government to recognize or address issues surrounding neglected zoonotic diseases. Discussion centers around the need for advocacy, and what that entails at a high level.
Fouchier, Ron A M, Vincent Munster, Anders Wallensten, Theo M Bestebroer, Sander Herfst, Derek Smith, Guus F Rimmelzwaan, Björn Olsen, and Albert D M E Osterhaus. 2005. “Characterization of a Novel Influenza a Virus Hemagglutinin Subtype (H16) Obtained From Black-Headed Gulls.” Journal of Virology 79: 2814–22.
Reading a paper by Ron Fouchier? Not surprising, considering he a frequent subject of my writing (here, here, here) .
Many of these titles are available online, for free. For those who aren’t, I’m happy to provide #canhazpdf assistance.
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Dewey really had an optimistic belief about the way science worked. This isn’t surprising for the early 20th century. Still, Dewey writes “physicists did not think for a moment of denying the validity of what was found in that experience [provided by the results of the Michelson-Morely experiments], even though it rendered questionable an elaborate intellectual apparatus and system.” That? Isn’t what happened. In fact, there were a litany of experiments that followed trying to measure the aether flux due to the earth’s motion. ↩
The Broken Spoke 