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Here’s why you’re not smart enough

Here’s why you’re not smart enough

An interesting
article in The New York Times
describes how the way in which the brain forms memories can, over time,
lead to false information from noncredible sources being reinterpreted as true. The article notes that this may explain why
smear campaigns can be so effective in politics: those who spread misinformation ‘know that if
their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it
is debunked’—and the rehashing of false information by victims during their defence simply adds to its plausibility in
the long term.  It seems, then, that
what we believe may often be based not on truth or credibility, but on repetition and emotional
resonance. 

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Duck and cover: how expensive does impact safety have to be?

This week is Tunguska week: on June 30 1908 a large meteoroid or comet exploded with the force of 5-30 megatons above the Tunguska River in Russia. The journal Nature celebrates it with several articles about impacts, ranging from a discussion of a controversial meteorite artwork to the confirmation that most of the northern hemisphere of Mars is a gargantuan crater.

From an ethics perspective the most interesting issue is how we should protect ourselves from rare but very destructive events. Had the Tunguska impactor hit an inhabited area it could easily have killed
millions, and larger impacts could imperil our species. But big impacts are rare: how much should we pay to detect and avoid them?

Read More »Duck and cover: how expensive does impact safety have to be?

Behavioural Internet Advertising

A recent article in The Economist reports the development of a new behavioural approach to targeted internet advertising being developed by companies such as Phorm, NebuAd and FrontPorch (see http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11482452 ). The current market leader is Phorm who have recently signed up the three biggest internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk to use their technology. The ISPs can use the technology supplied by behavioural advertising companies to record information about the web pages that a user visits. This information is used to build up a profile of the user that is then used to select targeted advertising. So, if a user visits a number of sites for online booksellers and webpages concerning literature this information is added to his or her profile. Subsequently, the user will receive a high proportion of advertising that is targeted at people who have a greater than average interest in literature.

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When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.

In Canada this week, an 84 year old man died after 9 months of treatment
in an intensive care unit. He had severe brain damage and multi-organ
failure, but his family sought a legal injunction to prevent doctors in
the intensive care unit from withdrawing life-support. Over the course
of his long intensive care stay, intensive care beds at a major trauma
centre were closed so that nurses could used instead to support his
care, and three doctors resigned from the hospital in protest at being
required to provide what they felt was ‘unethical’ treatment.

Read More »When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.

The Clash of Environmental Values

GMO
and climate change seem currently one of the more upsetting issues not only for
environmentalists, but for the wider public as well. Carbon tax proposals like
the one released by Canada’s opposition party last week (e.g Financial
Times) or requests to the
EU by Britain to embrace a more liberal attitude towards GM crops (e.g. The
Independent) are the order
of the day in many newspapers. 

Precautionary
arguments of any sort regarding the release of GMO or greenhouse gases commonly
invoke the complex and still badly understood entanglement of different parts
of the environment: Present greenhouse gas emissions may trigger a catastrophic
runaway climate change: An initial global
warming may yield to, say, the release of vast amounts of methane that so far
was bound in the permafrost of the Russian or North American tundra; the
methane further increases the initial warming.  We simply do not sufficiently understand such
type of feedbacks. The same holds true for releasing GMO into the atmosphere:
Via horizontal gene transfer to wild
types or feral relatives, for example, GMO may yield unpredicted and unwanted side
effects.

Releasing
greenhouse gases or GMO are both interventions in the complex environmental
system. But how, if at all, do these two issues, commonly discussed as separate
and isolated questions, interrelate?

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“Reanimation” and Taking Organs from Living People

One of the greatest fears associated with organ transplantation is that the person from whom organs are taken is not really dead.

That nightmare was almost realised in France last week when a French patient “came back to life” after 30 minutes of unsuccessfully heart massage. In 2007, in order to address the shortage of organs for transplantation, French authorities allowed the trial of using people whose hearts have stopped beating, but who have not met brain death criteria for being dead, as organ donors. These are called Non-Heart Beating Donors. Organs can also be taken from such donors in the UK. Such patients’ hearts have stopped beating but they have not met brainstem criteria for death.

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My Genes, not a Doctor’s

California has sent cease-and-desist letters to firms offering Web gene tests to consumers. The legal reason is that California law requires a licenced physician to order any lab tests. This follows from a similar crackdown in New York. Wired responds by top 10 reasons that regulators should not hinder genetic testing. Is there any good reason to limit public access to genetic testing besides protecting incumbents and gatekeepers?

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Setting a Minimum Price for the Sale of Organs

Professor Maqsood Noorani, a leading surgeon made the headlines asking for legalisation of the sale of organs to prevent the exploitation that exists in the black market. Yet his comments show that he is uneasy with the concept of a market in organs. He believes that the sale of organs in richer nations would ‘tarnish the process’, and suggests that even in poorer countries accommodation or education should be offered in exchange instead of cash. 

When two people want to freely exchange some good or service, we need good reasons in a free market to prevent the exchange. Moreover, when it comes to a market in organs, the good in question is life saving. Why then should we prevent such exchanges when there are willing buyers and sellers?

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Helping others to save the rainforest

The Congo basin rainforest is a natural resource of staggering scale, second only to the amazon in size. It stretches across six countries in the centre of Africa and provides shelter, food, income and fuel for millions of local people. However, like most of the world’s remaining forests, it is being destroyed at an unsustainable rate. Like all the world’s major rainforests, it lies in developing countries which are desperate for any small income it can provide. This adds to the sense of tragedy: these great resources are being destroyed for what is a relative pittance to conservationists in the rich countries. Happily, this tragic element is starting to be turned around and may give us our best chance at preserving the forest.

Read More »Helping others to save the rainforest