Skip to content

Remembering what happened vs. remembering what it meant

Remembering what happened vs. remembering what it meant

An upcoming issue of the Psychological Bulletin will
include a review suggesting that the memories of children may be more reliable
– at least for evidential legal purposes – than the memories of adults.

The review conducted by Valerie Reyna and Chuck
Brainerd assesses over thirty studies sparked by their own earlier research on what they call the Fuzzy Trace Theory. According to that theory, people store
two different kinds of memory of experiences: memory of what happened (verbatim memory), and
memory of the meaning of what happened (gist memory). Reyna and Brainerd hypothesised that
children rely more on the former, and adults rely more on the later, and they presented results indicating that this makes adults more prone to certain sorts of ‘false
memory’, since what an event meant to someone may be inconsistent with what
actually happened. In the upcoming review, Reyna and Brainerd will claim that the slough of publications triggered
by their initial research backs up these hypotheses.

Suppose that Reyna and Brainerd are right. What
would follow?

Read More »Remembering what happened vs. remembering what it meant

Killing the goose that laid the golden egg

The US government has just announced that it is likely to close its enormous Pacific salmon fishery, which stretches across 80% of the USA’s west coast. The once vast salmon stocks have crashed and are now at a mere 6% of the long-term average. Many readers will remember the similar crash in the cod stocks off the east coast of Canada in the early 90s which led to great economic hardship in the area. The cause of both incidents is the same: overfishing. The Canadian and US fishing industries destroyed these vast renewable resources and in doing so have probably killed their very own geese of the golden eggs.

Read More »Killing the goose that laid the golden egg

Is it Wrong to Deliberately Select Embryos which will have Disabiltites?

A current bill before Parliament would revise the current regulation of IVF. One clause has caused great debate, especially amongst people with disabilities. It states:

(9) Persons or embryos that are known to have a gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormality involving a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop—

(a) a serious physical or mental disability,
(b) a serious illness, or
(c) any other serious medical condition, must not be preferred to those that are not known to have such an abnormality.

Some people with disabilities like deafness or dwarfism wish to use IVF to select embryos with the same disabilities. For reports of such cases, see Sanghavi, D. M. ‘Wanting Babies Like Themselves, Some Parents Choose Genetic Defects’, The New York Times, (December 5, 2006).

According to a recent survey, deliberate selection of children with conditions such as deafness or dwarfism is not uncommon: 5% of 190 of PGD clinics surveyed in the US have allowed parents to select embryos with conditions commonly taken to be disabilities (See Baruch, S. Kaufman, D. and Hudson, K. L. ‘Genetic testing of embryos: practices and perspectives of U.S. IVF clinics’ Fertility and Sterility (2006).)

Read More »Is it Wrong to Deliberately Select Embryos which will have Disabiltites?

‘Reasonable steps’ to prevent gambling

The BBC
reports today that a compulsive gambler has failed in a High Court bid to make
the bookmaker William Hill repay £2 million of his gambling losses. The gambler, Graham Calvert, claimed that the
bookmaker failed in its ‘duty of care’ by allowing him to continue to place
bets after he had asked the company to close his account. The judge recognised that William Hill failed
to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent Calvert from gambling, but said that it
was probable that Calvert would have continued to gamble even had such steps
been taken, meaning that William Hill is not responsible for his losses.

Does a
bookmaker have a duty of care towards its customers? The judge in the case thought not, so let us
pose a far more modest question: ought a bookmaker to take ‘reasonable steps’
to prevent its customers from gambling in certain cases? Answering ‘yes’ to the latter question raises
a number of puzzling questions. For
example, what counts as a reasonable step, and under what circumstances ought
such a step to be taken? Consider the
reasons we might believe that pathological gambling is bad: I suggest that
three important reasons are (1) that it is irrational, in that the gambling
behaviour of pathological gamblers is highly unlikely to help realise their goal
of winning money and is highly likely to frustrate this goal; (2) that
pathological gamblers gamble often, and gamble more money than they can afford
to lose; and (3) because of (1) and (2), pathological gamblers are likely to
suffer large financial losses, which can disrupt other aspects of their lives,
such as their personal relationships, health, and career. 

Read More »‘Reasonable steps’ to prevent gambling

Small is beautiful, ain’t it? The EU’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research

While some see nanotechnology as the solution to our most pressing current
problems, or at least as the basis
for rapid future technological progress, others fear that nanotech might yield unprecedented
catastrophic consequences. Even outside the genre of science fiction, it has
been suggested that nanotech might provide a solution to world poverty and
waste disposal: Tiny robots will convert garbage into nutrition simply by
reorganizing structures on the molecular or atomic level. Also frequently discussed
is the possibility that self-replicating nanobots threaten the existence of our
world by converting all matter into their own kind – a dystopia that has come
to be known as grey goo.

The European Union has now reacted to the hopes
and fears associated with this fairly new technology and provided a code
of conduct for responsible nanoscience and nanotechnologies research. This
code shall guide scientists, engineers, policymakers, collective as well as
individual agents. Such a code of conduct seems indispensable. However, the tentativeness (e.g. in the form of a
rather vague appeal to the precautionary principle) and the lack of feasibility of its norms (for
example, it argues for a “general culture of responsibility”, see below) actually
raises more general questions about the feasibility of regulating scientific
research and technological progress.

Read More »Small is beautiful, ain’t it? The EU’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research

Bagging the bag

Last month Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the British Government intended to compel supermarkets to charge customers for plastic bags. The Australian Government has threatened to take the attack on plastic bags even further. Late last year the new Australian Labor Government pledged to phase out plastic bag usage altogether. However, they have been unclear on how this might be achieved. Media reports that the Australian Government will introduce a levy of up to $1- per plastic bag have been rejected by the Australian Federal Environment minister Peter Garrett. Nevertheless the Australian Government remains committed to phasing out plastic bags.

      It might seem that, as the visible face of pollution, the plastic bag would win few friends, but late last week The Times reported that scientists and environmentalists, including an expert advisor to Greenpeace, have stood up to defend the plastic bag. It seems that a large part of the case against the plastic bag is based on faulty science. A widely-cited 2002 report to the Australian Government by Nolan-ITU in association with the RMIT Centre for Design and Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd attributed the death of over 100,000 marine animals per year to plastic bags.

Read More »Bagging the bag

The Transparency of Clinical Trials

An article in the current issue of Science examines the extent to which new policies regarding the governance of clinical trials promote transparency. It goes on to suggest further issues that remain unaddressed and require attention. The authors suggest that recent policy changes have improved the extent of public access to clinical trial data. In particular, they suggest that Section 801 of the FDA Amendments Act “should go a long way in ensuring that all patients and all data are publicly accounted for.” However, with the Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, they do worry that some patients “are left on the cutting room floor to make a drug look better than it really is.”

Read More »The Transparency of Clinical Trials

Methuselah’s planet: the population cost of longer life

Ageing is a mysterious process. There is a good deal of ongoing research aimed at trying to understand its biological cause, though much remains unknown. Some research is aimed at trying to unlock longevity, for example a study published this week that found a particular gene mutation in a group of long-living Ashkenazi Jews. Other researchers are actively looking at rare diseases like progeria which lead to accelerated ageing. It is often expressed that such research will make it possible to extend the normal human lifespan.

But should we try to make our lives longer? In an era of increasing environmental awareness, when the costs of human overpopulation are all too clear it might be argued that the planet cannot support a significant increase in our lifespan.

Read More »Methuselah’s planet: the population cost of longer life

Placebos as cognitive enhancers?

A recent study on the efficacy of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – antidepressants like Prozac – has been widely reported in the media. Unfortunately it has not been reported very well. Headlines like ‘Antidepressant drugs don’t work’ (The Independent) are misleading. What the study actually found is that the efficacy of SSRIs varies with… Read More »Placebos as cognitive enhancers?

Doublethink and double effect; donation after cardiac death

In California a transplant surgeon has been charged with a felony in relation to the death in intensive care of a young disabled man (Ruben Navarro). (See also Matthew Liao’s blog from yesterday). Ruben had a severe degenerative disorder of the nervous system known as adrenoleukodystrophy, and had then suffered further brain damage after a respiratory arrest. The surgeon is accused of administering drugs to hasten Ruben’s death so that his organs could be used for transplantation. In the event Ruben’s death took some 8 hours after removal of life support, and none of the organs could be used.

What happened after Ruben Navarro’s life support was removed remains unclear. However this case highlights some of the problems of conflicting intentions when patients are allowed to die.

Read More »Doublethink and double effect; donation after cardiac death