In my dual roles as a palliative care physician and philosopher-bioethicist, I am often struck by the seeming “disconnect” between largely agreed-upon moral norms—as espoused in the bioethics literature, outlined by professional guidelines, embodied in institutional and national policies, and upheld by court rulings—and the actual clinical practices that I witness on a regular basis. Perha...
Read More →Research in neuroscience traditionally relies on rather small groups that deal with different questions on all levels of neuronal organization. Recent funding initiatives—notably the European “Human Brain Project” (HBP)—aim to promote Big Neuroscience for integrating research and unifying knowledge. This approach is characterized by two aspects: first, by many interacting researchers from ...
Read More →Several types of inferences are employed in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with brain injuries and disorders of consciousness. These inferences introduce unavoidable uncertainty, and can be evaluated in light of inductive risk: the epistemic and nonepistemic risks of being wrong. This article considers several ethically significant inductive risks generated by and interacting with inferen...
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