No description available.

This dissertation examines the recent historical period of emphasis on optimizing the use of scientific evidence in policymaking, the nature of the challenge to existing sources of authority in public health, medicine, and public policy initiated by the evidence-based movement as it developed and unfolded over fifty years, and its effect on the making and unmaking of public health policies in the United States. It engages in a broad study of how the concept of evidence has been mobilized in public health policymaking in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, how and why concepts of what should count as good evidence have changed over time, and differences in the role of scientific evidence in the policymaking versus policy-unmaking processes. The dissertation does this through an intellectual history of the evidence-based movement and three historical case studies. The three cases are: 1) the development and implementation of the low-fat campaign and its subsequent destabilization, incremental modification, and partial replacement with policies aimed at reducing population-level intake of sugar-sweetened beverages; 2) the development and adoption of salt reduction policies, and subsequent efforts by health officials to buttress those policies amid changes in the science that threatened to destabilize the policy paradigm; 3) the development and implementation of policies early in the AIDS epidemic requiring that risk-reduction counseling always be provided both before and after administration of the HIV test, and the struggles of health officials to discontinue those counseling programs when doubts emerged about their efficacy. The thesis concludes with a critique of the concept of “evidence-based policy” through the example of the US Preventive Services Task Force, a pioneer organization involved in the conduct of evidence-based analysis, which has struggled to maintain its exclusive focus on the data in the face of new policy responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act. In each case study I focus on the networks of researchers, advocates, journalists, industry professionals, and public health decision makers whose collective negotiations shape policy outcomes. I draw upon extensive documentary evidence gathered in public and private archives, emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and key informant interviews. The dissertation shows how the evidence-based movement has roots in the social sciences and the contentious politics of the War on Poverty and took shape in the 1970s in the context of a pivot to disease prevention and health promotion at moment when the efficacy of many clinical interventions had come under question. The case studies show that in situations of scientific uncertainty public health interventions must sometimes be implemented before obtaining evidence of efficacy, that institutional arrangements and historical context can powerfully shape interpretations of the available research, how pragmatic considerations such as feasibility contribute to decisions to implement interventions, the stark challenge that can be posed by institutional inertia and resistance to efforts to de-implement existing programs, and the ways in which public health actors can selectively invoke and distort the past in the service of contemporary initiatives to organize for policy change. The dissertation suggests the “evidence-based” mantra masks a complex interplay of politics, values, cultural trends, and other extra-scientific factors that often better explain the policy process than do shifts in the evidence.

A review of the philosophical and psychological literature on free will is presented. Three major positions are identified: libertarianism, hard determinism and compatibilism (or soft determinism). The latter enjoys widespread and largely unchallenged support in psychology. Substantive conceptual and empirical grounds are presented which suggest that psychologists may be dismissing free will at their peril. It is argued, first of all, that belief in the reality of free will has profound implications for conceptions of human action, of moral responsibility, of the form and veracity of scientific accounts and of the validity of scientific reduction. Moreover, the results of a multi-disciplinary survey of academics reveal that 80% of those surveyed believe free will is real. Contrary to popular assumptions in psychology, determinism is not endorsed by many scientists outside of psychology, nor does belief in free will reflect naive belief in mind-body dualism. Modern libertarians reject both dualism and reductionism, distinguishing instead between different levels of scientific explanation. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for cognitive, social and clinical psychology, and directions for further research are suggested.

Note:

No description available.

How do we systematise our knowledge without undermining mores and beliefs that have thus far guided our conduct? How do we account for free will in a cosmos made of molecules and universal laws? Is a metaphysical rebellion against the absurdity of a universe devoid of ethical significance unavoidable? Is this rebellion inevitably leading to the organization of the world in exclusively human terms? These are the problems that have been tackled among others by Dostoevskij, Kafka, Dickens, and Camus, thinkers who framed questions of paramount importance without finding persuasive answers (Davison 1997; Dodd 1992; Lary 1973). These are the same problems that many bio-scientists have grappled with in the past and I analyze the solutions they have identified. This work of mine could be seen as a follow-up to the qualitative survey carried out by Kerr, Cunningham-Burley, and Amos in 1998 among British scientists and clinicians with a well-established reputation. That investigation looked into the way the latter distance themselves from the dark shadow of eugenics and revealed that die equation of old eugenics and new genetics is deemed irrational because; scientific knowledge has grown by leaps and bounds ever since o the socio-political circumstances are radically different as coercion is unthinkable and the final decision rests with the individual who is protected by the principle of informed choice; o the aims of eugenics simply cannot be technically met; o the new genetics involves therapeutic aims as opposed to eugenics that concentrated on the alteration of the human gene pool; o the application of science is not necessarily one of scientists' main concerns; My contention is that these objections are too facile and unpersuasive. I submit that there is an obvious connection between how the existential and humanistic side of science failed to prove humanitarian, namely benevolent, compassionate and ultimately useful - the good -, the effort by several academicians to ground ethics on scientific evidence - the true -, And our incapacity to confront abnormality - the beautiful. This connection is eugenics. Eugenics is the scientific response to modern existential angst and social predicaments and is here to stay.

Text in English / The rise of the biotechnical and genomic revolution has motivated contemporary artists to explore the use of scientific methods as a medium for art-making. The application of these ground-breaking methods within the realm of contemporary art allows for the distortion that exists between life sciences and the imagination to become a reality. This practice is known as transgenic art. With biotechnology as the new playing-field for art comes a myriad of dangerous implications, ethical issues, questions of authorship and responsibilities. The transgenic artworks of Eduardo Kac entitled GFP Bunny (2000) and Genesis (1999) form the basis of the research. The main question posed in this research explores the purpose of transgenic art and the unavoidable impact thereof on society. Social awareness of ethical issues surrounding this type of art-making is addressed. The poignancy of the study lies in debates deliberately introduced by the artist, but also unintended controversial issues that surface from the creation of living artworks. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

Text in English / The rise of the biotechnical and genomic revolution has motivated contemporary artists to explore the use of scientific methods as a medium for art-making. The application of these ground-breaking methods within the realm of contemporary art allows for the distortion that exists between life sciences and the imagination to become a reality. This practice is known as transgenic art. With biotechnology as the new playing-field for art comes a myriad of dangerous implications, ethical issues, questions of authorship and responsibilities. The transgenic artworks of Eduardo Kac entitled GFP Bunny (2000) and Genesis (1999) form the basis of the research. The main question posed in this research explores the purpose of transgenic art and the unavoidable impact thereof on society. Social awareness of ethical issues surrounding this type of art-making is addressed. The poignancy of the study lies in debates deliberately introduced by the artist, but also unintended controversial issues that surface from the creation of living artworks. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

Orientador: Laymert Garcia dos Santos / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-05T01:28:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leite_Marcelo_D.pdf: 18137235 bytes, checksum: d2ccf296709649c706ae95e568a4a4e8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: A tese central deste trabalho é que a aceitação pública despertada pelo Projeto Genoma Humano só se explica pelo uso político e retórico de um determinismo genético crescentemente irreconciliável com os resultados empíricos da pesquisa genômica atual. A complexidade verificada no genoma humano e em suas interações com o meio desautoriza a manutenção de uma noção simples e unidirecional de causalidade, contrariamente ao pressuposto na idéia de gene como único portador de informação, esteio da doutrina do determinismo genético. Um complexo de metáforas informacionais e/ou lingüísticas continuo vivo nos textos publicados por biólogos moleculares na literatura científica, notadamente nos artigos veiculados nos periódicos de alto impacto Nature e Science de 15 e 16 fevereiro de 2001, respectivamente. Tais metáforas inspiram um tipo de discurso ambíguo que modula nuances variadas de retórica determinista, conforme se dirija aos próprios pares ou ao público leigo" O campo da genômica ainda está longe de rejeitar a conjunção problemática das noções de gene pré-formacionista e de gene como recurso desenvo/vimenta/ na base da metáfora do gene como informação. Essa fusão inspirada pela terminologia cibernética propicia uma versão asséptica de gene, distanciada da natureza, puramente sintática, móvel e virtual o bastante para circular desimpedida nos circuitos de produção de valor como recurso genético passível de garimpagem e de patenteamento. Críticos dã tecnociência devem desafiar o campo da genômica a reformular drasticamente as metáforas que dão suporte a seu programa hegemônico de pesquisa / Abstract: The central thesis of this work is that the public support generated for the Human Genome Project and the hype surrounding it can be explained only by the political and rhetorical uses of genetic determinism, a notion which increasingly cannot be reconciled with the empirical results of on-going genomic research. The complexity that has been uncovered in the human genome and in its interactions with the environment implies that a simple and unidirectional notion of causality cannot be maintained, contrary to a presupposition of the idea of the gene as the sole carrier of iliformation, an idea that contributes to sustain the doctrine of genetic determinism. A complex of informational and/or linguistic metaphors lives on in the texts published by molecular biologists in the scientific press, most notably in the issues published February 15thand 16thof 2001 ofthe high impact journals Nature and Science, respectively. These metaphors generate an ambiguous type of discourse that modulates various nuances of deterministic rhetoric, depending on whether it addresses peers or the lay publico The field of genomics is still a long way ITom rejecting the questionable conflation of the notions of gene as preformation and gene as developmental resource which underpins the metaphor of gene as information. This conflation inspired by cybernetics terminology enables an aseptic version of the gene, separated ITom nature, portable and virtual enough to flow unimpeded through the channels ofvalue production as genetic resource suitable for mining and patenting. Critics of technoscience should challenge the field of genomics to drastically reshape the metaphors which have supported its hegemonic research agenda / Doutorado / Doutor em Ciências Sociais