Politics and the Life Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Might the bioethical principle of individual decisional autonomy have a politically liberalizing effect on soft authoritarian communities?","authors":"Benjamin Gregg","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.20","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to the bioethical principle of individual decisional autonomy, the patient has a right of informed consent to any medical or experimental procedure. The principle is politically liberal by advocating significant individual freedom as guaranteed by law and secured by civil liberties. When practiced in illiberal communities, might it have a political liberalizing effect? I respond first by analyzing cross-national norms of individual decisional autonomy to identify tensions with illiberal community; second, by examining examining Singapore in a single case study to show that liberal bioethics does not promote political liberalization; and third, by showing that the possibility of practicing liberal bioethics in research, clinically as well as in education, does not require a democratic order, and that liberal bioethics is unlikely to encourage the liberalization of illiberal political communities. Hence, it may never contribute to the development of globally effective cross-national norms for the legal regulation of bioethical research and clinical practice. Fourth, to bolster this analysis, I anticipate several possible objections to various of its aspects.","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135350836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Authoritarianism, perceptions of security threats, and the COVID-19 pandemic: A new perspective","authors":"Daniel Stevens, Susan Banducci, Laszlo Horvath","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.12","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article offers a new perspective on when and why individual-level authoritarian perceptions of security threats change. We reexamine claims that authoritarian members of the public responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in a counterintuitive fashion. The response was counterintuitive in that, rather than a desire for a stronger government with the ability to impose measures to address the pandemic and its consequences, authoritarian individuals rejected a stronger government response and embraced individual autonomy. The article draws on perceptions of security threats—issues that directly or indirectly harm personal or collective safety and welfare—from surveys in two different contexts in England: 2012, when perceptions of the threat from infectious disease was low relative to most other security threats, and 2020, when perceptions of the personal and collective threat of COVID-19 superseded all other security threats. We argue that the authoritarian response was not counterintuitive once we account for the type of threat it represented.","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135830927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How COVID-19 is reshaping U.S. national security policy","authors":"Margaret Kosal","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.13","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is actively reshaping parts of its national security enterprise. This article explores the underlying politics, with a specific interest in the context of biosecurity, biodefense, and bioterrorism strategy, programs, and response, as the United States responds to the most significant outbreak of an emerging infectious disease in over a century. How the implicit or tacit failure to recognize the political will and political decision-making connected to warfare and conflict for biological weapons programs in these trends is explored. Securitization of public health has been a focus of the literature over the past half century. This recent trend may represent something of an inverse: an attempt to treat national security interests as public health problems. A hypothesis is that the most significant underrecognized problem associated with COVID-19 is disinformation and the weakening of confidence in institutions, including governments, and how adversaries may exploit that blind spot.","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135538250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Acculturation, Hispanic ethnicity, and trust: Verifying and explaining racial/ethnic differences in trust in health providers in North Carolina Medicaid.","authors":"Galen H Smith,&nbsp;Cicily Hampton,&nbsp;Hollie L Tripp,&nbsp;William P Brandon","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Three North Carolina Medicaid surveys conducted from 2000 to 2012 reported increasing numbers of Hispanic children enrolled in Medicaid and much lower trust in providers expressed by their adult caregiver respondents compared with responses for non-Hispanic Black and White children. To verify and explain this apparent trust chasm, we used bivariate and regression analyses. The variables employed included trust (dependent variable); child's race/ethnicity, age, and sex; satisfaction and health status scales; two utilization measures; respondent's age, sex, and education; geographical region; and population density of county of residence. Race/ethnicity was strongly associated with trust (<i>p</i> < .001), controlling for other independent variables. Access, satisfaction, and respondent's age and education were also significant. Our results fit the Behavioral Model for Vulnerable Populations, which maps the role of significant variables in health-seeking behavior. After analyzing the concept of trust, we argue that lower acculturation explains lower Hispanic trust compared with non-Hispanic Blacks. We suggest policies to improve acculturation.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"120-145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9448240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Scientists as spies?: <i>Assessing U.S. claims about the security threat posed by China's Thousand Talents Program for the U.S. life sciences</i>.","authors":"Kathleen M Vogel,&nbsp;Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley","doi":"10.1017/pls.2022.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2022.13","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 2008, the Chinese government created the Thousand Talents Program (TTP) to recruit overseas expertise to build up China's science and technology knowledge and innovation base. Ten years later, in 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced a new \"China Initiative\" that aimed to counter the transfer by U.S.-based scientists involved in the TTP of knowledge and intellectual property that could support China's military and economic might and pose threats to U.S. national security. This initiative launched a number of investigations into major U.S. federal funding agencies and universities and charged several scientists, many of them life scientists, with failing to accurately report their work and affiliations with Chinese entities and illegally transferring scientific information to China. Although the FBI cases demonstrate a clear problem with disclosure of foreign contracts and research integrity among some TTP recipients, they have failed to demonstrate any harm to U.S. national security interests. At the heart of this controversy are core questions that remain unresolved and need more attention: What is required to transfer and develop knowledge to further a country's science and technology ambitions? And can the knowledge acquired by a visiting scientist be easily used to further a country's ambitions? Drawing on literature from the field of science and technology studies, this article discusses the key issues that should be considered in evaluating this question in the Chinese context and the potential scientific, intelligence, and policy implications of knowledge transfer as it relates to the TTP.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"32-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9442009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In memoriam: Joseph Losco.","authors":"Gary R Johnson","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.1","url":null,"abstract":"Our APLS community recently lost one of its most loyal and long-contributing pioneers. Joseph Losco, professor emeritus of political science at Ball State University, passed away on November 14, 2022. Born in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1949, Joe was the youngest of two children of Italian immigrant parents. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science fromPennsylvania State University and then master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from Temple University. Joe began his teaching career at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he served as adjunct assistant professor of political science from 1981 to 1983. He moved to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, 1983. He remained at Ball State until 2016, when he became professor emeritus. In addition to his teaching and research at Ball State, Joe served as chair of the Department of Political Science from 2000 to 2014. Following his retirement from full-time teaching and administration, he served as adjunct professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago. Joe’s fields of teaching specialization were political theory, American government, and public policy. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in those fields, and he was also active as a scholar and leader in those fields. In the field of American government, Joe was coauthor of seven annual editions of AM GOV (2008– 2014), a popular introductory textbook. He was also a pioneer in the use of multimedia in teaching American government, having developed and produced 21 college-level educational videos (some of which also had high-school-level versions). These videos were produced for a variety of publishers, including McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, D.C. Heath, St. Martin’s Press, and Harcourt Brace. Four of these videos won awards. In the field of political theory, Joewas coeditor ofPolitical Theory: Classic andContemporary Readings (two volumes) and Political Theory: Classic Writings, Contemporary Views. In addition to these edited texts, he authored numerous book chapters, journal articles, and reviews in political theory. In the field of public policy, Joe was not only an author of scholarly articles in the field; he was also a visionary leader. With a million-dollar grant from the Lilly Endowment, he and two colleagues cofounded the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State. The mission of the Bowen Center and its three component institutes is to advance civic literacy, promote community involvement, enhance public service, and stimulate nonpartisan government research. Joe eventually became the center’s director. In that capacity, he oversaw its numerous programs, including the Hoosier Survey on public policy. The results of this statewide survey are presented annually to the Indiana General Assembly for use in state policymaking. In addition to his campus and public policy leadership, Joe was a leader in several state and national organizations. He served as a member of the nation","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"163-166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9443752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Disgust sensitivity and support for immigration across five nations.","authors":"Scott Clifford,&nbsp;Cengiz Erisen,&nbsp;Dane Wendell,&nbsp;Francisco Cantú","doi":"10.1017/pls.2022.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2022.6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Immigration has become a focal debate in politics across the world. Recent research suggests that anti-immigration attitudes may have deep psychological roots in implicit disease avoidance motivations. A key implication of this theory is that individual differences in disease avoidance should be related to opposition to immigration across a wide variety of cultural and political contexts. However, existing evidence on the topic has come almost entirely from the United States and Canada. In this article, we test the disease avoidance hypothesis using nationally representative samples from Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and Mexico, as well as two diverse samples from the United States. We find consistent and robust evidence that disgust sensitivity is associated with anti-immigration attitudes and that the relationship is similar in magnitude to education. Overall, our findings support the disease avoidance hypothesis and provide new insights into the nature of anti-immigration attitudes.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"65-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9448242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neurotechnology and international security: <i>Predicting commercial and military adoption of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in the United States and China</i>.","authors":"Margaret Kosal,&nbsp;Joy Putney","doi":"10.1017/pls.2022.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2022.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the past decade, international actors have launched \"brain projects\" or \"brain initiatives.\" One of the emerging technologies enabled by these publicly funded programs is brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which are devices that allow communication between the brain and external devices like a prosthetic arm or a keyboard. BCIs are poised to have significant impacts on public health, society, and national security. This research presents the first analytical framework that attempts to predict the dissemination of neurotechnologies to both the commercial and military sectors in the United States and China. While China started its project later with less funding, we find that it has other advantages that make earlier adoption more likely. We also articulate national security risks implicit in later adoption, including the inability to set international ethical and legal norms for BCI use, especially in wartime operating environments, and data privacy risks for citizens who use technology developed by foreign actors.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"81-103"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9448243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global political leaders during the COVID-19 vaccination: <i>Between propaganda and fact-checking</i>.","authors":"Rubén Rivas-de-Roca,&nbsp;Concha Pérez-Curiel","doi":"10.1017/pls.2023.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2023.4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The advent of COVID-19 vaccination meant a moment of hope after months of crisis communication. However, the context of disinformation on social media threatened the success of this public health campaign. This study examines how heads of government and fact-checking organizations in four countries managed communications on Twitter about the vaccination. Specifically, we conduct a content analysis of their discourses through the observation of propaganda mechanisms. The research draws on a corpus of words related to the pandemic and vaccines in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States (<i>n</i> = 2,800). The data were captured for a five-month period (January-May 2021), during which COVID-19 vaccines became available for elderly people. The results show a trend of clearly fallacious communication among the political leaders, based on the tools of emphasis and appeal to emotion. We argue that the political messages about the vaccination mainly used propaganda strategies. These tweets also set, to a certain extent, the agendas of the most relevant fact-checking initiatives in each country.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"104-119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9442007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Afraid of whom?: <i>Threat sensitivity's influence changes with perceived source of threat</i>.","authors":"Nicolas M Anspach","doi":"10.1017/pls.2022.12","DOIUrl":"10.1017/pls.2022.12","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Taking insights from the fields of psychology and biology, a growing body of scholarship considers the psychophysiological foundations of political attitudes. Subconscious emotional reactions to threat, for example, have been shown to predict socially conservative attitudes toward out-groups. However, many of these studies fail to consider different sources of perceived threat. Using a combination of survey and physiological data, I distinguish between fear of others and fear of authority, finding that threat sensitivity predicts divergent political attitudes depending on the strength of each. Those who are more sensitive to threat from others tend to hold socially conservative attitudes, while those who fear authority generally take more libertarian positions. As sensitivity to threat is at least partially inherited, these findings highlight the genetic role of political predispositions.</p>","PeriodicalId":35901,"journal":{"name":"Politics and the Life Sciences","volume":"42 1","pages":"17-31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9448241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}