Sometimes participants in research collaboration die before the paper is accepted for publication. The question we raise in this paper is how authorship should be handled in such situations. First, the outcome of a literature survey is presented. Taking this as our starting point, we then go on to discuss authorship of the dead in relation to the requirements of the Vancouver rules. We argue that in principle the deceased can meet the requirements laid down in these authorship guidelines. However, (...) to include a deceased researcher as author requires a strong justification. The more the person has been involved in the research and writing process before he or she passes away, the stronger the justification for inclusion. (shrink)

Patient preference predictors (PPPs) promise to provide medical professionals with a new solution to the problem of making treatment decisions on behalf of incapacitated patients. I show that the use of PPPs faces a version of a normative problem familiar from legal scholarship: the problem of naked statistical evidence. I sketch two sorts of possible reply, vindicating and debunking, and suggest that our reply to the problem in the one domain ought to mirror our reply in the other. The conclusion (...) is thus conditional: if we think the problem of naked statistical evidence is a serious problem in the legal domain, then we should be concerned about the symmetrical problem for PPPs. (shrink)