Much neuroethics literature concludes with a set of normative recommendations. While these recommendations can be a helpful way of summarizing a proposal for a future direction, some have recently argued that ethics scholarship has devoted insufficient attention to considerations of audience and real-world applications. To date, however, while scholars have conducted topic analyses of neuroethics literature, to our knowledge no study has evaluated who neuroethics scholarship addresses and what it recommends. The objective of the present study therefore was to provide (...) a preliminary characterization of recommendations offered in neuroethics scholarship and an assessment of their target audiences. Rather than attempting to demarcate what constitutes “neuroethics scholarship,” we analyzed text that authors’ had self-identified as being neuroethics-related: abstracts presented at the International Neuroethics Society (INS) annual meetings and published as top abstracts in AJOB Neuroscience in the last decade (2011–2020). We found that a majority of abstracts utilized conceptual methods (62.2%) and provided conceptual recommendations (68%). Roughly 77% of all abstracts did not explicitly address a target audience, yet nearly all of these were implicitly directed at other scholars. The remainder specified a target audience of scholars (12.2%), regulators (6.7%), healthcare providers (6.7%) and industry (2.6%). Only a subset of abstracts provided practical or policy recommendations (19.7%). Of those, the majority (61.5%) did not specify a target audience. Among the subset with actionable recommendations, a clarification of target audience may help increase the impact. (shrink)

The goals and tasks of neuroethics formulated by Farahany and Ramos (2020) link epistemological and methodological issues with ethical and social values. The authors refer simultaneously to the social significance and scientific reliability of the BRAIN Initiative. They openly argue that neuroethics should not only examine neuroscientific research in terms of “a rigorous, reproducible, and representative neuroscience research process” as well as “explore the unique nature of the study of the human brain through accurate and representative models of its function (...) and dysfunction”, but also its responsibilities or social consequences. In our commentary, we would like to concentrate on problem selection, which is shortly noticed by Farahany and Ramos, and by BRAIN Initiative’s Neuroethics Report itself. The document raises an important issue related to problem selection, which is strengthening or perpetuating existing prejudices and biases by choosing a research subject: “scientists are prompted to consider how the questions they choose to study in the laboratory might amplify existing biases.” This leads to several further problems: what constitutes bias?; how biases may be embedded in the selection of research programs?; is it possible to conduct completely unbiased research?; who should be a gatekeeper in the case of research that may amplify biases? We try to notice possible answers to these questions in the context of the research on differences (e.g., cognitive, medical, behavioral) between human populations. (shrink)

What is bioethics to do when it strives to assess the quality of its research and scholarship and when it needs to justify its work to prospective funders, especially a funder like the National Institutes of Health that privileges empirical discovery? In “A Conceptual Model for the Translation of Bioethics Research and Scholarship,” Debra Mathews and colleagues take an important first step at advancing an answer. The authors describe what they call a translational process, whereby bioethics “outputs” are translated into (...) changes of three types: in thinking, practice, and policy. It goes nearly without saying that bioethics research and scholarship must be held accountable for changes in thinking. What raison d'etre do we have if not to deepen thinking, question assumptions, and encourage ourselves and others to examine hard issues from novel approaches? Assuredly it is hard to assess quality, and even harder to assess specific changes in thinking for which high-quality scholarship may be responsible, but it is a necessary goal and one for which we should strive without reservation. Bioethics should also affect policy and practice. We should document how it does and the extent to which it does as often and as prominently as possible. However, let us be wary of pinning too much on practice and policy changes as the primary way of establishing bioethics’ worth. (shrink)

There are increasing pressures for bioethics to emphasise ‘translation’. Against this backdrop, we defend ‘speculative bioethics’. We explore speculation as an important tool and line of bioethical inquiry. Further, we examine the relationship between speculation and translational bioethics and posit that speculation can support translational work. First, speculative research might be conducted as ethical analysis of contemporary issues through a new lens, in which case it supports translational work. Second, speculation might be a first step prior to translational work on (...) a topic. Finally, speculative bioethics might constitute different content altogether, without translational objectives. For each conception of speculative bioethics, important methodological aspects determine whether it constitutes good bioethics research. We conclude that whether speculative bioethics is compatible with translational bioethics—and to what extent—depends on whether it is being employed as tool or content. Applying standards of impact uniformly across bioethics may inappropriately limit speculative bioethics. (shrink)

What is good bioethics? Addressing this question is key for reinforcing and developing the field. In particular, a discussion of potential quality criteria can heighten awareness and contribute to the quality of bioethics publications. Accordingly, the objective of this article is threefold: first, we want to identify a set of criteria for quality in bioethics. Second, we want to illustrate the added value of a novel method: in-depth analysis of a single article with the aim of deriving quality criteria. The (...) third and ultimate goal is to stimulate a broad and vivid debate on goodness in bioethics. An initial literature search reveals a range of diverse quality criteria. In order to expand on the realm of such quality criteria, we perform an in-depth analysis of an article that is acclaimed for being exemplary. The analysis results in eleven specific quality criteria for good bioethics in three categories: argumentative, empirical, and dialectic. Although we do not claim that the identified criteria are universal or absolute, we argue that they are fruitful for fueling a continuous constitutive debate on what is “good bioethics.” Identifying, debating, refining, and applying such criteria is an important part of defining and improving bioethics. (shrink)

In “A Conceptual Model for the Translation of Bioethics Research and Scholarship,” Debra Mathews et al. aim to “begin an important discussion” about how to measure success in bioethics, and in doing so they set out a typology of bioethics research and scholarship with the arguably correct assumption that we cannot evaluate success in bioethics without first understanding what its goals are. I think the authors are correct in their claim that, in the current academic climate, having work in bioethics (...) deemed a success is likely to hinge, in some way, on its being translated into practice and having impact. I want, however, to add a critical voice in the form of three considerations that I feel ought to be attended to before the work progresses further, the first being that the typology Mathews et al. propose is highly problematic. Although there is a burgeoning literature on “empirical bioethics” methodologies that blend empirical and conceptual work, the typology appears to ignore this. (shrink)

In 2014, the editorial board of BMC Medical Ethics came together to devise sections for the journal that would give structure to the journal help ensure that authors’ research is matched to the most appropriate editors and help readers to find the research most relevant to them. The editorial board decided to take a practical approach to devising sections that dealt with the challenges of content management. After that, we started thinking more theoretically about how one could go about classifying (...) the field of medical ethics. This editorial elaborates and reflects on the practical approach that we took at the journal, then considers an alternative theoretically derived approach, and reflects on the possibilities, challenges and value of classifying the field more broadly. (shrink)

In the article “A Conceptual Model for the Translation of Bioethics Research and Scholarship,” Debra Mathews and her colleagues want to apply to bioethics various translational concepts developed for biomedical research. According to experts in translational science, this would mean evaluating not only the extent to which research produces the “changes in thinking, practice, and policy” that interest Mathews et al. but also the appropriateness of bioethics training and the level of competency of people working in the field. Their proposal (...) thus raises two sets of questions. The first, which the authors recognize must be the starting point for their argument, is, what precisely is the field in question? The second is whether the tools of translational science provide the right means of measuring the achievements of bioethics. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 83-85.

The authors of “A Conceptual Model for the Translation of Bioethics Research and Scholarship” argue that bioethics must respond to institutional pressures by demonstrating that it is having an impact in the world. Any impact, the authors observe, must be “informed” by the goals of the discipline of bioethics. The concept of bioethics as a discipline is central to their argument. They begin by citing an essay that Daniel Callahan wrote in the first issue of Hastings Center Studies. Callahan argued (...) in this 1973 piece that bioethics had yet to attain the status of a discipline, and he lauded the freedom of being able to define a new discipline. Callahan's essay shares with Mathews and colleague's a peculiarity: neither ever defines what it means to refer to something as a “discipline.” To define a discipline does mean attending to the intended end product of scholarly activity, so I concur with Mathews et al.’s focus on outcomes. But I am concerned that in their argument they confusingly entangle their understanding of an academic discipline's internal goals, its telos, with its potential to have an impact on the external world, its praxis. The confusion that this can bring exposes what I believe is a profound problem within bioethics, the discipline's peculiar and at times intellectually hazardous relationship with its institutional hosts. (shrink)