I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

People tend to contribute more—and think they have stronger obligations to contribute more—to rescuing an identified victim rather than a statistical one. Indeed, they are often disposed to contribute more to rescuing a single identified victim than a greater number of statistical ones. By an “identified victim,” I mean Terry Q., lying injured in the passenger seat of the wrecked automobile on the corner of Main Street and Broadway, or Jessica McClure, the child who fell into the Texas well in (...) 1987 and whose family was sent $700,000 in donations for her. We need not know their names, however, and we can accept a very minimal form of identification. By a “statistical victim,” I mean the person who, extrapolating from traffic records, will be in a similar, serious car accident tomorrow (and may then be identified), or the children who will fall into wells next year if we do not cap them better than we did the well that trapped Jessica. Does this disposition (or perceived obligation) have any normative force? I initially thought there could be no such normative force, but consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments, pro and con, have convinced me that reasonable people can disagree with each other. This disagreement poses a problem for political philosophy: how should policy choices take such disagreement into account? (shrink)

This paper explores the socio-epistemic practice of shopping for experts. I argue that expert shopping is particularly likely to occur on what Thi Nguyen calls cognitive islands. To support my argument, I focus on macroeconomics. First, I make a prima-facie case for thinking that macroeconomics is a cognitive island. Then, I argue that ordinary people are particularly likely to engage in expert shopping when it comes to macroeconomic matters. In particular, I distinguish between two kinds of expert shopping, which I (...) call cynical and wishful, and introduce the notion of assisted expert shopping, which occurs when people or organizations shop for experts on behalf of other people. I argue that assisted expert shopping can sometime result in what I call a propagandistic use of expertise. Finally, I critically examine some possible reasons for optimism and find them wanting. I conclude by suggesting that that much of what I said about shopping for macroeconomic experts might also apply mutatis mutandis to other policy-relevant domains of expertise. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 9-12.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 59-61, December 2011.

Who are the gatekeepers in bioethics? Does editorial bias or institutional racism exist in leading bioethics journals? We analyzed the composition of the editorial boards of 14 leading bioethics journals by country. Categorizing these countries according to their Human Development Index (HDI), we discovered that approximately 95 percent of editorial board members are based in (very) high-HDI countries, less than 4 percent are from medium-HDI countries, and fewer than 1.5 percent are from low-HDI countries. Eight out of 14 leading bioethics (...) journals have no editorial board members from a medium- or low-HDI country. Eleven bioethics journals have no board members from low-HDI countries. This severe underrepresentation of bioethics scholars from developing countries on editorial boards suggests that bioethics may be affected by institutional racism, raising significant questions about the ethics of bioethics in a global context. (shrink)

How did bioethics manage to grow, flourish and ultimately do so well from a very unpromising birth in the 1970s? Many explanations have been advanced. Some ascribe the field9s growth to a puzzling, voluntary abnegation of moral authority by medicine to non-physicians. Some think bioethics survived by selling out to the biomedical establishment—public and private. This transaction involved bestowing moral approbation on all manner of biomedicine9s doings for a seat at a well-stocked funding table. Some see a sort of clever (...) intellectual bamboozlement at work wherein bioethicists pitched a moral elixir of objective expertise that the morally needy but unsophisticated in medicine and the biological sciences were eager to swallow. While each of these reasons has its defenders, I think the main reason that bioethics did well was that it did good. By using the media to move into the public arena, the field engaged the public imagination, provoked dialogue and debate, and contributed to policy changes that benefitted patients and healthcare providers. (shrink)

This paper identifies four major forms of scholarship in bioethics: empirical research, the articulation of mid-level principles of bioethics, the relating of these principles to fundamental moral theories, and discussions of the bioethical implications of legal principles and health delivery policies. It develops a reflective equilibrium approach to the relation between these four forms of scholarship. It then presents, in light of this approach, criteria for quality research in each of these forms of scholarship in bioethics. Keywords: quality of scholarship, (...) reflective equilibria in bioethics, research in bioethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three parts. “Moral Responsibility for Implicit (...) Bias” contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second part—“Structural Injustice”—explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third part—“The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice”—contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combating implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

This paper discusses the character of medical ethics and suggests that there are significant gaps that warrant greater attention. It describes ways in which the content and form of medical ethics may exclude or marginalise perspectives and contributions, thereby reducing its influence and its potential impact on, and value to, patients, students, carers and society. To consider what it is ‘to do good medical ethics’ suggests an active approach that seeks out, and learns from, contributions beyond the traditional boundaries of (...) scholarship. (shrink)

Suppose that we develop a medically safe and affordable means of enhancing human intelligence. For concreteness, we shall assume that the technology is genetic engineering (either somatic or germ line), although the argument we will present does not depend on the technological implementation. For simplicity, we shall speak of enhancing “intelligence” or “cognitive capacity,” but we do not presuppose that intelligence is best conceived of as a unitary attribute. Our considerations could be applied to specific cognitive abilities such as verbal (...) fluency, memory, abstract reasoning, social intelligence, spatial cognition, numerical ability, or musical talent. It will emerge that the form of argument that we use can be applied much more generally to help assess other kinds of enhancement technologies as well as other kinds of reform. However, to give a detailed illustration of how the argument form works, we will focus on the prospect of cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

Background Studying the contribution of individual countries to leading journals in a specific discipline can highlight which countries have the most impact on that discipline and whether a geographic bias exists. This article aims to examine the international distribution of publications in the field of bioethics. Methods Retrospective quantitative study of nine peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics and medical ethics (Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Hastings Center Report, Journal of Clinical Ethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Kennedy (...) Institute of Ethics Journal, Nursing Ethics, Christian Bioethics, and Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics). Results In total, 4,029 articles published between 1990 and 2003 were retrieved from the nine bioethical journals under study. The United States (59.3%, n = 2390), the United Kingdom (13.5%, n = 544), Canada (4%, n = 160) and Australia (3.8%, n = 154) had the highest number of publications in terms of absolute number of publications. When normalized to population size, smaller affluent countries, such as New Zealand, Finland and Sweden were more productive than the United States. The number of studies originating from the USA was decreasing in the period between 1990 and 2003. Conclusion While a lot of peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics profile themselves as international journals, they certainly do not live up to what one would expect from an "international" journal. The fact that English speaking countries, and to a larger extent American authors, dominate the international journals in the field of bioethics is a clear geographic bias towards the bioethical discussions that are going on in these journals. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have identified a wide range of biases and heuristics in human decision making over the past few decades. Only recently have bioethicists begun to think seriously about the implications of these findings for topics such as agency, autonomy, and consent. This article aims to provide an overview of biases and heuristics that have been identified and a framework in which to think comprehensively about the impact of them on the exercise of autonomous decision making. I analyze the impact (...) that these biases and heuristics have on the following dimensions of autonomy: understanding, intentionality, absence of alienating or controlling influence, and match between formally autonomous preferences or decisions and actual choices or actions. (shrink)

College-student subjects made notes about the morality of early abortion, as if they were preparing for a class discussion. Analysis of the quality of their arguments suggests that a distinction can be made between arguments based on well-supported warrants and those based on warrants that are easily criticised. The subjects also evaluated notes made by other, hypothetical, students preparing for the same discussion. Most subjects evaluated the set of arguments as better when the arguments were all on one side than (...) when both sides were presented, even when the hypothetical student was on the opposite side of the issue from the evaluator. Subjects who favoured one-sidedness also tended to make one-sided arguments themselves. The results suggest that ?myside bias? is partly caused by beliefs about what makes thinking good. (shrink)

A discussion of whiteness as an “ethos” or “relational category” in bioethics, drawing on examples from medical and historical research.

When ethical decisions have to be taken in critical, complex medical situations, they often involve decisions that set the course for or against life-sustaining treatments. Therefore the decisions have far-reaching consequences for the patients, their relatives, and often for the clinical staff. Although the rich psychology literature provides evidence that reasoning may be affected by undesired influences that may undermine the quality of the decision outcome, not much attention has been given to this phenomenon in health care or ethics consultation. (...) In this paper, we aim to contribute to the sensitization of the problem of systematic reasoning biases by showing how exemplary individual and group biases can affect the quality of decision-making on an individual and group level. We are addressing clinical ethicists as well as clinicians who guide complex decision-making processes of ethical significance. Knowledge regarding exemplary group psychological biases (e.g. conformity bias), and individual biases (e.g. stereotypes), will be taken from the disciplines of social psychology and cognitive decision science and considered in the field of ethical decision-making. Finally we discuss the influence of intuitive versus analytical (systematical) reasoning on the validity of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

A review of literature published a decade ago noted a significant increase in empirical papers across nine bioethics journals. This study provides an update on the presence of empirical papers in the same nine journals. It first evaluates whether the empirical trend is continuing as noted in the previous study, and second, how it is changing, that is, what are the characteristics of the empirical works published in these nine bioethics journals. A review of the same nine journals was conducted (...) for a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015. Data obtained was analysed descriptively and using a non-parametric Chi-square test. Of the total number of original papers published in the nine bioethics journals, 18.1% collected and analysed empirical data. Journal of Medical Ethics and Nursing Ethics led the empirical publications, accounting for 89.4% of all empirical papers. The former published significantly more quantitative papers than qualitative, whereas the latter published more qualitative papers. Our analysis reveals no significant difference between the proportion of empirical papers published in 2004–2009 and 2010–2015. However, the increasing empirical trend has continued in these journals with the proportion of empirical papers increasing from 14.9% in 2004 to 17.8% in 2015. This study presents the current state of affairs regarding empirical research published nine bioethics journals. In the quarter century of data that is available about the nine bioethics journals studied in two reviews, the proportion of empirical publications continues to increase, signifying a trend towards empirical research in bioethics. The growing volume is mainly attributable to two journals: Journal of Medical Ethics and Nursing Ethics. This descriptive study further maps the still developing field of empirical research in bioethics. Additional studies are needed to completely map the nature and extent of empirical research in bioethics to inform the ongoing debate about the value of empirical research for bioethics. (shrink)

This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value (...) is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty. (shrink)

Bioethicists disagree over methods, theories, decision-making guides, case analyses and public policies. Thirty years ago, the thinking of many scholars coalesced around a principlist approach to bioethics. That mid-level mode of moral reasoning is now one of many approaches to moral deliberation. Significant variation in contemporary approaches to the study of ethical issues related to medicine, biotechnology and health care raises the question of whether bioethics exists as widely shared method, theory, normative framework or mode of moral reasoning.

For millennia, philosophers have speculated about the origins of ethics. Recent research in evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences has shed light on that question. But this research also has normative significance. A standard way of arguing against a normative ethical theory is to show that in some circumstances the theory leads to judgments that are contrary to our common moral intuitions. If, however, these moral intuitions are the biological residue of our evolutionary history, it is not clear why we should (...) regard them as having any normative force. Research in the neurosciences should therefore lead us to reconsider the role of intuitions in normative ethics. (shrink)

Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, (...) such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data. (shrink)

If a doctor is trying to decide whether or not to provide a medical treatment, does it matter ethically whether that treatment has already been started? Health professionals sometimes find it harder to stop a treatment (withdraw) than to refrain from starting the treatment (withhold). But does that feeling correspond to an ethical difference? In this article, we defend equivalence—the view that withholding and withdrawal of treatment are ethically equivalent when all other factors are equal. We argue that preference for (...) withholding over withdrawal could represent a form of cognitive bias—withdrawal aversion. Nevertheless, we consider whether there could be circumstances in which there is a moral difference. We identify four examples of conditional nonequivalence. Finally, we reflect on the moral significance of diverging intuitions and the implications for policy. We propose a set of practical strategies for helping to reduce bias in end-of-life decision making, including the equivalence test. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEine wichtige Aufgabe empirischer Sozialforschung in der Medizinethik besteht darin, bisher unbekannte ethische Probleme zu identifizieren und zu beschreiben. Die Frage, welche Sachverhalte in den Gegenstandsbereich der Medizinethik fallen, ist jedoch sowohl aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht voraussetzungsreich als auch in der Praxis umstritten. Im Beitrag werden theoretische, methodologische und forschungspraktische Aspekte der Identifikation und Auswahl ethischer Probleme diskutiert und das Vorgehen am Beispiel einer konkreten empirisch-ethischen Studie illustriert. Der Schwerpunkt des Artikels liegt hierbei auf den Vorbedingungen sowie dem konkreten Vorgehen bei (...) der Integration von Laien- und Expertenperspektive. Im ersten Teil wird zunächst vorbereitend die Frage nach der Abgrenzung zwischen ethischen Problemen und anderen praktischen Herausforderungen adressiert. Dies geschieht unter Rückgriff auf die philosophisch-ethische Systematik sowie unter Berücksichtigung des stark praxisorientierten Charakters von Medizinethik. Anschließend wird ein Vorschlag zur Unterscheidung zweier Typen ethischer Probleme gemacht und die Frage nach der Definitionsmacht zur Auszeichnung ethischer Probleme auf den spezifischen Kontext empirisch-ethischer Forschung übertragen. Aufbauend auf diesen theoretischen Überlegungen wird im dritten Abschnitt des Beitrags schließlich ein Vorgehen zur Identifikation ethischer Probleme am Beispiel des ETHICO-Projektes als einer empirisch-ethischen Interventionsstudie im Bereich der Onkologie vorgestellt. Zusammenfassend vertritt der Beitrag die These, dass die Identifikation ethischer Probleme in der Medizin ein theoretisch komplexes und methodisch anspruchsvolles Unterfangen ist, bei dem nicht allein die Perspektive philosophischer Theorie eingenommen werden sollte, sondern vielmehr Formen der Integration von Laien- und Expertenperspektive entwickelt werden müssen. (shrink)

Empirical studies on people's moral attitudes regarding ethically challenging topics contribute greatly to research in medical ethics. However, it is not always clear in which ways this research adds to medical ethics as a normative discipline. In this article, we aim to provide a systematic account of the different ways in which attitudinal research can be used for normative reflection. In the first part, we discuss whether ethical judgements can be based on empirical work alone and we develop a sceptical (...) position regarding this point, taking into account theoretical, methodological and pragmatic considerations. As empirical data should not be taken as a direct source for normative justification, we then delineate different ways in which attitudes research can be combined with theoretical accounts of normative justification in the second part of the article. Firstly, the combination of attitudes research with normative-ethical theories is analysed with respect to three different aspects: The extent of empirical data which is needed, the question of which kind of data is required and the ways in which the empirical data are processed within the framework of an ethical theory. Secondly, two further functions of attitudes research are displayed which lie outside the traditional focus of ethical theories: the exploratory function of detecting and characterising new ethical problems, and the field of ‘moral pragmatics’. The article concludes with a methodological outlook and suggestions for the concrete practice of attitudinal research in medical ethics. (shrink)

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

Researchers increasingly rely on large data sets of health information, often linked with biological specimens. In recent years, the argument has been made that obtaining informed consent for conducting records-based research is unduly burdensome and results in ?consent bias.? As a type of selection bias, consent bias is said to exist when the group giving researchers access to their data differs from the group denying access. Therefore, to promote socially beneficial research, it is argued that consent should be unnecessary. After (...) analyzing the biostatistics evidence and bioethics arguments, the article concludes that (1) claims about the amount of consent bias are overstated; (2) commonly used statistical methods usually can account for consent bias; and (3) any residual effects of consent bias are below an acceptable level of imprecision and constitute a reasonable social cost for conducting ethically responsible research. (shrink)

The notion that it is useful to specify norms progressively in order to resolve doubts about what to do, which I developed initially in a 1990 article, has been only partly assimilated by the bioethics literature. The thought is not just that it is helpful to work with relatively specific norms. It is more than that: specification can replace deductive subsumption and balancing. Here I argue against two versions of reliance on balancing that are prominent in recent bioethical discussions. Without (...) meaning to address the substance or the overall merits of either view I criticize, I attack Gert, Culver and Clouser's implicit reliance on some overall dimension of balancing as a basis of resolving conflicts among norms and Beauchamp and Childress's residual acceptance of 'justified balancing'. The former authors' description of resolving conflicts depends upon a type of value commensurability that (as they otherwise seem to admit) does not obtain, while the latter authors' role for justified balancing would be better served by continued specification. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of a social desirability response bias as a personality characteristic (self-deception and impression management) and as an item characteristic (perceived desirability of the behavior) on self-reported ethical conduct. Findings from a sample of college students revealed that self-reported ethical conduct is associated with both personality and item characteristics, with perceived desirability of behavior having the greatest influence on self-reported conduct. Implications for research in business ethics are drawn, and suggestions are offered for reducing the effects (...) of a socially desirable response bias. (shrink)

This paper attempts a partial, critical look at the construction and use of case studies in ethics education. It argues that the authors and users of case studies are often insufficiently aware of the literary nature of these artefacts: this may lead to some confusion between fiction and reality. Issues of the nature of the genre, the fictional, story-constructing aspect of case studies, the nature of authorship, and the purposes and uses of case studies as "texts" are outlined and discussed. (...) The paper concludes with some critical questions that can be applied to the construction and use of case studies in the light of the foregoing analysis. (shrink)

The advances in biotechnology have given rise to a discussion concerning the strong emotional reaction expressed by the public towards biotechnological innovations. This reaction has been named the ‘Yuck-factor’ by several theorists of bioethics. Leon Kass, the former chairman of the President's council on bioethics, has appraised this public reaction as ‘an emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it’.1 Similar arguments have been forwarded by the Catholic Church, several Protestant denominations and the Pro-Life movement. Several (...) bioethicists have, however, opposed the idea of a disgust-based morality.2Recent findings in cognitive science support the view that the strong negative emotions people often experience when faced with biotechnological ideas are not expressions of inner wisdom. The negative emotions may rather be the result of a cognitive violation the biotechnological innovations easily cause.Due to their evolutionary background, people have certain automatic and quick cognitive tendencies routinely used for categorizing and reasoning about nature, usually termed ‘folk biology’. Biotechnological processes like hybridisation and cloning clearly violate several of the cognitive rules people naturally apply for the explanation and categorization of their natural environment.As the cognitive tendencies routinely applied to the explanation of biological world are violated, an emotional response of fear, disgust and of something unnatural being underway is easily provoked. It is suggested in this paper that the reason behind the Yuck-factor is not a deep inner wisdom, but a violation of natural human cognitive tendencies concerning the biological world. (shrink)

While experience often affords important knowledge and insight that is difficult to garner through observation or testimony alone, it also has the potential to generate conflicts of interest and unrepresentative perspectives. We call this tension the paradox of experience. In this paper, we first outline appeals to experience made in debates about access to unproven medical products and disability bioethics, as examples of how experience claims arise in bioethics and some of the challenges raised by these claims. We then motivate (...) the idea that experience can be an asset by appealing to themes in feminist and moral epistemology, distinguishing between epistemic and justice-based appeals. Next, we explain the concern that experience may be a liability by appealing to empirical work on cognitive biases and theoretical work about the problem of partial representation. We conclude with preliminary recommendations for addressing the paradox and offer several questions for future discussion. (shrink)

Given the lack of generally accepted moral standards, one of the controversial questions for those who investigate moral heuristics is whether we can argue that moral heuristics can lead to mistaken moral judgments. This paper suggests that, even if we agree that moral standards are different and chosen subjectively, deviations from them are possible and we can prove such deviations in a logically correct way. However, in this case, it must be admitted that not every deviation is a mistake. Deviation (...) becomes a mistake only when a person departs from the standard which she or he considers as right. There are cases where it is impossible to establish the fact of a mistake: when a person chooses a moral standard post hoc, in the light of which the decision would be right (only when there is a deviation from all moral standards which a person considers as right, it is possible to recognize the decision as mistaken). Accepting the idea of the subjectivity of a moral standard, it is also necessary to accept the idea of relativity of moral heuristics: the normative standard chosen by a person also determines which method of moral decision making will be considered as a heuristic. (shrink)

Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices (...) is based on a series of moral fictions – motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end-of-life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions is radically mistaken. (shrink)

Background In the last years, there has been an increase in publication of systematic reviews of normative literature or of normative information in bioethics. The aim of a systematic review is to search, select, analyse and synthesise literature in a transparent and systematic way in order to provide a comprehensive and unbiased overview of the information sought, predominantly as a basis for informed decision-making in health care. Traditionally, one part of the procedure when conducting a systematic review is an appraisal (...) of the quality of the literature that could be included. Main text However, while there are established methods and standards for appraising e.g. clinical studies or other empirical research, quality appraisal of normative literature in the context of a systematic review is still rather a conundrum – not only is it unclear how it could or should be done, but also the question whether it necessarily must be done is not settled yet. Based on a pragmatic definition of “normative literature” as well as on a typology of different types of systematic reviews of normative literature/information, this paper identifies and critically discusses three possible strategies of conducting quality appraisal. Conclusions The paper will argue that none of the three strategies is able to provide a general and satisfying solution to the problems associated with quality appraisal of normative literature/information. Still, the discussion of the three strategies allows outlining minimal conditions that elaborated strategies have to meet in future, and facilitates sketching a theoretically and practically promising strategy. (shrink)