Leadership Ethics

A CEO bankrupts the company he is supposed to be leading. A retiree donates thousands of hours to her community. A company\u27s leadership decides not to relocate a factory overseas, for the sake of the residents of an economically challenged town. A president of a club on a college campus encourages members to cheat on their examinations so that the group\u27s members can earn academic honors. An elected public official arranges a tryst with a lover and abandons his duties for days on end. These behaviors raise questions about motivation, rationality, and intent, but with a difference; these actions cannot only be judged as correct or incorrect in terms of effectiveness or competence, but as ethically right or wrong

Isospin Splitting in the Baryon Octet and Decuplet

Baryon mass splittings are analyzed in terms of a simple model with general pairwise interactions. At present, the $\Delta$ masses are poorly known from experiments. Improvement of these data would provide an opportunity to make a significant test of our understanding of electromagnetic and quark-mass contributions to hadronic masses. The problem of determining resonance masses from scattering and production data is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, LATEX inc. 2 LATEX "pictures", CMU-HEP91-24-R9

Pharmacist intervention in primary care to improve outcomes in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction

<b>Background</b> Meta-analysis of small trials suggests that pharmacist-led collaborative review and revision of medical treatment may improve outcomes in heart failure.<p></p> <b>Methods and results</b> We studied patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction in a cluster-randomized controlled, event driven, trial in primary care. We allocated 87 practices (1090 patients) to pharmacist intervention and 87 practices (1074 patients) to usual care. The intervention was delivered by non-specialist pharmacists working with family doctors to optimize medical treatment. The primary outcome was a composite of death or hospital admission for worsening heart failure. This trial is registered, number ISRCTN70118765. The median follow-up was 4.7 years. At baseline, 86% of patients in both groups were treated with an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. In patients not receiving one or other of these medications, or receiving less than the recommended dose, treatment was started, or the dose increased, in 33.1% of patients in the intervention group and in 18.5% of the usual care group [odds ratio (OR) 2.26, 95% CI 1.64–3.10; P< 0.001]. At baseline, 62% of each group were treated with a β-blocker and the proportions starting or having an increase in the dose were 17.9% in the intervention group and 11.1% in the usual care group (OR 1.76, 95% CI 1.31–2.35; P< 0.001). The primary outcome occurred in 35.8% of patients in the intervention group and 35.4% in the usual care group (hazard ratio 0.97, 95% CI 0.83–1.14; P = 0.72). There was no difference in any secondary outcome.<p></p> <b>Conclusion</b> A low-intensity, pharmacist-led collaborative intervention in primary care resulted in modest improvements in prescribing of disease-modifying medications but did not improve clinical outcomes in a population that was relatively well treated at baseline

Open solar flux estimates from near-Earth measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field: comparison of the first two perihelion passes of the Ulysses spacecraft

Results from all phases of the orbits of the Ulysses spacecraft have shown that the magnitude of the radial component of the heliospheric field is approximately independent of heliographic latitude. This result allows the use of near- Earth observations to compute the total open flux of the Sun. For example, using satellite observations of the interplanetary magnetic field, the average open solar flux was shown to have risen by 29% between 1963 and 1987 and using the aa geomagnetic index it was found to have doubled during the 20th century. It is therefore important to assess fully the accuracy of the result and to check that it applies to all phases of the solar cycle. The first perihelion pass of the Ulysses spacecraft was close to sunspot minimum, and recent data from the second perihelion pass show that the result also holds at solar maximum. The high level of correlation between the open flux derived from the various methods strongly supports the Ulysses discovery that the radial field component is independent of latitude. We show here that the errors introduced into open solar flux estimates by assuming that the heliospheric field’s radial component is independent of latitude are similar for the two passes and are of order 25% for daily values, falling to 5% for averaging timescales of 27 days or greater. We compare here the results of four methods for estimating the open solar flux with results from the first and second perehelion passes by Ulysses. We find that the errors are lowest (1–5% for averages over the entire perehelion passes lasting near 320 days), for near-Earth methods, based on either interplanetary magnetic field observations or the aa geomagnetic activity index. The corresponding errors for the Solanki et al. (2000) model are of the order of 9–15% and for the PFSS method, based on solar magnetograms, are of the order of 13–47%. The model of Solanki et al. is based on the continuity equation of open flux, and uses the sunspot number to quantify the rate of open flux emergence. It predicts that the average open solar flux has been decreasing since 1987, as Correspondence to: M. Lockwood ([email protected]) is observed in the variation of all the estimates of the open flux. This decline combines with the solar cycle variation to produce an open flux during the second (sunspot maximum) perihelion pass of Ulysses which is only slightly larger than that during the first (sunspot minimum) perihelion pass

Views of health journalists, industry employees and news consumers about disclosure and regulation of industry-journalist relationships: An empirical ethical study

Bioethicists and policymakers are increasingly concerned about the effects on health journalism of relationships between journalists and private corporations. The concern is that relationships between journalists and manufacturers of medicines, medical devices, complementary medicines, and food can and do distort health reporting. This is a problem because health news is known to have a major impact on the public’s health-related expectations and behaviour. Commentators have proposed two related approaches to protecting the public from potential harms arising from industry-journalist interactions: greater transparency and external regulation. To date, few empirical studies have examined stakeholders’ views of industry-journalist relationships and how these should be managed. We conducted interviews with 13 journalists and 12 industry employees, and two focus groups with consumers. Our findings, which are synthesised here, provide empirical support for the need for greater transparency and regulation of industry-journalist relationships. Our findings also highlight several likely barriers to instituting such measures, which will need to be overcome if transparency and regulation are to be accepted by stakeholder and have their intended effect on both the quality of journalism and the actions of news consumers.NHMR

Rules of Engagement: Journalists’ attitudes to industry influence in health news reporting.

Health-related industries use a variety of methods to influence health news, including the formation and maintenance of direct relationships with journalists. These interactions have the potential to subvert news reporting such that it comes to serve the interests of industry in promoting their products, rather than the public interest in critical and accurate news and information. Here we report the findings of qualitative interviews conducted in Sydney, Australia, in which we examined journalists’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, their relationships with health-related industries. Participants’ belief in their ability to manage industry influence and their perceptions of what it means to be unduly influenced by industry raise important concerns relating to the psychology of influence and the realities of power relationships between industry and journalists. The analysis also indicates ways in which concerned academics and working journalists might establish more fruitful dialogue regarding the role of industry in health-related news and the extent to which increased regulation of journalist-industry relationships might be needed.NHMR

Power and control in interactions between journalists and health-related industries – the view from industry.

The mass media is a major source of health information for the public, and as such the quality and independence of health news reporting is an important concern. Concerns have been expressed that journalists reporting on health are increasingly dependent on their sources – including representatives of industries responsible for manufacturing health-related products – for story ideas and content. Many critics perceive an imbalance of power between journalists and industry sources, with industry being in a position of relative power, however the empirical evidence to support this view is limited. The analysis presented here – which is part of a larger study of industry-journalist relationships – draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with representatives of health-related industries in Australia to inductively examine their perceptions of power relations between industry and journalists. Participants painted a picture in which journalists, rather than themselves, were in a position to control the nature, extent, and outcome of their interactions with industry sources. Our results resonate with the concept of “mediatisation” as it has been applied in the domain of political reporting. It appears that, from the perspective of industry representatives, the imposition of media logic on health-related industries may inappropriately influence the information that the public receives about health-related products. KEYWORDS: journalism, ethics, power, public health, qualitative researchNHMR

Health journalists’ perceptions of their professional roles and responsibilities for ensuring the veracity of reports of health research

Health industries attempt to influence the public through the news media and through their relationships with expert academics and opinion leaders. This paper reports the results of a study of journalists’ perceptions of their professional roles and responsibilities with regard to relationships between industry and academia. Journalists believed that responsibility for the validity of their reports rested with academics and systems of peer review. However this fails to account for the extent these interactions and the failures of peer review. Health journalists’ retention of a critical stance regarding industry-academia relationships will include advocacy for and adoption of mandatory reporting of these relationships

Parameterization invariance and shape equations of elastic axisymmetric vesicles

The issue of different parameterizations of the axisymmetric vesicle shape addressed by Hu Jian-Guo and Ou-Yang Zhong-Can [ Phys.Rev. E {\bf 47} (1993) 461 ] is reassesed, especially as it transpires through the corresponding Euler - Lagrange equations of the associated elastic energy functional. It is argued that for regular, smooth contours of vesicles with spherical topology, different parameterizations of the surface are equivalent and that the corresponding Euler - Lagrange equations are in essence the same. If, however, one allows for discontinuous (higher) derivatives of the contour line at the pole, the differently parameterized Euler - Lagrange equations cease to be equivalent and describe different physical problems. It nevertheless appears to be true that the elastic energy corresponding to smooth contours remains a global minimum.Comment: 10 pages, latex, one figure include