SYNOPSIS This report seeks to inform policy makers on the nature and the merit of the arguments for and against the concerns associated with a potential technological singularity. Part I describes the lessons learned from our investigation of the subject, separating the arguments of merit from the fallacies and misconceptions that confuse the debate and undermine its rational resolution.

This essay addresses the methodology of philosophy of science and illustrates how formal and empirical methods can be fruitfully combined. Special emphasis is given to the application of experimental methods to confirmation theory and to recent work on the conjunction fallacy, a key topic in the rationality debate arising from research in cognitive psychology. Several other issue can be studied...

This paper presents the full debate held on October 1, 2014, which focused on the following resolution: "Publications which promote political agendas have no place in scientific and medical journals, and academics should refrain from publishing in such journals." The debate moderator was Professor Shimon Glick. Taking the pro stance was Professor A. Mark Clarfield; the con stance was held by Pr...

We explored medical student's views and perceptions of a series of debates conducted during problem-based learning (PBL) practiced as a part of the Spiral curriculum at the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia. A series of debates were employed during PBL sessions for second-year female medical students, over the period 2014-2016. Each cohort of students was randomly split into ...

The "function debate" in the philosophy of biology and the "venom debate" in the science of toxinology are conceptually related. Venom systems are complex multifunctional traits that have evolved independently numerous times throughout the animal kingdom. No single concept of function, amongst those popularly defended, appears adequate to describe these systems in all their evolutionary context...

In general, I thought that the Boal and Willis “Note on the Armstrong/Mitroff Debate” 1 provided an interesting and fair discussion. 2 The summary of the consequences of the subjective versus objective approaches (Table 1 in their paper) was helpful. It clearly outlined the dilemma faced by scientists: “Should I strive for personal gain or for scientific contributions?” It also described what i...

Geocomputation is an emerging field of research that advocates the use of computationally intensive techniques such as neural networks, heuristic search, and cellular automata for spatial data analysis. Since increasing amounts of health-related data are collected within a geographical frame of reference, geocomputational methods show increasing potential for health data analysis. This paper pr...

The historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take the existence of a medical 'mainstream' for granted. This article argues that the idea of an 'orthodox', 'mainstream' named allopathy and one of its 'alternatives' homoeopathy were co-produced in Bengal. It emphasises the role of ...