During the first week of February, the Institute hosted Erik Angner, who delivered the final lecture of the library series on well-being, in addition to a second talk on campus. Science journalist Kayt Sukel also joined us during that week, and hosted a workshop on science writing for a general audience. Kayt also was the guest speaker at a special joint Rotman-BMI coffee hour during her stay. This month we hosted a work in progress seminar, titled How Philosophical Confusion Derails Everyday Medicine: Six Senses of “Symptoms Caused by the Mind”, focused on research being done by Rotman visiting fellow Diane O’Leary. And finally, we welcomed Daniel Ansari, who gave a brief talk about his research on the development of numerosity in young children during the end of the month joint Rotman-BMI coffee break.
All other news & announcements from our members are listed below in alphabetical order.
A new paper including co-authors Tommaso Bruni, Mackenzie Graham, Adrian Owen, and Charles Weijer, titled “Informed consent for functional MRI research on comatose patients following severe brain injury: balancing the social benefits of research against patient autonomy“, was just published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Robert Corless and Nic Fillion were co-editors of a Fields Institute Communications volume, Algorithms and Complexity in Mathematics, Epistemology and Science: Proceedings of the 2015 and 2016 ACMES Conferences. It includes a chapter by Robert Corless, titled “Backward Error Analysis for Perturbation Methods“, pp. 35 – 79, and a chapter by Robert Moir, titled “Effective Validity: A Generalized Logic for Stable Approximate Inference,” pp. 225-268.
Craig Fox attended the 2019 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, held in Denver from February 20 – 23. He was the commentator on a paper on the application of isotope geochemistry to questions regarding global temperature in the deep past, titled “Methodological Synthesis in the Paterson-Clarke Technique”, during a philosophy of science colloquium. The title of his talk was “Rethinking the distinction between experimental and historical scientific inquiry.”
Cory Goldstein was interviewed by Ariel Frame and Gavin Tolometti on GradCast, the official radio show and podcast of the Society of Graduate Students at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. He discussed his current research, how he ended up studying at Western, and what it means to be a PhD student. The interview aired Tuesday, February 26, 2019 at 6:00p.m. Listen to Episode #204: The Ethics of Pragmatic Clinical Trials.
Marie Gueguen attended the workshop Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Model-Independent Searches and chaired the Model-Independence in Cosmology session, on February 11-12 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Co-sponsored and co-hosted with the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, this two-day workshop brought together particle physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists to discuss the state of the art on methodological challenges and promises in using model-independent searches across a range of areas and searches.
Rebecca Livernois presented a talk, titled “Epistemic Ascriptions and the Actualization of Externalities”, at the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference, Young Scholars Initiative North America Convening, hosted by USC Dornsife on February 22-24.
Philippos Papagiannopoulos began a post-doctoral fellowship with a joint-affiliation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The fellowship duration is for one year, and is part of a research project under the title “The Indeterminacy of Computation”.
Maxwell Smith had a paper published in the journal Social Justice Research, titled “Public Health as Social Justice? A Qualitative Study of Public Health Policy-Makers’ Perspectives”.
Maxwell Smith also contributed a section (an ethical analysis) in Internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy for major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders: A Health Technology Assessment, a report which was just published by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology and Health (CADTH).
Maxwell Smith received an internal seed grant from Western’s Medical and Health Science Review Board Seed Research Grant competition titled ‘What does Health Equity Require for Public Health Interventions? Modelling Ethical Criteria of Health Equity for Canadian Adults using the Diabetes Population Risk Tool’.
Pictured above: Erik Angner delivers his talk on the science & philosophy of well-being; Kayt Sukel speaks at a special joint Rotman-BMI coffee break; Cory Goldstein with the hosts of GradCast, Gavin Tolometti and Ariel Frame; Marie Gueguen (back row, third from right) appears with other women participants in the Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Model-Independent Searches workshop; special attendee of Erik Angner’s on-campus talk, Emma. 🙂
