The role of national advisory bodies
Frank Wells, Michael Farthing in Fraud and Misconduct in Biomedical Research, 2019
Will it be necessary to make a change in the law to make research fraud a serious offence like financial fraud? This has not been seriously considered in the UK, but Norway is currently looking at the possibility following the retraction of a paper in the Lancet authored by the Norwegian cancer expert Dr Jon Sudbø.23 Hwang and colleagues are apparently going to be prosecuted in the South Korean courts.24 It has been argued that, unlike financial fraud, research fraud is a victimless crime. However, a patient harmed by a drug that came to market through a fraudulent clinical trial might see it differently. Similarly, funding agencies, particularly government-funded bodies, have responsibilities to ensure that the funds that they disperse are used appropriately and not for improper purposes such as fraudulent research.
The chemistry of the Body
Gail S. Anderson in Biological Influences on Criminal Behavior, 2019
In a study designed to expand the use of 2D:4D ratio as a measure of prenatal androgen exposure, a number of other measures that are known to be influenced by androgens, such as height, sports prowess, strength, and muscularity, were included.23 The study included an ethnically mixed group of 445 male and female university students who answered a questionnaire on 14 different types of offence. Finger measurements were made by the researchers, and participants were asked their height and to score their muscularity, physical strength, and athletic prowess. Low 2D:4D ratio predicted some but not all forms of criminal behavior in both males and females and the group overall.23 This makes sense, as not all crime has a single root cause. Moreover, there was no more relationship to violent crime than to property or victimless crime, suggesting, as many others have, that the risk is to antisocial behavior, which accrues resources to attract mates, rather than to violence. Using several measures of prenatal androgen levels did not increase associations, so the authors concluded that the use of 2D:4D alone was enough to draw conclusions.23 Recent research has shown more specific relationships between prenatal testosterone levels and 2D:4D ratio, linking low ratios to sensitivity to sudden increases in testosterone rather than just resting state, as well as to the ratio between testosterone and cortisol.24
The Deviance Model of Drug-Taking Behavior: A Critique
Bernard Segal in Perspectives on Drug Use in the United States, 2014
An early contributor to the view that the deviance model of drug taking was inappropriate was sociologist Alfred R. Lindesmith (1947), who argued that narcotic drugs were benign and that federal and local enforcement policies had created an artificial criminal subculture. A joint committee of the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association (1964) came to a somewhat similar conclusion. Around the same time, the identification of narcotics and other drug abuse as a noteworthy example of victimless crime raised questions about the wisdom of our laws restricting access to mood-modifying substances (Schur, 1965).
Sanctioning Sex Work: Examining Generational Differences and Attitudinal Correlates in Policy Preferences for Legalization
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2023
Ráchael A. Powers, Jacquelyn Burckley, Vanessa Centelles
Although sex work is considered a “victimless crime,” some research has indicated more punitive perceptions toward sex work than other vices, such as gambling and marijuana use. Cosby et al. (1996) showed large support for the legalization of gambling, but not sex work. Relatedly, May (1999) noted that most people favored legal gambling; however, those who were not in favor of legalized gambling were also not in favor of legalized sex work. Schnabel and Sevell (2017) found that perceptions of marijuana have become more tolerant of legalization since 1988 across demographics that are historically opposed to recreational drug use (political conservatives, older generations, and those who are more religious). Nonetheless, research has not thoroughly and recently examined the relationships between gambling, marijuana, and sex work policies.
Kübler-Ross and Bioethics: A Cautionary Tale
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2019
I first became aware of the nascent field of bioethics in 1973 when I was working with psychiatrist Paul Lowinger (1923–2013) on a Michigan state taskforce on “victimless crime”—a euphemism for Detroit’s opiate crisis. During that period Paul involved me in a psychosurgery case (Kaimowitz v. Michigan DMH (1973)) and as I became familiar with drug treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals it seemed to me, looking at things from an outsider’s perspective, that psychiatrists and drug counselors had so medicalized their interactions with their patients/clients that they seem to have lost the ability to appreciate what their patients/clients were saying to them. To quote Matthew 13:13 “they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand” (King James Bible 2019). I am not certain exactly when I purchased On Death and Dying, but given my involvement with psychiatrists and patients, counselors and clients, the book’s subtitle “What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families,” would certainly have grabbed my attention in 1973.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Criminology
- Deviance
- Obscenity
- Paraphilia
- Social Norm
- Carcinogen
- Recreational Drug Use
- Age of Consent
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Mens Rea