Recent changes instituted by the US government pose a sinister threat to the integrity of science worldwide. We roundly refute the many contrived assertions that have been unfairly levelled against scientists and their natural philosophy and implore them to champion the apodictic principles of science.

Recent changes to US research funding are having far-reaching consequences that imperil the integrity of science and the provision of care to vulnerable populations. Resisting these changes, the BJPsych Portfolio reaffirms its commitment to publishing mental science and advancing psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.

The federal government has a long history of trying to find the right balance in supporting scientific and medical research while protecting the public and other researchers from potential harms. To date, this balance has been generally calibrated differently across contexts – including in clinical care, human subjects research, and research integrity. New challenges continue to face this disparate model of regulation, including novel Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools. Because of potential increases in unintentional fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism using GenAI – and challenges establishing both these errors and intentionality in retrospect – this article argues that we should instead move toward a system that sets accepted community standards for the use of GenAI in research as prospective requirements.

Our national scientific enterprise has a crisis of reproducibility. While this phenomenon has many contributors, one is the proliferation of data manipulation. Data manipulation may range from seemingly innocuous to brazen to the point of verging on criminal. This latter category has recently received more attention, stimulating a debate about the handling of such unpleasant matters. We co-authors have instigated and interacted with numerous research integrity investigations and believe the current model of handling potential violations of research integrity standards is deeply flawed. Institution-led investigations are fundamentally conflicted because of the potential for institutional reputational damage and financial harm from a finding of research misconduct. Concerns are often handled with secrecy, lethargy, and limited technical analysis. Integrity lapses are frequently handled with a lack of openness, accountability and proportional consequences, which have weakened public trust in the scientific enterprise.

We propose that research integrity violations of substantial scale should be independently investigated by appropriately resourced specialists. Such investigations should be completed within a time frame that facilitates meaningful corrective action when required or exoneration of the accused party when appropriate; completion of an investigation should rarely extend beyond one year and the results of the investigation should be made public.

We quite often play the game of wondering what our older self would say to our younger self. Usually by way of advice. Mistakes to avoid. This seems true. But here it is suggested that our younger self may have important things to say of a similar sort to our older self, and in a sense can by our remembering when older what we were like when we were younger and what mattered to us. The process of wondering what might be said goes both ways.

What shapes voter perceptions of election outcomes? Recent disputes in Malawi and Kenya highlight the vulnerability of local vote counts to accusations of malfeasance, which often generate negative public perceptions of vote reliability. Election monitoring in these countries is thought to crucially affect both the quality of the election and voters’ perceptions of the same. To date, most research on this topic has focused on the effect of non-partisan electoral observers. However, in many countries, two other interest groups also monitor the vote-counting process: political party agents and government election officials. Does the presence of these actors also affect voter perceptions of election integrity? To answer this question, I conducted a conjoint experiment in Malawi and Kenya in which voters evaluate the reliability of vote counts from hypothetical polling stations where the presence of party agents, non-partisan observers, and election officials is varied. I find that the presence of each of these groups does indeed shape voter perceptions: voters are more likely to view vote counts as reliable when they are co-signed by a party agent, election official, or non-partisan observer. Further, these preferences persist regardless of the voters’ own party affiliation or trust in electoral institutions.

Galen Strawson (2004) has championed an influential argument against the view that a life is, or ought to be, understood as a kind of story with temporal extension. The weight of his argument rests on his self-report of his experience of life as lacking the form or temporal extension necessary for narrative. And though this argument has been widely accepted, I argue that it ought to have been rejected. On one hand, the hypothetical non-diachronic life Strawson proposes would likely be psychologically fragmented. On the other, it would certainly be morally diminished, for it would necessarily lack the capacity for integrity.

Missed detection probability is a critical metric for the integrity performance of receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) in the presence of faults. The traditional missed detection probability evaluation method for RAIM is limited by impractical time consumption because of the absence of accurate searching interval for the magnitude of a worst-case fault. To address this issue, the searching interval for the magnitude of a worst-case fault is constructed by the combination of minimum detectable magnitude and minimum hazardous magnitude, and the searching interval adjustment is designed to avoid the absence of worst-case fault magnitude so that the maximum missed detection probability can be accurately evaluated. The simulation result indicates that the proposed method can achieve higher accuracy for the worst-case fault magnitude searching. Furthermore, the accuracy of worldwide evaluated missed detection rate can achieve an improvement of 57·66% at most by the proposed method for the different classical RAIM algorithms.

Theology is both a human endeavor and something of Divine origin, insofar as it is a human attempt to make sense of certain Divinely revealed propositions. How does one reconcile these two elements? One attempt to do so was on the part of the Anglican theologian Rowan Williams. In sections I and II of chapter 1 of his work ‘On Christian Theology’, Williams speaks of the nature of authentic theological discourse, that is, theological discourse that has integrity. In his work on theological integrity, Williams explores how human intentions or hidden agendas can potentially warp our attempt to make sense of the truths contained within Divine Revelation. He then goes on to speak of how to avoid such pitfalls. In this article, I will respond to the epistemological implications of William's thoughts on this topic. I will use various ideas from Catholic theology, including the development of doctrines and the notion that faith has both a subjective and objective element, to explore both the strengths and weaknesses of Williams's thought.

We consider the problem of moral disjunction in professional and business activities from a virtue-ethical perspective. Moral disjunction arises when the behavioral demands of a role conflict with personal morality; it is an important problem because most people in modern societies occupy several complex roles that can cause this clash to occur. We argue that moral disjunction, and the psychological mechanisms that people use to cope with it, are problematic because they make it hard to pursue virtue and to live with integrity. We present role coadunation as a process with epistemic and behavioral aspects that people can use to resolve moral disjunction with integrity. When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments. We show how role coadunation can be facilitated by interpretive communities and discuss the emergence and ideal features of those communities.

Policy-making concerned with animals often includes human interests, such as economy, trade, environmental protection, disease control, species conservation etc. When it comes to the interests of the animals, such policy-making often makes use of the results of animal welfare science to provide assessments of ethically relevant concerns for animals. This has provided a scientific rigour that has helped to overcome controversies and allowed debates to move forward according to generally agreed methodologies. However, this focus can lead to policies leaving out other important issues relevant to animals. This can be considered as a problem of what is included in welfare science, or of what is included in policy. This suggests two possible solutions: expanding animal welfare science to address all ethical concerns about animals’ interests or widening the perspective considered in policymaking to encompass other important ethical concerns about animals than welfare. The latter appears the better option. This requires both a ‘philosophy of animal welfare science’, a ‘philosophy of decision-making about animals’, and greater transparency about what is included or excluded from both animal welfare science and the politics of animal policy.