“Fool me once, …”: deception, morality and self-regeneration in decentralized markets

Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Oxytocin

In this issue of Neuron, a study by Baumgartner et al. investigates the influence of oxytocin on trust behavior and its neural mechanisms. The authors report that, following breaches of trust, oxytocin facilitates prosocial behavior while modulating neural signals in the amygdala and caudate nucleus. The findings have implications for an array of mental disorders where social behavior is compro...

Morality and Markets in the NHS

Since its establishment in 1948, the history of the National Health Service (NHS) has been characterized by organisational turbulence and system reform. At the same time, progress in science, medicine and technology throughout the western world have revolutionized the delivery of healthcare. The NHS has become a much loved, if much critiqued, national treasure. It is against this backdrop that ...

Deception in Morality and Law

You Won’t Harm Me If You Fool Me

A decision maker faces a new theory of how certain events unfold over time. The theory matters for choices she needs to make, but possibly the theory is a fabrication. We show that there is a test which is guaranteed to pass a true theory, and which is also conservative: A false theory will only pass when adopting it over the decision maker’s initial theory would not cause substantial harm; if ...

Inject Me Once and Inject Me Twice. Then Inject Me Once Again.

Although nature may be subtle, our interventional approaches to enhancing myocardial regeneration can be anything but. We genetically re-engineer cells to enhance their potential, reprogram cells from one type to another, apply patches of cells like plaster on a wall, or inject unfathomable numbers of cells hopeful that a small fraction cling to the heart and to life long enough to make a diffe...