In the 1920s and mid 1930s, American dramatists struggled to find theatrical form to express America’s development from an isolationist agrarian nation into an industrial world power. Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Dynamo’ (1929) features a scathing critique of blind faith in scientific progress, whereas ‘Altars of steel’ (1937) favourably presents a regional factory under the control of a benevolent capita...

Statistical significance tests (SSTs) have been the object of much controversy among social scientists. Proponents have hailed SSTs as an objective means for minimizing the likelihood that chance factors have contributed to research results; critics have both questioned the logic underlying SSTs and bemoaned the widespread misapplication and misinterpretation of the results of these tests. The ...

Scholars in philosophy, law, economics, and other fields have widely debated how science, environmental precaution, and economic interests should be balanced in urgent contemporary problems such as climate change. One controversial focus of these discussions is the precautionary principle, according to which scientific uncertainty should not be a reason for delay in the face of serious threats ...

This article examines Naomi Mitchison's most contentious novel – We Have Been Warned (1935). uncommon depiction of sex and contraception in the 1930s scandalised her publishers public alike, whilst raising a number important feminist concerns. Comparing with historical fiction nonfiction which tackled similar themes illustrates how politicised contemporary contexts, embodied narratives, everyda...

Lifestyle diseases constitute an increasing proportion of health problems and this trend is likely to continue. A better understanding of the responsibility argument is important for the assessment of policies aimed at meeting this challenge. Holding individuals accountable for their choices in the context of health care is, however, controversial. There are powerful arguments both for and agai...

Many Latin American countries democratized between 1975 and 2000, and research has confirmed that contemporary Latin Americans hold democratic political attitudes. Using AmericasBarometer surveys of 18 countries from 2008, we examine the commitment of Latin Americans to three democratic attitudes – preference for democracy over other forms of government, support for general participation rights...

King’s publication based on a key note presentation at the 2014 British Association of the Study of Spirituality (BASS) conference, a well written and thought provoking paper, leads us to consider the contribution of this critique of spirituality research to contemporary debates on the topic The views expressed within the paper are important and foster debate about the validity of research in t...

Lifestyle diseases constitute an increasing proportion of health problems and this trend is likely to continue. A better understanding of the responsibility argument is important for the assessment of policies aimed at meeting this challenge. Holding individuals accountable for their choices in the context of health care is, however, controversial. There are powerful arguments both for and agai...

We present a deflationary account of smartphone addiction by situating this purportedly antisocial phenomenon within the fundamentally social dispositions of our species. While we agree with contemporary critics that the hyper-connectedness and unpredictable rewards of mobile technology can modulate negative affect, we propose to place the locus of addiction on an evolutionarily older mechanism...

Despite a brief career, the writer Sophie Cottin (1770-1807) enjoyed dazzling but prodigious literary fame during First Empire. Nevertheless, works on reception of this French scholar in Iberian Peninsula remain almost non-existent. It would seem that she went unnoticed by contemporary Spanish critics, except for an incomplete list translations published mid-19th century. Thus, first research w...