Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Older People compared to Younger People.

I hate taking the Implicit Association Test, but it’s a good thing to do.

Having mentioned it in my previous post (below), I was prompted to go do it again. The test that came up is on age groups; they have a wide range of others. I’ve taken the famous one on race, and it also showed a slight bias; almost everyone does.

It’s important not to read to much into things like this, but it’s important not to dismiss it, too.

Relative frequency of terms appearing on this blog over the last roughly 18 months (from the lovely Wordle online application).

Nothing surprising here (although it does appear to be weighted somewhat for more recent posts – “Hinckley” appears in only one post, and it seems much too prominent above).

A couple of observations: abortion looms about as large as it has to, but too large to be comfortable. That is, so much of practical bioethics is taken up by trying to stave off the continual, desperate assault on abortion rights that other issues – ones that actually have a significant ethical (rather than purely religious or political) issue at their core – get short shrift. Likewise, women’s issues predominate in bioethics because, as with abortion, so much of practical politics on bioethical issues is driven by misogyny. One longs for the luxury of moving on to other things.

“Fact” is prominent, which pleases me; at the core of rational bioethics is the fact/value distinction, in which regard it is almost always the facts that are under-represented, and I hope my writing balances the two. For the same reason, though, I am not sorry to note that “feelings” gets almost as much weight. “Right” and “law” are fairly prominent, which may be a source of chagrin for a consequentialist ethicist, but you can’t deny their importance in practical policymaking. I don’t understand how “treatment” is so large and “patient” is so small, or how certain other terms that I think are common do not seem emphasized here, but as I said, it appears that the terms are not equally weighted over time, so there may be a distortion resulting from mere differences in time of appearance.

I notice that LGBTQ and disability issues are not very obvious in the above, which bothers me. And though the emphasis on women’s issues evidences a feminist perspective that I hope is clear in the blog, the word “feminism” doesn’t appear above, which is a suggestive oversight. (In a way, a tag cloud is kind of like the Implicit Association Test – you reveal your own mental processes through behavioral patterns you weren’t consciously aware of.)

Still, interesting, no? Is anyone surprised by any of this? What terms are missing? What dark psychoses do you detect from the pattern above?

But wait . . . there’s more . . . !

Watch this space for new and exciting developments, coming soon to the right-hand sidebar! (What could it be? . . .)

You’re like the mean proctologist with a fetish.

My work is done.

Somewhere in your town there is a row of graves at the cemetery, called smartypants lane, filled with people who were buried at poorly attended funerals, whose headstones say “Well, at least I was right.”

The post is actually a useful discussion of the phenomenon of rationalization of bad thinking – something that is most perniciously prevalent in bioethics, it seems. But it really caught my attention just because I now know what my headstone is going to say.

I’ve decided to create a mechanism for reader input to the blog. I note the popularity of “open threads” on other blogs, but wanted something a little different here. I’ve also been worrying about the consistent lack of feedback or commentary on blog posts.

I know this blog is fairly low-traffic, but I also know that a good percentage of visitors are people who are knowledgeable about these issues and really interested in them. I don’t know why y’all don’t comment more. I’ve been telling myself that it’s because my posts are so thorough and comprehensive that there is just nothing more to say on any of the issues, but, I suppose, it’s possible that might not really be the answer. Another thought is that my posts may be generally interesting to readers, but not quite on-target enough to make them want to respond.

So, fine. Be that way. From now on you can do the work yourselves.

If there’s a topic you wish had been addressed here but hasn’t, or a question you’d like input on, or if you just have an opinion you want to get off your chest about something related to bioethics, you can now create your own posts and discussion topics on this blog.

Go to the top of the right-hand sidebar, in the section labeled “Ask the Ethicist!”. (See it up there? To the right – all the way near the side of your screen. Up at the top – below the words “Sufficient Scruples” but above all those lists of features and links. Got it?) Click anywhere in that box and it will take you to a permanent page with an open comments section. Use the comments section to post anything you like – a question, a proposed discussion topic, an argument on which you’d like feedback, or just an opinion. I will move that comment to the main page as a blog post, credited to you. In essence, you can be a blogger at “Sufficient Scruples”! Your comment will appear as a new post at the top of this page (so be sure it’s worded the way you want). Give your name or handle, and your e-mail or Web address if you like, so you get credit. I will give my response to your post, and other readers can then join in in the comments section. You can be sure, then, that this blog will always have something of interest to you on it – if it doesn’t, you have only yourself to blame!

So, welcome, to all my fellow bloggers! Let a thousand blog posts bloom!

NB: Your post will not appear immediately. I will have to create the new blog post from your text; it should usually take less than 24 hours. I reserve the right to delete posts that are offensive or trolls.

[This post will be back-dated for one month to keep the announcement at the top of the page. See below for other recent posts. 4/15/2008]

More when possible.

I’ve been struggling to build this blog up for a year and a half; just recently – and not without much begging – I’ve had some good fortune with links from other bloggers and seen my traffic climb from a handful of much-treasured regulars to about 100 hits a day. As pathetic as that is, it was progress, and I was getting more excited about trying to reach out further.

In the meantime, the rest of my life has been circling the drain for a decade or more, and is starting to pick up speed. For those who don’t know, I have been “on leave” (i.e., they haven’t seen me in years) from a doctoral program where I specialize in bioethics. But I need to finish that program to have any real place in this profession – blogging isn’t it. And I desperately need to do something about my negative cashflow situation. Spending all day reading blogs and working up one lengthy post has become another way to avoid doing the things I really need to be doing but don’t really like. Several of my friends have made pointed comments to that effect, and some have threatened to take over my blog if I don’t get my shit more in order.

Most importantly, I’m up against a deadline for making some important, possibly very valuable, moves in my career – predicated on my doing something serious about the PhD I’ve been bogged down on for years now. And as much as I don’t like to see it, this blog is essentially an end in itself, but is blocking my way to other things that serve more important ends. So, some serious prioritizing is in order.

I’ve decided to put Sufficient Scruples on the back burner, for a while at least. Already, I’m only making an average of 4-6 posts per week, but simply thinking that I should be posting every day is enough to eat up my time. So I’m going to cut back to 1-2 posts per week, maybe mostly on weekends.

It hurts to let this go, and to think about what I know this will do to my traffic volume. In particular, I feel like I’m letting down the few regulars who have been coming by. I want to thank you for all the interest and support you’ve shown. Be aware that this is in service of something that means a lot more to me personally, and will also let me play a bigger role in the issues we both care about. But I’m sorry to be running out on you.

Do come by every week or so, please! I will still post content here, but it will be much lower in volume. I’ll try to make it up in quality. And feel free to e-mail me. I rarely hear from readers, but I’d like to. As for you lurkers out there (yes, you at the American Physical Society with your two-hour browsing times – and you at the megachurch down in Dallas who’s been coming by every day for weeks – and the many others), say hello! I don’t know who you are (Sitemeter gives me your IP address but can’t know your username, so don’t worry), but I’m very glad to see you on the blog; feel free to drop me a line at the “Contact” link above.

Thanks to everyone who does or has read this blog; thanks to all those who have commented or e-mailed or linked; thanks especially to those who cared enough about me personally to offer feedback on the larger context it sits in. I hope you won’t disappear, as I won’t, but I’ll be sorry to see less of you from now on.

Best wishes.

Since I only average about a post per day on weekdays, and often don’t blog at all on weekends, devoting up to 20% of my posts to a recurrent, insulting joke probably sets the wrong tone for the blog. For one thing, I just got done chastizing the most recent StegoWeek winner for her lack of collegiality (among many more serious faults); I don’t think pointing out bad thinking by others falls to the same level as using your supposed credentials to justify picking a personal fight with a critic that spills over two Web sites, but it’s not the height of professionalism either. And singling people out for their personal lack of perspecuity, instead of focusing only on the deficiencies of their actual writings, is harsh. (Not, perhaps, unnecessarily so – there are a remarkable number of idiots who just have no clue about themselves, and I think it’s helpful to tell them the truth – but I’ll leave it to others.) After one early award resulted in an avalanche of abuse that caused the (richly deserving) recipient to shut down his blog, it started to seem as if this was detracting from debate, not fostering it. There may be more high-minded (though less satisfying) ways of conducting this discourse, and I think I should probably pursue them.

So I won’t be making new awards. That’s not to say that I won’t be turning my critical eye where it is needed – and boy, is it needed! And, too, that’s not to say that the winners to date have not entirely deserved their awards. A final hats-off to the few, and from now on the only, Stegosaurus of the Week Awardees:

1. (6/20/2006) Vital Signs Blog, for asserting his personal, and grossly ignorant, opinion as disproof of a Mayo Clinic report debunking the supposed abortion/breast-cancer link.
2. (6/30/2006) Dawn Eden, for using her amazing mind-reading powers to interpret pro-choice arguments according to her fantasies of what the speakers were feeling, and not what they actually said. (This is really something of a Lifetime Achievement award for Eden, who otherwise would have qualified almost every week.)
3. (7/6/2006) “Pete”, for responding with an unquestioning rant to a satirical “pro-abortion” article in The Onion, and then generating a total of 5 inconsistent posts and a magazine interview defending himself without ever really understanding his own problem.
4. (7/13/2006) “Ladies Against Feminism”, for posting snotty neo-Victorian crap, notably including an anti-birth-control article that somehow managed to work in leeches and euthanasia.
5. (7/24/2006) “Jacquefromtexas”, for claiming credentials as a professional social worker and counselor while adopting an explicitly manipulative, political-activist stance toward her own clients, and spreading the most malignant falsehoods, under cover of her professional stature . . . and much more.

[No] Thanks to all, for making health-ethics blogging what it is!

[UPDATE: And now Pandagon-dotted! Welcome, Pandas!]

[UPUPDATE: And Feministe-dotted! And Alternet-dotted! Thanks, all!]
This blog has been up for a year, and now averages about 30 hits a day. You can imagine how thrilled I am. But just now I noticed I had received close to well over 200 hits in less than 3 hours, and the rocket shows no signs of decelerating. WTF? Quick inspection (love that Sitemeter!) demonstrated that it’s all coming by way of a link from Jessica at Feministing, to my post about the dumbass who posted screens and screens of rant about a wholly fictional article on abortion from The Onion, of all places.

For this, I can only say: Thank you, Jessica! – and Feministing! – and the Feminist Blogs aggregator! (all linked to the right)

And now let me say this about that . . .

First, welcome, all Feministingers! Delighted to have you here, and very flattered to be linked by a great blog I read each and every day. [UPDATE: Special shoutout to my homies in Hayward, and Castro Valley, California! I grew up in Castro Valley, graduated from CV High, and never looked back. I was shocked to see you in the visitor stats - but welcome!] You’re exactly the audience I want to be in touch with.

And that’s what prompts these comments. Not to sound like a completely shameless blogwhore, but, now that you’re here, stick around! Read a few posts! Post a few comments (believe me, there’s room)! More than anything, tell me what you think, how this blog tickles your bioethics fancy, and what you’d like to see here.

I know this sounds pathetic, but I’ve been trying to build readership for a year, and can’t seem to find the formula. As both my regular readers know, my penchant is for longer-form essays on more theoretical issues in healthcare policy and ethics. This is not to say I don’t frequently take time out to rip some right-wing dipshit a much-deserved new one, but many of my posts are more discursive than brief commentary. And I don’t do “Friday Random Ten”. That’s just me. (See the FAQ for some light on why.) Maybe it’s not what blog-readers want. But I can’t help thinking there’s some sort of an audience for me out there. And if there is, that audience will be one with progressive values, strong feminist leanings, science-literate, with an eye for detail and a respect for argumentation. And I suspect much of that audience is already at the blogs I read and respect, such as the ones in my (very selectively chosen) blogroll. I think I’m posting things they (you) would find worthwhile, and I wish I could get the out to that wider audience.

I don’t know if I just have too low a profile, or if I’ve been tried and found wanting. But for those of you here the first time, consider coming back. Those of you who blog, please consider linking when you think there’s something here worth reading. You are the people I want to be in community with. Send me some feedback, drop me a line, let me know if what I’m offering fits a need you have.

And thanks again, for linking and for coming by. Hope to see you again.