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Business ethics research is not currently a cumulative science, but it must become one. The benefits to humanity from research that helps firms improve their ethics could be enormous, especially if that research also shows that strong ethics improves the effectiveness of companies.
Education reform in the United States has stalled and persistent achievement gaps remain. The challenges of overcoming socioeconomic disadvantages cannot be ignored if we are to develop an education system that will prepare all students to be productive members of the twenty-first century.
Clinically useful tools to identify the aberrant neural circuitry in individuals with psychiatric illness are lacking, as are treatments that do more than just address symptoms. Neuroplasticity-based treatments and computational neuroscience may hold some of the keys to unlocking the golden age of psychiatry.
The brain can be viewed as an organic computer that can be reprogrammed to incorporate external elements, such as artificial tools. But is there a risk that our increasing reliance on digital devices, such as smartphones, could also be reprogramming our brains and blunting our human attributes?
Performance data is dominating education policy, with many researchers and policymakers convinced that a data-based approach results in improved performance. The implications of this should be questioned by the research community to promote debate and consideration of choices excluded by data dependency.
To understand voting behaviour, we must consider voters' emotions and their interaction with electoral arrangements and the complex functions elections serve in democracies. We can then optimize voting via electoral ergonomics — the design of electoral arrangements that consider voters' bodies and minds.
Despite significant investment, contemporary anticorruption efforts have failed to be effective. A new index — the Index of Public Integrity — offers a transparent, evidence-based approach to controlling corruption and measuring progress.
As humans, our decision-making process is biased towards maintaining the status quo, even if an alternative choice has substantial long-term benefits. This cognitive myopia and present bias, when applied to decisions that affect sustainability, could be threatening our future.
