According to the Dutch chemist Gerrit Jan Mulder (1802-1880), the principal aim of university education was character building and moral edification. Professional training was of secondary importance. Mulder's ideas about the vocation and moral mission of the university professor can serve as a historical counterpart to later Weberian, Mertonian, and contemporary ideas on the ethos of science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor years now, Alzheimer's disease (AD) research has been stuck in a Groundhog-Day scenario: an endless time loop with no breakthrough in sight. Disagreement about the validity of the field's dominant approach, based on the Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis, has led to a seemingly unresolvable trench war between proponents and critics. Our paper evaluates the recent scientific literature on AD from a historical and philosophical perspective.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci
June 2014
In the history of genetics Arend Hagedoorn (1885-1953) is mainly known for the 'Hagedoorn effect', which states that part of the changes in variability that populations undergo over time are due to chance effects. Leaving this contribution aside, Hagedoorn's work has received scarcely any attention from historians. This is mainly due to the fact that Hagedoorn was an expert in animal breeding, a field that historians have only recently begun to explore.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: We sought to determine whether the introduction of a separate patient flow comprising patients with simple, non-complex health issues [Fast Track (FT)] in a Dutch emergency department setting (ED), without the introduction of additional staff, and treated by a physician assistant, would have favourable effects on waiting and turnaround times without deleterious effects for patients with a higher urgency.
Study Design: We used a prospective comparative intervention design for our study.
Methods: The waiting times and length of stay for surgical and orthopaedic patients in the ED were measured and compared 3 months before and 3 months after the introduction of FT.
In the 1970s and 1980s Dutch farmers replaced their dual-purpose Friesian cows with Holsteins, a highly specialized American dairy breed. The changeover was related to a major turnabout in breeding practices that involved the adoption of quantitative genetics. Dutch commercial breeders had long resisted the quantitative approach to breeding that scientists had been recommending since World War II.
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