A tenured position in philosophy of medicine or biology opens in Bordeaux

AOS: Philosophy of medicine, Philosophy of biology 

AOC: Philosophy of Science 

University of Bordeaux (France)

Deadline for application: June 28th, 2021.

Application: mael.lemoine@u-bordeaux.fr

Short description of the job profile

Candidates will have developed an expertise in any topic of medical science (e.g. a disease, a method, a subfield) by applying conceptual tools from philosophy of science to specific problems in medicine. The new professor will join a group of philosophers tightly collaborating with biologists and medical scientists. She or he will teach in English in an international Master program of “philosophy in science”, to be created soon.

Detailed description of the job profile

The person recruited will be required to teach in medical, scientific and philosophical curricula. 

The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to the development of the activities of the PhilInBioMed network (Institute for Philosophy In Biology and Medicine), through active international collaboration (http://philinbiomed.org).

In terms of teaching, the recruited professor will have to actively contribute to the implementation of innovative teaching, particularly at Master’s level, for philosophers wishing to work closely with scientists, and to integrate into existing philosophical teaching systems for courses in the health sciences.

The recruited professor should also participate in teaching in the health/sciences curriculum in the first cycle of health studies and in the third cycle of health studies in the framework of seminars intended for medical students in the various health specialties. A large part of the teaching, or even all of it, should or could be given in English.

Research must be in line with at least one of the research topics of the “Conceptual Biology and Medicine Group” (https://www.immuconcept.org/conceptual-biology-medicine/). An indispensable condition is that research must allow close collaboration with the group’s philosophers, with members of the unit, and must precisely identify potential partnerships with scientists and doctors from the Bordeaux community and abroad. Although the Conceptual Biology and Medicine Group is part of a research unit specialized in immunology, it is not necessary for the recruited professor to work specifically in that domain. A crucial condition, however, is that the recruited professor identify a biomedical field of competence on which he or she wishes to work in a privileged manner (for example, one or more pathology(ies), and/or a particular scientific method used in a medical context).

These collaborations should make it possible to reinforce the specificity of the group, i.e. the development of a program of publications co-written by scientists and philosophers for scientific and philosophical journals. The group is particularly keen on publishing in science and medicine journals, so as to foster the dialogue with these communities.

 Applicants must already hold a tenure or tenure-track position. Alternatively, they must already hold a ‘qualification’ from the Conseil National des Universités (CNU).

New postgraduate training course at the University of Bordeaux: Philosophy in science, conceptual approaches applied to biological and medical research

 

 

The course aims to equip medical, biological and neuroscientists with the conceptual tools of philosophy of science.
Philosophy is not conceived here as a reflection about science, but rather as a set of methods to improve research relevance and efficacy.
At the end of the program, participants will submit a paper, written in collaboration with the philosopher who supervises them, to a
scientific journal. All classes are taught in French.

Program Director : Maël Lemoine, Professor, philosophy of medical science, University of Bordeaux

More information

 

Crédits: Images Gerd Altmann & Arek Socha (Pixabay), Photos Drew Hays & freestocks.org (Unsplash)

New Philosophy of Biology section in eLIFE

 

The importance of philosophy in the life sciences is becoming more and more obvious – to philosophers and scientists alike. One marker for the increased awareness is the new "Philosophy of Biology" section of eLIFE. This peer-reviewed journal targets an audience in the biomedical and life science field. The fact that they now welcome spontaneous submissions from philosophers of biology is a major step towards more interdisciplinarity. Among the first to publish in this section are PhilInBioMed members Lucie Laplane, Sabina Leonelli, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein and Thomas Pradeu.

 

Summer school: Data & Health

Big data and algorithms are profoundly transforming contemporary medicine.

The program of this interdisciplinary summer school will present the genetic and bioinformatics foundations of this evolution and its philosophical, ethical, legal, sociological and psychological issues. Each session will include a conference and a workshop on a specific case. Students will actively participate in the final synthesis.

Expected sessions

– Big data and health: legal issues

– Data, health and ethical issues

– Brugada syndrome and connectivity map approach

– Big data and medical diagnosis

– From basic research to the patient: contribution of integrated biology in mitochondrial diseases

– Big data and the patient

– Bioinformatics and health

One day in Nantes to visit a research institution and discover the city.

The aim is to provide an overview of a set of problems, related to the use of data in health, thanks to humanities and social sciences methods.The course is intended for students and researchers interested in medicine, genetics, bioinformatic, laws or humanities.

The program will be entirely taught in English.

More information

The epigenetics of inflammaging, new review by Nadini et al.

 
A growing amount of evidences indicates that inflammaging – the chronic, low grade inflammation state characteristic of the elderly – is the result of genetic as well as environmental or stochastic factors.
In their latest review Christine Nadini, Jean-François Moreau, Noémie Gensous, Francesco Ravaioli, Paolo Garagnani and Maria Giulia Bacalini take a closer look how age related epigenetic changes promote inflammaging. Furthermore they discuss the role on envioronmental and microbial stimuli and how they can affect the rate of inflammaging via epigenetic mechanisms.
Find the full article here.

Trends in Cancer: what is the tumor environment?

 
If and how a tumor develops, depends in large part on its surroundings. While scientists agree on the importance of the tumor environment (TE), there is no consensus on how to define and spatially delineate it.
A new paper by Lucie Laplane, Dorothée Duluc, Nicolas Larmonier, Thomas Pradeu and Andreas Bikfalvi lays out six clearly defined layers that surround the tumor: (i) the tumor cell-only environment, (ii) the niche, and the (iii) confined, (iv) proximal, (v) peripheral, and (vi) organismal tumor environment. The authors show the different tumor-promoting or -suppressing mechanisms at work in the different layers and how they impact therapeutic approaches.

 
Click here for more information: The Multiple Layers of the Tumor Environment
Click here for the PDF

Jacob Stegenga, Visiting Scholar in ImmunoConcept lab

Jacob Stegenga will be an IDEX Visiting Scholar in Thomas Pradeu’s group at ImmunoConcept from October 2018 to June 2019.
Jacob is a University Lecturer in philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge (Department of History and Philosophy of Science). His research focuses on methodological problems of medical research, conceptual questions in evolutionary biology, and fundamental topics in reasoning and rationality. Stegenga’s present work is culminating in a book titled Medical Nihilism (Oxford University Press, 2018), in which he argues that if we attend to the extent of bias in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, the malleability of empirical methods in medicine, and if we employ our best inductive framework, then our confidence in medical interventions ought to be low. His research employs empirical findings, analysis, and formal methods to establish normative conclusions about science.

 
Before going to Cambridge, Stegenga taught at University of Utah and University of Victoria, and was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto. He received his PhD from the University of California San Diego.

Research interests
Philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of medicine

Selected publications
For a complete list of publications, please see Jacob’s Academia.edu site.
Medical Nihilism, Oxford University Press, 2018
Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine, University of Chicago Press, 2018
‘Three Arguments for Absolute Outcome Measures’ (with Jan Sprenger), forthcoming, Philosophy of Science
‘Population Pluralism and Natural Selection’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2016 67: 1–29
‘Measuring Effectiveness’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 2015 54: 62–71
‘Probabilizing the End’, Philosophical Studies 2013 165: 95–112
‘Is Meta-Analysis the Platinum Standard of Evidence?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 2011 42: 497–507