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Abstract In recent years, the production of pellets derived from forestry biomass to replace coal for electricity generation has been increasing, with over 10 million tonnes traded internationally—primarily between United States and Europe but with an increasing trend to Asia. Critical to this trade is the classification of woody biomass as ‘renewable energy’ and thus eligible for public subsidies. However, much scientific study on the net effect of this trend suggests that it is having the opposite effect to that expected of renewable energy, by increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide for substantial periods of time. This review, based on recent work by Europe's Academies of Science, finds that current policies are failing to recognize that removing forest carbon stocks for bioenergy leads to an initial increase in emissions. Moreover, the periods during which atmospheric CO2 levels are raised before forest regrowth can reabsorb the excess emissions are incompatible with the urgency of reducing emissions to comply with the objectives enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We consider how current policy might be reformed to reduce negative impacts on climate and argue for a more realistic science‐based assessment of the potential of forest bioenergy in substituting for fossil fuels. The length of time atmospheric concentrations of CO2 increase is highly dependent on the feedstocks and we argue for regulations to explicitly require these to be sources with short payback periods. Furthermore, we describe the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change accounting rules which allow imported biomass to be treated as zero emissions at the point of combustion and urge their revision to remove the risk of these providing incentives to import biomass with negative climate impacts. Reforms such as these would allow the industry to evolve to methods and scales which are more compatible with the basic purpose for which it was designed.

The COVID‐19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems that primarily fuel the competition between (groups of) scientific researchers. Competition between individual researchers, research groups, research approaches, and scientific disciplines is seen as an important selection mechanism and driver of academic excellence. These expected benefits of competition have come to define the organizational culture in academia. There are clear indications that the overreliance on competitive models undermines cooperative exchanges that might lead to higher quality insights. This damages the well‐being and productivity of individual researchers and impedes efforts towards collaborative knowledge generation. Insights from social and organizational psychology on the side effects of relying on performance targets, prioritizing the achievement of success over the avoidance of failure, and emphasizing self‐interest and efficiency, clarify implicit mechanisms that may spoil valid attempts at transformation. The analysis presented here elucidates that a broader change in the academic culture is needed to truly benefit from current attempts to create more open and collaborative practices for cumulative knowledge generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cases of scientific fraud and research misconduct in general have escalated in Western higher education over the last 20 years. These practices include forgery, distortion of facts and plagiarism, the outright faking of research results and thriving black markets for positive peer reviews and ghost-written papers. More recently, the same abuses have found their way into Asian higher education with some high profile and widely covered cases in India, South Korea, China and Japan. Reports of misconduct are now reaching alarming proportions in Asia, and the negative consequences for individuals, institutions, governments and society at large are incalculable. The incentives for academic scientists in Asia are approaching and even surpassing those ordinarily seen in the West. Cash payments for publishing articles in high impact journals can double or even triple yearly salaries in some cases. Combining this environment with the simultaneous pressure to obtain oftentimes scarce funding for research has produced a culture of unethical behaviour worldwide. This article assesses three important issues regarding scientific fraud and research misconduct: distorted incentives for research and overreliance upon metrics, damage to the integrity of higher education and public trust and improving research environments so as to deter unethical behaviour. This is especially crucial for emerging Asian countries, in particular Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose scientific infrastructure is less developed, but nonetheless has the potential to become a major player in the development of psychology as well as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ethical implications of perverse incentives with regard to autonomous driving. We define perverse incentives as a feature of an action, technology, or social policy that invites behavior which negates the primary goal of the actors initiating the action, introducing a certain technology, or implementing a social policy. As a special form of means-end-irrationality, perverse incentives are to be avoided from a prudential standpoint, as they prove to be directly self-defeating: They are not just a form of unintended side effect that must be balanced against the main goal or value to be realized by an action, technology, or policy. Instead, they directly cause the primary goals of the actors—i.e., the goals that they ultimately pursue with the action, technology, or policy—to be "worse achieved" (Parfit). In this paper, we elaborate on this definition and distinguish three ideal-typical phases of adverse incentives, where only in the last one the threshold for a perverse incentive is crossed. In addition, we discuss different possible relevant actors and their goals in implementing autonomous vehicles. We conclude that even if some actors do not pursue traffic safety as their primary goal, as part of a responsibility network they incur the responsibility to act on the common primary goal of the network, which we argue to be traffic safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the case of a patient called Medical Research who presents with multiple life threatening symptoms, including a plethora of false positive results. This paper describes the course of the disease, discusses possible etiologies and offers options for future management to ensure the survival of the patient and that of our civilization.

The 1978 Warnock Report made the case in the United Kingdom for a number of actions that, it was argued, would make the integration and support of young people with Special Educational Needs more effective. These included: a cohesive multi-agency approach in assessment and determination of special educational need and subsequent provision; early intervention with no minimum age to start provision for children identified with special educational needs; better structural and organizational accountability; the appointment of a Special Educational Needs Coordinator in each school; parental input to be valued and considered alongside professional views in matters relating to the child; and a recommendation that special classes and units should be attached to and function within ordinary schools where possible. The 1981 Education Act introduced a number of regulations and rights which supported the development of these forms of practice. However, the introduction of competition between schools driven by measures of attainment by the 1988 Education Act introduced new incentives for schools. At the same time there was a discourse shift from integration, or fitting young people with special educational needs into a system, to inclusion or inclusive practice in which inclusive systems were to be designed and developed. In the aftermath of this wave of policy development, a nascent tension between policies designed to achieve excellence and those seeking to achieve inclusive practice emerged. Whilst the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales have continued to try to give priority to inclusion in education, in recent years these tensions in England have intensified and there is growing concern about the ways in which schools are managing the contradictions between these two policy streams. There is widespread public and political unrest about the variety of ways in which young people with special educational needs, who may be seen as a threat to school attainment profiles, are being excised from the system either through formal exclusion or other, more clandestine, means. This paper charts this move from attempts to meet need with provision as outlined by Warnock to the current situation where the motives which drive the formulation of provision are driven by what are ultimately economic objects. We argue that policy changes in England in particular have resulted in perverse incentives for schools to not meet the needs of special educational needs students and which can result in their exclusion from school. These acts of exclusion in England are then compared to educational policies of segregation in Northern Ireland and then exemplified with data. We illustrate the impact of perverse incentives on practices of inclusion and exclusion through an analysis of interview data of key stakeholders in England gathered in a recent comparative study of practices of school exclusion across the four United Kingdom jurisdictions.

In recent years, the production of pellets derived from forestry biomass to replace coal for electricity generation has been increasing, with over 10 million tonnes traded internationally—primarily between United States and Europe but with an increasing trend to Asia. Critical to this trade is the classification of woody biomass as 'renewable energy' and thus eligible for public subsidies. However, much scientific study on the net effect of this trend suggests that it is having the opposite effect to that expected of renewable energy, by increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide for substantial periods of time. This review, based on recent work by Europe's Academies of Science, finds that current policies are failing to recognize that removing forest carbon stocks for bioenergy leads to an initial increase in emissions. Moreover, the periods during which atmospheric CO2 levels are raised before forest regrowth can reabsorb the excess emissions are incompatible with the urgency of reducing emissions to comply with the objectives enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We consider how current policy might be reformed to reduce negative impacts on climate and argue for a more realistic science‐based assessment of the potential of forest bioenergy in substituting for fossil fuels. The length of time atmospheric concentrations of CO2 increase is highly dependent on the feedstocks and we argue for regulations to explicitly require these to be sources with short payback periods. Furthermore, we describe the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change accounting rules which allow imported biomass to be treated as zero emissions at the point of combustion and urge their revision to remove the risk of these providing incentives to import biomass with negative climate impacts. Reforms such as these would allow the industry to evolve to methods and scales which are more compatible with the basic purpose for which it was designed. Trade in wood pellets from forestry biomass to replace coal for electricity generation is increasing dramatically. Critical to this trade is the classification of woody biomass as 'renewable energy' and thus eligible for public subsidies. However, scientific studies show that it is having the opposite effect and is increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide for substantial periods of time. We argue that EU regulations and the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change accounting, which both allow imported biomass to be treated as zero emissions at the point of combustion, should be revised to remove incentives to import biomass with negative climate impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law should be a critical tool in promoting and directing climate change adaptation in the USA. This should be particularly true in the nation's extensive coastal zone, much of which is subject to increasing rates of sea level rise, coastal erosion, increasing numbers of increasingly powerful storms, and saltwater intrusion. However, significant coastal infrastructure hampers many coastal adaptation strategies by making retreat both expensive and politically unpalatable. This article examines the specific role of insurance and other financing programs in coastal adaptation strategies. Insurance operates primarily to mitigate risk. The article focuses specifically on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is now driven by coastal catastrophes and is close to bankruptcy; Florida's decision to provide state-financed insurance to coastal property owners in the wake of the 2004-2005 hurricane season; and, conversely, the decisions of other states to use state and federal financing instead to facilitate coastal adaptation, including buyouts of transitioning coastal properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip Hoyle presents a compelling argument for the significant and highly valued role that the management of health information plays in the Australian healthcare system and the delivery of health services in this country. However, he also brings to our attention the ill-defined nature of the ethical oversight of this very information. Hoyle uses words such as "honesty," "commitment to beneficence," "commitment to equity" and "respect for variation" when describing the characteristics of ethical leadership. He singles out health information management professionals – Health Information Managers (HIMs) and Clinical Coders (CCs) – as the key professional group who need to step up and seize the initiative, get conversations going, form partnerships, do research and publish findings, so the knowledge and insights that the health information management profession has the potential to offer are not only more widely known and understood but also more useful to others working in the healthcare arena. Hoyle calls on health information management professionals to step out from behind the scenes and take responsibility for the ethical use of the information they help produce. Hoyle's words resonated powerfully with me, particularly with respect to the clinical coding workforce in Australia, which is made up of trained CCs and qualified HIMs. In a truly ethical environment, HIMs and CCs would not be asked to meet performance indicators for increased funding metrics or to change codes to avoid triggering certain indicators; they would simply be asked to ensure complete, accurate coding for every episode of care. This is what ethical leadership would look like. I am concerned about our clinical coding workforce. I am now asking, are our CCs and HIMs up to the task of taking back absolute and unchallenged ownership of their particular skill set, which makes them the keepers of the clinical coding standards and the experts in accurate and complete code assignment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perverse incentives are ubiquitous in different economic settings. In sports, they often take the form of temptation to deliberately lose matches (the phenomenon known as tanking or sandbagging). In practice, there were even such pathological situations as when a soccer team intentionally scored an own goal. We show how and when the temptation is generated by the current pair matching method, the one applied after the first phase of many popular tournaments, including the most prestigious soccer championships. If the organizers of important sporting contests do not introduce any organizational innovations, they risk serious match-fixing scandals. We introduce an alternative procedure and show that its practical implementation could radically mitigate the risk. We perform a comparative analysis of the methods. We analyze the format “Winners and Runners-up Advancing from Two Adjacent Groups”, particularly its FIFA World Cup variant. In order to quantify the benefits of switching from the current method to the proposed one, we refer to simulation results. The expected decrease in temptation probability is about 83% and could be even about 90% if we additionally implement the suggested scheduling innovation.

Peru is home to the world's biggest fishery with catches of over 95 million tonnes of anchoveta ( Engraulis ringens), since 2000, yet one in six small children in Peru suffer from chronic malnutrition. This is not because anchoveta is unsuitable for human consumption-on the contrary, they are nutritious, tasty and available year-round, close to the coast. Almost all anchoveta are, however, reduced to provide fishmeal and oil for export. Only a few per cent of the landings are used for direct human consumption, and while this use has increased significantly over the last decade, the growth has stopped because of perverse incentives that encourage landing for reduction purposes, combined with production methods that are expensive and unsuitable for large-scale operations. We discuss the roadblocks and prospects for significantly increasing the contribution of anchoveta to global food security and provide an outlook for how big this contribution potentially could be. It is time to change how anchoveta is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the case of a patient called Medical Research who presents with multiple life threatening symptoms, including a plethora of false positive results. This paper describes the course of the disease, discusses possible etiologies and offers options for future management to ensure the survival of the patient and that of our civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mangrove forests have been considered as potentially suitable for PES, though few mangrove PES schemes exist worldwide, suggesting they - and the broader social-ecological and governance systems in which they sit - may not be as conducive to PES as first thought. This study assesses economic, social, and governance challenges to implementing PES in mangroves. It draws on empirical evidence from two prospective community-level mangrove carbon PES schemes in the Philippines, where fishing and aquaculture are major livelihoods. We conducted (1) policy reviews and interviews with local communities, government, and NGOs to investigate governability; (2) village income accounting to determine the extra income that participants could receive through PES; and (3) a choice ranking exercise to elicit preferences on how payments could best be spent to enhance participant wellbeing. The latter approach identifies key gender differences, and enables potential PES-induced social-ecological trade-offs to be pre-empted. Blue carbon PES can contribute an additional 2.3–5.8% of current village incomes, while villagers would prefer to spend the monies on more effective fishing equipment, which could perversely jeopardize fishery sustainability. To be most successful, coastal PES schemes in the Philippines need to be managed through a multi-level governance regime involving co-management and local participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 50 years, we argue that incentives for academic scientists have become increasingly perverse in terms of competition for research funding, development of quantitative metrics to measure performance, and a changing business model for higher education itself. Furthermore, decreased discretionary funding at the federal and state level is creating a hypercompetitive environment between government agencies (e.g., EPA, NIH, CDC), for scientists in these agencies, and for academics seeking funding from all sources-the combination of perverse incentives and decreased funding increases pressures that can lead to unethical behavior. If a critical mass of scientists become untrustworthy, a tipping point is possible in which the scientific enterprise itself becomes inherently corrupt and public trust is lost, risking a new dark age with devastating consequences to humanity. Academia and federal agencies should better support science as a public good, and incentivize altruistic and ethical outcomes, while de-emphasizing output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences from Australia where undifferentiated publication counts were linked to funding of universities in 1993 is well known. Publication activity increased, but the largest increase was in lower-impact journals, leading to a general drop in overall citation impact for Australia. The experience from Australia has been a warning for what would most likely happen if funding were linked to publication activity. Nevertheless, in 2005, a performance-based model based on differentiated publication counts was implemented in Norway. Themodel was specifically developed to counter adverse effects like those identified in the Australian case. In the present article, we examine 'what happens at the aggregated level of publication and citation activity when funding is linked to differentiated publication counts'. We examine developments in Norwegian publication activity, journal publication profiles, and citation impact. We also examine developments in publication activities at the individual level and developments in research and development resource inputs. We compare experiences in Australia to those in Norway. The results show that for the Norwegian case, overall publication activity goes up, impact remains stable, and there is no indication of a deliberate displacement of journal publication activities to the lowest-impact journals. Hence, we do not see the same patterns as in Australia. We conclude that the experience in Norway with differentiated publication counts linked to funding has been different from the experience in Australia with an undifferentiated model. This is an important observation because currently the Norwegian model is being or has been adopted in several European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general theory of regulation and then 10 theories related to safety regulation are summarized, explaining why regulation is or is not beneficial, or why negative externalities like building fires might increase. As an example, evidence from regulation and planning to enhance fire safety in Turin, Italy, is included, which shows apparent regulatory failure due to public choice and knowledge problems. Regulators there apparently failed to meet their public interest objective: the “control of safety conditions to prevent fires” and to “minimize the causes of fire.” Data perusal suggests that (a) the income effect, (b) public choice theories of bureaucracy and perverse incentives, (c) the “knowledge problem” theory, and (d) population density to a lesser degree best explain and predict the regulatory outcome. The results tend to favor government failure models, rather than theories that say (e) government provision works even if inefficiently or as a placebo, (f) that regulation is irrelevant, or (g) explanations that surmise that racial composition, (h) immigration of poor and ignorant people, (i) technical problems with electricity (wiring and materials), or (j) moral hazard cause more fires. Thus, planning theory should endeavor to better incorporate government failure theories into its models. These theories at times provide better explanatory and predictive power than traditional market failure models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the evidence is internationally inconclusive, social protection systems have been blamed for various perverse incentives or unintended consequences. This article explores one particular case in point. The South African Constitution and the Social Assistance Act of 2004 provide a child support grant ( CSG) to low-income single parents/caregivers. There is nevertheless concern regarding possible perverse incentives of the grant, sparking debate that it may encourage teenage pregnancy. Several studies have examined the validity of the claim, yet methodological weaknesses cast doubt on their conclusions. This article examines the probability of being pregnant with another child among black teenagers receiving the CSG in South Africa compared with black teenagers who are not recipients. Results indicate that black teenagers aged 15-18 years receiving the grant have significantly lower odds of being pregnant with another child compared with their peers who do not receive the grant, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors. Related Articles [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Environmental management should be underpinned by quantitative management information. [•] Monitoring the marine environment is expensive. [•] As a result, many governments have outsourced monitoring obligations. [•] This can lead to inadvertent perverse incentives for activities that impact the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This opinion article explores a range of ethical issues that could impact on the daily work of all radiographers. The article focuses on informed consent, over servicing and unqualified persons performing radiographic and ultrasound examinations. The aim of the article is to lay the groundwork for future debates regarding the issues which are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maturing HIM epidemic has led to a decline in the health status of many South Africans, One result is an increasing number of AIDS-affected poor who qualify for a government disability grant. Recent research has drawn attention to the unintended conflict that this may present for poor people who might be faced with choosing between maintaining health through antiretroviral treatment and obtaining money through the state grant. While some evidence suggests that most AIDS-affected people would choose antiretroviral treatment over access to a disability grant, other evidence suggests that some would rather die than lose the grant. This paper is a qualitative exploration of ways that AIDS treatment policies and practices and grants for people disabled by AIDS are currently being negotiated by people caught in the double-bind of managing their own health and income, As South Africa continues to broaden its delivery of antiretroviral treatment and AIDS support services, it is important that planners incorporate an understanding of how an HIM or AIDS diagnosis in the context of entrenched poverty may represent both a threat and a means to financial survival There is a need to consider the 'disinhibiting' effects on HIM prevention and treatment that may result when AIDS support services are aimed at addressing the needs of individuals as opposed to the needs of highly affected communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient adaptation to climate change in coastal areas is likely to require public policy interventions. New policies or expectations of policy changes that impact private assets, such as housing, may generate economic incentives that result in unintended consequences. We examine the effect on new housing development resulting from a scientific report by a regulatory agency mandating coastal communities in North Carolina (NC) consider sea-level rise when developing new land-use policies. Estimates from our preferred triple-differences model suggest the policy announcement increased building permits by 32% in coastal NC counties until permitting returned to pre-policy levels after a moratorium on new regulations was passed by the state legislature. Our results are supported by numerous robustness checks, including alternative controls, placebo tests and a parcel-level model in Dare County, NC. This green paradox in coastal climate adaptation implies that hundreds of millions of dollars in additional unregulated housing was constructed in NC locations vulnerable to sea-level rise likely due to perverse incentives generated by a policy signal. • Anticipated sea-level rise (SLR) land-use regulations cause green paradox outcome. • We estimate the impacts of a SLR policy signal on housing development. • Housing starts increase by 32% in targeted coastal counties. • Additional $685 million in SLR-vulnerable housing constructed due to policy signal. • Public climate adaptation policies may generate perverse incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perverse incentives are ubiquitous in different economic settings. In sports, they often take the form of temptation to deliberately lose matches (the phenomenon known as tanking or sandbagging). In practice, there were even such pathological situations as when a soccer team intentionally scored an own goal. We show how and when the temptation is generated by the current pair matching method, the one applied after the first phase of many popular tournaments, including the most prestigious soccer championships. If the organizers of important sporting contests do not introduce any organizational innovations, they risk serious match-fixing scandals. We introduce an alternative procedure and show that its practical implementation could radically mitigate the risk. We perform a comparative analysis of the methods. We analyze the format "Winners and Runners-up Advancing from Two Adjacent Groups", particularly its FIFA World Cup variant. In order to quantify the benefits of switching from the current method to the proposed one, we refer to simulation results. The expected decrease in temptation probability is about 83% and could be even about 90% if we additionally implement the suggested scheduling innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Anomalous activity identified among a relatively small but extremely active set of editors. • Bias in manuscript handling time is strongest among the 10 most-active editors. • Case study of anomalous editors reveals perverse incentives oriented around self-citation. • Megajournals should list handling editor in manuscript byline for transparency. • Editorial boards with active researchers should be multi-tiered and have activity quotas. Since their emergence just a decade ago, nearly 2% of scientific research is now published by megajournals, representing a major industrial shift in the production of knowledge. Such high-throughput production stresses several aspects of the publication process, including the editorial oversight of peer-review. As the largest megajournal, PLOS ONE has relied on a single-tier editorial board comprised of ∼7000 active academics, who thereby face conflicts of interest relating to their dual roles as both producers and gatekeepers of peer-reviewed literature. While such conflicts of interest are also a factor for editorial boards of smaller journals, little is known about how the scalability of megajournals may introduce perverse incentives for editorial service. To address this issue, we analyzed the activity of PLOS ONE editors over the journal's inaugural decade (2006–2015) and find highly variable activity levels. We then leverage this variation to model how editorial bias in the manuscript decision process relates to two editor-specific factors: repeated editor-author interactions and shifts in the rates of citations directed at editors – a form of citation remuneration that is analogue to self-citation. Our results indicate significantly stronger manuscript bias among a relatively small number of extremely active editors, who also feature relatively high self-citation rates coincident in the manuscripts they handle. These anomalous activity patterns are consistent with the perverse incentives and the temptations they offer at scale, which is theoretically grounded in the "slippery-slope" evolution of apathy and misconduct in power-driven environments. By applying quantitative evaluation to the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, we shed light on various ethics issues crucial to science policy – in particular, calling for more transparent and structured management of editor activity in megajournals that rely on active academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]