Marion Boulicault

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT · Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Essays on the challenges and risks of designing algorithms and platforms for children, with an emphasis on algorithmic justice, learning, and equity. One in three Internet users worldwide is a child, and what children see and experience online is increasingly shaped by algorithms. Though children's rights and protections are at the center of debate...

Unlabelled: Family members can provide crucial support to individuals participating in clinical trials. In research on the "newest frontier" of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)-the use of DBS for psychiatric conditions-family member support is frequently listed as a criterion for trial enrollment. Despite the significance of family members, qualitativ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 2013 decision to lower recommended Ambien dosing for women has been widely cited as a hallmark example of the importance of sex differences in biomedicine. Using regulatory documents, scientific publications, and media coverage, this article analyzes the making of this highly influential and mobile 'sex...

Objective: Although previous studies have discussed the promise of deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a possible treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs) and collected researcher perspectives on possible ethical issues surrounding it, none have consulted people with SUDs themselves. We addressed this gap by interviewing people with SUDs. Methods...

Overall, men have died from COVID-19 at slightly higher rates than women. But cumulative estimates of mortality by sex may be misleading. We analyze New York State COVID-19 mortality by sex between March 2020 and August 2021, demonstrating that 72.7% of the total difference in the number of COVID-19 deaths between women and men was accrued in the f...

Objective While previous studies have discussed the promise of deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a possible treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs) and collected researcher perspectives on possible ethical issues surrounding it, none have consulted those with SUDs themselves. We addressed this gap by interviewing those with SUDs. Methods Partic...

Policies that require male-female sex comparisons in all areas of biomedical research conflict with the goal of improving health outcomes through context-sensitive individualization of medical care. Sex, like race, requires a rigorous, contextual approach in precision medicine. A “sex contextualist” approach to gender-inclusive medicine better alig...

In order to characterize how sex disparities in COVID-19 mortality evolved over time in New York State (NY), we analyzed sex-disaggregated data from the US Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker from March 14, 2020 to August 28, 2021. We defined six different time periods and calculated mortality rates by sex and mortality rate ratios, both cumulatively...

This paper presents the first longitudinal study of sex disparities in COVID-19 cases and mortalities across U.S. states, derived from the unique 13-month dataset of the U.S. Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker. To analyze sex disparities, weekly case and mortality rates by sex and mortality rate ratios and rate differences were computed for each U.S....

This dissertation is an experiment in interdisciplinary feminist philosophy of science. It explores an extremely broad question—what is the relationship between science and social values? —by interweaving three families of methodological approaches, to produce three papers, each geared to a different audience. In Chapter One, I consider the role of...

The past 50 years have seen heated debate in the reproductive sciences about global trends in human sperm count. In 2017, Levine and colleagues published the largest and most methodologically rigorous meta-regression analysis to date and reported that average total sperm concentration among men from ‘Western’ countries has decreased by 59.3% since...

Background Inequities in COVID-19 outcomes in the USA have been clearly documented for sex and race: men are dying at higher rates than women, and Black individuals are dying at higher rates than white individuals. Unexplored, however, is how sex and race interact in COVID-19 outcomes.Objective Use available data to characterize COVID-19 mortality...

What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one answer: the trustworthiness of science is based in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, wishes and interests of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific method would result in the same conclusions, reg...

Ranging from miniaturized biological robots to organoids, Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems (M-CELS) pose complex ethical and societal challenges. Some of these challenges, such as how to best distribute risks and benefits, are likely to arise in the development of any new technology. Other challenges arise specifically because of the partic...

Peacebuilding efforts and international environmental law have developed independently and in very different manners. There have been efforts to develop common approaches and standardize procedures, but organizations and individuals seeking to build the foundations for a durable peace still operate under a variety of guiding frameworks. Natural res...

Since the end of the Cold War, peacebuilding efforts and international environmental law have developed independently and in very different manners. Experiences in managing natural resources to support post‐conflict peacebuilding in dozens of countries over the past twenty years, however, highlight the critical role that natural resources often pla...

Recognizing the connection between local communities and conservation areas, Integrated Conservation with Development Projects (ICDPs) are being developed across the world to simultaneously address conservation and local development goals. Through a case study of the Phu My Lepironia Conservation Project (an ICDP) in Kien Giang Province, Vietnam, t...