Claims Of Advocates Research Articles

The Valuable Plurality of the Citizen Sciences

Citizen science is a multilayered concept. Although it is generally understood as a form of public engagement with science and technology, it can take various forms, with widely different roles for citizens. Despite this vastness, a “contributory” strand of citizen science dominates the field, which formally limits citizens’ roles to those of data gatherers for professional scientists or experts. This has led critics to argue that citizen science is not as inclusive, socially transformative, or democratizing as its advocates claim, and to appeals by scholars, practitioners, and policymakers for more dialogue and deliberation in all stages of citizen science processes. In this piece, we share our reflections on these questions drawing on our experiences as participant observers in contributory citizen science projects in various parts of the world. Responding to the above critiques, we illustrate how such projects can have emancipatory potential in terms of impacting policy agendas, inciting behavioral change, and engaging hard-to-reach societal groups. We argue that the future of citizen science lies in pluralizing the citizen sciences by experimenting with various modes of democratic representation, participation, and deliberation.

Sex, Gender and Women's Rights

Despite legislation proposing sex self-identification being deferred in early 2019, numerous government departments and agencies have implemented self-identification in their policies and practices. If a man can declare himself to be a woman, what, then, is a woman, and how can women’s rights as a political class be maintained? This article explores the tensions between women’s sex-based human rights and the claims of transgender advocates. In so doing, it discusses the nature and implications of gender ideology and highlights the failure of public sector institutions, in embracing key tenets of this ideology, to follow well-established policymaking processes.

Why was early therapeutic research on psychedelic drugs abandoned?

Advocates of the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs have argued that a promising approach to treatment was prematurely abandoned in the 1960s primarily because of Richard Nixon's 'War on Drugs'.This paper (1) briefly describes research in the 1950s and 1960s in North America on the use of LSD to treat alcohol dependence, anxiety in terminal illness, and anxiety and depression; and (2) discusses the factors that led to its abandonment. An analysis of historical scholarship on psychedelic research in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in North America. Research on psychedelic drugs in psychiatry was abandoned for a number of reasons that acted in concert. A major factor was that clinical research on psychedelic drugs was caught up in the tighter regulation of pharmaceutical research after the Thalidomide disaster in 1963. Psychedelic drugs also presented special challenges for randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials in the 1970s that were not as positive as the claims made by their advocates in the 1950s and 1960s. Clinical research became more difficult after 1965 when Sandoz ceased providing psychedelic drugs for research and their nonmedical use was prohibited in 1970. The demise of psychedelic drug research was not solely due to the 'War on Drugs'. It was hastened by tighter regulation of pharmaceutical research, the failure of controlled clinical trials to live up to the claims of psychedelic advocates, and the pharmaceutical industry's lack of interest in funding clinical trials.

Public Money Talks Too: How Public Campaign Financing Degrades Representation

AbstractDoes public campaign financing improve representation by reducing politicians' reliance on wealthy donors as advocates claim, or does it worsen representation by expanding the candidate marketplace to give extreme and nonrepresentative candidates an electoral boost? We conduct a novel analysis of public financing programs in Arizona, Connecticut, and Maine to causally identify the effect of a legislator's funding status on how closely she represents constituent preferences. Using multiple identification strategies, we show that candidates who exclusively use public campaign financing are more extreme and less representative of their districts than nonpublicly financed candidates. Our findings add new evidence to the electoral reform debate by demonstrating how replacing private campaign donations with public financing can actually damage substantive representation. We also advance the scholarship on how institutions affect substantive representation and candidate positioning as they respond to new campaign financing structures.

Immigration Policies and Access to the Justice System: The Effect of Enforcement Escalations on Undocumented Immigrants and Their Communities

Does intensifying immigrationenforcement lead to under-reporting of crime among undocumented immigrants and their communities? We empirically test the claims of activists and legal advocates that the escalation of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities in 2017 negatively impacted the willingness of undocumented immigrants and Hispanic communities to report crime. We hypothesize that ICE cooperation with local law enforcement, in particular, discourages undocumented immigrants and their Hispanic community members from reporting crime. Using a difference-in-difference approach and FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data at the county level, we find that total reported crime fell from 2016 to 2017 in counties with higher shares of Hispanic individuals and in counties where local law enforcement had more cooperation with ICE. Using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we show that these declines in the measured crime rate are driven by decreased crime reporting by Hispanic communities rather than by decreased crime commission or victimization. Finally, we replicate these results in a second case study by leveraging the staggered roll-out of the 2008–2014 Secure Communities program across US counties. Taken together, our findings add to a growing body of literature demonstrating how immigration enforcement reduces vulnerable populations’ access to state services, including the criminal justice system.

'Be a Lot Cooler if You Didn’t': Why Judges Should Refrain from Pop Culture References in Judicial Opinions

The use of pop culture references in judicial opinions—sometimes referred to as “dropping pop”—is unfortunately a growing trend. This Article presents the 2021 Briseno v. Henderson opinion as an illustration of the harms of unnecessary pop culture references. It provides a thorough analysis of the numerous ways in which pop culture references in judicial opinions are ill advised. It also addresses the arguments in favor of the practice, providing counterarguments to show why any purported benefits are exaggerated and far outweighed by the downsides. Then advice for judges, including best practices, is given. The Article concludes by providing suggested language for the Model Code of Judicial Conduct regarding pop culture references. Pop culture references are often misunderstood, which can lead to a misunderstanding of the case. Traditionally marginalized populations are particularly vulnerable to this, as they often do not share the same exposure to pop culture as predominantly white judges. They result in litigants believing that the judge was arbitrary, irreverent, and making fun of their plight. They blur the lines between fictional entertainment and the real-life legal system. They are perhaps indicative of a judge who is focusing on self-promotion at the cost of sound legal analysis. And they can be distracting, especially when the reader finds the reference offensive. Any net benefit gained by the entertainment value some experience from a pop culture reference is offset by the confusion and disagreement by others. And pop culture references are not necessary to create an engaging opinion. These references can serve as “seductive details” drawing attention away from the legal holding. They are likely not as persuasive as some advocates claim, and even if they were, persuasion is not a primary goal of a judicial opinion. The general public may find pop culture references in judicial opinions interesting, but this likely comes at the cost of diminished respect for the judicial system.

What Is Regenerative Agriculture? A Review of Scholar and Practitioner Definitions Based on Processes and Outcomes

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative means of producing food that, its advocates claim, may have lower – or even net positive – environmental and/or social impacts. Regenerative agriculture has recently received significant attention from producers, retailers, researchers, and consumers, as well as politicians and the mainstream media. Despite widespread interest in regenerative agriculture, no legal or regulatory definition of the term ‘regenerative agriculture’ exists nor has a widely accepted definition emerged in common usage. This paper answers the research question: How have different scholars and practitioners defined regenerative agriculture? We reviewed 229 journal articles and 25 practitioner websites to characterize the term ‘regenerative agriculture’. Our review revealed that there were many definitions and descriptions of regenerative agriculture in usage. These were variously based on processes (e.g. use of cover crops, the integration of livestock, and reducing or eliminating tillage), outcomes (e.g. to improve soil health, to sequester carbon, and to increase biodiversity), or combinations of the two. Process-based definitions may imply that advocates or users of such definitions are open-minded about the possible outcomes of these processes. Similarly, outcome-based definitions may imply that users of such definitions are open-minded about the processes that may lead to those outcomes. We discuss the implications of these different forms of definition for policy, including for certification programs and for payments for carbon sequestration programs. More generally, wide variance in the definitions used may lead to uncertainty about what different actors mean when they talk about regenerative agriculture. We suggest that it may be helpful for individual users of the term ‘regenerative agriculture’ to define it comprehensively for their own purpose and context.

Strengthening primary care through patient registration: a review of 10 countries

Abstract Background Effective primary care requires continuity in the patient-provider relationship so that the primary care provider can act as the central coordinator of services. For this reason, some high-income countries have insisted on patient registration with a primary care team as part of different reform efforts. This paper develops a framework for analysing the characteristics of patient registration across countries; applies this framework to a selection of high-income countries that have introduced registration; and identifies challenges related to registration and ongoing reform efforts. Methods Based on a literature review, 10 countries - Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Israel, Norway, Sweden Switzerland, and the Netherlands - were selected for analysis. Information was collected using a standardized questionnaire completed by national researchers who reviewed relevant literature and policy documents to report on the establishment and evolution of the policy, the requirements for providers and patients, the benefits for patients, providers and payers, and its connection to primary care reform. Results Patient registration establishes a triangular accountability relationship between patients, providers and payers that many reform advocates claim is the key to achieving better continuity and coordination of care. Results will provide information about the introduction of patient registration in the included countries; the characteristics of patient registration agreements; quantitative indicators, such as the proportion of patients registered, the proportion of primary care providers registering patients, and the average list size of providers. Recent reform experiences and ongoing challenges will also be reviewed. Conclusions This study will allow us to assess patient registration in terms of its key characteristics and outcomes. A preliminary evaluation of the policy's strengths and weaknesses based on key reform criteria is also presented.

Salvaging the EU: Two-Speed or Dual-Track Reform?

In the most recent decade, the European Union has shown itself to be less robust than globalists imagined. Globalists believed that supranationality was weatherproof – that it would always outperform national alternatives and would survive adversity. Economic stagnation and Brexit belied these expectations. This essay investigates one aspect of the EU’s supranational plight: incompatible goals and the difficulty of mutual accommodation, especially during hard times. EU supranationalists contend that the shared dreams assure harmonious results, but experience reveals that supranational government is shakier than advocates claim because shared ideals and benefits have not been enough for members to put aside conflicting national interests. These rivalries do not doom the European Union’s globalizing project, but they do expose the vulnerabilities of its premises. Supranational union is proving to be unsatisfactory to both many centralizers demanding “more Europe” and decentralizers insisting on “less Europe”. EU leaders are aware of the problem but are wedded to a one-track, two-speed supranational approach that is destined to fail. A dual-track supranational solution analogous to China’s “one country, two systems” offers a better alternative.

The Antiquities Act, national monuments, and the regional economy

Large, landscape-scale national monuments have long been controversial. It has been claimed that large monuments harm local economies by restricting growth of the grazing, timber, mining, and energy industries. Others have asserted that large monuments aid economic growth by reducing reliance on volatile commodity markets and fostering tourism growth. In this study, we use a synthetic control approach to measure the average causal effect of nine national monument designations on county-level per capita income. We find no evidence that monument designation affected per capita income in any of 20 counties hosting nine large (>50,000 acres) national monuments established under the Antiquities Act (six monuments) or by legislative action (three monuments). The broad economic claims of both advocates and critics of large national monuments have little empirical support. The absence of a designation effect for large national monuments is likely due to the attributes of federal land and the legal constraints under which it is managed.

Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation

The increasingly visible presence of heavily armed police units in American communities has stoked widespread concern over the militarization of local law enforcement. Advocates claim militarized policing protects officers and deters violent crime, while critics allege these tactics are targeted at racial minorities and erode trust in law enforcement. Using a rare geocoded census of SWAT team deployments from Maryland, I show that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, even after controlling for local crime rates. Further, using nationwide panel data on local police militarization, I demonstrate that militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime. Finally, using survey experiments-one of which includes a large oversample of African American respondents-I show that seeing militarized police in news reports may diminish police reputation in the mass public. In the case of militarized policing, the results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is a false choice.

Dynamics of Regulatory Policymaking in Sweden: The Role of Media Advocacy and Public Opinion

While extensive literatures study the responsiveness of policy to public opinion and the influence of interest groups, few studies look at both factors simultaneously. This article offers an analysis of the influence of media advocacy and public opinion on political attention and policy change for four regulatory issues over a relatively long period of time in Sweden. The data pools together measures of public support for specific policies with new data on attention to the policy issues in the Swedish parliament, policy developments over time and detailed coding of the claims of interest advocates in two major Swedish newspapers. Analyzing this data, a complex picture without a general tendency for either public opinion or media advocacy to act as dominant forces in producing policy change is revealed, although some evidence is found that the public is successful in stimulating political attention when it supports policy proposals aimed at changing the status quo.

Capitalizing on the crowd: The monetary and financial ecologies of crowdfunding

‘Crowdfunding’ is a method of raising money and finance to capitalize projects of various kinds. Drawing on the networking capabilities of the internet and software platforms, those seeking project funding appeal to potentially diverse audiences who are collectively referred to as ‘the crowd’. What practitioners, advocates and policymakers typically identify within crowdfunding is its ‘alternative’, ‘disruptive’ and ‘democratizing’ qualities; that is, it is held to be a novel, digitally rendered economic space which has the capacity to challenge established funding practices in banking, capital markets and venture capital networks, offering a more open and egalitarian source of capital for economic, social and cultural entrepreneurship. The paper develops the concept of ‘ecologies’, drawn from the geographies of money and finance literature, to advance a critical understanding of the crowdfunding economy that is sceptical of its apparent qualities. First, by encouraging the analysis of diverse and proliferative monetary and financial forms, the concept of ecologies enables an understanding that avoids the binary opposition of ‘capitalist/alternative’ economic forms and which differentiates between the variegated crowdfunding ecologies that have emerged to date. Second, by foregrounding the intermediation processes and credit–debt relations of monetary and financial ecologies, it is argued that crowdfunding may largely replicate rather than disrupt the extant institutional and debt dynamics of funding practices. Third, by emphasizing the socio-spatial effects of monetary and financial ecologies, attention is drawn to the need for further research into the unevenness that mitigates against crowdfunding being as open and egalitarian as its advocates claim.

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

Programmes and policies for a Circular Economy (CE) are fast becoming key to regional and international plans for creating sustainable futures. Framed as a technologically driven and economically profitable vision of continued growth in a resource-scarce world, the CE has of late been taken up by the European Commission and global business leaders alike. However, within CE debates and documentation, little is said about the social and political implications of such transformative agendas. Whilst CE proponents claim their agenda is ‘radical’, this paper outlines its inability to address many deeply embedded challenges around issues of consumption and the consumer, echoing as it does the problematic (and arguably failed) agendas of sustainable consumption/lifestyles. Using the Sharing Economy as an example, we argue here that the ontological and sociological assumptions of the CE must be open to more ‘radical’ critique and reconsideration if this agenda is to deliver the profound transformations that its advocates claim are within our collective reach.

The perceptive imperative: Connoisseurship and the temptation of rubrics

ABSTRACTWe examine the reliance on rubrics for educational evaluation and explore whether such tools fulfill their promise. Following Wittgensteinian critical strategies, we explore what “the application of the [rubric] picture looks like” and then evaluate (a) whether those benefits are attributable to rubric use at all, and (b) whether any of those benefits are unique to rubric use. Rubric advocates claim specifically that rubrics offer both the sheen of objectivity and time-saving benefits involved in streamlining the feedback process. Against these two main claims, we argue that even if rubrics can be used in beneficial ways, they fall short of achieving any robust sense of objectivity, and that engaging in real and difficult judgment from case to case of student work remains inescapably a teacher's time-consuming, yet necessary, responsibility. In instances where rubric use claims come up short, we will suggest an alternative framework, based upon Elliot Eisner's notion of educational connoisseurship and criticism, arguing for the development of perceptive abilities in teachers and students alike.

Explanatory pluralism: An unrewarding prediction error for free energy theorists

Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies that the grand unifying claims of advocates of PTB are unwarranted. More generally, we suggest that the form of scientific progress in the cognitive sciences is unlikely to be a single overarching grand unifying theory.

NORMS, EVALUATIONS, AND IDEAL AND NONIDEAL THEORY

Abstract:This essay discusses the relation between ideal theory and two forms of political moralism identified by Bernard Williams, structural and enactment views. It argues that ideal theory, at least in the sense Rawls used that term, only makes sense for structural forms of moralism. These theories see their task as describing the constraints that properly apply to political agents and institutions. As a result, they are primarily concerned with norms that govern action. In contrast, many critiques of ideal theory are structured and motivated by their commitment to an enactment model of political theorizing. This instead sees political agents and institutions as instruments for producing or promoting better states of affairs. Enactment models treat the evaluations that rank different states of affairs as justificatorily basic, rather than norms governing action on which structural models focus. This reveals an important feature of debates about ideal theory. Whether ideal theory is capable of appropriately guiding action will depend on what the criteria for appropriately guiding action are, about which different theorists have importantly different views. For example, some popular strategies for defending ideal theory fail, while it may be much less clear that some alternatives to ideal theory can provide action guidance than their advocates claim.

Contesting Claims on Measuring Performance in the Public Sector Using Performance Audits: Evidence from the Literature

Based on desk study, this article adduces theoretical and empirical evidence to analyze the claims of advocates and critics of performance audit (PA). The paper establishes that the application of PA in some developed countries has led to improvement in aspects of public sector performance albeit sometimes short of the often highlighted effects of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The article further provides evidence to support the claim that despite its touted contribution to performance, PA could rather lead to anti-innovation, nit-picking, expectations gap, lapdog, headline hunting, unnecessary systems and hollow ritual. The paper questions the quality of reported PA systems in the literature and advocates a PA regime that strikes a delicate balance between compliance and performance.

The brain disease model of addiction: is it supported by the evidence and has it delivered on its promises?

Since 1997 the US National Institute on Drug Abuse has advocated a brain disease model of addiction (BDMA). We assess the strength of evidence for the BDMA in animals, neuroimaging studies of people with addiction, and current research on the role of genetics in addiction. We critically assess claims about the medical and social benefits of use of the BDMA because the social implications are often implied as a reason to accept this model. Furthermore, we argue that the BDMA is not supported by animal and neuroimaging evidence to the extent its advocates suggest; it has not helped to deliver more effective treatments for addiction; and its effect on public policies toward drugs and people with addiction has been modest. The focus of the BDMA is on disordered neurobiology in a minority of severely addicted individuals, which undermines the implementation of effective and cost-effective policies at the population level to discourage people from smoking tobacco and drinking heavily. The pursuit of high technology direct brain interventions to cure addiction when most individuals with addiction do not have access to effective psychosocial and drug treatments is questionable.

E-democracy at the American grassroots: Not now … not likely?

Using data from two national surveys conducted in 2006 and 2011, we empirically examine whether, and the extent to which, grassroots or local governments in the United States have adopted electronic democracy e-democracy. We contrast this empirical reality against the claims made by e-democracy advocates. The survey results show that few American local governments have adopted e-democracy, particularly meaningful elements through which citizens can actively participate in governmental activities, programs and decision-making. Even fewer local governments plan to do so in the near future. These empirical results are highly inconsistent with the claims of e-democracy advocates. Based on the survey results, we conclude that two important reasons account for the lack of e-democracy at the American grassroots: lack of funding to support e-democracy applications and lack of perceived demand for e-democracy. A third important factor may well be the fact that early predictions were, for various reasons, incorrect. Based on these findings, we would expect that e-democracy at the American grassroots will not be substantially different in the foreseeable future than it is now.