Benefit-of-the-Doubt Research Articles

The delusive benefit of the doubt

Science promises benefits, some true and some illusory. Consider a scientific agnostic who thinks that to reap the true benefits of a scientific theory he does not have to believe in its theoretical posits. Instead, it is enough if he believes that the theory successfully predicts the behavior of the observables, as ultimately only such predictions matter.Say, however, that given the results of her thorough research, a psychologist proposes a theory describing a psychological mechanism underlying a certain class of normative judgments. Moreover, the mechanism seems unfit for the task—once you see the details of the mechanism, you will realize that this is not the way they should be produced. Therefore, if the psychologist is right, it seems that these normative judgments should not inform one's normative theorizing or one's actions (Greene, 2008; Greene, 2014; Kelly, 2014). And say that the agnostic accepts the psychologist's theory, trusting that it makes correct predictions about, for example, fMRI images and subjects' reaction times, as they are observable. He also thinks that if the psychologist's description of the mechanism is correct, the judgments should not be trusted. Yet, since the mechanism posited by the theory is not observable, the agnostic is agnostic about it. He thus cannot be convinced that these judgments are produced in a flawed way and, consequently, has no reason to distrust them.Scientific agnosticism comes, therefore, at the cost of dismissing normative arguments that invoke unobservable posits of psychological models. The ability to make such arguments is a true (rather than illusory) benefit of science, despite the agnostic's promise that his philosophical theory leaves intact benefits that genuinely matter.

Does pig production improves cattle farm sustainability in the French massif central? A hierarchical constrained directional benefit-of-the-doubt approach

CONTEXTPig production systems are currently in decline in the French Massif Central, while herbivore production systems, most of which are specialised, generate little income. The diversification of herbivore farms with pig production appears to be an interesting lever for improving farm sustainability. OBJECTIVEThe objective of this study was to assess the impacts of adding pig production on the sustainability of beef and dairy farms and to assess the pros and cons of a DEA based multicriteria evaluation model. METHODSThe Orfee bioeconomic model was used to simulate 17 beef or dairy farms with and without pigs. This pig production system consists of either a farrow-to-finish sow production system or a pig fattening production system only. The structural and technical parameters of these farms were established from a farm survey. Farm sustainability was assessed using 17 indicators. These indicators were hierarchically aggregated into a single sustainability composite indicator using an innovative method, the constrained directional benefit of the doubt (D-BoD) method. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSThe results indicate that the addition of a pig production system has an overall positive impact on the sustainability of cattle farms. Mixed cattle-pig systems score significantly better on the social dimension as they generate more jobs and contribute more to food security. The overall economic performance is not significantly better than that of specialized systems for the price context from 2012 to 2022. The pig production system increases the average income per work unit for cattle farms but needs more purchased inputs to produce. This reduces but not offsets the risk reduction advantage of diversification and reduces production efficiency. Mixed farms do not score higher than specialized cattle farms on the environmental dimension. Mixed farms contribute less to global warming per kg of protein produced but have higher nitrogen and phosphorus surpluses. The constrained D-BoD method is a useful tool for endogenously aggregating indicators without having to arbitrarily set weights and thresholds to evaluate performance, but with certain limitations, such as the possibility that a farm may be judged efficient if it performs better on some indicators while being relatively weak on others. SIGNIFICANCEFavouring mixed farming appears to be an interesting lever for territorial development, but with two important issues: local supply of pig feed at a secure price and improved manure management to allow a virtuous cycle of nutrients.

European Defence Industries’ Sales Performance: A Benefit-Of-The-Doubt Based Comparative Analysis

ABSTRACT The Russian invasion of Ukraine has generated a new impetus towards an enhanced European defence pillar, while many EU members have announced significant increases in their respective defence budgets over the coming years. Expectedly, a large percentage of the capital and technological inputs required to support the efforts towards a common European defence and the increased defence needs of many EU members will be procured from the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB). The European defence companies are among the major suppliers of conventional arms in the world. Their cumulative share of world arms exports is the second largest globally. This paper uses a Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) model via Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to comparatively evaluate the sales performance of major European defence industries vis-à-vis other major international arms producers. The sample used in the analysis contains 72 firms and spans the period 2016–2020. The findings indicate that on the whole US defence manufacturers have a dominant presence among the biggest global producers and outrank many major European companies. These findings offer valuable policy recommendations.

Beyond the Z‐score: A novel measure of bank stability for effective policymaking

This article looks beyond Z‐score and proposes a novel methodological framework to build an all‐encompassing indicator of bank stability for individual banks using the optimisation‐based ‘benefit‐of‐the‐doubt (BoD)’ approach. Unlike other available approaches, this approach is totally data‐driven and generates endogenous weights to aggregate sub‐indicators of bank stability and dimensions. Further, the final outcomes are not limited to a scalar measure of bank stability. The unique optimal weights offer valuable policy‐relevant insights and highlight the most precarious areas of stability, which demand the immediate attention of the bank's management and the industry regulators for both micro‐and macro‐level policymaking. Using the data of Indian public sector banks operating in the year 2018, the study illustrates the proposed framework to obtain a holistic indicator of bank stability, defined on 14 ratio sub‐indicators and 5 broad dimensions (soundness, asset quality, profitability, management efficiency, and liquidity) of bank stability.

The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests

The use of industrial chemicals to eradicate foliage in the name of economic, scientific, and military progress was a cornerstone of post–World War II US policy. Needless to say, their use also provoked significant controversy within the United States and across the world. It is that controversy that Amy H. Hay explores in her new book. The Defoliation of America is not only a history of Agent Orange chemicals (phenoxy herbicides) but is, more importantly, an examination of how diverse networks of grassroots activists questioned state and scientific authority. The book offers new and interesting insights into the history of how “ordinary citizens” became activists and the processes through which they challenged the use of phenoxy herbicides in agriculture, land management, and warfare.The book is divided into three sections each containing three chapters, as well as an introduction and conclusion. The first section explores the origins of phenoxy herbicides and “the quickening of conscience” around their use in the United States, Europe, and Vietnam. The second section offers case studies of phenoxy spraying and citizen response in the US West, while the third considers the toxic legacies of phenoxy herbicides, including their use in the War on Drugs. The Defoliation of America is an expansive book that links disparate networks of activism together in a coherent way and does an excellent job of interrogating the contested nature of knowledge making around phenoxy herbicides. I look forward to teaching it in my upper division science, technology, and society classes.I was particularly intrigued by Hay's eloquent descriptions of how people became activists. For some, it was reading about or participating in Operation Ranch Hand, while for others it was the spraying of their bodies or their land. This fascinated me because it highlighted something that Hay does so well, situating scientific authority and processes of knowledge making within larger structures of power. Many of the protest networks that Hay described were successful in contesting the scientific and state authority to determine the nature of proof and harm, but it is also true that many of the successes of these “anti-toxics” campaigns were little more than a way for chemical companies to buy time: US policies gave chemical companies the benefit of the doubt when it came to any potential harm. The protests of “ordinary citizens” shaped the discourse around phenoxy herbicides use in war and agriculture, but so too did the more powerful chemical companies—most often by sowing doubts of chemical harm deep within our policies and institutions.My reading of Hay's book left me with a plethora of negative emotions. I was angry for the countless Vietnamese harmed and still yet to be harmed in the name of the Cold War. I felt sad for the US soldiers who had survived war only to die from so-called manufacturing mistakes or improper use. I empathized with the people catalyzed to be activists and the struggles they faced. I was again disheartened by yet another story of agricultural laborers living with outsized exposure. Perhaps that is why I found the story of Ida Honorof in chapter 5 so compelling. For all of the stories of contested knowledge making that Hay describes, the one characteristic that permeated them all was the lack of significant accountability. Ida Honorof, first and foremost, was about accountability. She advocated for incarceration of those who had exposed the public to widespread harm. I think her observations around lack of accountability still ring true today. Thus, the main question I could not shake after reading the Defoliation of America is what accountability would actually look like. I think it would look like what Ida said it would, at least in part.The Defoliation of America is an original and fascinating look at the contested history of knowledge making around phenoxy herbicides. But I think one of its most lasting contributions will come from the larger questions it asks—important questions that have resonance for who we want to be today and what our future agriculture looks like. In particular, throughout the book, Hay struggles with the why of chemical herbicides. I think that this is key. Agricultural historians have written so well on the what and the how of pesticides. Perhaps we need to take Hay's lead and ask the why question more.

The Human Touch

The challenge of providing a safe communications environment in the face of such social engineering attacks isn't just the technology; it's also people. As anyone who has done serious work in computer security knows, the biggest problems are between the keyboard and the chair. Most people by default trust other people and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Revelations and Translations, Volume 5: Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon

Revelations and Translations, Volume 5: Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon

Development and application of a composite circularity index

Resource depletion and environmental pollution are increasingly a matter of concern for their adverse effects on ecosystems, human health, and the economy. Circular Economy (CE) practices can help us address these challenges. This paper proposes a composite circularity index (CI) to assess the level of implementation of CE practices. The main advantage of the proposed index is its ability to combine multiple indicators of circularity for different units operating in a given sector (given as inputs), using a ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ model. This new model is innovative in the manner it deals with ordinal scales and also by considering both relative and absolute performance indices. These indices are computed using mathematical programming tools, building on ideas from Data Envelopment Analysis models.Although the model can be applied to any sector, this work addresses the hotel industry in particular. The selection of indicators for this CI was based on seven blocks of the Circular Economy Action Plan and a literature review of circular practices. An application of the proposed index is performed by using data from Portuguese and Spanish hotels. The proposed CI allows the identification of the organizations with the best and worst performance in implementing the CE practices and clarifying the benchmarks they could follow to improve their level of circularity. Moreover, the index analysis also provides specific targets for improvement, indicating which circular practices should be improved for the lower performers to reach the implementation levels of the best performers.

The measurement of asset management performance of water companies

This study explores asset management performance of Portuguese water supply companies operating in the bulk market. The focus of the analysis are the managerial practices and the condition of infrastructures. This assessment is based on the information conveyed by the indicators collected by the Portuguese water and waste services’ regulator authority (ERSAR) between 2016 and 2020. The main contribution of this research is to propose innovative methods to enhance the knowledge on asset management practices in the water sector. Two Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) Composite Indicators are developed to highlight different aspects of asset management approaches. The first reflects organisations’ performance in maintaining their infrastructures at acceptable operational levels, and the other reveals their maturity in asset management practices. Robust and conditional approaches for estimating the BoD indicators are applied, allowing to obtain results that account for the effect of contextual variables on companies’ performance. Additionally, the performance of the companies is analysed over a 5-year period. The results show that there is significant room for improvement given the indicators’ values estimated in the benchmarking analysis. The type of management systems and areas of intervention (urban, semi-urban or rural) are factors that present significant impact in asset management performance. The analysis of trends in the evolution of performance over time revealed improvements both in the companies’ managerial practices and operational results.

Obama in the Americas: The Politics of Hope and Disappointment

The aim of this article is to analyze what accounted for the hope Caribbean leaders and the general Caribbean population had regarding U.S. engagement in the region with the election of Barack Obama. The paper provides a brief analysis of Obama’s foreign policy in the Americas, with particular focus on the small island developing states in the Caribbean region. Utilising public discourse (online discussions and local news coverage), the paper explores the affection and the benefit of the doubt that was given to Obama as president, despite the historical asymmetrical relationship and experience of American foreign policy in the Caribbean and Latin America. The paper draws on the long history and experience of U.S. engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean broadly, but focuses on the smaller island nations of the Caribbean as they generally find themselves in more precarious economic, political, and social situations than their larger mainland counterparts. The paper also provides a review of some highlighted events in the region over the eight years of Obama’s presidency, including a discussion on the role of “blackness” in the Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States. The analysis shows that while the Caribbean harbors deep affection for Obama, his policies were no different from his predecessors. His policies toward the region were no more progressive or consultative or less hegemonic and dictatorial than previous American presidents. The affection and benefit of the doubt given to Obama had little to do with policies and more to do with “skinship” on the one hand and the dependent mindset of many Caribbean leaders on the other hand.

Use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess management alternatives in the presence of multiple objectives

Marine ecosystem-based management often aims to satisfy a wide range of economic, social and environmental objectives. These are often measured in non-commensurable units, making identification of a preferred option difficult when outcomes and measures vary considerably. In this paper, we examine the potential for data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an alternative approach to traditional multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). We derive multi-output composite indicator scores for three case study examples. The management alternatives are assessed both with and without exogenously determined objective preference weights. The frontier-based analysis does not require weights to be assigned to each objective, instead generating flexible “benefit of the doubt” weights that allow for different objectives to be influencing each management option. Applying stakeholder objective importance weights allows the assessment of the objective alignment of the different stakeholder groups, providing additional information on management option performance. The DEA results were found to be consistent with those from an earlier study that used a more traditional MCDA approach. DEA has the additional advantage of not requiring measures to be commensurable and can also directly incorporate undesirable outcomes into the analysis.

Measuring the digital divide: A modified benefit-of-the-doubt approach

In this paper, a modified composite index is developed to measure digital inclusion for a group of cities and regions. The developed model, in contrast to the existing benefit-of-the-doubt (BoD) composite index literature, considers the subindexes as non-compensatory. This new way of modeling results in three important properties: (i) all subindexes are taken into account when assessing the digital inclusion of regions and are not removed (substituted) from the composite index, (ii) in addition to an overall composite index (aggregation of the subindexes), partial indexes (aggregated scores for each subindex) are also provided so that weak performances can be detected more effectively than when only the overall index is measured, and (iii) compared with current BoD models, the developed model has improved discriminatory power. To demonstrate the developed model, we use the Australian digital inclusion index as a real-world example.

An Anatomist Considers Overflow at the Boundaries of Being a Person

In dealing with the body of a deceased individual, the anatomist has to decide whether this individual is to be treated as a person. One approach is to gain insights from those who are definitely persons--healthy children and adults--and work toward those in which there is uncertainty and ambiguity, in this instance, the deceased. The same applies at the other end of life when dealing with embryos and fetuses. In both cases, marginal persons are given the benefit of the doubt, using the concept of "overflow." *An analysis is undertaken of the treatment of the deceased: initially, of the recently deceased; then assessing approaches to human remains from the remote past; and finally, the troubling status of dissected plastinated bodies, "plastinates." Against this background, attention moves to ways of approaching embryos. Following an overview of a range of theological insights into embryonic existence, attention is paid to the heterogeneity of blastocysts, the significance of their immediate environment, and their place within the broader human community. Reference is also made to the advent of synthetic embryos and the challenge they will present for a notion of personhood. An attempt is made to assess where these ambiguous versions of ourselves fit into the priorities of the human community, and whether an approach based on the notion of "overflow" will provide helpful pointers.

A subgroup dominance-based benefit of the doubt method for addressing rank reversals: A case study of the human development index in Europe

The benefit of the doubt (BoD) is a non-parametric weighting method that aims to maximize the relative composite indicator value of each decision-making unit (DMU). A well-known issue of BoD-based ranking of DMUs is the rank reversal problem when DMUs are deleted or added. The fundamental reason for rank reversals is that deleting (or adding) a DMU influences the generated weight by changing the frontier surface. To address the rank reversal problem, this paper proposes a subgroup dominance-based BoD model (SD-BoD). Based on the individual weights obtained from a classic BoD model, a dominance-based pairwise comparison mechanism is put forward to ensure comparability of different DMUs. Moreover, motivated by the data envelopment analysis idea, we construct a sequential frontier surface partition technique and establish a DMU ranking framework based on subgroup dominance, which helps reduce weight variation due to DMU addition or deletion. Finally, the effectiveness of the SD-BoD method is illustrated by comparing and analyzing the Human Development Indices of the 28 European regions.

A composite indicator analysis for optimizing entrepreneurial ecosystems

• We use the ‘benefit of the doubt’ (BOD) weighting to evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem at the global scale. • We compute endogenous weights to identify country-specific policy priorities. • We show how countries can design optimal entrepreneurship policy using objective criteria. • Effective policy is conditional on the configuration of countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystem. • Quality improvements in entrepreneurial ecosystems are conducive to higher levels of venture capital investments. We employ the ‘benefit of the doubt’ approach rooted in non-parametric techniques to evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of 71 countries for the period 2016. By scrutinizing the relative efficiency of countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystems, the proposed analysis of composite indicators allows the computation of endogenous (country-specific) weights that can be used for developing more informed policy making. The results show that countries prioritize different aspects of their national system of entrepreneurship which confirms that, contrary to homogeneous prescription, tailor-made policy is necessary if the objective is to optimize the resources deployed to enhance the countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystem. The findings of the empirical application reveal significant improvements in the quality of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can be realized by targeting the policy priorities of the local entrepreneurship system identified by the ‘benefit of the doubt’ weights. By analyzing the variation in economic and entrepreneurship outcomes over the seven-year period centered on the study year (period 2013–2019), we found a significant positive correlation between quality improvements in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and venture capital investments.

Understanding the efficiency changes of green institutional environment: An application of two new cross-efficiency Benefit-of-the-Doubt models to China

Green institutional environment reflects the government's effort to promote sustainability and thus becomes an important research focus worldwide. To the best of our knowledge, no study has adopted the Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) models to evaluate the performance of green institutional environment. It is noteworthy that the previous BoD studies receive great criticism, due to the possible occurrence of improper or extreme weights. To deal with the issue, this paper proposes two new types of cross-efficiency BoD models and provides methodological contributions to the BoD literature. To make empirical contributions to the studies on green institutional environment, this study proposes a new methodological framework to perform efficiency analysis. Our new framework has five types of academic effort: (a) five BoD models (for efficiency analysis); (b) Malmquist index (for sources of dynamic efficiency changes); (c) K-means clustering method (for group classification); (d) Mann-Whitney U test (to examine group heterogeneity); and (e) Gini coefficient (for inequality analysis) and group-based decomposition analysis (for identifying technology diffusion barriers). Such work cannot be found in the existing empirical studies. Empirically, this study focuses on green institutional environment of Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2019. The main conclusions are summarized as follows. First, China has succeeded in achieving an overall growth of green institutional environment during the examined periods. Second, there exists certain method heterogeneity, where our new models perform better than conventional BoD models. Finally, there is a growing trend in overall efficiency Gini coefficient, implying that an increasing technological disparity is confirmed in green institutional environment.

Potential improvements approach in composite indicators construction: The Multi-directional Benefit of the Doubt model

The aim of the present paper is to propose an innovative method to construct composite indicators, starting from an attractive frontier approach called Multi-directional Efficiency Analysis (MEA), and making it suitable to aggregate simple indicators. The main advantage of this method is the separation of the benchmark selection issue from that of efficiency measurement. The novel method, called Multi-directional Benefit of the Doubt, combines the MEA with the Benefit of the Doubt approach adding some valuable properties to the obtained composite indicator. The proposed method is tested on simulated data for illustrative purposes, and then, an empirical application on OECD ”Better life index” is provided. Results suggest that the method could be a good tool for local policy makers alongside the OECD BLI to investigate and improve some non-performing well-being dimensions.

Constructing a financial inclusion index for Mexican municipalities

Access to financial services varies sharply around the world among countries but also within regions and municipalities in the same country. To identify this important variation multivariate indices have been considered previously but they should have an adequate formulation that results in relevant information for policy proposals. Many Financial Inclusion (FI) Indices have been constructed using methodologies that do not allow identifying subdimensions within the broad dimensions of access and usage in which the entity (country or municipality) could be lagging. In this respect our contribution is to construct a novel FI index that encompass different subdimensions of access and usage which are determined previously by exploratory factor analysis. The aggregation of our index is as a weighted geometric mean with the weights derived from DEA Benefit of the Doubt (BoD). In other formulations the weights imposed in multivariate indices have been a source of criticism when determined by the researcher discretionally or derived by factor or principal component analysis which have some shortcomings. We construct a Geometric BoD index for Mexican municipalities in 2020 considering that our FI index formulation is also appropriate to use for any other country or region. Our results show that the importance of each dimension is different for each municipality in Mexico which in turn indicates that each of them can suffer of low levels of FI for a variety of reasons.

When group members dissent: A direct comparison of the black sheep and intergroup sensitivity effects

How do people react to opinion conflict occurring within an ingroup? Whereas some work suggests that dissenting ingroup members evoke more negativity than equivalently dissenting outgroup members (termed the black sheep effect), other research instead finds that people are more receptive to dissent from within the group relative to the same opinion originating from outsiders (termed the intergroup sensitivity effect). We sought to integrate these largely independent lines of work by investigating how people react to opinion conflict within and between groups based on U.S. political party affiliation. Participants read about a target person, “Robert C.,” with whom they shared or did not share party affiliation. Robert C. criticized (Study 1; N = 637; preregistered) or insulted (Study 2; N = 647; preregistered) the Democratic or Republican party. Ingroup members who criticized or insulted the ingroup elicited more negativity than outgroup members who criticized or insulted the outgroup, representing the black sheep effect. Moreover, criticism and insults targeting the ingroup elicited more negativity when they originated from an outgroup (vs. ingroup) member, representing the intergroup sensitivity effect. Taken together, the present studies demonstrate that whereas ingroup critics are at times perceived as black sheep, they are also afforded a degree of benefit of the doubt. We suggest that both of these effects may be driven by social identity concerns.

Chatting with God and the Benefit of the Doubt

Chatting with God and the Benefit of the Doubt