Bits Of Evidence Research Articles

The party of Reagan: External (but not internal) personalization

AbstractObjectiveThe purpose of this article is to assess whether the relationship that existed between Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party could reasonably be characterized as one of personalization/de‐institutionalization of the party.1MethodsThe authors employ the common conceptual framework developed for this special issue. Evidence is drawn from both popular journalism and scholarly sources.Results and ConclusionWhile bits of evidence exist for personalization, especially with regard to the external dimension, the collective evidence stops short of what is required to be considered de‐institutionalization of the party.

In Defense of Evidential Minimalism: Varieties of Criticizability

AbstractThis paper will critically engage with Daniel Buckley's argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM), i.e., the claim that necessarily, bits of evidence (are or) provide epistemic reasons for belief. Buckley argues that in some cases, a subject has strong evidence that p (and fulfills further minimal conditions), does not believe p, but nevertheless is not epistemically criticizable and has no epistemic reason to believe p. I will defend EM by pointing out that Buckley's argument trades on an ambiguity between a strong and a weak notion of criticizability.

Statistical evidence and surprise unified under possibility theory

AbstractSander Greenland argues that reported results of hypothesis tests should include the surprisal, the base‐2 logarithm of the reciprocal of a p‐value. The surprisal measures how many bits of evidence in the data warrant rejecting the null hypothesis. A generalization of surprisal also can measure how much the evidence justifies rejecting a composite hypothesis such as the complement of a confidence interval. That extended surprisal, called surprise, quantifies how many bits of astonishment an agent believing a hypothesis would experience upon observing the data. While surprisal is a function of a point in hypothesis space, surprise is a function of a subset of hypothesis space. Satisfying the conditions of conditional min‐plus probability, surprise inherits a wealth of tools from possibility theory. The equivalent compatibility function has been recently applied to the replication crisis, to adjusting p‐values for prior information, and to comparing scientific theories.

You Are Standing in a Doorway: California, Fall 2020

You Are Standing in a Doorway: California, Fall 2020

The Lead Tablet from Tongres: Curse or amulet?

The editors of the lead tablet recently excavated in Tongres conclude that it was a curse tablet, primarily because of its lead medium and because all four of the later, but similarly designed tablets, are or seem to be curses. In this essay, however, I argue that the Tongres tablet was, in fact, an amulet for a house or a workshop. The archaeology provides three important bits of evidence, because the tablet was nailed up on a wall, exposed to the open air for a good deal of time and displayed in a commercial or domestic context possibly in the midst of wooden buildings. I further my argument by discussing three issues unaddressed by the editio princeps: (i) the shared syntax of three of the five tablets, which ask a deity to “give” or “grant” some abstract quality to a person or persons, a popular request on amulets, but not on curses; (ii) the importance of two underappreciated parallels to the Tongres tablet (a second-century lead disk from Bordighera and a drawing in a papyrus recipe for a tin amulet); and (iii) the shape of a shrine or aediculum at the very center of the design, which points to a Greek tradition of house amulets in the shape of little shrines.

Probabilistic semantics for epistemic modals: Normality assumptions, conditional epistemic spaces and the strength of must and might

The epistemic modal auxiliaries must and might are vehicles for expressing the force with which a proposition follows from some body of evidence or information. Standard approaches model these operators using quantificational modal logic, but probabilistic approaches are becoming increasingly influential. According to a traditional view, must is a maximally strong epistemic operator and might is a bare possibility one. A competing account—popular amongst proponents of a probabilisitic turn—says that, given a body of evidence, must \(\phi \) entails that \(Pr(\phi )\) is high but non-maximal and might \(\phi \) that \(Pr(\phi )\) is significantly greater than 0. Drawing on several observations concerning the behavior of must, might and similar epistemic operators in evidential contexts, deductive inferences, downplaying and retractions scenarios, and expressions of epistemic tension, I argue that those two influential accounts have systematic descriptive shortcomings. To better make sense of their complex behavior, I propose instead a broadly Kratzerian account according to which must \(\phi \) entails that \(Pr(\phi ) = 1\) and might \(\phi \) that \(Pr(\phi ) > 0\), given a body of evidence and a set of normality assumptions about the world. From this perspective, must and might are vehicles for expressing a common mode of reasoning whereby we draw inferences from specific bits of evidence against a rich set of background assumptions—some of which we represent as defeasible—which capture our general expectations about the world. I will show that the predictions of this Kratzerian account can be substantially refined once it is combined with a specific yet independently motivated ‘grammatical’ approach to the computation of scalar implicatures. Finally, I discuss some implications of these results for more general discussions concerning the empirical and theoretical motivation to adopt a probabilisitic semantic framework.

Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700 by Noeleen McIlvenna

Reviewed by: Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700 by Noeleen McIlvenna Owen Stanwood Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640–1700. By Noeleen McIlvenna. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xiv, 168. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5606-9; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-5605-2.) The seventeenth-century Chesapeake abounded with rebels. From Ingle's Rebellion in 1640s Maryland to the intercolonial uprisings in 1689 following [End Page 515] the Glorious Revolution, political strife hit the colonies with some regularity, even bringing down Maryland's proprietary government and threatening to do the same in Virginia and North Carolina. Aside from Bacon's Rebellion, usually considered a key event in early American political development, most of these uprisings have received little attention from historians. In her new book, Noeleen McIlvenna seeks to fill this gap by offering a linked history of political unrest across the later half of the seventeenth century. In her telling, these rebellions were nothing short of attempted revolutions, attempts by "small farmers" to establish "a republic of equals" in the early American South (p. 4). The American story started as an outgrowth of England's own mid-seventeenth-century revolution. In particular, the rise of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army introduced new, egalitarian impulses into English life, often linked with the liberating theologies of an ascendant radical Protestantism. While previous scholars have paid more attention to connections between revolutionary England and New England, McIlvenna finds radical traces in the Chesapeake as well. In particular, she pays close attention to the Gerard clan, a Maryland family that was active in Maryland politics and soon spread its tentacles around the region, mainly through a series of strategic marriages. McIlvenna uses this family story to underscore the role of women in political movements. While it was the Gerard daughters' husbands who often took the lead in the rebellions, McIlvenna makes the fascinating suggestion, based on a few tantalizing bits of evidence, that many of the most radical ideas came from women rather than men. These rebels had their work cut out for them. On the other side, the royalist Virginia governor William Berkeley and Maryland's proprietors, the Calverts, sought to build a hierarchical society more in line with Stuart England. The struggle between these two visions could become violent, whether in Maryland's battle of the Severn of 1655 or Nathaniel Bacon's burning of Jamestown, Virginia, a decade later. All of these rebellions, obviously, were multifaceted and complex, but McIlvenna contends that they were fundamentally about democracy. Both Virginia and Maryland were notably democratic in their early years—neither had property requirements for voting—and it was rebels like the Gerards who kept this egalitarian vision alive. It was only somewhat later, with the clear move toward chattel slavery, that the dream of a democratic South was more permanently deferred. There is much to admire about this book. McIlvenna deftly links English and American events, and her attention to genealogical detail clarifies the importance of family ties in seventeenth-century American politics. Still, it is hard to accept that the rebels in this story acted in the name of democracy. After all, most were middling (or upper-middling) farmers themselves, and the greatest evidence for their radicalism came from their royalist opponents, who considered leveler and Oliverian to be biting insults. In their own manifestos, moreover, the rebels tended to portray themselves in much more moderate terms, as critics of corruption by "unworthy Favourites and juggling Parasites" (p. 83). More than that, they usually presented their struggle not so much against the king and aristocracy as against diabolical outsiders, almost always Native people and Catholics. In short, one sees not so much an origin story for American democracy as for American populism—the effort by [End Page 516] ambitious politicians to build a movement by exploiting fears of ethnic and religious others. Owen Stanwood Boston College Copyright © 2021 Southern Historical Association

Temporality in Academic Evaluation

This paper builds on emerging concerns with how temporality and spatiality unfold in, and order, academic evaluation practices. We unpack how the notion of ‘trajectory’ – a simultaneously prospective and retrospective narrative device permeating contemporary academic evaluation discourses – is mobilized within a particular evaluation site. Materials for our study are drawn from reports commissioned by Swedish universities when hiring for new professors. These texts are authored by external referees who rank and compare candidates, in this case for associate and full professorship positions in biomedicine. By using the theoretical perspective of ‘narrative infrastructures’ we explore how the referee reports mobilize ‘trajectories’ to weave together disparate bits of evidence extracted from the bylines of biomedical researchers’ CVs: publication numbers, impact factors, authorship positions and ‘earning power’. Our analysis finds certain resemblances across reports of what constitutes an ideal candidate’s career trajectory, but none of these are completely identical. We consider how ‘the trajectory’ is evoked as a singularity within this genre of writing, thereby bestowing retrospectively a sense of coherence and purpose on the past performance and prospective development of careers. We discuss the implications of our findings in terms of how ‘trajectorism’ shapes evaluation in academic biomedicine and possibly beyond, and propose suggestions for how this dominant narrative might be challenged.

The trade effects of skilled versus unskilled migration

In this paper, we assess the role of skilled versus unskilled migration for bilateral trade in a flexible econometric model. Using a large data-set on bilateral skill-specific migration and a flexible novel identification strategy, the functionally flexible impact of different levels of skilled and unskilled immigration on the volume and structure of bilateral imports is identified in a quasi-experimental design. We find evidence of a polarized impact of skill-specific immigration on imports: highly concentrated skilled or unskilled immigrants induce higher import volumes than a balanced composition of the immigrant base. This effect turns out particularly important when institutions are weak. Regarding the structure of imports, we observe that skilled immigrants specifically add to imports in differentiated goods. Both bits of evidence are consistent with a segregation of skill-specific immigrant networks and corresponding trade patterns.

Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages ed. by Helen Fulton, and Michele Campopiano

Reviewed by: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages ed. by Helen Fulton, and Michele Campopiano Nicholas D. Brodie Fulton, Helen, and Michele Campopiano, eds, Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2018; hardback; pp. 224; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781903153697. This is a book about 'the variety of ways in which British and Italian cultures spoke to each other' (p. 1). Words thus feature prominently within its constituent essays as signifiers of communication. Margaret Bridges examines the Polychronicon, partly focusing on place names. 'Italian toponyms evoke a distant past and foreign clime' (p. 21) she notes, before going on to unpick an erudite medieval literary gaze focused more on the Roman past than any Italian present. Caroline P. Collette unravels a 'shared bibliophilia' (p. 42) that bridges time and place for Richard de Bury. Threading through issues like the reception of Petrarch, the habits of humanism, and the movement of books and texts, Collette deftly blurs the sometimes too-arbitrary distinction between medieval classicism and early humanism. Similarly focused on text and people and time, Michele Campopiano explores 'some less well known evidence for the reception of Italian legal and political works in the northern English city of York' (p. 52). European volumes with English annotations reveal how jurisprudential ideas developed in Bologna were read in the light of contemporary concerns in York. These are small but telling bits of evidence for wider networks of trade and information transfer, Campopiano [End Page 247] argues, which should encourage further exploration of such connections in ways that expand beyond centre-and-periphery scholarship. Ignazio Del Punta's focus is economic. Pointing out that modern and medieval financial crises are not as cleanly comparable as popularly assumed, Del Punta then explores and exposes structural elements of the medieval monetary system. He concludes that 'efficient international banking companies fostered speculative spirals' (p. 8). What worked well in good times proved unable to cope with the bad. The next chapters move from macroeconomics to societal micro-studies. Bart Lambert provides a survey of the Lucchese community in England by drilling into a case study of the Gigli family. Through a fascinating use of Italian sources he presents 'a surprisingly clear view of the businesses of one of the most important foreign trading groups in late medieval England' (p. 88), revealing where they lived, prayed, and travelled. Complementing this well is Helen Bradley's essay on London's Italian merchants, principally traced through examination of their wills. She focuses on the everyday 'linguistic, economic and social interface between cultures' (p. 103) that such individuals reveal, finding evidence for 'several distinct Italian city-state communities' (p. 108) in medieval England, among other things of interest. Victoria Flood investigates Franciscan prophetic texts and rumour in a study of political Joachism. Following threats from Italy to England, Flood notes how 'political Joachism presented not only a possible overture to good rulers, but a mechanism for the critique of the bad' (p. 136), explaining how 'Franciscan prophecies were part of an oppositional culture' (p. 149). Thus, Italian prophecy helped inform and interpret Franciscan relationships with English monarchs. Similarly showing a broader cultural influence informing English texts, Helen Fulton offers 'a redefinition of what urban history was and what forms it took in medieval Britain' (p. 150) by charting continuities over time, particularly those that link urban centres with political narratives and agendas. From Bede to Camden, Fulton casts a wide net to make a compelling case that British urban history has a long history with clear Italian and classical resonances. While at once broad and particular, as most edited volumes are, this book highlights the diverse range of ways wherein English society was influenced by Italian culture. Revealing links personal, economic, and textual, it is a counterpoint to any view of England that would see it in isolation from Europe generally, or Italy specifically. [End Page 248] Nicholas D. Brodie Hobart, Tasmania Copyright © 2020 Nicholas D. Brodie

Organizing specialized production: gender in the medieval Flemish wool cloth industry (c. 1250–1384)

ABSTRACT:In the earliest centuries of the Flemish wool cloth industry, the lower-level, preparatory stage of wool processing and spinning was organized by a form of ‘putting-out’ significantly different from later forms in the industry. It took place in and around the cities or smaller drapery centres rather than in rural areas, and women were prominent as middle-level organizers, managers and small entrepreneurs, despite their marginal status in or exclusion from the craft guilds. Using small bits of evidence from Flemish regulations and contracts from the earliest documented period of cloth production, this article analyses lower-level organization through the lens of gender. It shows that the production of yarn was organized by a broad middling level of drapers and small marketsellers, who were women, men and husbands and wives working together. The gendered lens distinguishes this middle level, which was indispensable to the efficient production of wool cloth in medieval Flanders.

Analysis as history, and history as analysis: a search for common goals and standards

History is something far from storytelling about the past; it has its own methods, discipline, techniques, and value. The same can be said about intelligence analysis, which is a comparative newcomer to the professions. Like historians, analysts seek to gather information, evaluate their sources, create meaning from disparate bits of evidence, and impart significant findings. These considerations make it important for analysts to learn their history and how the discipline of history functions. A greater ‘historical sense’ can make analysts more rigorous in their work, and less likely to be frustrated by the situations they see around them.

PREDATION ON NATIVE ANURANS BY INVASIVE VERTEBRATES IN THE ATLANTIC RAIN FOREST, BRAZIL

Anurans are usually preyed upon by other vertebrates, but in a few cases higher vertebrates serve as food for anuran species. This complexity in predator-prey interactions makes predicting the impacts of interactions difficult, especially when we are dealing with novel interactions imposed by non-native species. Introduced predators may have dramatic effects on resident species, which have not co-evolved with the introduced ones, since they provide a new environmental stress. On the other hand, the scarcity of studies and our consequent lack of understanding prevent us from taking the actions necessary to protect the native fauna into megadiverse places. Therefore, in the present paper we intent to provide new data on novel predator-prey interactions involving native and non-native species in the Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest. In the first predatory event an individual of Rattus rattus was observed attempting to prey on two individuals of Rhinella icterica . In the second predatory event a tadpole of the native tree frog Hypsiboas sp. was found in the stomach contents of an individual of Micropterus salmoides . Non-native predators are one of the causes for amphibian population declines worldwide and the negative impacts of introduced vertebrates are probably more significant than we can detect. Additionally, in Brazil, information about the impacts caused by introductions of non-native species is accumulating slowly. Therefore, basic bits of evidence, as reported here, are necessary and may serve as a starting point for future investigations that explore the novel interactions and negative impacts caused by invasive species. We must improve our knowledge base and provide data regarding non-native predator-prey interactions with a view to clarify their biological aspects and to enable species conservation.

Off Course? A Career in Archaeology Outside of the Academy

Off Course? A Career in Archaeology Outside of the Academy

The Publishing of a Murder Case in Early Modern Germany. The Limits of Censorship in the Electorate of Saxony (1726)

The murder of a popular and high-ranking Lutheran cleric in May 1726 in the residential city of the Electorate of Saxony, Dresden, by a Catholic foreigner triggered both urban turmoil and a process of intense media recycling. This article is concerned not so much with the murder case in detail but with the ‘publishing of the murder case’ by the lively local and regional print industries. It will be argued that these publishing processes were moments of economically driven media recycling that had effects on the censorship regime. Analyzing the contemporary perception of circulating prints by the Saxon authorities shows clearly a very low level of censorship activity. When connecting the bits of evidence, it seems evident that the inactivity must have been caused by more than just the usual level of administrational incompetence: the relevant Saxon authorities were Lutheran officials working for a Catholic King, and they chose inactivity deliberately.

Unconscious thought and deliberation without attention: A miracle or a mirage?

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What is it to Write a Biography of J.S. Bach?

What is it to Write a Biography of J. S. Bach?1 Peter Williams Ofwheneighteenth-century/courseIamwhatnoneitis-ofGerman/tothosewritethingstheOrthodoxbiography-isachallenge.Lutheran/ofagreatAndcomposer,man/whenan eighteenth-century/German/OrthodoxLutheran/composer, whenIamnoneofthosethings-isachallenge.Andwhen thecomposerlivedinanageoffewbiographies,andwrotesolitde himselfabouthislifeandfeelings,biographersaresooneitherhaving torecountthefewdocumentedfactsortospeculatebeyondthem.In thecaseofBach,onecouldviewitasathanklesstask,andmorethan onetrulyqualifiedscholarhasavoidedit.ButIhavefoundthe challengeusefulinoneparticularway:formyowninstruction, wantingverymuchtofind"myownwayinto"auniqueperson.2 Twoparticulartendenciesemerge.Oneistobeveryfondof one'sownspeculationsanddoubtfulofeverybodyelse's;anda secondistowriteinanywaythatistotally,andevenunhelpfully, deferentialtowardsthesubject.Ofcourse,thechallengeiseven greaterwhenthesubject'slifewasmakingmusicoutofthinair,soto speak,leavingonlyapalereflectionofitonpaper-whichinBach's casehedidn'talwaysdo,orwhenhedid,ofteninmorethanoneform oroneversion.Ifthewordsofapoet-orthepicturesofapainterofferonlysnaresanddelusionsforabiographer ,howmuchmoreso doesthemusicofacomposer!Thebiographerofapoetornovelist isatleastwritingwordsaboutsomeonewhoseworkwaswriting words,andespeciallythoseofthenineteenthcenturyarelikely ^hisessayisaneditedversionofalecturegivenrecendyattheGermanHistorical InstituteinLondon,England. lhisbeganfirstwhenwritingTheUfeofBach,partofaseriesbyCambridge UniversityPress(Cambridge,2004)then,second,alargermonograph,/.S.Bach:A UfeinMsic(Cambridge,2007),andlasdy,amuchexpandedversionofthesecond, withaprovisionaltide,Bach:AMusicalBiography(forthcoming). 1 2 Bach themselves to be the case with Jo are less likely t words. What cle phy! So, where does one begin with Bach? The many previous attempts are a help, of course, but the general idolizing of him makes it difficult to resist romantic interpretations. It seems best to start again from original documents, which are of three kinds: 1) biographical data (baptism, burial and so on), plus a few letters; 2) the musical scores themselves, often made by copyists and implying a lot about Bach's priorities; 3) early biographical essays, such as the famous Obituary. Salient points about the biographical outlines familiar to any Bach admirer can sometimes be overlooked: notice, for instance, the composer of the greatest single repertory of organ music published nothing of it until he was fifty- four. Does this not lead immediately to interesting questions, such as Why not? Why that particular work? Does it have some specific raison d'être we don't know about? I thought that a promising way to start might be to look at the Obituary from a deconstructionist viewpoint. I mean nothing deeply theoretical with this word, merely to recognize that there are constructs in any writing: biographers have agendas, they want to show Bach the German patriot - Bach the orthodox believer - the virtuoso organist - the deep thinker of complex music - the reluctant church and school musician - an incomparable composer indifferent to opera - and so on. To deconstruct such images is not to demolish them but to interpret them against what else is said and, more importandy, what isn't said. For example, if the Obituary makes a point of how enthusiastically Bach was feted by certain dukes and kings, including the most powerful king in Europe when they were writing, is it implying that he was under-valued by his own clergy? Well, I think so, and one can bring in various bits of evidence for this, including quarrels that he took all the way up to the King of Writing a Biography of Bach 3 Saxony. And then, why does he not appear in a massive published at that time in Leipzig Zedler's Universal-Lex he never answer requests for an autobiography? Wh published in the book-center of Leipzig ever dedic resident of nearly thirty years? More still could be read into the Obituary's report o Frederick at Potsdam: its authors could be getting in their own against the very Leipzig establishment th declined to appoint one of them (Emanuel). And yet, iťs that great respect for the composer did come from Germany. So there's no either/ or here: Bach was prais but he could also have become increasingly out of t might now say. It must be significant that nowhere do mention his church job, only that he was music di municipality and cantor to the school. His grumblin to everyone, as surely were his attempts to find a elsewhere, in each case probably more often than we The Obituary's two authors were Bach's second son Emanuel and a former student; one is bound to question by biographers contemporary with the admired subject demonstrated that just like many an author today, espec in Germany, the Obituary authors had their views and welcome those of others. When another pupil, Loren a sentence saying that Bach didn't care for deep theore ations, his son dismissed it as worthless. I think that's Mizler's point was merely that Bach didn't contribute t corresponding musical societies of the time, wh (including Handel) often...

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Not Many Compliments but Lots of Alternatives

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Not Many Compliments but Lots of Alternatives

Case Studies: One Observation or Many? Justification or Discovery?

Critiques of case studies as an epistemic genre usually focus on the domain of justification and hinge on comparisons with statistics and laboratory experiments. In this domain, case studies can be defended by the notion of “infirming”: they use many different bits of evidence, each of which may independently “infirm” the account. Yet their efficacy may be more powerful in the domain of discovery, in which these same different bits of evidence must be fully integrated to create an explanatory account with internal validity.

Chaucer Abroad, Chaucer at Home:

Chaucer Abroad, Chaucer at Home: