Claims Of Superiority Research Articles

Technical opinionDo SAP successes outperform themselves and their competitors?

Technical opinionDo SAP successes outperform themselves and their competitors?

Reviewing the Unsubstantiated Claims for the Methodological Superiority of ‘Placebo’ over ‘Active’ Controlled Trials: Reply to Open Peer Commentaries

I was delighted to receive so many detailed, interesting, and thoughtful commentaries. The remarks represent a wide range of views. Some sympathetic authors suggest ways to strengthen my arguments ...

Transparency through Financial Claims with “Fingerprints”: A Mechanism for Preventing Financial Crises

Lack of transparency in securitization transactions contributed significantly to the current global financial crisis. This article proposes an incentive-compatible mechanism for future securitization transactions that would increase transparency: financial claims with “fingerprints.” This mechanism would allow market participants at each stage of the securitization process to easily obtain full information about the underlying original risks and the superior claims that need to be satisfied before receiving their own payoffs. The mechanism would considerably enhance transparency in securitization transactions at the expense of some transaction costs.

Islam dan Pluralitas Paham Ekonomi

This article aims to explore the relationship between Islam (Islamic economy) and many different economic thoughts existing in the world. Islamic economy, since its existence, has established what is called superiority claim that lead its followers to blame other economic thoughts, mainly capitalism, socialism, and new classics. The superiority claim has been a boomerang for Islamic economy to establish an economic system based on Qur’an and hadith because of its counter attack from other economic thoughts followers. Using historic-sociologic approach combined with communicative active theory of Jurgen Habermas, the article tries to make a new silaturahim between Islam and economic thoughts to eliminate negative effects of the claim. It concludes that the fall of conventional economic system which is based on existing economic thoughts is an opportunity for Islamic economy to raises as long as its followers have a willing to communicate actively with previously existing economic thoughts. Keywords: Islamic economy, economic thoughts, superiority claim, and communication active theory

Content Analysis of FDA Warning Letters to Manufacturers of Pharmaceuticals and Therapeutic Biologicals for Promotional Violations

Manufacturers of pharmaceuticals use advertising and promotion as key marketing activities to foster the success of their products. These activities, however, have to comply with FDA regulations; failure to do so results in FDA enforcement actions such as issuance of warning letters and notices of violation. The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the content of FDA letters to manufacturers for promotional violations. Two judges formally trained in content analysis procedures critically evaluated the content of publicly available letters from 2000 to 2006. A total of 249 letters described 806 violations from 107 manufacturers. Media most frequently cited in letters were print (n −67), sales aids (n = 42), and television (n = 39). Violations were most frequently related to lack of fair balance (n = 131), misleading claims of efficacy (n = 102), misleading superiority claims (n = 92), and omission of risk information (n = 89). Inter-rater reliabilities between the two judges were exceptional, ra...

Public policy and sequential lineups

The claim that sequential lineups are superior to simultaneous lineups and that our knowledge of sequential lineups is sufficient to warrant their being required by law is reviewed for the validity of both strong and weak claims of sequential superiority, adherence to principles of research design, and the needs of public policy. We conclude, (1) there is little evidence to support the claim that sequential presentation of photos is responsible for lower levels of false identifications, (2) the evidence is weak that the aggregation of factors commonly labeled as the sequential lineup together produce lower levels of false identifications without additional offsetting effects, (3) much of the literature contains several confounds in research design and additional offsetting effects that question its overall utility, (4) recent research shows that the superiority of sequential lineups is restricted to specific ranges on other study design variables, and (5) the corpus of research on sequential lineups does not satisfy the needs of policy sufficiently to justify its mandated use as the required identification procedure throughout the criminal justice system.

Response to Lindsay, Mansour, Beaudry, Leach and Bertrand's Sequential lineup presentation: Patterns and policy

This paper is a response to the earlier paper by Lindsay, Mansour, Beaudry, Leach and Bertrand (2009). We argue that eyewitness research is an important public good and that high‐quality in research and policy formulations offered to the public interest is required to maintain our standing of trust. We argue that even though sequential lineups have been successfully codified in some jurisdictions as the exclusive eyewitness identification procedure, the claim of sequential superiority is built upon errors in the research process and that the evidence of reduced false identification with sequential lineups is completely offset by reductions in correct identifications. We reject the idea that the loss of correct identifications can be dismissed as guessing on the basis that this is speculative and that there is no published empirical support for the idea. We reject the idea that false identifications are necessarily more valuable for society to reduce than are correct identifications to achieve. Improvements in eyewitness identification are important, and interesting lines of investigation are available. It is questionable whether the sequential lineup is important among them.

Transparency through Financial Claims with Fingerprints - A Free Market Mechanism for Preventing Mortgage Securitization Induced Financial Crises

Lack of transparency in securitization transactions significantly contributed to the severe financial crisis of 2007–2009. To increase transparency we propose a new mechanism: financial claims with fingerprints. They would allow market participants at each stage of the securitization process to obtain easily full information about the underlying original risks and the superior claims that need to be satisfied before receiving their own payoffs. The fingerprint mechanism would considerably enhance transparency in securitization transactions at the expense of some transaction costs, while reducing the need for government involvement in securitization markets.

Economic Imperialism

Abstract Economic Imperialism is the claim of some economists that the methodology of neoclassical economics has superior scientific qualities and should be adopted by most or all social sciences. The paper first shows why such a dominant claim could develop among economists but in no other science and then goes on to point out the shortcomings of this claim of methodological superiority. These critical remarks are also relevant for methodological controversies within economics between a mainstream and heterodox economists.

Roberta Bivins, Alternative medicine? A history, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. xvii, 238, illus., £14.99 (hardback 978-0-19-921887-5).

The history of medicine has for some time lacked an accessible historical overview of so-called alternative medicine. Robert Jutte's Geschichte der alternativen Medizin (Munich, 1996) is a notable exception; alas it remains untranslated. Roberta Bivins’ book is therefore a welcome attempt to fill this gap, its compact size belying the extensive nature of its content. The reader is introduced to the basics and history of western, traditional Chinese and Indian Ayurvedic medicine, highlighting the surprising similarities in the different cultures’ medical cosmologies. In examining Chinese moxibustion and acupuncture, Bivins then illustrates the intercultural exchange of medical knowledge through lay and medical networks and its adaptation to prevalent western beliefs. Moxibustion against gout was enthusiastically taken up by eighteenth-century westerners, but suitably adjusted to eliminate “disturbingly foreign elements” and conform to western medico-theoretical frameworks. This would also be its downfall when the latter altered. Acupuncture resembled no existing procedure and was long ignored, re-emerging in 1820s orthodox practice as a pragmatic “trial-by-error needling in locus dolenti”. While it too fell out of favour, Bivins suggests that its popularity may have influenced the rise and acceptance of the needle as a medical instrument. Western alternatives are represented in the guise of homoeopathy and mesmerism. Unlike their “foreign” counterparts, both originated as reform movements within orthodox medicine, only gradually relocated outside the mainstream by a profession hostile not only to the therapies, but to some of the social changes these practices advocated. Moving beyond western spheres, a most interesting contrast is given by examining the impact of both orthodox and alternative western medicine in colonial India. Orthodoxy, with all its claims of superiority and intrinsic opposition to existing Indian medicine, as well as its close ties to colonial administration, was mistrusted. Western scientific medicine, and germ theory's supposed novelty and superiority in particular, were contested in light of existing Ayurvedic concepts and arguments for Indian medicine already being “scientific”. Homoeopathy and mesmerism meanwhile were more readily accepted, as they were not tainted by association with the colonial elite and could often be accommodated within local cultural and medical understanding. Overall, Bivins shows that alternative practices and an interest in heterodoxy have been permanent features in the medical world. As the rise of biomedicine diminished the patient's power to influence orthodox medical practice, increasing consumer dissatisfaction made alternative, complementary and cross-cultural medicine a more attractive proposition, thus ensuring that the medical marketplace remained as varied as ever. The Indian example reminds us that our understanding of mainstream and alternative must be questioned, something already hinted at in the use of a question mark in the book's title, as even the bastion of orthodoxy can be the mistrusted “outsider” when introduced into a different cultural context. Bivins’ own positive experiences with both alternative and mainstream healing clearly inform her judgement throughout this book, resulting in an unbiased analysis that should give pause for thought even to the more obstinate members of the western medical profession. The task of fitting the breadth of topics covered into a small tome could have become the book's Achilles’ heel, as the author tackles classical and modern, western and eastern themes over four centuries. Happily, Bivins’ already remarkably compendious account is complemented with a list of recommended further readings, thereby ensuring that interested readers can go beyond the provided text, following up themes in greater depth if they so wish. Combined with a lucid and engaging writing style, the resulting book is as accessible and entertaining to the layman as it is informative to scholars of the history of medicine seeking to familiarize themselves with alternative and cross-cultural perspectives.

Physics made Simple: the image of nuclear weapons in the writing of Langston Hughes

Drawing upon the Simple stories written by Langston Hughes in the post-war period, this paper argues that Hughes repeatedly drew upon nuclear technology as part of a symbolic vocabulary that articulated American racial injustice, both within and outside the United States. For the character Simple, nuclear weapons are white weapons, deployed in defence of white interests, and whose use has been informed by hierarchies of racial difference. However, this technology also provides potent evidence that Hughes juxtaposes against claims of white racial superiority: how can white America continue to assert its racial maturity, while building weapons capable of extinguishing human life from the planet? Ultimately, the character of Simple asserts that non-military nuclear technology can help construct a future beyond race.

Should chlorthalidone be the diuretic of choice for antihypertensive therapy?

For decades, diuretic therapy has been a cornerstone in treating hypertension, an approach supported by multiple randomized controlled trials demonstrating reduced morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular events. Yet controversy persists regarding the potential detrimental metabolic effects and side effects of diuretic agents. Within the risk-benefit debates about diuretic therapy is a second dialogue regarding the best thiazide or thiazidelike agent to prescribe. Proponents of chlorthalidone emphasize the demonstrated reductions in cardiovascular events reported from multiple classic trials and its longer half-life, whereas opponents point to its limited availability in low-dose forms and comparable favorable results from hydrochlorothiazide-based therapy to discredit claims of superiority. This review presents the data available on both sides of this issue to help the reader decide which claims are most valid, and offers recommendations for treatment.

Not All Sorrys Are Created Equal, Some Are More Equal than ‘Others’

Not All Sorrys Are Created Equal, Some Are More Equal than ‘Others’

Lessons to Take Home From CATIE

Lessons to Take Home From CATIE

Contracting out employment services to the third and private sectors: A critique

As part of its welfare reform strategy, the government has made increasing use of the private and third sector in the provision of employment-related services. Ministers claim that this results in better service for users and better value for money for the taxpayer. This article examines these claims for third and private sector superiority in service provision and, using the government's own evaluative reports, challenges this view. The article contends that there is little evidence to support the government's case for the wholesale embrace of contracting out employment services. Based on reviewing experience of previous projects, it argues that given the same flexibilities and financing routinely offered to contractors, in-house provision would match or surpass contractor performance.

Letters

50 Historically Speaking March/April 2008 Letters Rethinking the West To the Editors: I have read with some bewilderment the debate between John M. Headley and Professors Constantin Fasolt, John Hobson, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam in your issue of November /December last. They appear to be discussing diree distinguishable questions: 1.Whether Western civilization is a good tiling or a bad? 2.Whether Western civilization exists in a history that can be recounted without merging it with die histories of other civilizations? 3.Whether the claim, made in the 18thcentury West, to have established rights and values applicable to all humans has equivalents in the intellectual and moral histories of other civilizations? The first question appears entirely futile; the second only a litde less so. I would really like to hear some answers to the third. Yours in some irritation, J.G.A. Pocock Johns Hopkins University To the Editors: I am quite disturbed by the debate over John Headley's essay "Western Exceptionalism and Universality Revisited" in the November/December 2007 issue. Headley himself engages in intemperate accusations—I know no reputable Ottoman, Chinese , or world historians who would relegate Western civilization to "a great black pit . . . chained in Danteesque feasting upon its own evil being" (although some historians of Africa and Native-American peoples might indeed wish this in return for what imperialism visited on those regions). Still, the responses to Headley's claims that the West is unique in advocating universal values are not always helpful. Sanjay Subrahmanyam is quite right that Headley's accounts of Islam and India, mentioning only one individual per civilisation (Akbar, Mencius) do not provide sound contrasts. Constantin Fasolt cleverly takes apart the oxymoron of "exceptional Western universalism." AndJohn Hobson correctly points out that Europe was not so isolated or exceptional as Headley would have us believe. Yet all of these replies seem engaged in a kind of oneupmanship (which Headley's essay admittedly beChinese royal court scene, from Martino Martini, De bello tartárico historia (1655). Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. gins), an odd quarrel over priorities, exceptionalism, and who did what when. Yet surely the point of the new world history is not merely to replace the old claims of Western civilizational superiority with a list of "firsts" or "equal points" by non-Western societies. Rather, the point is to better understand how interactions among all the major societies of the globe contributed to making the world we inhabit today. Each society was unique in its own ways, and made essential contributions to science, government, law, economics, and philosophy. The old "Western civ" approach tended to treat only the contributions of the West, starting widi classical Greece, as having lasting value, while the contributions of non-Western peoples were seen as emanations or accidents that only achieved real importance in Western hands. Thus Bacon's famous saying that three critical inventions changed the world—printing, the compass, gunpowder—used to be transmitted to students without noting not only that all three were invented by China centuries before their use in Europe, but also that the very saying itself was borrowed from China's traditional catalogue of the four great inventions: printing, paper, gunpowder, and the compass. The new world history seeks more accurately to show how the modern age arose from a mix of major accomplishments in varied times in varied societies , a mix in which the West played a very modest role until 1700 or so. If we are to understand the truth about the Renaissance—that it was not merely a revival of learning based on "lost" classical texts, but was in fact the result of Europe's encounter with a very active and creative tradition of Muslim scholarship combining Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Arabic insights, which was a consequence of the Spanish Reconquista, the Crusades, and the decline of Byzantium—then it is necessary for history texts to spend rather more time on Byzantium, Muslim societies and learning, and the political and economic histories of places from Morocco to Japan. If that means less emphasis on the Renaissance itself, then that is the price of broadening historical understanding. It is not an attack on the...

American Ideas About Race and Olympic Races in the Era of Jesse Owens: Shattering Myths or Reinforcing Scientific Racism?

The Olympic victories of Jesse Owens and other non-European athletes during the 1930s have been traditionally hailed as refutations of white racial superiority. Certainly some Americans saw Owens and other African-American stars as destroyers of insidious stereotypes. However, some American scientists interpreted the data differently, claiming that a broader look at Olympic results supported the claim of European physical superiority. Others conceded the alleged genetic superiority of people of African descent in certain athletic contests, while at the same time creating new racist stereotypes which held that physical gifts implied mental deficits. Still others used the anthropometric studies of Owens and other athletes in an effort to shatter existing racial typologies and argue that culture and not just biology played a crucial role in human performance. While most historians have contended that Owens' feats challenged racist notions, the debate reveals far more complexities and nuances than previously realized.

The evolving European system of corporate governance: implications for worker participation

This article contributes to the current battle over the character of the evolving European system of corporate governance. The claims of proponents of the shareholder value model, which has been hegemonic in European policy-making circles over the past decade, are subject to a critical examination. In particular, the claims of the governance superiority of private equity, one of the extreme expressions of the shareholder model, are shown not to hold empirically. The concept of the sustainable company is proposed as an alternative to the shareholder value model, both because of its explicit commitment to a multidimensional understanding of welfare, and because of its extension of worker participation beyond traditional trade union concerns.

Varieties of Neoliberalization: Freeing the Invisible Hand of Free Markets and Extending the Visible Hand of Market Power

Neoliberalism is most commonly regarded as a discourse of state laissezfaire with regard to both domestic and international markets, as well as a normative theory of radically free and competitive markets as conceived by or thodox economists since the devolution of Keynesian neo-classical synthesis. As such, neoliberalism is a preeminent political eco nomic discourse of our time. Moreover, as a discourse that reflects, as well as constitutes, political economic interests, it is a central ide ology of our time. Neoliberalism is an ideological discourse undergoing change. Most recently, this change has been largely devolutionary. In particular, recent scholarship has belied sundry neoliberal claims: for example, claims for a precipitous race to the bottom so far as tax rates and welfare benefits of rich democ racies go (Swank and Steinmo 2002); claims for the developmental superiority of capital ist income growth in the post-1980 era of oliberal ascendance relative to the preceding post-WXWII decades of the developmental state (Chang 2002); and claims for the pro growth functions of at least one key Interna tional Financial Institution, the IMF (Vree land, 2002). However, change has been evo lutionary as well, evolutionary both with re spect to our understanding of neoliberal pol icy-making practice and with regard to the content of neoliberal ideology itself (Rodrik 2006). Both Aihwa Ong's Neoliberalism as Exception and Monica Prasad's The Politics of Free Markets contributes to our understand ing of changing neoliberal discourse, Ong to the discourse itself. Anthropologist Ong con tributes to the evolution and mapping of in practice, in particular to ne oliberalism as a pair of previously unarticu lated optimizing technologies for the visible hand of national and transnational political economic management. Sociologist Prasad contributes principally to our understanding of the taxation as both cause and component Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, by Aihwa Ong. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 295pp. $22.95 paper. ISBN: 0822337487.

Optimal detectors for WIMP and 0–ν ββ searches: Identical high-pressure xenon gas TPCs?

A time projection chamber (TPC) filled with high-pressure gaseous xenon (HPXe)—instead of liquid xenon (LXe)—appears likely to offer both superior energy resolution for the 0–ν ββ decay search in 136Xe and superior γ-background rejection in the search for WIMPs. An augmentation to maximize the primary scintillation detection efficiency of the 0–ν ββ decay detector design will realize an optimum design for both purposes. In this scenario an attractive synergy exists: two identical HPXe TPCs differing only in isotopic content will provide significantly more robust evidence for the existence of either signal if present. A simple analysis of important factors that limit energy resolution leads to the conclusion that the optimal design for either next-generation search at the few hundred kg level is the same HPXe-based TPC. A careful measurement of the scintillation and ionization responses of HPXe to nuclear and electronic recoils is needed to test the claim of HPXe superiority to LXe for the combined goals.