Dogmatic Belief Research Articles

Prevalence of misconceptions, dogmas, and popular views about giftedness and intelligence: a case from Turkey

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of misconceptions, dogmas and popular views about giftedness and intelligence among Turkish lay people. A survey questionnaire consisting of 12 forced-choice items about global misconceptions, dogmatic beliefs and popular views related to giftedness and intelligence was used to collect data. Participants included 812 people (41.6% male; 58.4% female). Descriptive analyses yielded that a significant number of the participants expressed agreements with the statements related to misconceptions, dogmatic and popular beliefs. Nonparametric correlational analyses showed both educational status and age to be associated either negatively or positively with most of the statements. Findings imply that misconceptions, dogmas, and popular views about giftedness and intelligence are quite prevalent among Turkish lay people.

2010 International consensus conference on liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma: Texts of experts

2010 International consensus conference on liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma: Texts of experts

Prostate I 125 Brachytherapy: Critical Evaluation of Mid Term Oncologic and Functional Results after 250 Cases

Even if brachytherapy (BT) in low-risk prostate cancer (CaP) is a common practice since more than 20 and 10 years in U.S.A. and Italy, respectively, it is still an uncommon procedure because of the problems related to the organization and collaboration among urologists, radiotherapists and physics, to the competition of alternative therapies, to dogmatic and educational beliefs, and to the poor knowledge of this technique. Between May 1999 and September 2010, 250 patients with low risk CaP underwent I125BT using a "real time" approach; the seeds implantation was performed using Mick applicator, in the first 190 patients, and the "Quick-Link" technique in the last 60 cases. Oncologic results were reported in the first 150 cases with a mean follow-up of 95 months, while functional outcomes and complications were assessed in all the patients at different time points with a mean follow-up of 65 months. A good quality implantation was assessed in 88% of patients (D90 >140 Gy). Overall, a biochemical failure was assessed, in accordance with Phoenix criteria, in 10 patients (6.6%). Among these patients, the prostatic biopsy showed a CaP in 6/10 patients, who underwent retropubic radical prostatectomy (4 pts) and external RT (2 pts); only one patient developed a systemic progression with secondary bone lesions and died after 122 months and 36 months from BT and RRP, respectively. The 4/10 patients with negative biopsy were treated with total androgen blockade (2 pts) and with watchful waiting (2 pts). Regarding functional results, we assessed a moderate incidence of irritative disorders (70%) during the first six months and a good recovery of erectile function after one year from surgery (78.8%). Brachytherapy in the low-grade risk prostatic cancer represents a good alternative to RRP with excellent functional and oncologic results

Becoming Resilient: Overturning Common Sense — Part 1

How might we engage with the concept resilience in a world obsessed with the measurement and cataloguing of deficits and virtues alike; with predicting outcomes, producing certainty and the reification of stable identity? This article is based on a plenary address presented to the Australian Family Therapy Conference in 2009 and takes Deleuze's paraphrase of the 17th century philosopher, Spinoza as a point of departure from common sense views of identity. Can resilience be possessed by some as a personal quality enhancing their coping skills or might resilience be a vital aspect of living which passes through us? Perhaps resilience bounces back towards us and enables the unsettling of dogmatic beliefs and a stable sense of identity Enquiry might then shift from the moral; What kind of person am I? How should I live? towards an ethical position of wonder; What else might there be? What might I be capable of?This article invites an ethical exploration of desire, its capture and of resistance and explores the politics of identity; illustrated with men's journeys of struggle with violence, sexuality and belonging and the discovery of ethics and generous forms of love in the face of adversity.

Pragmatism Not Dogmatism: The Inconvenient Need for Border Adjustment Tariffs Based on What Is Known About Climate Change, Trade, and China

The current paradigm for global trade is as antagonistic to low-carbon development as it is supportive of it. Considering the risks that climate change presents to human development, the global economy’s reliance on trade should be actively leveraged to promote low-carbon development. This is especially the case with China, where decisions made today about energy infrastructure investment will greatly influence GHG emissions for decades to come. The commonly promoted idea that all goods and all sectors should be treated equally under the global trade regime finds no practical support at the national level and even less support when the global externalities of certain sectors are critically analyzed, e.g., goods and services related to energy infrastructure.In a less than perfect world, GHG based border tariffs are a pragmatic option for mitigating climate change. The promotion of border tariffs is far more pragmatic than the Panglossian belief that sans intervention the market will produce technological solutions that sufficiently address climate change. The continued dogmatic belief in an amoral free trade system for all sectors as the best option for addressing climate change will be far more harmful to the world’s poor and the global commons than well-managed border adjustment tariffs.

Response to Coyne's review of Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction

As an academic and editor of a theoretical journal on Austrian economics it is understandable that Christopher J. Coyne fails to grasp what is at stake on the ground. Like Dambisa Momo, Coyne has a dogmatic and unflinching belief in the markets and naively thinks that poor countries coming out war or chaos can do it on their own.

What's so wrong with being absolutely right: the dangerous nature of dogmatic belief

What's so wrong with being absolutely right: the dangerous nature of dogmatic belief

The best rehabilitation programs in the world

The best rehabilitation programs in the world

On the conceptual and thematic foundations of the fresco paintings in the diaconicon of the Church of Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid

The author presents the view that the themes referring to St. John the Precursor and the Virgin in the diaconicon of the Church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid were painted as the visual expression of the dogmatic belief in the Incarnation of the Saviour. He interprets the scenes of the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace and of the Visitation that also appear in the diaconicon, in the same way. The recently identified figure of the prophet Elijah, painted on the western side of the diaconicon, is also published in this article.

What is known, new and controversial about GLP-1? Minutes of the 1st European GLP-1 Club Meeting, Marseille, 28–29 May 2008

The first antidiabetic agent was a hormone—insulin—and ever since, all therapeutic strategies have been based on the synthesis of chemical compounds to bind its receptors or transcription factors, or to trigger its intracellular mechanisms. Eighty years on, new therapeutic molecules are available for the treatment of diabetes and, again, are based on a hormone—glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). Whereas the theoretical benefit of insulin is based on normalization of functional physiology, therapeutic strategies based on GLP-1 aim to increase the circulating concentration of a natural component—the hormone GLP-1. There are two strategies for increasing GLP-1 plasma concentrations: replace the hormone with a long-acting analogue or molecule with a longer half-life; and prevent its degradation by inhibiting its natural protease, dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV). Although numerous clinical trials have been carried out and vast amounts of data are available, the mechanisms through which GLP-1-based therapy reduces blood glucose in diabetic patients remain unclear. Thus, it is essential to ask the right questions and to design appropriate clinical trials and experiments to increase our understanding of the mode of action of GLP-1-based therapy. For this reason, in the spring of 2008, expert scientists and clinicians in the field of GLP-1 got together for an intensive debate on the subject at the first meeting of the European Club for the study of GLP-1, held in Marseille. The subject of the round table discussions was: what is known, new and controversial about GLP-1? During these discussions, numerous facts and controversies were reevaluated, and revealed that several long-held, dogmatic beliefs have never been fully and scientifically established. These points are detailed here in these minutes of the landmark meeting.

Unique Estrogenic Mechanisms for Unique Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Neurons?

The history of studies of mechanisms of estrogen action in the brain is filled with at least two periods of intense dogmatic beliefs. These include thinking that a single type of cytoplasmic, unliganded estrogen receptor (ER) bound ligand and moved to the nucleus after activation (1), to thinking that all ERs were located in cell nuclei even in the unoccupied state (2). The dogma of cytoplasmic vs. nuclear distribution began to die in the early 1990s with the recognition of a more widespread intracellular distribution (3), and the single ER concept died later in the 1990s with the discovery of ER-β (4). The current state of affairs was well summarized recently (5,6) as a situation in which a plethora of proteins localized from plasma membrane to nuclei has the potential to bind estrogens and initiate diverse signal transduction pathways.

Information technology as an ethical challenge

Information technology has an ambiguous impact on society. This situation calls for a two-level ethical analysis. On the one hand the issues of power and control must be reconsidered under the viewpoint of institutional structures, i.e., of living norms. On the other hand, the technological shaping of society, taking the character of power, oppression, verbosity and dogmatic belief, should be at the same time reconsidered under the viewpoint of a plurality of living forms, i.e., within a framework of deliberation and dissent. This paper presents briefly both issues, taking into account Michel Foucault's concept of technologies of the self.

Information technology as an ethical challenge

Information technology has an ambiguous impact on society. This situation calls for a two-level ethical analysis. On the one hand the issues of power and control must be reconsidered under the viewpoint of institutional structures, i.e., of living norms. On the other hand, the technological shaping of society, taking the character of power, oppression, verbosity and dogmatic belief, should be at the same time reconsidered under the viewpoint of a plurality of living forms, i.e., within a framework of deliberation and dissent. This paper presents briefly both issues, taking into account Michel Foucault's concept of "technologies of the self."

Religious Fundamentalism

The term, ‘fundamentalism’, today names a broad religio-political perspective found in most, if not all, major religions. Most disturbingly, it is associated with variant forms of religious extremism and thus religiously-oriented terrorism. And it is Islamic modalities of terrorism that, rightly or wrongly, have come to take centre-stage in current world affairs. Arguably, however, the religious fundamentalism with which Islamist extremism is associated follows an identifiable paradigm that has wider applicability. It denotes, among other things, a paradigm that paves the way from the relative harmlessness of an idiosyncratic and dogmatic belief system, to the harmful reality of religiously driven and fanatically followed pathways to terrorist activity. This paper will discuss the phenomenon of fundamentalism and attempt to describe and analyse the paradigm of religious fundamentalism. It is the cumulative dynamic of fundamentalism which informs the emergence of religious extremism and terrorism.

A cognitive approach to dogmatism: An investigation into the relationship of verbal working memory and dogmatism

This study investigated the relationship of working memory to open and closed belief systems. Two hundred college students completed a working memory span test to measure verbal working memory, and Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale (1956). Regression analysis was undertaken to determine the contribution of verbal working memory to dogmatism. A negative correlation was found between dogmatism scores and working memory scores ( p = .002) confirming the hypothesis that those participants who display a larger working memory capacity would show lower levels of dogmatic beliefs than participants displaying a smaller working memory capacity. Error analysis was employed to determine the significance of inhibition processes; indicating that capacity limits in verbal working memory, and not processing deficits, were primarily responsible for poor working memory scores. Dogmatism was not found to be related to gender, age, ethnicity, religious affiliation, academic major, or level of education.

The romance of balancing selection versus the sober alternatives: Let the data rule

Schizophrenia has attracted more than its fair share of evolutionary-based theories. The theories involving balancing selection are based on the assumption that the incidence of schizophrenia is invariant across time and place. Modern epidemiology allows us to reject this dogmatic belief. Once variations in the genetic and epidemiological landscape of schizophrenia are acknowledged, more productive research models can be generated.

Predictability in Financial Analyst Forecast Errors: Learning or Irrationality?

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we propose a rational learning‐based explanation for the predictability in financial analysts' earnings forecast errors documented in prior literature. In particular, we argue that the serial correlation pattern in analysts' quarterly earnings forecast errors is consistent with an environment in which analysts face parameter uncertainty and learn rationally about the parameters over time. Using simulations and real data, we show that the predictability evidence is more consistent with rational learning than with irrationality (fixation on a seasonal random walk model or some other dogmatic belief).

Predictability in Financial Analyst Forecast Errors: Learning or Irrationality?

In this paper, we propose a rational learning-based explanation for the predictability in financial analysts' earnings forecast errors documented in prior literature. In particular, we argue that the serial correlation pattern in analysts' quarterly earnings forecast errors is consistent with an environment in which analysts face parameter uncertainty and learn rationally about the parameters over time. Using simulations and real data, we show that the predictability evidence is more consistent with rational learning than with irrationality (fixation on a seasonal random walk model or some other dogmatic belief).

Occult Couches in the Pampa: Reviewing Three Recent Books on Twentieth-Century Argentina

Mariano Plotkin's 2001 study, Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina is an important and necessary book that continues in greater depth and with more systematic rigor the work begun by Jorge Balan (Cuentame tu vida. Una biografia colectiva del psicoandlisis argentino, 1991). Its starting point is the need to explain the historical causes of the enormous presence of in urban Argentinean culture, which has meant that, as Plotkin facetiously points out, anyone who questions the existence of the unconscious or of the Oedipus complex at a social gathering in any large Argentine city is made to feel as if he or she were denying the virginity of Mary before a synod of Catholic bishops (1). The use of the metaphor of Mary's virginity to explain the importance of psychoanalysis in Argentina is surely no accident in this introductory remark, since it allows Plotkin to set himself up as the heretic who will rightfully question the (supposedly) dogmatic belief system of Argentinean culture. Plotkin then proceeds seriously to explain how his project fills a scholarly gap. He argues that only a historical approach to the subject will be up to the task of answering the question of why Buenos Aires is the

What’s the Point of It All?

In the modern period the decline of traditional dogmatic religious belief has led to a remarkable return of the great questions of life that so worried the first speculative thinkers 2500 years ago. As a result, the first priority for modern religious enquirers is not ‘what must I do to be saved?’, but ‘what’s the point of it all?’ Why does anything at all exist?