Empirical Claims Research Articles

Ecological and psychological factors in the cultural evolution of music.

The two target articles agree that processes of cultural evolution generate richness and diversity in music, but neither address this question in a focused way. We sketch one way to proceed - and hence suggest how the target articles differ not only in empirical claims, but also in their tacit, prior assumptions about the relationship between cognition and culture.

Efficacy and safety in consuming python bile: a literature study

In Indonesia, consuming python bile is quite popular to treat various health conditions, such as respiratory disorders, fever, aches, and increase immunity. However, scientific study as a basis for the use in this modern era still limited. This research is a literature study to determine the efficacy and safety of python bile consumption. Literature search was conducted in June 2020. Appropriate keywords were put in Google search engine, Google Scholar and PubMed. The results showed pythons bile have the main content of bile acids and bile salts type Tauropythocholate (TPC), Taurocholate (TC), Taurodeoxycholate (TDC) that could inhibit bacteria growths. Other compounds are protein and antioxidants. Consumption of python’s bile can provide benefits like bile function itself, namely elimination of toxins, increase the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and cholesterol. Pythons bile can be a source of bacteria and parasites transmission. High doses (>2 biles) and long term use are not recommended since the potential damage of liver and kidneys. Python bile has the potential for efficacy in accordance with its empirical claims. The consumption of healthy snake bile, in accordance with the dosage and not often is quite safe. This finding must still be strengthened with experimental study.

Towards the Reversal of Poverty and Income Inequality Setbacks Due to COVID-19: The Role of Globalisation and Resource Allocation

Policy recommendations for building resilient and all-inclusive societies post COVID-19 pandemic continue to dominate the media and research landscapes. However, rigorous empirical content backing such claims, particularly, on both poverty and income inequality, is hard to find. Motivated by the bleak outlook of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as driven primarily by the floundering hydrocarbon sector, vulnerable employment, and low foreign direct investment, we analyse the poverty and income inequality effects of globalisation and resource allocation in the region. Using data from the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Database for the period 1990–2019, we provide estimates robust to several econometric techniques the pooled least square, fixed effect, random effect, and the system generalized method of moments estimators to show that: (1) while economic globalisation reduces both poverty and income inequality, social globalisation matters only for income inequality in MENA; (2) economic globalisation is remarkable in reducing income inequality through resource allocation. Policy recommendations are provided in the light of the geopolitical fragility and rise in social globalisation of the region.

Enhancing Students’ Learning Activity and Outcomes via Implementation of Problem-based Learning

To prove the credibility of empirical and theoretical claims about the ties between problem-based learning (PBL) and educational outcomes, this study investigates the role of PBL as a teaching model to enhance students’ learning activities and outcomes in South Sulawesi located in rural Indonesia. The study subjects included first graders at a junior high school who achieved lower levels academically than pupils in other regions. This study involved classroom activities conducted in two cycles, each comprising routine of planning, action, observation, and reflection. Observation sheets and evaluation tests were used to measure students’ learning activities and outcomes. The data were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analyses. The results showed that the students’ learning activities and outcomes in biology class were improved from the first to the second cycle, suggesting successful resolution of students’ difficulties and enhanced performance. In addition, teachers improved their effectiveness by implementing PBL, even though they lacked prior knowledge. Therefore, this study may be useful for practitioners especially teachers administering PBL. PBL is an effective approach that may be incorporated into teaching curriculum by science teachers.

The 'Streetlight Effect' in Commentary on Citizenship by Investment

In this chapter I examine recent scholarship on the sale of citizenship. Specifically, I discuss Ana Tanasoca’s historical sensitivity to the sale of citizenship, Luca Mavelli’s Foucauldian account of commodification, and Desiree Lim’s account of expressive discrimination. As with any nuanced political inquiry, there are conceptual, ethical and empirical choices that inform such commentary. In making epistemic choices, an empirical claim may well be premised on an implicit ethical argument, a normative argument may be made by selectively picking a certain sort of empirical inquiry, or one among several conceptualisations of a concept may be passed off as the only one. There is therefore the possibility of a ‘streetlight effect’ where the confines of an inquiry are conducted within an already illuminated patch. I show that this phenomenon applies to the scholarly works discussed in this chapter: Commentary on the sale of citizenship is illuminated by a priority for the claims of community on ‘Who Belongs’ over the claims of access on ‘Who Should Get In’. There is a discursive confounding of ethical, conceptual and empirical claims operating under the streetlight of a presupposition that the claims of a pre-existing national community should determine the claims of access. The chapter is divided into three parts: (1) First, I elaborate on what I mean by a priority of claims of community over claims of access. To do so, I reconstruct a celebrated debate between Joseph Carens and David Miller, and show a continuity in the argumentative strategies employed in general criticisms of open borders and specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship; (2) Second, I provide a brief account of the phenomenon of investment migration, including the sale of citizenship and residency, in order to appreciate specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship; and (3) Third, I reconstruct recent scholarly work on investment migration, and show that a general disposition towards divining the preferences of a pre-existing national community and attributing moral weight to such preferences illuminates specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship. At stake is not only good argumentative practice. Critical commentary on investment migration influences both public discourse and official documents. Without specific findings on how and in what form the sale of citizenship is problematic, a general indictment of the phenomenon has the expressive effect of adding to the exclusionary sentiment that is a defining feature of contemporary public life.

Rhythmic Haptic Cueing for Gait Rehabilitation of People With Hemiparesis: Quantitative Gait Study

Background Rhythm, brain, and body are closely linked. Humans can synchronize their movement to auditory rhythms in ways that can improve the regularity of movement while reducing perceived effort. However, the ability to perform rhythmic movement may be disrupted by various neurological conditions. Many such conditions impair mechanisms that control movement, such as gait, but typically without rhythmic perception being affected. This paper focuses on hemiparetic stroke, a neurological condition that affects one side of the body. Hemiparetic stroke can cause severe asymmetries in gait, leading to numerous physical problems ranging from muscle degeneration to bone fractures. Movement synchronization via entrainment to auditory metronomes is known to improve asymmetry and related gait problems; this paper presents the first systematic study of entrainment for gait rehabilitation via the haptic modality. Objective This paper explores the gait rehabilitation of people with hemiparesis following a stroke or brain injury, by a process of haptic entrainment to rhythmic cues. Various objective measures, such as stride length and stride time, are considered. Methods This study is a quantitative gait study combining temporal and spatial data on haptically cued participants with hemiparetic stroke and brain injury. We designed wearable devices to deliver the haptic rhythm, called Haptic Bracelets, which were placed on the leg near the knee. Spatial data were recorded using a Qualisys optical motion capturing system, consisting of 8 optoelectronic cameras, and 20 markers placed on anatomical lower limb landmarks and 4 additional tracking clusters placed on the right and left shank and thigh. Gait characteristics were measured before, during, and after cueing. Results All 11 successfully screened participants were able to synchronize their steps to a haptically presented rhythm. Specifically, 6 participants demonstrated immediate improvements regarding their temporal gait characteristics, and 3 of the 6 improved their gait in terms of spatial characteristics. Conclusions Considering the great variability between survivors of stroke and brain injury and the limited number of available participants in our study, there is no claim of statistical evidence that supports a formal experimental result of improved gait. However, viewing this empirical gait investigation as a set of 11 case studies, more modest empirical claims can be made. All participants were able to synchronize their steps to a haptically presented rhythm. For a substantial proportion of participants, an immediate (though not necessarily lasting) improvement of temporal gait characteristics was found during cueing. Some improvements over baseline occurred immediately after, rather than during, haptic cueing. Design issues and trade-offs are identified, and interactions between perception, sensory deficit, attention, memory, cognitive load, and haptic entrainment are noted.

Mutation bias can shape adaptation in large asexual populations experiencing clonal interference.

The extended evolutionary synthesis invokes a role for development in shaping adaptive evolution, which in population genetics terms corresponds to mutation-biased adaptation. Critics have claimed that clonal interference makes mutation-biased adaptation rare. We consider the behaviour of two simultaneously adapting traits, one with larger mutation rate U, the other with larger selection coefficient s, using asexual travelling wave models. We find that adaptation is dominated by whichever trait has the faster rate of adaptation v in isolation, with the other trait subject to evolutionary stalling. Reviewing empirical claims for mutation-biased adaptation, we find that not all occur in the 'origin-fixation' regime of population genetics where v is only twice as sensitive to s as to U. In some cases, differences in U are at least ten to twelve times larger than differences in s, as needed to cause mutation-biased adaptation even in the 'multiple mutations' regime. Surprisingly, when U > s in the 'diffusive-mutation' regime, the required sensitivity ratio is also only two, despite pervasive clonal interference. Given two traits with identical v, the benefit of having higher s is surprisingly small, occurring largely when one trait is at the boundary between the origin-fixation and multiple mutations regimes.

Survey Reliability: Models, Methods, and Findings.

Although most survey researchers agree that reliability is a critical requirement for survey data, there have not been many efforts to assess the reliability of responses in national surveys. In addition, there are quite different approaches to studying the reliability of survey responses. In the first section of the Lecture, I contrast a psychological theory of over-time consistency with three statistical models that use reinterview data, multi-trait multi-method experiments, and three-wave panel data to estimate reliability. The more sophisticated statistical models reflect concerns about memory effects and the impact of method factors in reinterview studies. In the following section of the Lecture, I examine some of the major findings from the literature on reliability. Despite the differences across methods for exploring reliability, the findings mostly converge, identifying similar respondent and question characteristics as major determinants of reliability. The next section of the paper looks at the correlations among estimates of reliability derived from the different methods; it finds some support for the validity of the measures from traditional reinterview studies. The empirical claims motivating the more sophisticated methods for estimating reliability are not strongly supported in the literature. Reliability is, in my judgment, a neglected topic among survey researchers, and I hope the Lecture spurs further studies of the reliability of survey questions.

Legislative Capacity and Administrative Power Under Divided Polarization

It is commonly argued that party polarization leads to legislative gridlock, which in turn disables congressional oversight of agencies and thus erodes their constitutional legitimacy and democratic accountability. At the root of this argument is an empirical claim that higher levels of polarization materially reduce legislative productivity as measured by the number of laws passed or the number of issues on the legislative agenda addressed by those laws, both of which are negatively associated with party polarization. By focusing on the content of statutes passed rather than their number, this essay shows that in the era of party polarization and divided government Congress has actually (1) enacted an ever growing volume of significant regulatory policy (packaged into fewer laws), (2) increasingly employed implementation designs intended to limit bureaucratic and presidential power, and (3) legislated regulatory policy substance in greater detail (reducing bureaucratic discretion) when relying on litigation and courts as a supplement or alternative to bureaucracy, a design choice that occurs more frequently under party polarization combined with divided government. It thereby complicates, both empirically and normatively, the relationship between Congress and administrative power in the era of party polarization and divided government.

Relevance, validity, and evidential reasoning in clinical practice

Relevance, validity, and evidential reasoning in clinical practice

Equality, Self-Government, and Disenfranchising Kids: A Reply to Yaffe

Abstract Gideon Yaffe has recently argued that children should be subject to lower standards of criminal liability because, unlike adults, they ought to be disenfranchised. Because of their disenfranchisement, they lack the legal reasons enfranchised adults have to comply with the law. I critically consider Yaffe’s argument for such disenfranchisement, which holds that disenfranchisement balances children’s interest in self-government with adults’ interest in having an equal say over lawmaking. I argue that Yaffe does not succeed in showing that these two values need to be balanced, nor that disenfranchising children is a justifiable method of achieving this balance. In my conclusion, I sketch an alternative contractualist approach to disenfranchising children that, like Yaffe’s, appeals to the implications that enfranchisement has for political relations among citizens, but, unlike Yaffe’s, rests on empirical claims about the influence of parents on children’s voting patterns rather than on a priori claims regarding who has a rightful say over lawmaking.

New Labels for Old Ideas: Predictive Processing and the Interpretation of Neural Signals

Philosophical proponents of predictive processing cast the novelty of predictive models of perception in terms of differences in the functional role and information content of neural signals. However, they fail to provide constraints on how the crucial semantic mapping from signals to their informational contents is determined. Beyond a novel interpretative gloss on neural signals, they have little new to say about the causal structure of the system, or even what statistical information is carried by the signals. That means that the predictive framework for perception can be relabeled in traditional, non-predictive terms, with no empirical consequences relevant to existing or future data. To the extent that neuroscientific research based on predictive processing is both innovative and productive, it will be due to the framework’s suggestive heuristic effects, or perhaps auxiliary empirical claims about implementation, rather than a difference in the information-processing structure that it describes.

Evaluating Impact in the Forgotten Field of Prison Librarianship

ABSTRACT For decades, a number of prison librarians and researchers have decried the near-total lack of data in their field regarding the impact of prison libraries on incarcerated individuals. In spite of their critiques, the majority of prison library literature remains descriptive in nature and relies more on speculation than empirical claims when describing impact. This paper attempts to identify the main reasons why it is so difficult to adequately evaluate the impact of prison library services. Following an exploration of these issues, suggestions for strengthening impact evaluation in prison libraries are proposed.

Public Perceptions of Insider Trading

The U.S. insider trading enforcement regime has been mired in controversy since it was introduced in 1961. Some have argued that insider trading should not be regulated because it actually improves market performance. Others have argued that insider trading must be vigorously regulated because it is generally regarded as unfair and therefore undermines market confidence. Arguments on both sides of this debate, however, rest on empirical claims that are rarely backed by data. The resulting impasse has left lawmakers and jurists without a clear sense of what conduct should be proscribed and why. This, in turn, has placed market participants in a state of confusion that has been exaggerated by the fact that insider trading is a common-law offense, never having been defined by statute or rule. But after sixty years, Congress appears poised to act. With reform proposals pending, reliable empirical evidence of public attitudes concerning insider trading has never been more needed. This Article presents the results of the first large-scale national survey of public attitudes regarding insider trading since 1986, and the first comprehensive, census-representative study ever conducted on the subject. It offers valuable data to inform claims regarding public perceptions of, inter alia, the fairness of different forms of insider trading, its pervasiveness, and the public’s willingness to participate in markets where insider trading is common.

A critical commentary on ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria’

The term ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ (ROGD) was coined in 2016 to describe an alleged epidemic of youth coming out as trans ‘out of the blue’ due to social contagion and mental illness. The term reflects a deliberate attempt to weaponise scientific-sounding language to dismiss mounting empirical evidence of the benefits of transition. This article offers an introduction to the theory of ROGD and its history, presents a detailed critique of the empirical and theoretical claims associated with the theory, and highlights structural concerns with the ROGD discourse. The article argues that claims associated with ROGD, including assertions of declining mental health and degrading familial relationships following coming out, are best explained by the leading ROGD study’s recruitment of parents from transantagonistic websites against a background of growing visibility and social acceptance of trans people. ROGD theory is best understood as an attempt to circumvent existing research demonstrating the importance of gender affirmation, relying on scientific-sounding language to achieve respectability.

Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism, by Caroline Hovanec

Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism, by Caroline Hovanec

Current critiques of the WHO policy on female genital mutilation.

In recent years, the dominant Western discourse on "female genital mutilation" (FGM) has increasingly been challenged by scholars. Numerous researchers contest both the terminology used and the empirical claims made in what has come to be called "the standard tale" of FGM (also termed "female genital cutting" [FGC]). The World Health Organization (WHO), a major player in setting the global agenda on this issue, maintains that all medically unnecessary cutting of the external female genitalia, no matter how slight, should be banned as torture and a violation of the human right to bodily integrity. However, the WHO targets only non-Western forms of female-only genital cutting, raising concerns aboutgender bias and cultural imperialism. Here, we summarize ongoing critiques of the WHO's terminology, ethicolegal assumptions, and empirical claims, including the claim that non-Western FGC as such constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. To this end, we highlight recent comparative studies of medically unnecessary genital cutting of all types, including those affecting adult women and teenagersin Western societies, individuals with differences of sex development (DSD), transgender persons,and males. In so doing, we attempt to clarify the grounds for a growing critical consensus that current anti-FGM laws and policies may beethically incoherent, empirically unsupportable, and legally unsustainable.

Participatory constitution-making: Introduction

Abstract At least since the late eighteenth century, constitutions have been understood as emanations of the will of “the People,” as the ultimate expression of an inherent popular sovereignty. In the form of theories of constituent power, accounts of constitutional foundations blended notional or conceptual “descriptions” of the People, which anchored the political legitimacy of constitutional orders in the idea of hypothetical consent, with empirical claims that the nation’s actual people were represented in constitution-making processes through elected delegates and thereby were the authors of and gave consent to its fundamental law. As part of the third wave of democratization, there was an important shift in what popular participation consisted of—from indirect participation by elected representatives to direct, popular participation in the constitution-making process. As a matter of constitutional process, this led to the growing practice, and expectation, that major constitutional changes should be ratified through referenda.

Irremediable Psychiatric Suffering in the Context of Physician-assisted Death: A Scoping Review of Arguments: La souffrance psychiatrique irrémédiable dans le contexte du suicide assisté : Une revue étendue des arguments.

Objectives:Physician-assisted death (PAD), also known as medical assistance in dying, of patients with a psychiatric disorder (PPD) is a global issue of debate. In most jurisdictions that allow PAD, irremediable suffering is a legal requirement, how to apply the concept of irremediability to PPD remains challenging. The aim of this article is to identify the main arguments concerning irremediability in the debate about PAD of PPD and give directions for further moral deliberation and empirical research.Methods:Systematic searches in MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO were combined with 4 additional search strategies. All conceptual-ethical articles, quantitative and qualitative empirical studies, guidelines, case reports, and commentaries that met the inclusion criteria were included, and a qualitative data synthesis was used to identify recurring themes within the literature. The study protocol was preregistered at the Open Science Framework under registration code: thjg8.Results:A total of 50 articles met the inclusion criteria. Three main arguments concerning irremediability were found in the debate about PAD of PPD: uncertainty, hope, and treatment refusal.Conclusions:Uncertainty about irremediability is inevitable, so which level of certainty is morally required should be the subject of moral deliberation. Whether PAD induces or resolves hopelessness is an empirical claim that deserves clarification. Treatment refusal in search of PAD raises questions about treatment efficacy in this patient group and about decision-making in the context of the physician–patient relationship. Going forward, more attention should be given to epidemiological research and to specific challenges posed by different psychiatric disorders.

Joint Response to the House Judiciary Committee on the State of Antitrust Law and Implications for Protecting Competition in Digital Markets

Economic research establishes that market power is now a serious problem. Growing market power harms consumers and workers, slows innovation, and limits productivity growth. Market power is on the rise in a number of major industries, including, for example, airlines, brewing, and hospitals, where multiple horizontal mergers that were allowed to proceed without antitrust challenge have markedly increased concentration in important markets and facilitated the exercise of market power. Exclusionary conduct by dominant companies that stifles competition from actual and potential rivals — including nascent rivals with capabilities for challenging a dominant firm’s market power and firms with competing R&D efforts — impairs what is often the most important economic force creating competitive pressure for dominant firms. This concern exists in digital marketplaces. Platforms are often insulated from platform competition to a substantial extent by substantial scale economies in supply and demand (network effects) combined with customer switching costs. Courts have contributed to increased monopoly power through decisions that have weakened the prohibitions against anticompetitive exclusionary conduct and anticompetitive mergers. The antitrust laws, as interpreted and enforced today, are inadequate to confront and deter growing market power in the U.S. economy and unnecessarily limit the ability of antitrust enforcers to address anticompetitive conduct. Many key antitrust precedents — particularly those precedents governing exclusionary conduct — rely on unsound economic theories or unsupported empirical claims about the competitive effects of certain practices. In part for this reason, the antitrust rules constructed by the courts reflect a systematically skewed error cost balance: they are too concerned to avoid both chilling procompetitive conduct and the high costs of litigation, and too dismissive of the costs of failing to deter harmful conduct. Excessively permissive precedents and unsound or unsupported economic claims have, in turn, encouraged overly cautious enforcement policies and overly demanding proof requirements and have discouraged government enforcers and private plaintiffs from bringing meritorious exclusionary conduct cases. The statement discusses a number of legal rules that are unsupported by or inconsistent with sound economic research that have contributed to overly permissive rules. The signatories to this letter strongly believe that antitrust enforcement has become too lax, in large part because of the courts and that Congress must act to correct this problem. The statement suggests a number of reforms could be considered. We do not collectively or unanimously endorse any of these, though some of us have done so in other contexts. We do believe that Congress has a historic opportunity to identify adverse trends in judicial interpretation of the antitrust and correct problems—not just by overriding damaging precedents, but also by reshaping the antitrust laws more broadly to enhance deterrence of anticompetitive conduct.