Factual Assertions Research Articles

Citation prediction by leveraging transformers and natural language processing heuristics

In scientific papers, it is common practice to cite other articles to substantiate claims, provide evidence for factual assertions, reference limitations, and research gaps, and fulfill various other purposes. When authors include a citation in a given sentence, there are two considerations they need to take into account: (i) where in the sentence to place the citation and (ii) which citation to choose to support the underlying claim. In this paper, we focus on the first task as it allows multiple potential approaches that rely on the researcher’s individual style and the specific norms and conventions of the relevant scientific community. We propose two automatic methodologies that leverage transformers architecture for either solving a Mask-Filling problem or a Named Entity Recognition problem. On top of the results of the proposed methodologies, we apply ad-hoc Natural Language Processing heuristics to further improve their outcome. We also introduce s2orc-9K, an open dataset for fine-tuning models on this task. A formal evaluation demonstrates that the generative approach significantly outperforms five alternative methods when fine-tuned on the novel dataset. Furthermore, this model’s results show no statistically significant deviation from the outputs of three senior researchers.

Budget Communication, Final Authority, And Negotiation On Budgetary Proposal : An Experimental Study

This study aims to investigate the relation between budget communication, final authority and negotiation on budget setting which analyzed by Agency Theory. This research used 2x3 between subject experimental design of budget communications and final authority treatments. The results of this study show that less slack is created when budget proposal requires a factual assertion, but it’s not when manager not requires factual assertion. Meanwhile, in final authority condition, manager creates budget slack more when they have final authority than owner’s authority. This study show an evidence that there is no significant interaction between budget communication and final authority in creating budget slack. Additionally, this study finds that negotiation can influence manager’s performance although it’s measured by budget slack or output of production. Negotiation can reduce budget slack. The performance test (which is measured by ability of manager to make product) show that as a whole is not have difference significantly. Meanwhile, for budget slack show that slack in No Factual Assertion treatment is higher than Factual Assertion treatment.
 Keywords: Participative Budgeting, Budget Communication, Final Authority, Negotiation, Budget Slack, Manager’s Performance.

In case of doubt for the speculation? When people falsely remember facts in the news as being uncertain.

Modern media report news remarkably fast, often before the information is confirmed. This general tendency is even more pronounced in times of an increasing demand for information, such as during pressing natural phenomena or the pandemic spreading of diseases. Yet, even if early reports correctly identify their content as speculative (rather than factual), recipients may not adequately consider the preliminary nature of such information. Theories on language processing suggest that understanding a speculation requires its reconstruction as a factual assertion first-which can later be erroneously remembered. This would lead to a bias to remember and treat speculations as if they were factual, rather than falling for the reverse mistake. In six experiments, however, we demonstrate the opposite pattern. Participants read news headlines with explanations for distinct events either in form of a fact or a speculation (as still being investigated). Both kinds of framings increased participants' belief in the correctness of the respective explanations to an equal extent (relative to receiving no explanation). Importantly, however, this effect was not mainly driven by a neglect of uncertainty cues (as present in speculations). In contrast, our memory experiments (recognition and cued recall) revealed a reverse distortion: a bias to falsely remember and treat a presented "fact" as if it were merely speculative. Based on these surprising results, we outline new theoretical accounts on the processing of (un)certainty cues which incorporate their broader context. Particularly, we propose that facts in the news might be remembered differently once they are presented among speculations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Linguistic expertise assertion o f fact in controversial texts

There are cases of committing offenses in the course of the activity, use of the language in various spheres of society’s life. Problems in this regard are considered at the intersection of linguistics and law, and require theoretical and methodological research. In view of this, the article considers issues that arise in the course of linguistic expertise of the controversial text in a lawsuit for damage to the honor, dignity and business reputation of a person and ways to resolve them. The subjective assessment of the data statement and the possibility of expressing the objective data and the role of semantic analysis in their differentiation are presented to the attention of experts. Consequently, the role of grammatical markers of subjective modality and the possibilities of semantic analysis in determining information that can be verified for compliance with reality are analyzed. In the semantics of explicit and implicit language units, the nature of the content of information that can be checked for compliance with reality is indicated as one of the main features of the data statement. The possibility of identifying data that can be inspected for compliance with reality by mutually distinguishing data (fact) and factoids of a factual nature is analyzed on the basis of specific examples. It also indicates the significance in the forensic linguistic expertise of the scientific provisions of the proposition theory in the part in which the subject of the truth of a sentence, utterance, speech acts is determined. The article is devoted to specialists in the field of forensic linguistic expertise. Key words. Linguistic expertise of negative information, assertion of fact, propositions in a sentence, explicit and implicit language units, semantic analysis, the role of grammatical markers.

The Photovoice Decision Tree: Legal Considerations and Ethical Implications for Photographs and Captions.

This article presents a photovoice decision tree that serves as a guide for making lawful and ethical decisions during the portions of the photovoice process that involve photograph selection, caption development, and public display of photographs and captions. Lawful and ethical considerations encompass privacy of person, privacy of place, illegal acts and obscenity, defamation, representation of truth versus actual malice, and opinion versus assertion of fact, but do not address pursuing and obtaining institutional review board approval for photovoice projects and/or other important steps of photovoice projects that are beyond the scope of this article. The decision tree presumes that a comprehensive photo release process was completed with all photovoice participants and collected from any individual captured within a photograph. The decision tree has important implications for research and practice, including movement of photovoice practitioners beyond the required institutional review board approval for research projects to consider lawful and ethical issues associated with photograph selection, caption development, and public display of photographs and captions. This decision tree can serve as a meaningful tool for all photovoice practitioners and participants to guide their lawful and ethical decisions.

Job's Final Insight, Narratives, and the Brain

In continental philosophy of religion, the hermeneutics of narratives takes a central role. Analytic philosophy of religion, on the other hand, considers religious statements mostly as assertions of fact. It examines the logical form and semantics of religious statements, addresses their logical commitments, and examines their epistemological status. Using the example of a passage in the Book of Job, it is investigated whether the methods of analytic philosophy are also suitable for analyzing religious narratives. The question is explored whether there is a genuine form of knowledge, besides propositional factual knowledge, which is bound to the form of narration. Particular attention will be paid to the inter-personal pragmatic embeddedness of narratives. The connection between second-personal knowledge and narratives is examined. Using the historical example of Ignatius of Loyola's theory of religious knowledge, it is argued that propositional argumentative knowledge is only one form of religious knowledge among others. The others are second-personal and narrative in character. Having thus established this distinct form of knowledge, it is asked whether our best empirical knowledge of the neurophysiological basis of intuitive and non-argumentative cognition provides a foundation for better understanding inter-personal religious cognition within narratives.

Transparency About Values and Assertions of Fact in Natural Resource Management

Worldwide, unsustainable use of nature threatens many ecosystems and the services they provide for a broad diversity of life, including humans. Yet, governments commonly claim that the best available science supports their policies governing extraction of natural resources. We confront this apparent paradox by assessing the complexity of the intersections among value judgments, fact claims, and scientifically verified facts. Science can only describe how nature works and predict the likely outcomes of our actions, whereas values influence which actions or objectives society ought to pursue. In the context of natural resource management, particularly of fisheries and wildlife, governments typically set population targets or use quotas. Although these are fundamentally value judgments about how much of a resource a group of people can extract, quotas are often justified as numerical guidance derived from abstracted, mathematical, or theoretical models of extraction. We confront such justifications by examining failures in transparency about value judgments, which may accompany unsupported assertions articulated as factual claims. We illustrate this with two examples. Our first case concerns protection and human use of habitats harboring the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), revealing how biologists and policy scholars have argued for divergent roles of scientists within policy debates, and how debates between scientists engaged in policy-relevant research reveal undisclosed value judgments about communication of science beyond its role as a source of description (observation, measurement, analysis, and inference). Our second case concerns protection and use of endangered gray wolves (Canis lupus) and shows how undisclosed value judgments distorted the science behind a government policy. Finally, we draw from the literature of multiple disciplines and wildlife systems to recommend several improvements to the standards of transparency in applied research in natural resource management. These recommendations will help to prevent value-based distortions of science that can result in unsustainable uses and eventual extinctions of populations. We describe methods for communicating about values that avoid commingling factual claims and discuss approaches to communicating science that do not perpetuate the misconception that science alone can dictate policy without consideration of values. Our remedies can improve transparency in both expert and public debate about preserving and using natural resources, and thereby help prevent non-human population declines worldwide.

The Internet and the Limping Truth

Constitutional doctrine protects false speech and even lies in certain circumstances. The doctrine also endorses non-literal interpretation of speech that can cause statements implying factual assertions to be treated as non-factual, non-actionable opinion. These doctrines limit the degree to which laws may counteract falsity. Historically publishers exercised discretion, through ex ante review, that limited the dissemination of false statements, including those that would have been protected speech had they been published. As the Internet has lowered the cost of disseminating expression, speech has been democratized radically. Many more people say many more things, many of them untrue. 47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1) provides that social media outlets are not publishers of user-generated content, thus immunizing such outlets from, for example, tort liability such as for defamation. Outlets' terms of use typically grant them discretion to decline to post or to remove content. These outlets thus exercise ex post the sort of discretion formerly exercised ex ante by traditional media outlets. Political dissatisfaction with the exercise of such discretion has led to calls to treat social media outlets either as state actors or common carriers. Neither option is desirable. Social media outlets do not satisfy the legal criteria for state action, and misguided claims that Section 230 gives them a subsidy provides no logical basis for treating them as state actors. Nor is common carrier treatment warranted. If the relevant market is publicly available expression, as critics seem to assert, then even the largest outlets have no plausible claim to market power. Normatively, to treat social media outlets as either state actors or common carriers would subject them to falsity-protecting constitutional rules and thus lead to a net increase in harmful conduct--lies, among other things. Public discourse would be better served by allowing media outlets to continue to refine their content moderation practices, as private speech outlets historically have done.

A Phonological History of Chinese by Zhongwei Shen

Reviewed by: A Phonological History of Chinese by Zhongwei Shen Zev Handel (bio) A Phonological History of Chinese. By Zhongwei Shen. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2020. A Phonological History of Chinese is an important and welcome contribution, which attempts to fill a glaring gap in English-language scholarship on Chinese language history. It is intended for “both the general phonologist and specialist of Chinese studies, as well as both beginners and experts” (p. xxxiv). The book is divided into six parts. The first presents the complex and daunting set of concepts and terminology that arise from the peculiar history of phonological analysis of Chinese. Mastering this knowledge is essential to an understanding of key source materials and the secondary scholarship derived from them. The remaining five parts correlate with the traditional phonological periodization of Chinese phonology: Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, the transitional period from Middle Chinese to Mandarin, Old Mandarin, and Modern Mandarin. This way of structuring the book implies a conservative—what some would call “Karlgrenian”—understanding of Chinese language history, as a series of northern standards proceeding in a straight line of direct inheritance from the Western Zhou dynasty down to the modern Beijing-based standard Chinese of the PRC. But the author ends up presenting a far more nuanced and valuable understanding of Chinese language history, one that emerges with increasing clarity through the later chapters. [End Page 568] The author, Zhongwei Shen, begins the introductory chapter by stating flatly: “The study of the phonological history of Chinese is in essence a study of a history of phonological standards.” (p.3). As a matter of disciplinary practice this is a fair description of much work in historical Chinese phonology by 20th-century linguists, but as an assertion of fact it is incorrect. So much so that it is contradicted by Shen’s very next sentence: “Historically, the Chinese language is a set of not just variants in time but variants in space as well.” The third sentence of the introduction clarifies that the opening sentence presents an authorial choice, not an immutable truth: “the purpose of this book is not to cover all the available historical variants in time and space, but to focus on the phonological standards of major historical periods.” What Shen’s book covers, then, is but one possible phonological history of Chinese, limited in perspective. It can be taken as an implicit rejection of the call made by Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin in 1995 for a new approach to Chinese historical linguistics that shifts focus away from artificially elaborated literary standards encoded in dictionaries of character readings and onto “the comparative and historical study of human speech in China” (Norman and Coblin 1995, 576). Ironically, however, Shen’s initial characterization of his own book proves to be overly reductive. The second half of the work, which deals with northern varieties of Chinese from the Song Dynasty to the present (i.e., the last 1,000 years or so), ranges far beyond descriptions of “phonological standards” to provide a detailed and fascinating summary of what textual sources can tell us about varieties of Chinese language spoken across space and time. And it is precisely this second half of the book where Shen makes the greatest contribution to Chinese historical phonological studies, and which makes this book so valuable to the linguist or China specialist with an interest in this subject matter. The first three parts of the book are of lesser significance. The first part, “The Keys to Traditional Phonology”, introduces the source materials, concepts, and terminology connected to Middle Chinese, the native phonological tradition that grew up around it, and 20th-century scholarship on its reconstruction. This material is the traditional starting point for teaching and research in historical Chinese phonology, and as many university students have learned, it is rough going. The terminology [End Page 569] is daunting, the concepts are esoteric and opaque, and the connections to actual language pronunciations are often tenuous or unclear. I suspect that for the reader who is not already familiar with this subject matter, the dense and abstract presentation will not be easy to follow. This is...

PUENTES ENTRE LOS HECHOS Y EL DERECHO APLICABLE EN LA VERIFICACIÓN PROBATORIA: ESTANDAR Y VALORACIÓN DE LA PRUEBA

The legal argumentation on controversial facts deals with the evidence that allows reaching a precise verdict on the facts. The evidence is necessary to support the factual assertions made by the parties and the conclusions of fact made by the decision makers. But the test per se does not yield verdicts. The evidence must be evaluated and whoever decides must consider whether or not it satisfies a basic minimum to consider a fact proven, if it meets a standard of proof. Much work has been done on the subject of legal standards of proof. Legal argumentation theorists, evidence scholars, civil and criminal process scholars, among others, have extensively addressed this issue. Some of them have made an analytical effort to clarify the idea of an evidentiary standard; others have done descriptive work to understand how the standards actually work; Others have done a kind of normative work in the hope of suggesting better or at least better defined standards; and the best contributions to the debate do more than one of these things at the same time.

Beliefs and emotions about social conventions

Deontic assertions concern what people should and shouldn't do. One sort concern moral principles, such as: People should care for the environment; and another sort concern social conventions, such as: People should knock before entering an office. The present research examined such deontic assertions and their corresponding factual assertions, such as: People care for the environment and People knock before entering an office. Experiment 1 showed a correlation between emotions and beliefs for both sorts of deontic assertion, but not for their factual counterparts in which the word “should” had been deleted (as in the preceding examples). Experiment 2 showed that changing the pleasantness of participants' emotions about social conventions changed their strength of belief in them. Experiment 3 showed conversely that changing the participants' strength of belief in social conventions changed the pleasantness of their emotions about them. These results corroborate the mental model theory of deontic assertions, which postulates that emotions and beliefs about deontics depend on parallel systems that interact with one another.

Misdescription and Misrepresentation Liability Arising Out of Art Auctions in New Zealand

Assumptions that successful bidders carry the risk in terms of artwork that is either mis-described or misrepresented by art auctioneers is challenged, for New Zealand at least. This is because descriptions of works to be auctioned are invariably proffered in sale catalogs as unqualified assertions of fact (or opinion based on fact), inviting reliance. Further, consumer protection legislation in New Zealand overrides privity of contract, enabling courts to give relief where the auction contract terms are found to be unfairly weighted against the successful bidder, as a consumer. For New Zealand, these arguments may be more persuasively made, given a significant number of bidders are members of the general public.

Lying and Freedom of Speech

This Article, prompted by recent criminal cases involving alleged false claims to have been awarded particular military medals, addresses broad questions of lying and freedom of speech. The Supreme Court has held that false assertions of fact – let alone outright lies – have no value for free speech purposes. With more nuance, the Court has also said that as a realistic matter, courts should protect some false speech in order to provide “breathing space” for, or to avoid inhibiting, good faith speech on important matters. This Article argues, however, that lies can actually have substantial, direct, and independent free speech value. Such lies can, under given circumstances, uniquely promote one or more of the standard reasons for protecting speech. While this may initially seem paradoxical, the Article considers in particular two kinds of extreme cases: first, lying in the context of fugitive slave cases, where the lie is told either by the fugitive slave, or by someone assisting the fugitive slave; and second, lying, especially to officials, by threatened Jews, or by others seeking to protect them, in Nazi-controlled territories. The alternatives to lying in such cases are carefully considered as well. The Article then considers less extreme cases, and concludes that in particular circumstances, lying, on any reasonable definition, may distinctively promote any or all of the standard free speech values. Whether a particular lie, or kind of lie, should ultimately be constitutionally protected will of course depend upon an appropriate judicial free speech test.

Gli articoli di Freud sulla tecnica: resoconto di una scoperta

Freud’s Papers on Technique is commonly thought to collect various essays that reflect Freud’s opinions about how a proper psychoanalyst should behave. Accordingly, today’s analysts ask themselves whether - or how strictly - they should obey the Patriarch’s hundred-year-old rules. This mistakes the overall sense of the book as a book. Freud is reporting an extended, empirical experiment on a radically new type of (psychoanalytic) phenomenon that he had chanced upon. He tries to determine the variables that either provoke or dispel the phenomenon. He is not primarily concerned with theory, efficacy or comfort. The data are often unwelcome, and are thrust upon him. Freud’s report is in the form of conditional assertions of fact, as though to say, if you do X you will produce Y. He has found that the eliciting behaviors often run counter to normal social reflexes, so anyone wishing to reproduce the findings will need graphic alternatives as replacements. Therefor Freud conveys his results not so much by rules or values, as by metaphors and images that help an analyst adopt an attitude that elicits the phenomenon. Unfortunately, readers are generally unaware of the convergent aim of the book’s explorations, though that is what gives those terms their sole and specific purpose. We see readers seize one or another of the papers, pull out this or that familiar cliche or metaphor, and give whatever ra-tionale they assume it must have had. Since Freud provided these striking terms and images as aids in marshaling an un-definable and un-prescribable experience, uprooting them from their precise place in the inquiry turns guide-posts into loose lumber. The result is fruitless debate cir-cling personal taste and opinion, and tragic loss of access to a delicate and unnatural experience that will never be encountered without a deliberate plan. (This article is a modified version of the Introduction to Lawrence Friedman’ book Freud’s Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Practice. New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 1-11)

What is the Difference between a Conclusion and a Fact?

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, building on Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to treat a complaint’s conclusions differently from allegations of fact. Facts, but not conclusions, are assumed true for purposes of a motion to dismiss. The Court did little to help judges or lawyers understand the elusive distinction, and, indeed, obscured the distinction with its language. The Court said it was distinguishing “legal conclusions” from factual allegations. The application in Twombly and Iqbal, however, shows that the relevant distinction is not between law and fact, but rather between different types of factual assertions. This essay, written for a symposium on the tenth anniversary of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, explores the definitional problem with the conclusion-fact distinction and examines how district courts have applied the distinction in recent cases.

Emotions and beliefs about morality can change one another

A dual-process theory postulates that belief and emotions about moral assertions can affect one another. The present study corroborated this prediction. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 showed that the pleasantness of a moral assertion – from loathing it to loving it – correlated with how strongly individuals believed it, i.e., its subjective probability. But, despite repeated testing, this relation did not occur for factual assertions. To create the correlation, it sufficed to change factual assertions, such as, “Advanced countries are democracies,” into moral assertions, “Advanced countries should be democracies”. Two further experiments corroborated the two-way causal relations for moral assertions. Experiment 4 showed that recall of pleasant memories about moral assertions increased their believability, and that the recall of unpleasant memories had the opposite effect. Experiment 5 showed that the creation of reasons to believe moral assertions increased the pleasantness of the emotions they evoked, and that the creation of reasons to disbelieve moral assertions had the opposite effect. Hence, emotions can change beliefs about moral assertions; and reasons can change emotions about moral assertions. We discuss the implications of these results for alternative theories of morality.

Speech, truth and liberty: Bentham to John Stuart Mill 1

Bentham’s Utilitarianism transforms earlier free speech doctrine in the service of the pursuit of truth and the control of government, preserving the distinction between statements of opinion and of fact and awarding the latter a lesser degree of protection. The work of James Mill and the early writings of John Stuart Mill retain this distinction, but their accounts are weighed down by the problems of a direct Utilitarian approach, in their consequentialist balancing of different values against each other, and in their dependence on a majoritarian epistemology and their commitment to a naive progressive optimism. Mill goes on in On Liberty to address and resolve these problems on the basis of a new justification for free speech as free deliberative thought. I argue that, contrary to most interpretations, his new justification leaves untouched the basic distinction between absolutely protected expressions of opinion and only functionally and contingently protected assertions of fact, leaving room for restrictions on factual statements, especially when untrue.

Speaking Truth: The Uses of אָמְנָם, אָמְנָה, and אֻמְנָם

are cognate adverbs that are are often translated alike (“truly,” “really,” or “indeed”). While they may be semantically alike, they are used differently. אָמְנָה marks an assertion of fact supported by proof. אָמְנָם is a conversational device expressing opinion or argumentation; it also is used to register agreement or a premise that will be developed or modified further along. אֻמְנָם is also a conversational device but occurs only in strong rhetorical questions. It too does not address fact but questions or strongly doubts a prior assertion, inference, or conversational situation. In other words, the differences among have interpretive value.

Mandates of maternity at a science museum, from should to must

A pregnancy exhibit at a science museum is an opportunity to research how medical advice is communicated and interpreted. This paper is about the Beginning of Life area of an exhibition called The Amazing You at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, where exhibits are prescriptive as well as descriptive. Expectant women are urged to deliver full-term, normal birthweight babies, by behaving according to prescribed medical norms. This study provides ethnographic descriptions of the exhibits, as well as insights from museum visitors who were interviewed. The exhibits, which emphasize fetal rights and maternal duties, are interpreted and critiqued by women visitors. As the exhibits climb towards greater realism (from euphemistic computer graphics to actual fetal specimens) visitors encounter assertions of fact that precede sometimes tacit directives to undergo a medicalized pregnancy. Exhibits are viewed from the perspective of speech act theory, presenting a new approach to health communication research. I argue that this science center exhibit tells people what to do, in addition to passing on information.

Sabotage in Capital Budgeting: The Effects of Control and Honesty on Investment Decisions

This study investigates the sabotage of investments in response to hurdle contracts as a means of formal control in capital budgeting. We conduct a laboratory experiment to examine factors that drive or inhibit sabotage. Sabotage occurs when the manager provides false information to prevent the firm from realizing a profitable investment, which is costly both for the manager and the firm. Our results show that managers sabotage investments to reciprocate for distrustful formal control. Conversely, budget communication that requires factual assertions and thus activates managers' preference for honesty inhibits sabotage. Moreover, honesty suppresses negative reciprocity and thus reduces sabotage not only directly but also indirectly. Our findings warn firms to consider the sabotage of investments as a hidden cost of control in budgeting. They show that honesty has a spill-over effect, as it absorbs negative reciprocity.