Genuine Mistakes Research Articles

Set up a 'self-retraction' system for honest errors.

Notices should make obvious whether a withdrawal of research is the result of misconduct or a genuine mistake, says Daniele Fanelli.

In Further Defense of Ovid’s Astronomical Accuracy in the Fasti

Matthew Fox argued convincingly, in AJP 125:91–133 (“Stars in the Fasti ”), that an earlier negative assessment of Ovid’s astronomy in the Fasti has been incorrect and that Ovid’s accuracy in his astronomical references is generally above reproach. Fox was left at the conclusion of his analysis, however, with twelve astronomical references, which he was compelled to categorize as “genuine mistakes.” This article argues that, on the basis of astronomical placements that can be verified on a celestial map, Ovid does not appear to have committed any errors in his astronomical references in the Fasti .

DNA sequencing and metabolomics: new approaches to the forensic assessment of herbal therapeutic agents

The role and frequency that herbal therapeutic agents play in unexpected deaths remains unclear. Herbal agents may be directly toxic in their own right, or they may act synergistically with other herbal materials, or with prescribed pharmaceutical agents. Herbal therapies are also known to sometimes contain toxic agents such as herbicides or heavy metals, or to have been adulterated with standard drugs to enhance their efficacy [1]. In the medicolegal arena the consumption of drugs that may be contraindicated in certain conditions may not be apparent at the time of autopsy, such as when steroids or non-steroidal antiinflammatory agents have been unknowingly taken by an individual with active peptic ulcer disease. Substitution of one plant for another, whether because of financial considerations or from a genuine mistake in plant identification, compounds the complexities associated with attempting to determine whether a herbal preparation has contributed to, or caused, illness or death. Thus, when compared to the assessment of prescribed medications in a standard forensic autopsy, the evaluation of the role of herbal preparations in a death is problematic [2, 3]. Death scene examiners may not document herbal preparations, as they may be considered to be ‘‘natural’’ products and therefore not likely to cause any health problems. Even if herbal medications are recorded at a death scene, there is no guarantee that the ingredients and dosages listed on the container (if this information is available) are a true reflection of the composition of the contained preparation. As standard preparations come as powders, pill or liquids, standard taxonomic classification of herbs by morphology is not possible. Finally, due to the complex organic molecules present and the blending of a number of plants, searching for active organic ingredients in forensic toxicology laboratories may resemble the time honored search for the ‘‘needle in haystack’’ [4]. Fortunately technology is now available which may assist in focusing the search for these elusive active organic agents. Two recent papers [5, 6] show how DNA sequencing can be used to identify materials in herbal medicines that would otherwise be potentially difficult to analyze. In particular, Coghlan et al.’s [5] use of next generation DNA sequencing (NGS) demonstrates how sophisticated analyses of samples, including complex mixtures unable to be evaluated effectively by previous techniques, can be rapidly screened. NGS analysis of herbal medications confiscated at a death scene may provide valuable data that can then be compared to either in-house databases or to larger collections such as the NIH genetic sequence database, GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/genbank/). Although a potential difficulty with external databases involves the accuracy with which entries have been checked prior to uploading, they may, along with smaller databases, be extremely useful in matching the pattern of a DNA sequence to that of known plants. Thus, modern DNA sequencing can rapidly provide a genetic audit of large numbers of cases that can be matched against established standards to focus the search for ingredients [5] such as toxic plants and/or potential allergens. R. W. Byard (&) I. Musgrave C. Hoban School of Medical Sciences, Level 3 Medical School North Building, The University of Adelaide, Frome Road, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia e-mail: roger.byard@sa.gov.au

Ending the Karl Pearson Controversy (1904): Over the Incomplete Couplets Produced by Mendel’s Fraction-Addition Method

Early in the 20th Century, leading mathematicians found a link between Mendel’s Laws and Newton’s Binomial. This enabled multigenerational studies of entire populations. In this regard, K. Pearson in 1904 raised objections to Mendel’s predictions that the ‘pure’ (dominant and recessive) descendants of hybrid ancestors turn out to be incomplete assemblies when using the sum of fractions used by Mendel in his 1866 article “Experiments in Plant Hybridization”. This algorithm is analyzed as a model for the case of just one hereditary characteristic, within an axiomatic framework that necessitates the formulation of a theorem in order to elucidate whether it was, on the one hand, a genuine mistake or, on the other, it is what Mendel, with all conviction and consideration, intended to say. We take into account the contemporary (1850-1870) knowledge of the cell and the structures involved in the transmission of inherited characteristics that this pioneer in the field of genetics would have had available for his deliberations at a time when this discipline was not yet a science. There follows the analysis of an unspecified intermediate member of the sum of fractions (not included in the Mendel’s original paper), which, from a mathematical standpoint, helps us resolve the incomplete assemblies (‘pure’ descendants) enigma.

Appreciating and reforming the remedy of equitable rescission for genuine mistake in contract law

It is not unusual that one or all parties commit a genuine mistake when making contracts. While there is the strict general duty under the law to respect agreements, there equally exists the duty for courts and tribunals to be fair and to render commercial justice in the factual matrix of cases before them. In national legal systems and transnational law regimes, rescission for mistake on economically efficient and just terms is embedded in contractual obligations. The Solle v Butcher (1950) doctrine, which represented the English law approach, was rejected in The Great Peace (2002). Potential conflicts and crises now exist in commercial relations and international dispute resolution when ‘English law’ is the applicable law. This extends to jurisdictions where English decisions are highly persuasive. This article examines the correctness and effect of The Great Peace decision on the doctrine of equitable rescission for genuine mistake as propounded in Solle v Butcher, and possible clarifications needed after the complications brought by The Great Peace. It analyses the conceptual importance of the remedy of equitable rescission for mistake in commercial transactions, and identifies serious substantive errors of law by The Great Peace court. Finally, it provides other effective, fair and efficient legal methods that remain available to avoid the weaknesses of the decisions.

A Simplified but Effective Method for the Quality Control of Medicinal Plants by Planar Chromatography

Three of the factors limiting the rational use of herbal medicine are uncertainty on effectivity, uncertainty on safety and variation in quality of the product. Because many herbal medicines have been used over centuries by indigenous peoples, the safety and effectivity is frequently not such a big concern. With more people collecting and distributing herbal medicine, the offered product is however, frequently not what the label indicates either through a genuine mistake, but also through fraud especially where expensive herbal medicine is concerned. Some wrong identifications have already led to serious side effects and deaths. Planar chromatography or thin layer chromatography [TLC] is widely used to verify the identity of plant extracts by determining the chemical fingerprint of the extracts. In a leading publication 17 different extractants, 41 solvent systems and 44 spray reagents have been used to verify the identity of important herbal preparations. We investigated whether a simplified system could not be developed to aid small laboratories in identifying different herbal medicines. We compared the efficacy of different extractants, identified and developed three TLC solvent systems that would separate compounds with low, medium and high polarity and then also investigated the use of several spray reagents. With acetone as extractant and benzene:ethanol:ammonia [9:1:0.1], chloroform:ethylacetate:formic acid [5:4:1] and ethylacetate:methanol:water [10:1.35:1] as TLC solvent system and vanillin-sulphuric acid as spray reagent the identity of 81 samples of more than 50 herbal preparations could be verified on the basis of the chromatograms. The same product from different suppliers usually gave similar chromatograms. More importantly in several cases it was clear that products with the same label were so different that a mistake must have occurred in the labelling. This method has found application in the quality control of the most important African medicinal plants in the recently published African Herbal Pharmacopoeia produced by the Association for African Medicinal Plant Standards (AAMPS).

Malformaciones vasculares como marcadores sindrómicos

Vascular malformations are static lesions, generally present at the moment of birth, formed by displasic vessels that grow in proportion to the growth of the child. They show normal cell replacements that constitute genuine mistakes of morphogenesis. The absence of regression of these malformations implies that they remain throughout the lifetime. The terminology describing this type of lesions gave rise to confusion in the medical literature until the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies adopted a classification based on the dominant vessel of the malformation in 1996. This classification distinguishes between simple and complex forms depending on whether they affect one or several types of vessel. Vascular malformations can show themselves as isolated lesions or can be associated with other lesions, constituting the guide sign or being the principal marker of some syndromic complexes. This paper describes the principal signs and symptoms of those syndromes in which a vascular malformation is the key that raises suspicion about the existence of other associated lesions.

How to Read Once Again: Derrida on Husserl

It is a truism that the agents of intellectual fashions inspire equal and opposite reactions in many of their prospective but unwilling patients. Up to the early 1990s, proponents and opponents of Derrida's deconstruction tended to make panoramic evaluations of his thought that were not based on detailed examination of individual essays, with the notable exception of John Searle's 1977 article Reiterating the Differences.1 This situation changed markedly with the arrival in 1991 of Joseph Claude Evans' booklength Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of the Voice.2 Concentrating almost line by line on Speech and Phenomena,3 generally regarded as Derrida's clearest work in philosophy, and certainly his most famous, Evans argues that it constitutes a sustained misinterpretation of Husserl that ultimately shows no real interest in the latter's texts themselves. Evans is not the only critic to focus almost exclusively on Speech and Phenomena. In the same year, Kevin Mulligan published an article with the snappy title How Not to Read: Derrida on Husserl.4 Mulligan's article is of interest for several reasons. Unlike Evans, he writes from an exclusively Anglo-Austrian analytic perspective. It is clear that he is not concerned with exhibiting a charlatan inside the Continental tradition, rather with exhibiting a more obvious case of charlatanism that helps to make up that same and (on his view) sorry tradition. Thus we find him describing Derrida as philosopher, thinker, as the author of a slim in which we find 'a logic' (in the sense), and as someone whose concept of structure is inflationary in Parisian fashion.5 As this suggests, Mulligan's style is often a witty one (which is easier to carry off in ten pages rather than Evans' 200 plus). On a more serious note, he (like Evans) identifies genuine mistakes and difficulties in Derrida's reading of Husserl, the most important of which I try to outline below. He goes on to conclude that Derrida gets Husserl wrong in most important respects. His most worrying objection concerns the thesis that a subject is aware of the mental states he or she is in. According to Mulligan, this thesis applies neither to speech nor to Husserl's account of the latter. Such an objection is worrying because, if correct, it stops Derrida's essay getting off the ground. Speech and Phenomena begins with the thesis that, for Husserl, at least one form of speech inherently involves self-presence. For Mulligan, the reason why phenomenologists have rarely responded to Derrida's monograph is that they tend to confine themselves to the first of the Logical Investigations, the one that Derrida concentrates on.6 So far as I am aware, Mulligan's own piece has not had a response, in contrast to Evans.7 I hope to show that, in all but one instance, Derrida's interpretation of Husserl is far more accurate and multi-faceted than Mulligan allows. I also want to demonstrate that if we bring in the subsequent Logical Investigations and Husserl's later works, we can in fact find added textual support for Derrida's conclusions. Finally, I want to suggest that we can read Derrida again once the qualifications in his own text are taken on board. What is required is adequate contextualization, not charity. The chief objections that Mulligan raises against Speech and Phenomena run as follows: (1) Derrida's reading of Husserl seems to want to undo the distinction, not just between the imagined word and the perceived word, but between imaginative presentations and perceptual presentations in general. (2) Amongst Derrida's mistaken views is the traditional mentalist thesis that a subject is aware of the states he is in, a thesis not applicable to speech anyway. (3) Derrida makes a failed psychologistic attempt to display the role of death in our uses of signs. (4) He also claims that sign and meaning idealities command the totality of their actual and possible instantiations (including death) and so represent these, such that the resulting ideal mixed species has the magical properties of being active and efficient. …

To be Taken at Face Value? Computerised Identification

Scientific evidence such as fingerprints and blood, hair and DNA samples are often presented during legal proceedings. Without such evidence, a description provided by the victim or any eyewitnesses is often the only means to identify a suspect. With the advent of closed circuit television (CCTV), many crimes are now recorded by cameras in the public or private domain, leading to a new form of forensic identification--facial biometrics. Decisions on how to view and interpret biometric evidence are important for both prosecution and defence, not least for the judge and jury who must decide the case. A jury may accept eyewitnesses as reliable sources of evidence more readily than complicated forensic or scientific evidence. False eyewitness accounts appear reliable when confidently presented to a mock jury. The decision-making process of the judge and jury may be seriously flawed if an eyewitness has made a genuine mistake. Using computerised recognition, the judicial decision of whether to accept an alibi or whether to accept the eyewitness account may be helped by removing the inherent uncertainty of human recognition.

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

Retracing the confused pattern of planning for escalation of the Vietnam War, Moise reconstructs the events of the night of August 4, 1964, when the U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy reported that they were under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Using declassified records and interviews with the participants, Moise demonstrates that there was no North Vietnamese attack; the original report was a genuine mistake.

Malpractice Claims against Social Workers: First Facts

Social workers, along with their colleagues in other professions, have become increasingly aware of malpractice risks. Rumors abound about professionals who have been named as defendants in both meritorious and frivolous lawsuits. The media regularly feature stories about client-plaintiffs and patient-plaintiffs who have been awarded substantial compensatory and punitive damages based on their claims of professional negligence. The phrase litigious society has become commonplace. Despite this widespread concern, very little empirical research has been conducted on the problem of professional malpractice in social work. Several valuable conceptual discussions of the problem have been published (for example, Bernstein, 1981; Besharov, 1985; Besharov & Besharov, 1987; Kurzman, 1991). However, data on the prevalence of liability risks and their relative costs have not generally been available in the profession's published literature. This article summarizes claims data drawn from the records of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Insurance Trust covering the period between 1969 and 1990 (the most recent data available). Data are provided on the frequency and cost of claims for various claims categories. Suggestions are offered to minimize the occurrence of liability claims and to enhance risk management. Types of Malpractice Professional malpractice is generally considered a form of negligence. Professionals are required to perform in a manner consistent with the standard of care in the profession, legally defined as the way an ordinary, reasonable, and prudent professional would act under the same or similar circumstances (Cohen, 1979; Cohen & Mariano, 1982; Hogan, 1979; Rinas & Clyne-Jackson, 1988). Malpractice generally occurs as a result of a social worker's active violation of clients' rights (in legal terms known variously as acts of commission, or misfeasance or malfeasance) or as a result of a social worker's failure to perform certain duties (acts of omission, or nonfeasance). Misfeasance is the doing of a proper act in a wrongful or injurious manner or the improper performance of an act that might have been lawfully done (for example, inadvertent disclosure of confidential information) (Gifis, 1991). Malfeasance is the doing of a wrongful or unlawful act (for example, embezzlement of a client's funds) (Gifis, 1991). Nonfeasance is the total omission or failure of an individual to carry out the performance of some distinct duty or undertaking that he or she has agreed to do (Gifis, 1991). Malpractice occurs when there is evidence that four elements are in place: 1. At the time of the alleged malpractice, a legal duty existed between the practitioner and the client (for example, to keep treatment-related information confidential). 2. The practitioner was derelict in that duty, either through an action that occurred or through an omission (confidential information was divulged to a public welfare agency without the client's permission). 3. The client suffered some harm or injury (benefits the client was receiving were terminated after the unauthorized disclosure of confidential information). 4. The harm or injury was directly and proximately caused by the professional's dereliction of duty (the client suffered financial injury because of the social worker's unauthorized disclosure of confidential information). Some malpractice claims result from genuine mistakes or inadvertent oversight on the part of social workers (for example, neglecting to have a client sign an informed consent form) or from a deliberate decision to risk a claim (for example, a social worker decides to divulge confidential information to protect a third party from harm). In other cases, malpractice claims allege unethical behavior or professional misconduct (for example, sexual harassment of a client). Incidence of Malpractice Claims The NASW Insurance Trust sponsors malpractice coverage for approximately 60,000 NASW members. …

To Find Allies

I am intensely interested in reading everything that somehow touches upon the subject "Ethics and Psychology of Family Life," which is the newest subject in the schools. I have been conducting this course for six years now. Pain and sorrow are evoked in my heart by articles in our press, and also by television programs, in which the subject is the target of what I think are unfounded accusations, while genuine mistakes and shortcomings have so far remained in the background. The subject gets called all kinds of things, even "sexual likbez [crash campaign of rudimentary literacy]." The press presents statements by a few youngsters who say that the subject does not tell them anything that they have not "already known for a long time." And then when articles are published about underage sexual relations, about girls between twelve and fifteen giving birth to babies, and about fights between girls and other negative phenomena among adolescents, the reporter presents sarcastically, as a final accusatory argument, the response of a school principal or a class adviser stating that in their school the "Ethics and Psychology of Family Life" course is being conducted "on a high ideological-moral level."

Complications in head and neck surgery and how to avoid trouble.

Increasing litigation in recent years has made it more and more necessary for the surgeon to be aware of the problems, pitfalls and complications which may arise as a result of surgery. The risks are compounded in the head and neck not only because of its complex anatomy but also because of additional difficulties relating to surgery of the upper aero-digestive tract. Some problems are unavoidable. The potential risks of surgery and its complications should be carefully weighed against the natural history of the pathological process and a realistic expectation of the surgical outcome compared with alternative treatments. Other problems may result from genuine mistakes, but a number of complications are caused through actions or omissions which are avoidable and which in certain circumstances may be construed as professional negligence. Some of the more common pitfalls and complications in head and neck surgery are discussed with particular reference to their causation and possible avoidance.