Implicit Claims Research Articles

Extended peer communities: Creating good and fair knowledges

This conceptual paper reconstructs an implicit ethical claim of post-normal science, namely that knowledge produced in extended peer communities (EPCs) is both epistemically better and fairer. Post-normal science introduced EPCs to operationalise better quality knowledge for decision-making in conditions when facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. In such contexts, traditional forms of quality assurance in science are bound to fail and even risk becoming the source of harm to people, their social and natural environment. Consequently, the community of peers assessing the quality of knowledge needs to be broadened to include a plurality of perspectives and epistemic communities. To date, post-normal scholarship has focused primarily on the epistemological side of EPCs. Building on this, this paper addresses the ethical side of EPCs. In doing so, it aims to make explicit a claim that has always been at the heart of post-normal scholarship, namely that the knowledge produced in EPCs is also more just. In doing so, the paper builds on the literature on epistemic (in)justice and in particular on work done by Kristie Dotson.

“And All I Gotta Do Is Act Naturally”

This article analyses musicians’ performances on film, using the iconic Beatles film Help! (Richard Lester 1965) as a foundational case study. The study investigates distinctions between film acting and musical performance while exploring the defining characteristics of musicians’ performances within the context of cinema. Building upon established concepts of persona (Auslander 2021), metafiction and metareference (Waugh 1984; Wolf 2009), the author introduces novel conceptual frameworks of “metaperformance” and “intramedial transmediality”. “Metaperformance” refers to the doubling of the act of performance, whereas “intramedial transmediality” describes the coexistence of diverse media texts within a single media text. Due to their off-screen musical persona, musical stars in films often provoke a pronounced transtextual and transmedial network and convey an implicit claim to reality. Compared to film actors, musical stars on film frequently provide metaperformances, embodying not only (fictional) characters but also performing their (“real”) musical persona within them. Additional case studies of Ed Sheeran’s performance in Danny Boyle’s Yesterday (2019) and the Spice Girls’ performance in Bob Spiers’s Spice World (1997) further clarify these theoretical insights. Working deductively, these films serve as contemporary illustrations of the theoretical concepts under examination. The findings of this essay contribute to an enriched understanding of the intricacies in musicians’ performances on film and shed light on the interplay between music, cinema, and artists’ on-screen personas.

Your Ancestors Worked Hard for this Legitimacy! Theory and Experiment on the Inauthenticity of Second Movers

Why do first movers into a new industry sometimes gain an advantage simply because of the fact that they are perceived by audiences to be more authentic than second movers, whereas in other contexts such second movers are perceived as no less authentic than first movers? We theorize that this difference hinges on the amount of costly, risky “legitimation work” that entrants are perceived to have conducted in their efforts to establish that the new organizational form is reliable and acceptable. Whereas a first mover must expend great effort to reassure skeptical audiences that the new form coheres with their norms and that it can meet and even exceed their standards, later arrivals are often able to appropriate such legitimacy once it has been established. But such appropriation by the second mover makes its (often implicit) claim of original insight or vision seem less authentic than that of the first mover. In three complementary online experiments on audience reactions to online healthcare startups, we find support for our prediction that followers suffer from a lower consumer preference because they are perceived to have done less work in establishing the new form’s legitimacy. Our results show that when follower firms show evidence of participation in legitimation work, it may overturn the default interpretation and reduce the authenticity discount. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.17215 .

“My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble”: Hester Pulter’s Apostrophe to the Soul

Abstract The poems of Hester Pulter (1605–1678) provide insight into the religion and politics of a woman writing through the English Civil Wars and Republic. This paper focuses on Pulter’s use of the apostrophe to the soul and on her abstention from employing disciplinary metaphors that so often characterise devotional poetry. In merging the devotional apostrophe to the soul with complaint, Pulter effectively jettisons the penitential aspects of these approaches, creating a hybrid form in which her body provides comfort to her grieving soul. Pulter thus creates a form of devotional poem that relies on an aesthetics of comfort instead of discipline. By utilising the affordances of the apostrophe – its ability to bring the speaker and its addressee into a relation with one another – Pulter enacts a spiritual unification and in so doing makes implicit claims about the emotional and spiritual efficacy of poetry.

The Negative Freedom and Politics of Modus Vivendi

Aim. The aim of this study is to provide a selected theoretical-methodological analysis of the concept of negative freedom in relation to the political sphere of its application, to reveal and clarify the main political implications and normative claims that its recognition implies for political theory. Concept. From a methodological point of view, the study is based on three justified assumptions: (1) that in modern political philosophy the idea of individual freedom is the main normative basis for political theories, (2) that philosophical development has brought several competing concepts of this idea and (3) that from its own content the concept implies basic requirements for its social and political application. For the purposes of theoretical-methodological analysis, we distinguished two different moments in the concept of individual freedom (freedom as a question of will and freedom as a question of practice) and from their point of view we examined the selected concept of negative freedom in an attempt to reveal its implicit claims at the political level. Results. In the article, we have succeeded in formulating and arguing for the thesis that the concept of negative freedom in its applicability programmatically leads to a modus vivendi model of politics. We have shown that the concept of freedom and the model of politics are interrelated and normatively interdependent. Conclusion. The main conclusion of the study is that the above model of politics cannot be generalised and considered equally acceptable for all conceptions of freedom and the good life.

On Merging Feature Engineering and Deep Learning for Diagnosis, Risk Prediction and Age Estimation Based on the 12-Lead ECG.

Over the past few years, deep learning (DL) has been used extensively in research for 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis. However, it is unclear whether the explicit or implicit claims made on DL superiority to the more classical feature engineering (FE) approaches, based on domain knowledge, hold. In addition, it remains unclear whether combining DL with FE may improve performance over a single modality. To address these research gaps and in-line with recent major experiments, we revisited three tasks: cardiac arrhythmia diagnosis (multiclass-multilabel classification), atrial fibrillation risk prediction (binary classification), and age estimation (regression). We used an overall dataset of 2.3M 12-lead ECG recordings to train the following models for each task: i) a random forest taking FE as input; ii) an end-to-end DL model; and iii) a merged model of FE+DL. FE yielded comparable results to DL while necessitating significantly less data for the two classification tasks. DL outperformed FE for the regression task. For all tasks, merging FE with DL did not improve performance over DL alone. These findings were confirmed on the additional PTB-XL dataset. We found that for traditional 12-lead ECG based diagnosis tasks, DL did not yield a meaningful improvement over FE, while it improved significantly the nontraditional regression task. We also found that combining FE with DL did not improve over DL alone, which suggests that the FE were redundant with the features learned by DL. Our findings provides important recommendations on 12-lead ECG based machine learning strategy and data regime to choose for a given task. When looking at maximizing performance as the end goal, if the task is nontraditional and a large dataset is available then DL is preferable. If the task is a classical one and/or a small dataset is available then a FE approach may be the better choice.

Fictional books in Coptic apocrypha

Coptic literature abounds with references to books that never existed as physical objects in their own right. This article explores the role of fictional books specifically in a selection of Coptic apocrypha deriving from the entire period of Coptic literary production. Whether presented as apostolic, prophetic, or angelic; earthly or heavenly; historical or contemporary, references to fictional books could function as veracity devices, authority claims, or as materials for storyworld creation. Taking as its points of departure recent work on pseudo-documentarism, transnarrative storyworlds, and the cognitive effects of fiction, this article explores implicit claims to authority and authenticity, as well as the fuzzy boundaries and interrelationships between fictional and factual references in meaning- and world-making.

Seeking Abolition: Black Letter Writers and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in the Era of Gradual Emancipation

During the era of gradual emancipation, between about 1780 and 1830, ordinary African Americans tested the power of correspondence in efforts to advance their claims to freedom. Their demands often exceeded the limits of emancipation laws, but the letters themselves became a form of evidence in cases that challenged the existing legal regime. This article draws upon the correspondence files of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society to reveal a pattern of antislavery activism in which enslaved and free Black correspondents communicated their views directly white abolitionists, seeing themselves as participants in a cooperative activist partnership. Writing as deferential petitioners, indignant parents, aggrieved victims, and shrewd negotiators—sometimes all within the space of the same letter—African Americans used correspondence to present their political concerns as inseparable from their daily lives. Harnessing the medium of correspondence, they made immediate demands for legal freedom and relief from suffering. They also made implicit claims to equality through their conscious deployment of language and letter-writing conventions to reflect good moral character—a prerequisite for equal membership in the body politic. Together, these sources demonstrate that African Americans used letter-writing to secure freedom for themselves and their families as well as to emphasize the universal injustice of slavery and the moral obligation to oppose it.

Implied Claims in Drug Advertising: A Review of Recent Literature and Regulatory Actions

ABSTRACT Federal agencies and self-regulatory bodies help to ensure prescription and nonprescription drug promotion contains accurate information; however, false or misleading claims may cause people to have inaccurate perceptions of a drug and inhibit their ability to make informed decisions. We conducted a systematic review assessing evidence from 2012–2021 on how consumers and healthcare providers (HCPs) interpret claims made indirectly or through inference (implied or implicit claims) as well as synthesizing prescription and nonprescription drug advertising claims that have been the subject of regulatory actions from 2017–2021. Our search identified 16 studies from the peer-reviewed literature and 26 letters or case reports issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or National Advertising Division (NAD). Results from peer-reviewed studies suggest that implied claims can result in inferences that may not be warranted by the material facts about the drug. Perceptions of a drug’s efficacy and, to a lesser extent, risk, are influenced by implied and explicitly false claims in prescription drug promotion. Claims related to implied superiority and overstatement of efficacy were the most prevalent claims flagged for review and examined in the literature. These types of claims were also the subject of many of the compliance actions by the FDA and case reports from the NAD. More research is needed to understand how people interpret varying types of implied claims and the impact of such claims on key outcomes. From a policy standpoint, understanding how people interpret implied claims can inform how the FDA approaches these claims in the marketplace.

Do Perceptions of Ingroup Discrimination Fuel White Mistrust in Government? Insights from the 2012–2020 ANES and a Framing Experiment

Since the 1960s, political elites have used implicit and overt claims that the government discriminates against whites to mobilize white voters. As a result, many white Americans perceive government policies that address racial inequalities as a form of anti-white bias and politicians who criticize racial inequities as hostile to white interests. We hypothesize that white Americans who believe their group faces discrimination are more likely to mistrust the federal government. We test our hypothesis using three American National Election Study (ANES) cross-sectional studies (2012–2020), the 2016–2020 ANES panel, and a survey experiment. Our results show a negative and significant relationship between perceived ingroup discrimination and trust in government in 2012 and 2016 but not in 2020. A lagged dependent variable (LDV) analysis shows that the negative effect of ingroup discrimination remains significant even after an LDV is included in the model, but the reverse is not the case. Finally, a framing experiment suggests that those high on ingroup discrimination beliefs are more likely to think that politicians have an anti-white agenda, while those low on such beliefs are more likely to think that politicians have an anti-Black agenda.

:Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism

:<i>Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism</i>

Echoing Retorts in Hárbarðsljóð and Lokasenna

Echoing Retorts in <i>Hárbarðsljóð</i> and <i>Lokasenna</i>

The Impact of Cannabis Packaging Characteristics on Perceptions and Intentions

As cannabis increasingly becomes a consumer product in the U.S., its product packaging has become critically important to regulators. This study examined the influence of recreational cannabis packaging characteristics. Five online between-subjects experiments were conducted in April 2021, and data were analyzed in May 2021-July 2021. Experiments randomized participants to view different (1) types of cannabis, (2) visual displays of tetrahydrocannabinol content, (3) cannabis packages designed around brand personality research, (4) health warnings, and (5) health claims. Outcomes included cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. A total of 841 adults from the U.S. (49% male, 50% young adults, 44% White, 17% Hispanic) were included in the study. Edible gummies were perceived as healthier (β=0.32, 95% CI=0.03, 0.62), less grown up (β= -0.58, 95% CI= -0.86, -0.28), and more socially acceptable to consume (β=0.30, 95% CI=0.01, 0.59) than cannabis concentrate in a medical dropper. Participants also had more interest in trying edible gummies (β=1.33, 95% CI=1.04, 1.62) and trying a free sample (β=1.30, 95% CI=1.01, 1.60) than trying cannabis concentrate. Cannabis packages with a helps-you-relax health claim elicited more happy (β=0.34, 95% CI=0.04, 0.64) and good (β=0.37, 95% CI=0.07, 0.67) feelings than cannabis packages without this claim. Minimal effects were found for visual displays of tetrahydrocannabinol content and health warnings. Edibles are a unique type of cannabis that should be given special consideration under state laws, and lawmakers should consider limiting and governing the use of both implicit and explicit health claims on recreational cannabis packages when implementing laws.

Stakeholder Orientation and Bank Payout Policy: Evidence from US Constituency Statutes

AbstractWe investigate the impact of stakeholder orientation on bank payout policy. As a quasi‐experimental setting, we exploit the staggered enactment of constituency statutes across US states, which broaden the scope of managerial duties to an extended group of stakeholders. The results of a difference‐in‐differences analysis suggest that bank holding companies (BHCs) incorporated in states enacting constituency statutes experience significant declines in total payouts, which is driven by a decline in share repurchases. This observed decline in share repurchases is stronger for banks with sizeable implicit claims, lower transparency and substantial agency conflicts. These findings remain intact following a myriad of robustness checks and alternative estimation techniques.

Urban Revitalization and the Policing of Racial Territoriality

The results from several recent studies suggest that police stop rates are elevated in neighborhoods that are gentrified or undergoing gentrification. However, it remains unclear how these findings fit into the well-documented pattern of racialized proactive policing practices, often interpreted through a racial-threat lens. To further our understanding of how of law enforcement relates to gentrification as a racialized institution, I utilize pedestrian stop data from eight cities to analyze the interconnected relationships between neighborhood-level police stops, temporal changes in racial and ethnic composition, and gentrification processes. Results from negative binomial spatial-durbin models reveal that, controlling for local crime levels and other covariates, police stops are more prevalent in neighborhoods that have experienced decreases in black and Latinx populations and in those surrounding gentrified areas. However, because gentrified and gentrifying neighborhoods have experienced relatively larger losses of these minority residents, this relationship appears to be intertwined with processes of urban revitalization. Based on these results, I argue that the geographic concentration of proactive police stops operates as an instrument of urban social transformation, shaped by racial territoriality – the implicit and explicit claims of whites to urban spaces.

‘Bidding and forbidding’: Morality, Prosody, and The Wreck of the Deutschland

Abstract This essay considers the unsettling prosody of The Wreck of the Deutschland (composed 1875–6), Gerard Manley Hopkins’s long poem in sprung rhythm, through the lens of his implicit and explicit claims about the moral and theological operations of poetic form. Connecting Hopkins’s account of poetry’s forceful ‘bidding’ to his later assertions about God’s ‘bidding and forbidding’, the essay’s first section argues that the affective texture of Hopkins’s verse undertakes a kind of moral and theological self-examination, registering the implicit violence and volatility of The Wreck’s theodicy. Taking stock of Hopkins’s reading of William Wordsworth, moreover—and developing this, in its second section, through some of Hopkins’s philosophical writings as a young man—it goes on to explore how the sounds and rhythms of poetry might intimate the complexities of moral and religious belief. The essay is committed, indeed, to understanding the sensate qualities of verse form as a medium for serious thinking, implicated as they can be with the proper intensities and uncertainties of our spiritual lives. At stake in The Wreck’s prosody, it claims, is less a kind of sure-footed belief than what Hopkins described as the ‘shock’ or ‘tremble’ of reading Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ (1807): the undecidable sense of ‘having seen something, whatever that really was’.

Supplier Concentration and Earnings Management

In this paper, I empirically examine the association between supplier concentration and earnings management. A firm’s major suppliers use its accounting performance to evaluate its ability to fulfill trading obligations and honor implicit claims, giving rise to its stronger incentives to manipulate earnings. However, the firm may face punishment and termination of relationships if major suppliers detect its earnings management with their information and bargaining advantages. Employing a comprehensive sample of firms with supply chain data, I find a negative association between a firm’s supplier concentration and earnings management using discretionary accruals and real activities. My results suggest that customer firms are concerned about major suppliers’ close monitoring and bargaining power, thereby decreasing their earnings management practices.

The Geo-Ecological Turn in Sociology and its Implications for the Sociology of the Arts

Accelerating climate change has set in motion a broad change in beliefs about human life that is affecting the social sciences and humanities (SSH). A deeper understanding of the social causes and consequences of climate change is evolving in sociology, yet some of the discipline’s subfields have not responded to climate change. Is this because climate change is perceived to be irrelevant or are scholars suppressing new beliefs that could disrupt the norms of their field? The sociology of the arts provides an illustrative case. This subfield has historically ignored environmental factors, but there is mounting pressure for correcting this oversight and rethinking the beliefs and norms of the field. This article argues that climate change is relevant to the sociology of the arts and that this subfield can become more aligned with the geo-ecological turn in sociology and the SSH. This turn is part of a wider epochal and existential transformation in public consciousness in response to broad changes in society and nature. Changing beliefs about the arts are therefore not explained by endogenous dynamics in the arts field. The article provides a meta-analysis of the geo-ecological turn in sociology and in interdisciplinary arts and cultural research where pioneering arguments have emerged. The analysis uses theory of disciplinary transformation in the sociology of science to analyze largely implicit sociological claims for a transformation of ‘normal science’ beliefs about (1) aesthetic exceptionalism, illustrated by a new conception of music as a study object, and (2) the role of the arts in economic growth. Some implications for the sociology of the arts are considered.

Occupied labour: dispossession through incorporation among Palestinian workers in Israel

ABSTRACT Promoting the employment of indigenous peoples has been a key strategy of economic development in settler colonial states. Israel’s framing of occupied Palestinian labour in its economy has mirrored this approach, with an implicit claim that it contributes prosperity to the Palestinians. What this false promise hides is how employment and the economic incorporation of indigenous people can become a source of ongoing dispossession in and of itself: a kind of dispossession that is driven by workers’ economic inclusion rather than being remedied through it. Based on ethnographic research among Palestinians from the occupied West Bank who work in Israel, this article explores the multiple dispossessions that result from such labour. The article explains how a neoliberal settler economy utilizes a meritocratic regime of indigenous employment to execute a colonial logic of domination. As access to jobs in the settler economy is made conditional on workers’ political docility and their continued absence from communal life, the labour regime aims to turn Palestinian livelihood and Palestinian nationhood into mutually exclusive aspirations: it strives to undermine the Palestinians’ capacity for social reproduction and anticolonial resistance.

The Poet and the Antiquaries: Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532–1635

The Poet and the Antiquaries: Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532–1635