Substantive Publications Research Articles

Recent efforts to elucidate the scientific validity of animal-based drug tests by the pharmaceutical industry, pro-testing lobby groups, and animal welfare organisations

BackgroundEven after several decades of human drug development, there remains an absence of published, substantial, comprehensive data to validate the use of animals in preclinical drug testing, and to point to their predictive nature with regard to human safety/toxicity and efficacy. Two recent papers, authored by pharmaceutical industry scientists, added to the few substantive publications that exist. In this brief article, we discuss both these papers, as well as our own series of three papers on the subject, and also various views and criticisms of lobby groups that advocate the animal testing of new drugs.Main textWe argue that there still remains no published evidence to support the current regulatory paradigm of animal testing in supporting safe entry to clinical trials. In fact, the data in these recent studies, as well as in our own studies, support the contention that tests on rodents, dogs and monkeys provide next to no evidential weight to the probability of there being a lack of human toxicity, when there is no apparent toxicity in the animals.ConclusionBased on these data, and in particular on this finding, it must be concluded that animal drug tests are therefore not fit for their stated purpose. At the very least, it is now incumbent on—and we very much encourage—the pharmaceutical industry and its regulators to commission, conduct and/or facilitate further independent studies involving the use of substantial proprietary data.

Know Me Before You Speak for Me: Substantive Public Representation Among Nonprofits

Nonprofit and public administration scholars have increasingly turned attention to the wide variety of channels by which nonprofit organizations may influence public policy, raising critical questions about nonprofit representation. While recent years have brought important work about the extent to which nonprofits are perceived as symbolic representatives of their clients, scholars repeatedly note substantive representation remains understudied. This article seeks to address that gap by offering a conceptual framework of potential nonprofit substantive representation mechanisms. Two categories of mechanisms emerged from a scan of scholarly and practitioner literature—client engagement and client assessment, while an exploratory case study of one nonprofit’s explicit endeavor to improve substantive representation surfaced a third category—immersion. We offer this framework as a useful first step in organizing and presenting mechanisms for consideration, and to encourage future exploration and testing of mechanisms by which nonprofits may come to substantively understand those whom they represent.

An Anti-Enforcement Bias? The Application of the Substantive Public Policy Exception in Polish Annulment Proceedings

This article examines how Polish courts have dealt with annulment applications based upon purported violations of substantive public policy and measures the Polish jurisprudence against the standards developed by the national courts in England, France, Switzerland and Germany. It identifies an anti-enforcement bias of the Polish courts which, in sharp contrast to their European counterparts, still favour an expansive interpretation of the public policy exception and have surprisingly little qualms in engaging in a thinly veiled merits review with unclear boundaries. The markedly interventionist approach of the Polish judiciary encourages annulment applications, which both ill-serves the arbitral process generally and undermines recent efforts to promote Poland as a desirable seat for international arbitration specifically. A solution to these ills can only be found in a narrower interpretation of the substantive public policy exception, in harmony with the standards developed by the national courts in the major European arbitration centres.

The EFPA Test-Review Model: When Good Intentions Meet a Methodological Thought Disorder.

The European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) has issued sets of test standards and guidelines for psychometric test reviews without any attempt to address the critical content of many substantive publications by measurement experts such as Joel Michell. For example, he has argued that the psychometric test-theory which underpins classical and modern IRT psychometrics is “pathological”, with the entire profession of psychometricians suffering from a methodological thought disorder. With the advent of new kinds of assessment now being created by the “Next Generation” of psychologists which no longer conform to the item-based, statistical test theory generated last century, a new framework is set out for constructing evidence-bases suitable for these “Next Generation” of assessments, which avoids the illusory beliefs of equal-interval or quantitatively structured psychological attributes. Finally, with no systematic or substantive refutations of the logic, axioms, and evidence set out by Michell and others; it is concluded psychologists and their professional associations remain in denial. As with the eventual demise of a similar attempt to maintain the status quo of professional beliefs within forensic clinical psychology and psychiatry during the last century, those following certain EFPA guidelines might now find themselves required to justify their professional beliefs in legal rather than academic environments.

Measurement Error in Spatial Exposure Models: Study Design Implications.

Measurement Error in Spatial Exposure Models: Study Design Implications.

Editorial introduction to ‘Geological Development of Anatolia and the Easternmost Mediterranean Region’

The present set of 22 papers stems from the 7th International Symposium on Eastern Mediterranean Geology that was held in Adana, Turkey, 18–22 October 2010. After its initiation in l992, in Adana this international conference has been held successively in Jerusalem (Israel) in l995, Nicosia (Cyprus) in 1998, Isparta (Turkey) in 2001, Thessalonica (Greece) in 2004 and Amman (Jordan) in 2007. The Cyprus and Thessalonica conferences were followed by substantive publications, including one with a focus on Cyprus (Panayides et al. 2000) and another mainly concerned with the Balkan region (Robertson & Mountrakis 2006). A subset of the papers that were presented at the 7th Adana meeting, together with some others, have been prepared and edited for the present volume. Anatolia and the surrounding region provide an excellent opportunity for the study of fundamental geological processes, including rifting, seafloor spreading, ophiolite genesis and emplacement, collision, continental assembly and neotectonics. This volume should interest a wide cross-section of international researchers, including those concerned with hydrocarbons, mineral deposits and seismic risk, and also postgraduate students and advanced undergraduates. The papers highlight the role of fieldwork, the multidisciplinary nature of much of the current research in the region, the role of teamwork and the strong contribution being made by young scientists. Following an introductory chapter, the volume is divided into four sections covering different aspects of the region as a whole. The area discussed mainly lies within Turkey, Cyprus and Syria. Section 1 is made up of a small number of papers that are mainly concerned with the Pontide belt of northern Turkey. Section 2 is concerned with the geological development of the Tauride and Anatolide belts of central and southern Anatolia, especially the Triassic–Jurassic period of rifting and passive margin development and the Late Cretaceous period of ophiolite genesis and emplacement. Section 3 is mainly concerned with the formation of sedimentary basins during closure of several Mesozoic ocean basins and the related structural development during Late Cretaceous to Pliocene time. Finally, Section 4 is devoted to aspects of the structural development of the region, mainly during the Pliocene–Quaternary (i.e. neotectonics) when the plate configuration was essentially as it is today. The area covered by each paper is shown in Figure 1. The introduction by Robertson et al. covers the southern part of Anatolia and the adjacent easternmost Mediterranean region that was the main subject of the international conference. The main focus is on Late Permian–Recent time. A review of the Late Precambrian–Recent geological development of the easternmost Mediterranean region is published elsewhere (Robertson et al. 2012). The authors discuss alternative interpretations of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic inter-relations of the various crustal units that make up the region. In particular, they consider whether these should be interpreted as individual microcontinents separated by Mesozoic small ocean basins or as parts of larger continental units (i.e. microcontinents). The Anatolides in the north are generally interpreted as the metamorphosed equivalents of the Taurides, although different reconstructions exist. The Anatolides are commonly seen as the northern, leading edge of the Mesozoic Tauride–Anatolide continent that subducted and underwent high-pressure/lowtemperature (HP/LT) metamorphism during Late Cretaceous–Early Cenozoic time. The Anatolides are divided into two parts, namely the HP/LTmetamorphosed Afyon–Bolkar Dag zone in the south, which can be closely correlated with the Taurides, and the very HP/LT Tavsanli Zone further north, which also shows some affinities with the Taurides but is less well understood. The Kirsehir Massif is interpreted as a rifted continental block that was separated from a larger Tauride continent to the south by a Mesozoic oceanic basin known as the Inner-Tauride Ocean. However, uncertainties remain, including the reconstruction

Psychological morbidity and quality of life of ethnic minority patients with cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Ethnic minority is associated with higher cancer incidence and poorer survival than is being in the majority group. We did a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess whether psychological morbidity and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) were affected by minority status. We searched Medline, AMED, PsycINFO, Embase, CENTRAL, CINAHL, PubMed, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science for English-language articles published between Jan 1, 1995, and October, 2009. Articles were eligible if they reported original data on anxiety, depression, distress (for psychological morbidity), or HRQoL in minority and majority cancer patients or survivors. Minority status was defined as being an immigrant or having an ethnic, linguistic, or religious background different to the majority of the population in the country where the research was done. We excluded African Americans and indigenous groups. Eligible articles were rated for quality of reporting, external validity, internal validity, sample size, and power. Each quality criterion was rated independently by two reviewers until inter-rater reliability was achieved. In a meta-analysis we compared mean scores adjusted for socioeconomic status and other sociodemographic and clinical variables, where available. Effect sizes greater than 0·5 and 95% CI that included 0·5 or -0·5 were deemed clinically important, with negative values indicating worse outcomes in minority patients. We assessed publication bias by estimating the number of potential unpublished studies and the number of non-signficant studies with p=0·05 required to produce a non-significant overall result. We identified 21 eligible articles that included 18 datasets collected in the USA and one in each of Canada, Romania, and the UK. Ethnic minority groups were Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, or Hungarian (one dataset). Overall, we found minority versus majority groups to have significantly worse distress (mean difference -0·37, 95% CI -0·46 to -0·28; p<0·0001), depression (-0·23, -0·36 to -0·11; p=0·0003), and overall HRQoL (-0·33, -0·58 to -0·07; p=0·013). Further analyses found disparities to be specific to Hispanic patients in the USA, in whom poorer outcomes were consistent with potentially clinically important differences for distress (effect size -0·37, 95% CI -0·54 to -0·20; p<0·0001), social HRQoL (-0·45, -0·87 to -0·03; p=0·035), and overall HRQoL (-0·49, -0·78 to -0.20; p=0·0008). Results were significantly heterogeneous for overall HRQoL and all domains. Tests for interaction, for adjusted versus unadjusted and comparisons of high-quality, medium-quality, and low-quality articles, were generally non-significant, which suggests no bias. We found no evidence of any substantive publication bias. Hispanic cancer patients in the USA, but not other ethnic minority groups, report significantly worse distress, depression, social HRQoL, and overall HRQoL than do majority patients, of which all but depression might be clinically important. Heterogeneous results might, however, have limited the interpretation. Data for other minority groups and for anxiety are scarce. More studies are needed from outside the USA. Future reports should more clearly describe their minority group samples and analyses should control for clinical and sociodemographic variables known to predict outcomes. Understanding of why outcomes are poor in US Hispanic patients is needed to inform the targeting of interventions. Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia.

So You Want Tenure? Factors Affecting Tenure Decisions in Political Science Departments

AbstractThis article investigates the variables that affect the award of tenure in political science departments in the United States. We examined two dependent variables: (1) whether a department has denied tenure in the past five years, and (2) whether a positive departmental tenure recommendation has been reversed by higher college or university authorities during the same period of time. Five clusters of independent variables were evaluated: (1) college/university and departmental characteristics, (2) the procedures employed to evaluate tenure cases, (3) the instruments used to assess teaching, (4) service expectations, and (5) research and publication standards. We found that the most important factors affecting departmental decisions to deny tenure were whether teaching and substantive publications were treated as equally valuable qualifications, the number of articles a candidate published, and the candidate's level of commitment to advising. Interestingly, reversal decisions by higher authorities were not strongly affected by any of the variables in the analysis.

Planning, Policy and the Public Interest: Planning Regimes and Planners' Ethics and Practices

A substantive Public Interest criterion promotes planning area residents' welfare, absent countervailing public policy considerations. This criterion is applied to appraise planning practices in two planning regimes in the West Bank of Palestine: the British Mandate and the Israeli occupation. Detailed analysis of these planning systems' institutions, land policies, statutory plans and development control shows that planners in both regimes acted in the Public Interest as they saw it. But under the British Mandate there was no conflict between the two considerations, while the Israeli occupation policy promoting Israeli interests overrides the welfare of the Palestinian population. This conclusion invites reflection on the interaction between planning regimes and the ethics of planners' practices.

Julien Gracq Studies

Julien Gracq (1910–2007) was generally considered to be the doyen of French letters at his demise on 22 December 2007, aged ninety-seven. Born Louis Poirier in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil (Maine-et-Loire), Gracq took his nom de plume in 1939 at the time his first novel, Au château d’Argol, was published. Professor agrege of history and geography, notably at the Lycee Claude-Bernard in Paris from 1947 until his retirement in 1970, Gracq began writing fiction almost by accident. His works, published by the Librairie Jose Corti, were collected in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, under the masterly direction of Bernhild Boie. Translated into twenty-six languages, they touch on all genres: novels, poetry, theatre, short stories, translations, autobiographical essays, literary criticism, and occasional writings, including notebooks, travel journals, prefaces, and interviews. Gracq is one of the rare literary figures to have appeared in the Pleiade and on agregation examinations during his lifetime, a prestige marking him out as an exceptional writer. The exception gracquienne, however, is a double-edged one, indicating not only the singularity of a writer whose syncretic style defies labelling, but also, unfortunately, a dearth of critical interest in his works, especially in the UK and other anglophone academies, as Beatrice Damamme-Gilbert has recently pointed out in French Studies Bulletin. Author of an excellent Bakhtinian study of Gracq’s lyrical remapping of the Nantes of his adolescence, Damamme-Gilbert finds this gap all the more surprising, given Gracq’s stature in France and his familiarity with British cultural history. Among academics based in North America, too, substantive publications are few, with only one book in English. Even in

Josef Steindl and the Instability of Capitalism

Josef Steindl's first substantive publication was a nine-page review of Roy Harrod's book The Trade Cycle (1936), which appeared in the June 1937 issue of the Austrian journal, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie. The review reveals the Austrian – or, as he put it, the neo-Wicksellian – roots of Steindl's early macroeconomic thinking. It also contains the first mathematical formulation of what would later be known as the (Hicks) super-multiplier. In this paper I summarise Steindl's critique of Harrod, comparing his analysis of the multiplier-interaction with that of several contemporaries. A translation of his review is given in the paper that follows.

Revisiting NGO Participation in WTO and Investment Dispute Settlement: From Procedural Arguments to (Substantive) Public Interest Considerations

SummaryA nuanced analysis of relevant decisions suggests that some investment dispute settlement tribunals have gone beyond the World Trade Organizations (WTO) largely procedural approach to non-governmental organization (NGO) participation in their proceedings and have adopted a relatively more substantive approach. This article suggests that this difference of approach stems from three characteristic differences between international trade and foreign investment — the political economy of the international trade and foreign investment orders, the substantive effects of trade and investment activities, and their dispute settlement mechanisms. However, these general differences are by themselves insufficient to justify excluding a substantive public interest approach to NGO participation at the WTO, especially in view of the fact that WTO tribunals have conceded limited participatory privileges to these non-state actors.

How to write a highly cited article without even trying.

personal story behind a much-cited article, The Hippocampus and Behavior, is related in some detail. twists and turns of this 8-year odyssey form a context in which many important issues in psychology are discussed. greatest emphasis is placed on an analysis of citations and what they mean, but this inevitably leads to such seemingly unrelated issues as the interpretation of history, the stealing of ideas, fads and fashions, the possible dangers of peer review, and others. literature on the behavioral effects of hippocampal lesions is reviewed and it is concluded that a lesion produces a unitary deficit. On a purely descriptive level this deficit consists of an ability to withhold a prepotent response, whether learned or unlearned. Many hypotheses about hippocampal function are shown to be inconsistent with the data or otherwise inadequate. 4 ideas appear to be generally supported by the results in the literature, and these essentially represent slightly divergent views about possible causes for the deficit above. In 3 of these, the hippocampus is postulated to have an inhibitory function, whether Pavlovian, S-R bond suppression, or inhibition of attention and/or stimulus input. In the 4th idea, the hippocampus is postulated to play a crucial role in a working memory mechanism. (The Hippocampus and Behavior, Douglas, 1967, p. 416) During the cold war, it was often claimed that people fleeing to the West from socialist countries were with their feet for capitalism. By analogy, when writers feel the necessity to make a citation to an article, they are, in effect, voting that the article is important to the topic of discourse and to science as a whole. Citations are a blue-collar index of impact, made primarily by people in the trenches rather than by the generals, and they paint a different picture of history than the ones often found in textbooks. In psychology, as in other areas, the most highly cited articles tend to be about methods or procedures rather than the central issues of the field (Garfield, 1975b). This is primarily because such topics often cut across fields of specialization and thus appeal to a much broader audience than is the case with a typical substantive article addressed to a tiny group of narrow specialists. In any event, if you were to set out in cold blood to write a highly cited article, your best bet would be to devise or revise a paper-and-pencil test of personality or motivation, improve on a commonly used method, coin a snappy new word or phrase, or think of a new way to apply statistics. And while you are at it, you might as well also become very wealthy by buying low and selling high in the stock market. I appear to be one of the relatively few people who followed a different pathway and produced a flock of highly cited articles that are experimental or theoretical in nature rather than methodological. In addition to The Hippocampus and Behavior (Douglas, 1967; 630 citations through 1990) I have five more substantive publications that have been cited at least 120 times each, with the mean being 150 (see Douglas, 1984). Thus, I

Are There Adverse Effects of Sensitivity Training?

A review is made of substantive publications reporting adverse effects of sensitivity training. Such reports lack any clear consensus as to what is an adverse effect. Some are based on small samples and almost all lack adequate controls. It is concluded: ( a) that adverse effects do occur among a small proportion of trainees, ( b) chat this proportion differs markedly in different populations, and ( c) that no study yet published provides a basis for concluding that adverse effects arising from sensitivity training are any more frequent than adverse effects arising in equivalent populations not in groups. A method of casualty detection derived from a study by Yalom and Lieberman was used by the author in two residential laboratories, but no casualties were detected by it.