What Is Wrong with Criterion FN-Lines for Judging the Tolerability of Risk?

This paper is concerned with the intellectual framework in which judgments are made about the tolerability of so-called societal risk. The current practical approach is based on the position of the FN-curves representing the risks from hazardous systems in relation to criterion FN-lines. The objections to FN-criteria are that they can give unreasonable conclusions and that they are inconsistent. Statistical decision theory suggests an alternative and preferable rule of minimising the expected disutility, that is average harm, from accidents.     

References

Bibliography

References     

Limitations to Empirical Extrapolation Studies: The Case of BMD Ratios

Extrapolation relationships are of keen interest to chemical risk assessment in which they play a prominent role in translating experimentally derived (usually in animals) toxicity estimates into estimates more relevant to human populations. A standard approach for characterizing each extrapolation relies on ratios of pre-existing toxicity estimates. Applications of this "ratio approach" have overlooked several sources of error. This article examines the case of ratios of benchmark doses, trying to better understand their informativeness. The approach involves mathematically modeling the process by which the ratios are generated in practice. Both closed form and simulation-based models of this "data-generating process" (DGP) are developed, paying special attention to the influence of experimental design. The results show the potential for significant limits to informativeness, and revealing dependencies. Future applications of the ratio approach should take imprecision and bias into account. Bootstrap techniques are recommended for gauging imprecision, but more complicated techniques will be required for gauging bias (and capturing dependencies). Strategies for mitigating the errors are suggested.     

The threat of unionism and wage-coverage effects

This study finds that the union/nonunion wage differential decreases with local labor-market coverage. In general, SMSA coverage has a negligible impact on union wages, and nonunion wages increase significantly with coverage. This is consistent with strong threat effects operating at the local labor-market level. As with most other wage-coverage studies, however, union wages increase more quickly with industry coverage than do nonunion wages. These results support the argument that distinctly different economic processes underlie local labormarket and industry-coverage effects. Economies in the provision of union services imply that union threat effects will be most salient at the local labor-market level. Industry wage-coverage relationships are dominated by the positive effect of product-market coverage on union bargaining power. Estimated coverage effects vary by major industry groupings and are sensitive to changes in the specification of the wage equations. The author acknowledges the helpful comments of an anonymous referee and the competent research assistance of Harold Leong.     

Cultural studies, a sociological poetics: institutions of the Canadian imaginary

La poétique sociologique est définie comme problématique pour la sociologie critique de la culture afin de considérer l'avenir du rapport du dédoublement entre les cultures vécue et officielle à travers les institutions de l'imaginaire canadien anglais. On propose des critiques de la CBC, du développement de la politique culturelle, et des Études canadiennes comme école de pensée. A critique of the official definition of Canadian culture is presented. Given the distinction between lived and official culture, the question posed is, ‘how do we theorize the relations between these two levels for an entire society? Based principally on Bahktin's concept of ‘dialogism’ with references to Dumont and Rioux, a sociological poetics is advanced as a theoretical device for unravelling ‘the Canada’. It is argued that cultural studies defined as a sociological poetics must negate any definition of the one Canadian culture or representations of the one Canadian society. Lines of inquiry are suggested with respect to the CBC and Canadian studies as cultural industries.     

Experimental evaluation of a humanities program

This research sought to determine the effects of a one-hour humanities lecture concerning midwest architectural preservation on a group of college undergraduates. Effects were assessed by a semantic differential procedure which revealed two factors in a pre-treatment trial. A four-group design required administration of the instrument to two groups one week prior to the lecture, and to all groups one week following the lecture. ANOVA and post hoc analyses revealed significant changes in the experimental group's “semantic space” on three of eight architectural concepts which were assessed. The results provide an empirical basis for the success of the program which the humanities people had “known” all along.     

A goodness-of-fit index for blockmodels

The ‘fit’ between blockmodels and data networks is extended from a binary to a continuous concept. An index of goodness-of-fit for α-fit blockmodels is proposed, based on the purity (density of 1's or 0's) of the submatrices of the data matrix(es) after the blockmodel partition is imposed. The characteristics of this index are compared with those of correlation coefficient. Some applications are described.