Daubert v. Merrell Dow pharmaceuticals: Toward a better relationship between law and science

[Scientists] are neither Gods nor charlatans; they are merely experts, like every other expert on the political stage. They have, of course, their special area of expertise, the physical world, but their knowledge is no more immaculate than that of economists, health policy makers, police officers, legal advocates, weather forecasters, travel agents, car mechanics, or plumbers. The expertise that we need to deal with them is the well‐developed expertise of everyday life; it is what we use when we deal with plumbers and the rest. Plumbers are not perfect-far from it‐but society is not beset with anti‐plumbers because being anti-plumbing is not a choice available to us.1     

Measuring ambiguity attitude: (Extended) multiplier preferences for the American and the Dutch population

Empirical studies of ambiguity aversion often use measures that are not grounded in theory. This paper shows how a theoretically-founded measure of ambiguity aversion can be derived from Hansen and Sargent’s theory of multiplier preferences. Multiplier preferences are used in macroeconomics to capture model uncertainty. At the micro level, they have not been applied yet, because they do not permit ambiguity seeking, which is usually observed for a substantial proportion of subjects. We give a preference foundation for (extended) multiplier preferences accommodating both ambiguity aversion and ambiguity seeking and we propose a simple method to measure them using matching probabilities. We illustrate our method in two large representative samples (Dutch and American) and obtain the first micro estimates of multiplier preferences.     

Homosexual role separation: Implications for analyzing and modeling the spread of HIV

The analysis of the spread of HIV in homosexual populations must be based on knowledge of all factors which promote or inhibit transmission. Recently, data were reported from the Amsterdam cohort study that imply that sexual role separation and the changes therein should be taken into account in analyzing and modeling the spread of HIV. In this paper, a role separation mixing model is described and linked to data from the Amsterdam cohort. The model allows one to study the impact of homosexual role separation on the spread of HIV. The homosexual men are classified into four sexual subgroups based on the preference for: 1) no anal intercourse; 2) anal insertive only; 3) anal receptive only; 4) both insertive and receptive. The analysis accounts for variability and change in homosexual role behavior and loss to follow up. The results support the conjecture that there are large differences between the risks of receptive and insertive anal intercourse, with the latter carrying only minimal risk. The analysis indicates that the spread of HIV is mostly restricted to subgroup 4, the largest and sexually most active subgroup. In this subgroup, the estimated probability of HIV transmission from an infected insertive partner (in subgroup 2 or 4) to a receptive susceptible (in subgroup 4) is between 1 and 5 percent (assuming a closed cohort).     

Perturbation Analysis of Indices of Lifespan Variability

A number of indices exist to calculate lifespan variation, each with different underlying properties. Here, we present new formulae for the response of seven of these indices to changes in the underlying mortality schedule (life disparity, Gini coefficient, standard deviation, variance, Theil’s index, mean logarithmic deviation, and interquartile range). We derive each of these indices from an absorbing Markov chain formulation of the life table, and use matrix calculus to obtain the sensitivity and the elasticity (i.e., the proportional sensitivity) to changes in age-specific mortality. Using empirical French and Russian male data, we compare the underlying sensitivities to mortality change under different mortality regimes to determine the conditions under which the indices might differ in their conclusions about the magnitude of lifespan variation. Finally, we demonstrate how the sensitivities can be used to decompose temporal changes in the indices into contributions of age-specific mortality changes. The result is an easily computable method for calculating the properties of this important class of longevity indices.     

Communication in Care and Coercion: Institutional Interactions between Family Supervisors and Parents

Summary In this study the interaction of 51 videotaped professionalcommunications between Dutch family supervisors and parentsof children under family supervision were analysed. Family supervisionlies at the interface of care and control. This is evident inthe communication of professional child welfare workers withtheir clients for whom they have to clarify their rights. Theanalysis shows some of the strategies used by Dutch family supervisorsin cases of formal decisions and other interactions where theyanticipate confrontation with the client. In this way, familysupervisors separate their caring from their repressive functions.Nevertheless care and control were found to be successfullyintegrated in some communications.     

Evaluating a project on Roma education

This research note is based on the evaluation of the Comenius project Teacher‐IN‐SErvice‐Training‐for‐Roma‐inclusion (INSETRom). The project represented an international effort that was undertaken to bridge the gap between Roma and non‐Roma communities and to improve the educational attainment of Roma children in the mainstream educational system. The evaluation of the project showed that such projects can impact a teacher's confidence and attitudes, but that implementing new insights poses many challenges.     

The Gandhi Secondary School: an experiment in Roma education

The Gandhi Secondary School, located in Pécs, Hungary, was, until recently, the only secondary school in Europe devoted to preparing young Roma for higher education. This article discusses the school's origins and philosophy, its curriculum, and its teaching models. There is also a discussion of the reality of life at the school and the various challenges faced by teachers and students.     

Expressing Induced Emotions Through Free Dance Movement

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of two basic emotions, happiness and sadness, on dance movement. A total of 32 adult participants were induced to feel emotional states of either happiness or sadness and then danced intuitively to an emotionally ‘neutral’ piece of music, composed specifically for the experiment. Based on an Effort-Shape analysis of body movement, full body movement was captured and seven different movement cues were examined, in order to explore whether differences in corporeal articulations between the happy and sad condition existed. Results revealed that in the happy condition, participants moved faster, with more acceleration, and made more expanded and more impulsive movements than in the sad condition. Results are discussed with respect to possible consequences for future research on human movement.     

Institutional Shifts In Inter-Municipal Service Delivery

Comparative research on inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries shows that there is a great variety of institutional arrangements for cooperation across the different countries. Also, these arrangements tend to change over time in terms of the scope of cooperation among partners, their composition and the degree of organizational integration. This article describes and analyzes the variety of and shifts in institutional arrangements for a specific class of inter-municipal cooperation arrangements: those that are set up to provide for the joint delivery of public services. It is argued that specific arrangements are typically the outcomes of interaction between national institutional contexts, environmental factors and local preferences.