Some remarks on the paper by Julia Ericksen et al., ‘Fertility patterns and trends among the Old Order Amish’

At the present time there are very few populations, whose members do not practise contraception at all, or only to a very limited extent, and for whom accurate data on nuptiality and fertility exist. Among populations of European residence or origin, there are only a few groups who reject any limitation of families for religious reasons. One of these, the Hutterites, has already been studied; the other, the Old Order Amish, is studied in Ericksen's papers, and my preceding remarks point to the importance of this study.     

Differentiation and complexity in the functionalist corpus: Rethinking the metaphor of system

The following paper examines the cybernetics trajectory of Parsons’ later work and its extension in the work of Luhmann. While the earlier work was focused on social action as a basic unit of sociological analysis, in The Social System Parsons articulates a notion of systems as self-generating and self-regulating. In Luhmann’s Social Systems this trajectory is made more explicit and developed in opposition to the early Parsons. Its metaphorical dimensions are also developed, creating additional levels and layers of abstraction. Those developments are deemed necessary in order to come to terms with the increasingly “complex” nature of modern society; however they are problematic in several respects—including their tautological nature which provides a basis for the unrestrained explanatory power of “system.“     

Miscommunicating Risk,Uncertainty, and Causation: Fine Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality Risk as an Example

A recent paper in this journal (Fann et al., 2012) estimated that “about 80,000 premature mortalities would be avoided by lowering PM_2.5 levels to 5 μg/m³ nationwide” and that 2005 levels of PM_2.5 cause about 130,000 premature mortalities per year among people over age 29, with a 95% confidence interval of 51,000 to 200,000 premature mortalities per year.⁽¹⁾ These conclusions depend entirely on misinterpreting statistical coefficients describing the association between PM_2.5 and mortality rates in selected studies and models as if they were known to be valid causal coefficients. But they are not, and both the expert opinions of EPA researchers and analysis of data suggest that a true value of zero for the PM_2.5 mortality causal coefficient is not excluded by available data. Presenting continuous confidence intervals that exclude the discrete possibility of zero misrepresents what is currently known (and not known) about the hypothesized causal relation between changes in PM_2.5 levels and changes in mortality rates, suggesting greater certainty about projected health benefits than is justified.     

Data envelopment analysis 1978–2010: A citation-based literature survey

This study surveys the data envelopment analysis (DEA) literature by applying a citation-based approach. The main goals are to find a set of papers playing the central role in DEA development and to discover the latest active DEA subareas. A directional network is constructed based on citation relationships among academic papers. After assigning an importance index to each link in the citation network, main DEA development paths emerge. We examine various types of main paths, including local main path, global main path, and multiple main paths. The analysis result suggests, as expected, that Charnes et al. (1978) [Charnes A, Cooper WW, Rhodes E. Measuring the efficiency of decision making units. European Journal of Operational Research 1978; 2(6): 429–444] is the most influential DEA paper. The five most active DEA subareas in recent years are identified; among them the “two-stage contextual factor evaluation framework” is relatively more active. Aside from the main path analysis, we summarize basic statistics on DEA journals and researchers. A growth curve analysis hints that the DEA literature’s size will eventually grow to at least double the size of the existing literature.     

The Impact of Organizational Structure and Supervisory Listening Indicators on Subordinate Support,Trust, Intrinsic Motivation,and Performance

A field study of a tool manufacturing organization examined the impact of supervisory listening indicators on subordinate perceptions of support, trust, and intrinsic motivation and on subordinate performance (productivity and absenteeism). The moderating impact of organizational structure was also investigated. The results indicated that the impact of supervisory listening indicators was very different dependent upon whether the structure of the organizational work group was more mechanistic or more organic. Within the more organic portions of the organization, supportive listening indicators were positively related to production and negatively related to absenteeism. The opposite occurred within the mechanistic levels. At all levels, perceived listening increased supportiveness, trust, and intrinsic motivation, although listening for accuracy had the strongest impact.     

Why Risk Is Not Variance: An Expository Note

Variance (or standard deviation) of return is widely used as a measure of risk in financial investment risk analysis applications, where mean‐variance analysis is applied to calculate efficient frontiers and undominated portfolios. Why, then, do health, safety, and environmental (HS&E) and reliability engineering risk analysts insist on defining risk more flexibly, as being determined by probabilities and consequences, rather than simply by variances? This note suggests an answer by providing a simple proof that mean‐variance decision making violates the principle that a rational decisionmaker should prefer higher to lower probabilities of receiving a fixed gain, all else being equal. Indeed, simply hypothesizing a continuous increasing indifference curve for mean‐variance combinations at the origin is enough to imply that a decisionmaker must find unacceptable some prospects that offer a positive probability of gain and zero probability of loss. Unlike some previous analyses of limitations of variance as a risk metric, this expository note uses only simple mathematics and does not require the additional framework of von Neumann Morgenstern utility theory.     

Assessing Potential Human Health Hazards and Benefits from Subtherapeutic Antibiotics in the United States: Tetracyclines as a Case Study

Many scientists, activists, regulators, and politicians have expressed urgent concern that using antibiotics in food animals selects for resistant strains of bacteria that harm human health and bring nearer a “postantibiotic era” of multidrug resistant “super‐bugs.” Proposed political solutions, such as the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), would ban entire classes of subtherapeutic antibiotics (STAs) now used for disease prevention and growth promotion in food animals. The proposed bans are not driven by formal quantitative risk assessment (QRA), but by a perceived need for immediate action to prevent potential catastrophe. Similar fears led to STA phase‐outs in Europe a decade ago. However, QRA and empirical data indicate that continued use of STAs in the United States has not harmed human health, and bans in Europe have not helped human health. The fears motivating PAMTA contrast with QRA estimates of vanishingly small risks. As a case study, examining specific tetracycline uses and resistance patterns suggests that there is no significant human health hazard from continued use of tetracycline in food animals. Simple hypothetical calculations suggest an unobservably small risk (between 0 and 1.75E‐11 excess lifetime risk of a tetracycline‐resistant infection), based on the long history of tetracycline use in the United States without resistance‐related treatment failures. QRAs for other STA uses in food animals also find that human health risks are vanishingly small. Whether such QRA calculations will guide risk management policy for animal antibiotics in the United States remains to be seen.     

Nano Risk Analysis: Advancing the Science for Nanomaterials Risk Management

Scientists, activists, industry, and governments have raised concerns about health and environmental risks of nanoscale materials. The Society for Risk Analysis convened experts in September 2008 in Washington, DC to deliberate on issues relating to the unique attributes of nanoscale materials that raise novel concerns about health risks. This article reports on the overall themes and findings of the workshop, uncovering the underlying issues for each of these topics that become recurring themes. The attributes of nanoscale particles and other nanomaterials that present novel issues for risk analysis are evaluated in a risk analysis framework, identifying challenges and opportunities for risk analysts and others seeking to assess and manage the risks from emerging nanoscale materials and nanotechnologies. Workshop deliberations and recommendations for advancing the risk analysis and management of nanotechnologies are presented.