Letters to the editor

This article proposes that an assessment of commercial feasibility should be integrated as a prerequisite for human clinical testing to improve the quality and relevance of materials being investigated, as an ethical aspect for human subject protection, and as a means of improving accountability where clinical development is funded on promises of successful translational research. A commercial feasibility analysis is not currently required to justify human clinical testing, but is assumed to have been conducted by industry participants, and use of public funds for clinical trials should be defensible in the same manner. Plant-made vaccines (PMVs) are offered in this discussion as a model for evaluating the relevance of commercial feasibility before human clinical testing. PMVs have been proposed as a potential solution for global health, based on a vision of immunizing the world against many infectious diseases. Such a vision depends on translating current knowledge in plant science and immunology into a potent vaccine that can be readily manufactured and distributed to those in need. But new biologics such as PMVs may fail to be manufactured due to financial or logistical reasons—particularly for orphan diseases without sufficient revenue incentive for industry investment—regardless of the effectiveness which might be demonstrated in human clinical testing. Moreover, all potential instruments of global health depend on translational agents well beyond the lab in order to reach those in need. A model comprising five criteria for commercial feasibility is suggested for inclusion by regulators and ethics review boards as part of the review process prior to approval of human clinical testing. Use of this model may help to facilitate safe and appropriate translational research and bring more immediate benefits to those in need.     

Applying statistical tests to empirically compare tabu search parameters for MAX 3-SATISFIABILITY: A case study

The application of stochastic heuristic, like tabu search or simulated annealing, to address hard discrete optimization problems has been an important advance for efficiently obtaining good solutions in a reasonable amount of computing time. A challenge when applying such heuristics is assessing when a particular set of parameter values yields better performance compared to other such sets of parameter values. For example, it can be difficult to determine the optimal mix of memory types to incorporate into tabu search. This in turn prompts users to undertake a trial and error phase to determine the best combination of parameter settings for the problem under study. Moreover, for a given problem instance, one set of heuristic parameter settings may yield a better solution than another set of parameters, for a given initial solution. However, the performance of this heuristic on this instance for a single heuristic execution is not sufficient to assert that the first set of parameter settings will always produce superior results than the second set of parameters, for all initial solutions.     

Should We Have Faith in Faith‐Based Social Services? Rhetoric Versus Realistic Expectations

Early in his administration, President George W. Bush set forth his Faith‐Based Initiative, which would authorize and encourage religious groups to compete for and provide publicly funded social services. This article analyzes the arguments made by supporters of faith‐based social services in regard to their underlying values and premises. This analysis forms the basis for examining the managerial track record of faith‐based organizations in the delivery of social services. To identify issues and trends within this category of service providers, the authors analyzed press reports of instances of wrong doing in faith‐based groups from 1995 to 2001. Findings reveal that faith‐based groups appear to be as susceptible to managerial and accountability inadequacies, if not outright wrongdoing, as are nonsectarian service providers. The authors identify implications regarding the credibility of faith‐based groups and public trust as they pertain to an enhanced role in the less regulated service system that the president envisions.     

Ethical issues in editing scholarly journals

Various ethical issues that often involve dilemmas to face editors of scholarly journals. These issues are treated via discussions of treatment of colleagues’ submissions; paradigm-based decisions, and decisions based on personal sociological predilections and commitments; “reasonable” referee-assignment policies; policies with respect to how referees’ judgments are used; and “privileged” treatment of categories of authors relative to other categories. He has served terms as editor of the American Sociological Review, Sociometry (now Social Psychology Quarterly) and the Rose Monograph series.     

Health and Social Services Planning

The authors outline joint planning between health and social services since 1974, examining the joint planning meetings of two different types. They identify certain features of small group meetings which could ease joint planning arrangements.     

Addressing the Dependency Problem in Access Security System Architecture Design

The objective of this research is to present a method for evaluating the performance of access control security systems, such as airport security operations. This requires the examination of security system architectures, which involve security technology devices and the algorithms that coordinate their operations. Dependence between device responses in multiple-device systems is a critical practical issue in assessing the performance of such architectures, though no results on this problem have appeared in the literature. This paper presents a method for evaluating when multipledevice security systems with overlapping capabilities are cost-effective. This is achieved using a dependency structure for security system devices to quantify how various technologies interact and to measure the impact of device dependence on system error probabilities. A measure of device response dependence for a two-device system is defined and its properties are explored, including bounds on the dependency measure. The effect of dependence on the system Type I and Type II error probabilities is examined for the two-device system. System performance is compared for independent vs. dependent device responses and desirable dependence relationships are identified. Results are also presented for a cascading sequence of devices. An example is presented to illustrate the results for the two-device system. Implications of these results are discussed, such as how they can be used to identify the optimal use of security devices and to determine whether new technologies warrant investment.     

Civil religion and the arms race

Dans cette communication, l'auteur examine l'interaction entre la religion civile et la politique dans la course aux armements nucléaires à la lumière de la théorie de Bellah selon laquelle la religion civile s'élabore dans les ‘temps difficiles’. Pour l'auteur, la bombe atomique a posé des problèmes particuliers pour les valeurs américaines, problèmes qu'on a surmontés en l'alignant symboliquement sur certains éléments de la religion civile américaine. Ainsi, le monopole nucléaire a fini par être considéré comme un ‘devoir sacré, à la fois une conséquence du caractère unique des États-Unis et la preuve de sa ‘destinée particulière’. Cependant, les Soviétiques ont contesté ce devoir sacré en faisant exploser leur propre bombe atomique, tout comme ils ont mis en doute la notion de la destinée particulière des États-Unis en lançant les satellites Sputnik. Les prétensions américaines à l'unicitéétant contredites devant le monde entier, la destinée particulière des Américains est devenue de plus en plus associée à leur supériorité technologique, d'où le développement paradoxal d'une technocratie aux États-Unis qui contraste nettement avec les réactions canadiennes à la menace nucléaire soviétique. Following Bellah's notion that civil religion is elaborated in ‘times of trial, this paper examines the interaction between civil religion and politics in the nuclear arms race. It argues that the bomb posed special difficulties to American values, and that these were overcome by symbolically aligning it with elements of American civil religion. The nuclear monopoly was viewed as a ‘sacred trust, the result of the United States' uniqueness and proof of its special destiny. However, a Soviet atomic explosion challenged the sacred trust, while the subsequent launch of the Sputnik satellites violated the tenets of the special destiny of the U.S. As the claim of the U.S. to uniqueness was undermined before the whole world, the nation's special destiny was associated particularly with its technological superiority. The upshot was the paradoxical development of an American technocracy, which contrasts sharply with Canadian responses to the Soviet nuclear threat.     

Scientific Misconduct in Social Welfare Research: Preventive Lessons from Other Fields

This article examines instances of scientific misconduct which have occurred in recent years from an international perspective and explores their implications for the burgeoning social work research enterprise. Although the majority of cases of scientific misconduct which have received international publicity are confined to the hard sciences, there are important implications to be derived for the growing productivity in social welfare research. A comprehensive search was conducted of press reports for the time frame of 1995–2002 for both US and international stories about research misconduct. Using qualitative analysis, themes related to scientific conduct were identified. These cases reveal serious consequences to individual researchers and to their employing institutions. The motivating factors for the wrongdoing are applicable to researchers of any discipline and include perceived pressure to document positive outcomes and the rush to publish findings. The authors urge development of standards of research conduct specific to social work and social welfare and increased dialogue about the issues involved.     

Making combination vaccines more accessible to low-income countries: The antigen bundle pricing problem

Combination vaccines have become the preferred choice for immunizing children in high- and middle-income countries. However, these new vaccines are prohibitively expensive for low-income countries, causing them to rely on older, less-expensive vaccines. This product divergence decreases economies of scale for the purchase of vaccines and eliminates the financial incentive for manufacturers to maintain production of less-expensive vaccines or even to develop new vaccines for diseases affecting developing countries. This paper treats combination vaccines as bundles of antigens that can be priced as a single item. Such bundles are used to formulate an optimization problem that determines the combination vaccine allocation between vaccine producers and different countries under a price discrimination agreement. The objective of the optimization problem is to satisfy countries' antigen demand at the lowest possible price, while providing a reasonable profit for the vaccine producers. The optimization problem results in a mixed-integer non-linear programming model that maximizes the sum of manufacturing profits and the customer surplus, and hence, it maximizes the total social surplus. Moreover, a constructive heuristic is proposed to determine an approximation to the best allocation of combination vaccines and their range of feasible prices. Computational results show that vaccine prices in all market segments become more affordable as the supply of the most complex combination vaccines becomes more available to low-income countries.