Durkheim and The Structure of Social Action*

The analysis of Durkheim in The Structure of Social Action is integral to Parsons's discussion of the utilitarian-positivist tradition and the emergence of a voluntaristic theory of action from it. The four “stages” of theoretical argument in Durkheim can be related directly to the four defining elements of the “utilitarian dilemma,” namely empiricism, rationality, atomism, and the randomness of ends. The most questionable aspect of Parsons's argument is the alleged stubbornness of Durkheim's empiricism. On the other hand, much of the criticism of Parsons's argument, by Pope in particular, although also by Scott and Warner, Is either misdirected or itself questionable. The development and conclusions of Durkheim's moral sociology are as Parsons claims, and form a viable basis for a non-positivist theory of action.     

Predicting the quality of life in the United States

A principal components analysis performed by David M. Smith on 47 U.S. state level indicators of social well-being yielded several components. The first two of these are socio-economic well-being and social pathology. Structural hypotheses are offered to explain state differences in these components. The structural variables condensed by a principal components analysis of state political, economic and social structure measures are differentiation, flexibility-rigidity, and progressive industrialization. These, along with several population measures, determine a substantial part of the variance in the two measures of social well-being.     

Modified pseudo-likelihood estimator of the overdispersion parameter in Poisson mixture models

There are a variety of methods available for analyzing count data exhibiting extra-Poisson variation. Those based on quasi-likelihood, in particular, have gained tremendous popularity. In this paper, several moment estimators are compared. A new estimator, based on a modification of the pseudo-likelihood approach, is introduced and shown to perform very well when the overdispersion is not large, even if the sample size is very small.     

Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect

A high-risk population was successfully identified by the use of perinatal screening procedures. These children encountered significantly different parenting practices than the low-risk "control" group. There were also significant differences between "High-Risk" and "Low-Risk" families on issues concerning social adjustment and mother/infant attachment. Five children in a "High-Risk Nonintervene" group required hospitalization for serious injuries thought to be secondary to abnormal parenting practices. There were no such hospitalizations in either a High Risk Intervene group or a Low Risk group. Labordelivery observations, and postpartum interviews and observations provided the most accurate predictive information; prenatal interviews and questionnaires did not add significantly. Perinatal assessment and simple intervention with families at high risk for abnormal parenting practices significantly improves the infants' chances for escaping serious hospitalized physical injury.     

Ebola Virus Dose Response Model for Aerosolized Exposures: Insights from Primate Data

This study develops dose–response models for Ebolavirus using previously published data sets from the open literature. Two such articles were identified in which three different species of nonhuman primates were challenged by aerosolized Ebolavirus in order to study pathology and clinical disease progression. Dose groups were combined and pooled across each study in order to facilitate modeling. The endpoint of each experiment was death. The exponential and exact beta-Poisson models were fit to the data using maximum likelihood estimation. The exact beta-Poisson was deemed the recommended model because it more closely approximated the probability of response at low doses though both models provided a good fit. Although transmission is generally considered to be dominated by person-to-person contact, aerosolization is a possible route of exposure. If possible, this route of exposure could be particularly concerning for persons in occupational roles managing contaminated liquid wastes from patients being treated for Ebola infection and the wastewater community responsible for disinfection. Therefore, this study produces a necessary mathematical relationship between exposure dose and risk of death for the inhalation route of exposure that can support quantitative microbial risk assessment aimed at informing risk mitigation strategies including personal protection policies against occupational exposures.     

Predictive Inference and Scientific Reproducibility

ABSTRACT

Most statistical analyses use hypothesis tests or estimation about parameters to form inferential conclusions. I think this is noble, but misguided. The point of view expressed here is that observables are fundamental, and that the goal of statistical modeling should be to predict future observations, given the current data and other relevant information. Further, the prediction of future observables provides multiple advantages to practicing scientists, and to science in general. These include an interpretable numerical summary of a quantity of direct interest to current and future researchers, a calibrated prediction of what’s likely to happen in future experiments, a prediction that can be either “corroborated” or “refuted” through experimentation, and avoidance of inference about parameters; quantities that exists only as convenient indices of hypothetical distributions. Finally, the predictive probability of a future observable can be used as a standard for communicating the reliability of the current work, regardless of whether confirmatory experiments are conducted. Adoption of this paradigm would improve our rigor for scientific accuracy and reproducibility by shifting our focus from “finding differences” among hypothetical parameters to predicting observable events based on our current scientific understanding.