The therapeutic misconception: a threat to valid parental consent for pediatric neuroimaging research

Neuroimaging research has brought major advances to child health and wellbeing. However, because of the vulnerabilities associated with neurological and developmental conditions, the parental need for hope, and the expectation of parents that new medical advances can benefit their child, pediatric neuroimaging research presents significant challenges to the general problem of consent in the context of research involving children. A particular challenge in this domain is created by the presence of therapeutic misconception on the part of parents and other key research stakeholders. This article revierws the concept of therapeutic misconception and its role in pediatric neuroimaging research. It argues that this misconception can compromise consent given by parents for the involvement of their children in research as healthy controls or as persons with neurological and developmental conditions. The article further contends that therapeutic misconception can undermine the research ethics review process for proposed and ongoing neuroimaging studies. Against this backdrop, the article concludes with recommendations for mitigating the effects of therapeutic misconception in pediatric neuroimaging research.     

Fairness and Contract Design

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit incentive contracts when there are some fair‐minded players, but trust contracts that pay a generous wage up front are less efficient than incentive contracts. The principals understand this and predominantly choose the bonus contracts. These results are consistent with recently developed theories of fairness, which offer important new insights into the interaction of contract choices, fairness, and incentives.     

Norovirus Dose–Response: Are Currently Available Data Informative Enough to Determine How Susceptible Humans Are to Infection from a Single Virus?

Two forms of single‐hit infection dose‐response models have previously been developed to assess available data from human feeding trials and estimate the norovirus dose‐response relationship. The mechanistic interpretations of these models include strong assumptions that warrant reconsideration: the first study includes an implicit assumption that there is no immunity to Norwalk virus among the specific study population, while the recent second study includes assumptions that such immunity could exist and that the nonimmune have no defensive barriers to prevent infection from exposure to just one virus. Both models addressed unmeasured virus aggregation in administered doses. In this work, the available data are reanalyzed using a generalization of the first model to explore these previous assumptions. It was hypothesized that concurrent estimation of an unmeasured degree of virus aggregation and important dose‐response parameters could lead to structural nonidentifiability of the model (i.e., that a diverse range of alternative mechanistic interpretations yield the same optimal fit), and this is demonstrated using the profile likelihood approach and by algebraic proof. It is also demonstrated that omission of an immunity parameter can artificially inflate the estimated degree of aggregation and falsely suggest high susceptibility among the nonimmune. The currently available data support the assumption of immunity within the specific study population, but provide only weak information about the degree of aggregation and susceptibility among the nonimmune. The probability of infection at low and moderate doses may be much lower than previously asserted, but more data from strategically designed dose‐response experiments are needed to provide adequate information.     

Technologiebasierte Spin-offs ?C Ein Forschungs??berblick zu Einflussgr??en ihrer Entwicklung

Technology-based spin-offs from academic institutions and private corporations represent an important proportion of young innovation-oriented ventures. They encounter specific starting conditions in terms of their core technology, the composition of the founding team, and the critical junctures during their establishment. This study analyses the state-of-the-art in quantitative empirical research on factors impacting the development of these types of firms. We present findings of both research fields and discuss them critically. Methodological and measurement issues receive particular attention in our analysis. Based on the literature review we identify factors impacting the development of both types of firms. Additionally we expose gaps in past and current research on academic and corporate spin-offs and suggest interesting opportunities for future research. Methodological shortcomings of existing studies are discussed. We derive implications for research on academic and corporate spin-offs and for the management of these types of firms.     

Reconsidering the common ratio effect: the roles of compound independence,reduction, and coalescing

Common ratio effects should be ruled out if subjects’ preferences satisfy compound independence, reduction of compound lotteries, and coalescing. In other words, at least one of these axioms should be violated in order to generate a common ratio effect. Relying on a simple experiment, we investigate which failure of these axioms is concomitant with the empirical observation of common ratio effects. We observe that compound independence and reduction of compound lotteries hold, whereas coalescing is systematically violated. This result provides support for theories which explain the common ratio effect by violations of coalescing (i.e., configural weight theory) instead of violations of compound independence (i.e., rank-dependent utility or cumulative prospect theory).     

Supply Chain Disruptions and the Role of Information Asymmetry

This research investigates how information asymmetry between the firm and its investors can influence supply chain disruptions. In such settings, these actors may be induced to take steps which exacerbate rather than ameliorate both the likelihood and impact of disruptions. By better understanding these mechanisms, managers and investors alike are better armed to avoid the costly consequences.     

On the parameterized complexity of the Multi-MCT and Multi-MCST problems

The comparison of tree structured data is widespread since trees can be used to represent wide varieties of data, such as XML data, evolutionary histories, or carbohydrate structures. Two graph-theoretical problems used in the comparison of such data are the problems of finding the maximum common subtree (MCT) and the minimum common supertree (MCST) of two trees. These problems generalize to the problem of finding the MCT and MCST of multiple trees (Multi-MCT and Multi-MCST, respectively). In this paper, we prove parameterized complexity hardness results for the different parameterized versions of the Multi-MCT and Multi-MCST problem under isomorphic embeddings.     

Methodology and finance

The relationship between science and methodology (philosophy of science) is reciprocal. Methodological concepts can be used to describe, to evaluate, and even to guide scientific activity. In discussing philosophy of science, real-life science can be used to clarify, to illustrate, and even to evaluate competing methodological positions. This paper analyzes the reciprocal relationship between methodology and financial economics.Two different philosophical positions are presented, contrasted, and related to two different branches of financial economics. Capital market theory is tentatively evaluated on the basis of both positions. The evaluation shows that - and why - capital market theory can be considered as a successful research programme. As a methodological case study it also demonstrates that - and why - traditional methodological concepts are largely inappropriate to finance. The alternative methodological position presented in the paper is found to be better suited.These results are then used to investigate whether methodological arguments imply that a behavioral approach to business finance should be preferred rather than an economic approach. The traditional methodological position rejected in this paper does support a behavioural approach, while the position favored in the paper does not.     

Policy evaluation and economic policy advice

Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last few decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific interest typically exert some influence on their treatment status under the policy to be evaluated and on their economic outcomes. Thus, economic policy advice can only be successful, if it is based on an appropriate study design, experimental or observational. It will strive in societies that provide liberal access to data, accept the merits of randomized assignment and guard the independence of research institutions.