Since the February 2020 publication of the article ‘Flattening the curve’ in The Economist, political leaders worldwide have used this expression to legitimize the introduction of social distancing measures in fighting Covid-19. In fact, this expression represents a complex combination of three components: the shape of the epidemic curve, the social distancing measures and the reproduction number \. Each component has its own history, each with a different history of control. Presenting the control of the epidemic as flattening (...) the curve is in fact flattening the underlying natural-social complexity. The curve that needs to be flattened is presented as a bell-shaped curve, implicitly suggesting that the pathogen’s spread is subject only to natural laws. The \ value, however, is, fundamentally, a metric of how a pathogen behaves within a social context, namely its numerical value is affected by sociopolitical influences. The jagged and erratic empirical curve of Covid-19 illustrates this. Although the virus has most likely infected only a small portion of the total susceptible population, it is clear its shape has changed drastically. This changing shape is largely due to sociopolitical factors. These include shifting formal laws and policies, shifting individual behaviors as well as shifting various other social norms and practices. This makes the course of Covid-19 curve both erratic and unpredictable. (shrink)

In the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, the phrase “Flattening the curve” has become a rallying cry, popularized by government leaders and journalist in the news and on the social media. FTC is a succinct way of communicating an important public health message that physical distancing, mask-wearing and other public health measures will decrease the peak number of cases and prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. However, while the message of FTC is right in the sense that limiting transmission (...) will reduce the peak number of cases, some visualizations used to illustrate its effect are incorrect from an infectious disease modelling point of view. The misconceptions are misinterpretations of flattened curves, the effect of FTC on the duration of the pandemic, the dynamics of the curve to be flattened, and the overestimation of the importance of FTC. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 77-80.

The current expression of “flatten the curve” has similarities with mid-twentieth century macro-economic policy that can aptly be characterized as “shaping macro phenomena.” To the extent these similarities hold, the historical-epistemological analysis of this kind of macro-economic policy can provides us with a better understanding of the preconditions for the effectiveness of the current COVID-19 flatten-the-curve policy. Policy in terms of shaping a phenomenon presumes that the phenomenon in question exists and has a certain shape that (...) can be moulded. This moulding, however, is not assumed to be performed directly on the shape itself, but by operating the mechanism that generates this shape, and which is also believed to exist. Therefore the precondition for this kind of policy is knowing the mechanism at work. The knowledge of this kind of intervention needed to change the shape in a desired direction, this knowledge about the mechanism, is assumed to be captured by a mathematical model on which several policies can be tried out to see which one leads to the desired shape. Mid-twentieth century macro-economic policy aimed at shaping the business cycle, and hence was based on the belief in the existence of a business cycle mechanism. With the loss of the belief in the existence of such a mechanism, the policy of shaping the business cycle disappeared with that too. This paper unpacks this history and shows how this policy based on mechanical reasoning, which originated in natural science, was gradually replaced by an approach that takes into account non-natural aspects of human behaviour. (shrink)

COVID-19 is a highly contagious infection with no proven treatment. Approximately 2.5% of patients need mechanical ventilation while their body fights the infection.1 Once COVID-19 patients reach the point of critical illness where ventilation is necessary, they tend to deteriorate quickly. During the pandemic, patients with other conditions may also present at the hospital needing emergency ventilation. But ventilation of a COVID-19 patient can last for 2–3 weeks. Accordingly, if all ventilators are in use, there will not be time for (...) patients to ‘queue up’ to wait for those who arrived earlier to recover. Those who need a ventilator will die if they do not receive access to one quickly. Many nations now face the prospect that they failed to prepare appropriately for this foreseen risk of pandemic (another issue worthy of legal analysis) and that their populations will need far more ventilators than the health service can supply. For many weeks, the UK has been anticipating a surge of COVID-19 infections that could leave patients queuing in hospitals for ICU care. Luckily, social distancing has ‘flattened the curve’ and this problem might not arise. There is still a degree of risk, however, and other countries will not be so lucky. At some point, during this pandemic or the next, all countries will need to answer hard questions about whether and when scarce ICU resources (such as ventilators, beds and staff) should be either withheld or withdrawn from certain groups of patients solely for the purpose of providing them to others. Attempts to answer these questions can be found in a wide range of ICU triage protocols and ethical guidance documents, many of which embrace the foundational principle of ‘save the most lives’. Unfortunately, this worthwhile goal has generated many suggestions that could violate the law. This article identifies …. (shrink)

In response to crises, people sometimes prioritize fewer specific identifiable victims over many unspecified statistical victims. How other factors can explain this bias remains unclear. So two experiments investigated how complying with public health recommendations during the COVID19 pandemic depended on victim portrayal, reflection, and philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). Only one experiment found that messaging about individual victims increased compliance compared to messaging about statistical victims—i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs—an effect that was undetected after controlling for (...) other factors. However, messaging about flu (vs. COVID19) indirectly reduced compliance by reducing perceived threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, moral beliefs predicted compliance better than messaging and reflection in both experiments. The second experiment’s additional measures revealed that religiosity, political preferences, and beliefs about science also predicted compliance. This suggests that flouting public health recommendations may be less about ineffective messaging or reasoning than philosophical differences. (shrink)

Operating universities under pandemic conditions is a complex undertaking. The Artificial University responds to this need. TAU is a configurable, open-source computer simulation of a university using a contact network based on publicly available information about university classes, residences, and activities. This study evaluates health outcomes for an array of interventions and testing protocols in an artificial university of 6,500 students, faculty, and staff. Findings suggest that physical distancing and centralized contact tracing are most effective at reducing infections, but there (...) is a tipping point for compliance below which physical distancing is less effective. If student compliance is anything short of high, it helps to have separate buildings for quarantining infected students, thereby gracefully increasing compliance. Hybrid in-person and online classes and closing fitness centers do not significantly change cumulative infections but do significantly decrease the number of the infected at any given time, indicating strategies for “flattening the curve” to protect limited resources. Supplementing physical distancing with centralized contact tracing decreases infected individuals by an additional 14%; boosting frequency of testing for student-facing staff yields a further 7% decrease. A trade-off exists between increasing the sheer number of infection tests and targeting testing for key nodes in the contact network. There are significant advantages to getting and acting on test results quickly. The costs and benefits to universities of these findings are discussed. Artificial universities can be an important decision support tool for universities, generating useful policy insights into the challenges of operating universities under pandemic conditions. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse the implications of “flattening” the curve for long-term care residents in the Province of Ontario, Canada during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. I then question what the role of healthcare systems are in the response to public health emergencies and problematize their status as entities in need of protection. The ethical implications of this are discussed in light of potential challenges raised by climate change.

Top priority of governments in containing the COVID-19 pandemic is “flattening the curve” which implies a slowing down of the virus’ spread across the entire population. The situation which European policymakers are facing at the moment is completely new and only few of them have the required experience to handle a disaster of such magnitude. What is important now is to avoid problems that repeatedly occurred in past disaster responses by learning the lessons and acting accordingly. This paper reflects (...) on European disaster management in containing the spread of COVID-19 and uncovers response inefficiencies that are still present. (shrink)

The post-confinement phase of the COVID-19 pandemic will require that governments navigate more complex ethical questions than had occurred in the initial, ‘curve-flattening’ phase, and that will occur when the pandemic is in the past. By looking at the unavoidable harms involved in the confinement and quarantine methods employed during the initial phase of the pandemic, we can develop a harm reduction approach to managing the phase during which society will be gradually reopened in a context of managed risk. (...) The principles that are at the heart of such an approach include a reckoning with all of the harms involved in policy choice, including harms that might be given rise to by policy implementation itself; a focus on the harms to which already vulnerable populations are susceptible; and a strong preference for policies that economize on the use of prohibitions and of coercive state enforcement, and that instead emphasize the agency of citizens in realizing health-promoting behavior change. This framework is applied to a policy proposal that has been discussed in policy circles in a number of countries, that of immunity ‘passports’, and to policies that emphasize the creative use of space and time to achieve physical distancing goals. (shrink)

Non-commuting quantities and hidden parameters – Wave-corpuscular dualism and hidden parameters – Local or nonlocal hidden parameters – Phase space in quantum mechanics – Weyl, Wigner, and Moyal – Von Neumann’s theorem about the absence of hidden parameters in quantum mechanics and Hermann – Bell’s objection – Quantum-mechanical and mathematical incommeasurability – Kochen – Specker’s idea about their equivalence – The notion of partial algebra – Embeddability of a qubit into a bit – Quantum computer is not Turing machine – (...) Is continuality universal? – Diffeomorphism and velocity – Einstein’s general principle of relativity – „Mach’s principle“ – The Skolemian relativity of the discrete and the continuous – The counterexample in § 6 of their paper – About the classical tautology which is untrue being replaced by the statements about commeasurable quantum-mechanical quantities – Logical hidden parameters – The undecidability of the hypothesis about hidden parameters – Wigner’s work and и Weyl’s previous one – Lie groups, representations, and psi-function – From a qualitative to a quantitative expression of relativity − psi-function, or the discrete by the random – Bartlett’s approach − psi-function as the characteristic function of random quantity – Discrete and/ or continual description – Quantity and its “digitalized projection“ – The idea of „velocity−probability“ – The notion of probability and the light speed postulate – Generalized probability and its physical interpretation – A quantum description of macro-world – The period of the as-sociated de Broglie wave and the length of now – Causality equivalently replaced by chance – The philosophy of quantum information and religion – Einstein’s thesis about “the consubstantiality of inertia ant weight“ – Again about the interpretation of complex velocity – The speed of time – Newton’s law of inertia and Lagrange’s formulation of mechanics – Force and effect – The theory of tachyons and general relativity – Riesz’s representation theorem – The notion of covariant world line – Encoding a world line by psi-function – Spacetime and qubit − psi-function by qubits – About the physical interpretation of both the complex axes of a qubit – The interpretation of the self-adjoint operators components – The world line of an arbitrary quantity – The invariance of the physical laws towards quantum object and apparatus – Hilbert space and that of Minkowski – The relationship between the coefficients of -function and the qubits – World line = psi-function + self-adjoint operator – Reality and description – Does a „curved“ Hilbert space exist? – The axiom of choice, or when is possible a flattening of Hilbert space? – But why not to flatten also pseudo-Riemannian space? – The commutator of conjugate quantities – Relative mass – The strokes of self-movement and its philosophical interpretation – The self-perfection of the universe – The generalization of quantity in quantum physics – An analogy of the Feynman formalism – Feynman and many-world interpretation – The psi-function of various objects – Countable and uncountable basis – Generalized continuum and arithmetization – Field and entanglement – Function as coding – The idea of „curved“ Descartes product – The environment of a function – Another view to the notion of velocity-probability – Reality and description – Hilbert space as a model both of object and description – The notion of holistic logic – Physical quantity as the information about it – Cross-temporal correlations – The forecasting of future – Description in separable and inseparable Hilbert space – „Forces“ or „miracles“ – Velocity or time – The notion of non-finite set – Dasein or Dazeit – The trajectory of the whole – Ontological and onto-theological difference – An analogy of the Feynman and many-world interpretation − psi-function as physical quantity – Things in the world and instances in time – The generation of the physi-cal by mathematical – The generalized notion of observer – Subjective or objective probability – Energy as the change of probability per the unite of time – The generalized principle of least action from a new view-point – The exception of two dimensions and Fermat’s last theorem. (shrink)

The latest Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has itself created a novel situation—bringing attention to the topic of healthcare rationing among hospitalized pediatric patients. This may be the first time that many pediatricians, nurses, parents, and public health officials have been compelled to engage in uncomfortable discussions about the allocation of medical care/resources. Simply put, finite budgets, resources, and a dwindling healthcare workforce do not permit all patients to receive unlimited medical care. Triage and bedside rationing decisions are happening (...) in a range of difficult everyday circumstances both implicitly and explicitly, but in ways not recognized by even the best ethically framed intentions. Clinicians and hospital administrators have largely been left on their own “to flatten the rationing curve” in hopes that resources never have to be explicitly rationed at their facility. Unfortunately, the downstream result is a misinformed and distrustful public (i.e. parents, guardians, and caregivers) filled with people who are already burdened with inflammatory pseudoscience narratives and deficits in health literacy. This paper aims to elevate a more thoughtful conversation about healthcare rationing by analyzing some existing ethical principles/framework developed for rationing decision making during previous emergency responses and drawing from the day-to-day clinical perspectives of a frontline pediatric acute care/hospitalist. (shrink)

This study aims at identifying the tools necessary for COVID-19 health emergency management, with particular reference to the period following the first lockdown, a crucial phase in which it was important to favor the maintenance of protective behaviors. It also aims at identifying the messages and sources that were most effective in managing communication correctly in such a crucial phase that is likely characterized by a fall in perceived health risk (due to the flattening of the epidemic curve) and (...) a simultaneous rise in perceived economic and social risks (due to the enduring calamity). Knowing what source will be most effective to convey a specific message is fundamental in enabling individuals to focus on and comply with the rules. At the same time, it is necessary to understand how the message should be presented, and the relationships between messages, sources and targets. To meet these goals, data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire submitted to a sample of undergraduate students from a University in Lombardy–the region most affected by the pandemic in the first wave- (Study 1), and to a national sample composed of Italian citizens (Study 2). Through our first manipulation which explored the effectiveness of social norms in relation to different sources, we found that, in the national sample, the injunctive norm conveyed by the government was the most effective in promoting behavioral intentions. By contrast, among the students, results showed that for the critical group with a lower risk perception (less inclined to adopt prevention behavior) descriptive norms, which implicitly convey the risk perception of peers, were as effective as the government injunctive norm. Our second manipulation, identical in Study 1 and 2, compared four types of communication (emotional, exponential growth, both of them, or neutral). The neutral condition was the most memorable, but no condition was more effective than the others. Across all message types there was a high intention to adopt protective behaviors. The results indicate possible applicative implications of the adopted communicative tools. (shrink)

At the time of writing the COVID-19 pandemic was entering its ninth month, with nearly 800 000 recorded fatalities and 22 million infections in 188 countries and territories.1 In previous ethics briefings2 we raised concerns about the possibility that demand for life-sustaining treatment would overwhelm supply, with a consequent requirement for health professionals to make challenging triage decisions. Fortunately, to date, these have largely not been realised, although there is a possibility that countries in which containment measures have been less-successful, (...) such as South Africa, may still be required to triage.3 Despite the successful ‘flattening of the curve’ in many countries, there is a wide consensus that we remain firmly within the pandemic. Enormous practical challenges remain. It is unclear whether the pandemic will ultimately take the form of two or more successive waves, or whether the patchwork of global responses will lead to a sustained slow ‘burn’ with sporadic flare-ups.4 Areas of uncertainty include whether infection confers some immunity, how long any such immunity might last, whether effective vaccines can be developed and if seasonal temperature fluctuations alter the spread of the virus. The pandemic will also be fundamentally shaped by the decisions that governments make and the extent to which their diktats are complied with by citizens. With the – possibly temporary – retreat of urgent clinical ethics issues, such as triage, opportunities have arisen to reflect on some of the ethical questions that underlie and structure the demanding policy decisions that governments are wrestling with. One of the early questions was how to balance the complex constellation of costs and benefits associated with lockdown. Countries that …. (shrink)

In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity and goodness-of-fit pull in opposite directions. To solve this problem, two proposals, the first one based on Bayes's theorem criterion (BTC) and the second one advocated by Forster and Sober based on Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) are discussed. We show that AIC, which is frequentist in spirit, is logically equivalent to BTC, provided that a suitable choice of priors is made. We evaluate the charges against Bayesianism and contend that AIC (...) approach has shortcomings. We also discuss the relationship between Schwarz's Bayesian Information Criterion and BTC. (shrink)

In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity and goodness-of-fit, pull in opposite directions. To this problem, we propose a solution that strikes a balance between simplicity and goodness-of-fit. Using Bayes’ theorem we argue that the notion of prior probability represents a measurement of simplicity of a theory, whereas the notion of likelihood represents the theory’s goodness-of-fit. We justify the use of prior probability and show how to calculate the likelihood of a family of curves. We diagnose the (...) relationship between simplicity of a theory and its predictive accuracy. (shrink)

In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity and goodness-of-fit, pull in opposite directions. To this problem, we propose a solution that strikes a balance between simplicity and goodness-of-fit. Using Bayes' theorem we argue that the notion of prior probability represents a measurement of simplicity of a theory, whereas the notion of likelihood represents the theory's goodness-of-fit. We justify the use of prior probability and show how to calculate the likelihood of a family of curves. We diagnose the (...) relationship between simplicity of a theory and its predictive accuracy. (shrink)

In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity and goodness-of-fit, pull in opposite directions. To this problem, we propose a solution that strikes a balance between simplicity and goodness-of-fit. Using Bayes' theorem we argue that the notion of prior probability represents a measurement of simplicity of a theory, whereas the notion of likelihood represents the theory's goodness-of-fit. We justify the use of prior probability and show how to calculate the likelihood of a family of curves. We diagnose the (...) relationship between simplicity of a theory and its predictive accuracy. (shrink)

Much of scientific inference involves fitting numerical data with a curve, or functional relation. The received view is that the fittest curve is the curve which best balances the conflicting demands of simplicity and accuracy, where simplicity is measured by the number ofparameters in the curve. The problem with this view is that there is no commonly accepted justification for desiring simplicity.This paper presents a measure of the stability of equations. It is argued that the fittest (...) curve is the curve which best balances stability and accuracy. The received view is defended with a proof that simplicity corresponds to stability, for linear regression equations. (shrink)

Much of scientific inference involves fitting numerical data with a curve, or functional relation. The received view is that the fittest curve is the curve which best balances the conflicting demands of simplicity and accuracy, where simplicity is measured by the number ofparameters in the curve. The problem with this view is that there is no commonly accepted justification for desiring simplicity. This paper presents a measure of the stability of equations. It is argued that the (...) fittest curve is the curve which best balances stability and accuracy. The received view is defended with a proof that simplicity corresponds to stability, for linear regression equations. 1This paper is based on part of my doctoral dissertation. My thanks go to my thesis supervisor Professor Alasdair Urquhart for his encouragement, constructive criticism, and for directing me to several relevant articles: to my advisor Professor Ian Hacking for reminding me to concentrate on results that might have some application in the real world; and to my friend Wendy Brandts for sharing her ideas on a closely related problem. My thanks also to an anonymous referee of The British Journal of the Philosophy of Science for several helpful comments, to my friends and family for unfailing support, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (awards 452-86-5885 and 453-87-0513) and the University of Toronto for financial assistance. (shrink)

Model simplicity in curve fitting is the fewness of parameters estimated. I use a vector model of least squares estimation to show that degrees of freedom, the difference between the number of observed parameters fit by the model and the number of explanatory parameters estimated, are the number of potential dimensions in which data are free to differ from a model and indicate the disconfirmability of the model. Though often thought to control for parameter estimation, the AIC and similar (...) indices do not do so for all model applications, while goodness of fit indices like chi-square, which explicitly take into account degrees of freedom, do. Hypothesis testing with prespecified values for parameters is based on a metaphoric regulative subject/object schema taken from object perception and has as its goal the accumulation of objective knowledge. (shrink)

Organizational corruption is a wide-spread negative aspect of economic activity, and a seemingly never-ending series of corruption scandals has been made public around the globe. Although research is performed in a broad variety of disciplines, ranging from psychology to management to law, a fully satisfactory explanation for the causes of organizational corruption has not been found. By looking at organizational factors as potential triggers for corruptive behavior, this study draws upon the concept of entrepreneurial orientation. Diverse studies have shown that (...) EO, as an antecedent to company performance, has a positive effect. Recent EO literature, however, indicates that EO has not only positive but also negative consequences. In this line of reasoning, this study builds upon principal agent theory and makes a first step in exploring the impact of EO on a negative aspect of business behavior, namely organizational corruption. We gathered survey data and publicly available data from 411 firms, inquiring for both acts of corruption from within the top management team over the last 3 years and the level of entrepreneurial orientation within the organization. Results show diverging effects along the individual dimensions of EO; they point to risk orientation as the dark side of EO, as it significantly increases the likelihood of corrupt behavior in companies. In contrast, innovation orientation, to a certain extent, counterbalances by reducing the likelihood of corrupt behavior. (shrink)

Forster and Sober present a solution to the curve-fitting problem based on Akaike's Theorem. Their analysis shows that the curve with the best epistemic credentials need not always be the curve that most closely fits the data. However, their solution does not, without further argument, avoid the two difficulties that are traditionally associated with the curve-fitting problem: that there are infinitely many equally good candidate-curves relative to any given set of data, and that these best candidates (...) include curves with indefinitely many bumps. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Forster and Sober's [1994] solution to the curve-fitting problem. If their solution is correct, it will provide us with a solution to the New Riddle of Induction as well as provide a basis for choosing realism over conventionalism. Examining this solution is also important as Forster and Sober incorporate it in much of their other philosophical work (see Forster [1995a, b, 1994] and Sober [1996, 1995, 1993]). I argue that Forster and Sober's solution (...) is subject precisely to the problem they seek to solve. They provide a method of choosing among hypotheses but only at the cost of requiring that we have a method of choosing between different ways of conceptualizing the world. Thus the solution raises a new problem--the world-fitting problem. (shrink)

This response to Evanset alencourages broader consideration of what constitutes disability, extending beyond a protagonist’s capabilities toward society’s fuller chorus. Three avenues are submitted to encourage this. First, Engel’s biopsychosocial paradigm of health can be helpfully applied to the question of identity in general, and disability in particular. Second, the philosophy of language (and of naming) gives useful insight into the pitfalls of trying to define disability via descriptions of capability. Third, Kennedy’s critique ‘Unmasking Medicine’ offers a sociopolitical view that (...) builds on Foucault and Illich allowing us to recognise that it matters who judges who, as disabled, and on what grounds. Alongside this, I suggest alternative views first, on the authors’ liberal use of bell curves in the depiction of disability and second, on their terminology of capacity spaces. (shrink)

This response to Kariyawasam and Rai affirms their critique of the pathologization of trans youth but forecasts a foreseeable negative outcome of their proposed elimination of diagnosis as a prerequisite to gender-affirming care (GAC) — the risk of removing GAC entirely from the medical sphere and compromising the wellbeing of those transgender individuals for whom GAC is deeply affirming. We suggest an ethical framework of GAC that expands past a focus on autonomy to incorporate a principle of respect for persons (...) that affirms the dignity and diversity of trans youth — recognizing the need to facilitate both medical assistance and social change. (shrink)

In this essay, it is argued that naturalism of an even moderate sort speaks strongly against a certain widely held thesis about the human mental (and cognitive) architecture: that it is divided into two distinct levels, the personal and the subpersonal, about the former of which we gain knowledge in a manner that effectively insulates such knowledge from the results of scientific research. -/- An empirically motivated alternative is proposed, according to which the architecture is, so to speak, flattened from (...) above. On this flattened view, although the states and processes typically associated with the personal level likely appear in our best models of the production of human behavior, they appear alongside states and processes normally associated with the subpersonal level. Moreover, the success of such models depends nowise on a levels-based distinction between the various causal contributors. It is argued that the flattened view has methodological implications of significant import. (shrink)

In Kate Bush’s 1993 album, The Red Shoes, and her film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, she engages with the symbolism of The Red Shoes fairytale as first depicted in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 fairy tale and later developed by the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name. In Bush’s versions of the tale she attempts to find a space of agency for the main female protagonist in a plot structure over-determined by patriarchal narrative and symbolic (...) logic. I will argue that it is through her own use of mystical symbolism — the Line, the Cross and the Curve — mediated through the deployment of ritual magick and kabbalistic ritual — that she breaks the ‘spell’ of the red shoes story where the main female character can escape the gender specific ‘curse’ of the red shoes. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to revisit the curve fitting problem using the reliability of inductive inference as a primary criterion for the ‘fittest' curve. Viewed from this perspective, it is argued that a crucial concern with the current framework for addressing the curve fitting problem is, on the one hand, the undue influence of the mathematical approximation perspective, and on the other, the insufficient attention paid to the statistical modeling aspects of the problem. Using (...) goodness-of-fit as the primary criterion for ‘best', the mathematical approximation perspective undermines the reliability of inference objective by giving rise to selection rules which pay insufficient attention to ‘accounting for the regularities in the data'. A more appropriate framework is offered by the error-statistical approach, where (i) statistical adequacy provides the criterion for assessing when a curve captures the regularities in the data adequately, and (ii) the relevant error probabilities can be used to assess the reliability of inductive inference. Broadly speaking, the fittest curve (statistically adequate) is not determined by the smallness if its residuals, tempered by simplicity or other pragmatic criteria, but by the nonsystematic (e.g. white noise) nature of its residuals. The advocated error-statistical arguments are illustrated by comparing the Kepler and Ptolemaic models on empirical grounds. ‡I am grateful to Deborah Mayo and Clark Glymour for many valuable suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of the paper; estimating the Ptolemaic model was the result of Glymour's prompting and encouragement. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Economics, Virginia Tech 3019 Pamplin Hall (0316), Blacksburg, VA 24061; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Violence is a known risk factor for health problems. In this epidemiological study across 5,385 male patients, we investigate the prevalence of perpetrated violence, exposure to violence, their overlap and the relationship between violence, mental, and psychosomatic health, as well as adverse health behaviors, such as self-harming behavior and the consumption of drugs. Participants completed an anonymous questionnaire addressing violence experience, age of victimization/perpetration, frequency, and perceived severity of violence exposure. We considered physical, psychological as well as sexual violence. Information (...) on health status and adverse health behaviors complemented the data. Results showed that 48.4% of the sample reported having experienced violence. The victim-perpetrator overlap formed the largest group, in which the incidence of having experienced multiple types of violence was significantly higher compared to victims and perpetrators. The age-crime curve flattened more slowly with increasing age in this group. Although the perceived severity of exposure to violence is lower in the overlap group, its health status and adverse health behaviors were worse. Interventions should focus on this group since they constitute a burden for the healthcare system. (shrink)

Beyond the Learning Curve reviews and considers the psychology of skill acquisition. In so doing the authors propose a whole new theory of mental function - demonstrating that the mind is subject to the same natural laws as the physical world. Accessibly written, 'Beyond the learning curve' is a thought provoking and challenging new text for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences.

I argue that Kravchenko over-estimates the extent of the dominance of the traditional approach that the author criticizes, while under-estimating the continuing influence of different approaches in the history of language sciences. Karl Bühler’s Sprachtheorie is taken as a key example, and current developments drawing on 4E theories of cognition and niche-construction theory are outlined.

Many of today’s most disruptive challenges are the result of rare yet highly impactful events. Their characteristics are largely at odds with prevailing management research paradigms, thus stymieing efforts toward societally relevant guidance. New approaches are needed to ensure sustainable businesses and societies.