Search Results

Likelihood Ratios as a Measure of the Diagnostic Usefulness of Excretory Urogram Information

Jie W Weiss and David J Weiss

in A Science of Decision Making: The Legacy of Ward Edwards

This chapter discusses a method for measuring the diagnostic usefulness of the information from a radiologic examination (excretory urography). The log likelihood ratio (LLR) method requires ... More

This chapter discusses a method for measuring the diagnostic usefulness of the information from a radiologic examination (excretory urography). The log likelihood ratio (LLR) method requires collection of referring physicians' diagnoses prior to and after urography, and their certainty in relation to receipt of the radiologic information. Physicians in daily practice are able to provide diagnoses and assign a percentage number to their certainty. The LLR method permits measurement of the diagnostic usefulness of both normal and abnormal urogram results. Retrospective chart review does not provide the same LLR results as those obtained from the prospective study.Less

Conclusion

Robert Rosenthal

in Artifacts in Behavioral Research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow's Classic Books

Theoretical integration, applications in other areas (e.g., teachers’ expectations and their students’ performance), and procedures for dealing with experimenter expectancy effects within this ... More

Theoretical integration, applications in other areas (e.g., teachers’ expectations and their students’ performance), and procedures for dealing with experimenter expectancy effects within this conceptual framework, including the sampling of experimenters, blind and minimized contact between experimenters and subjects, expectancy control groups, and so on.Less

Philosophical Foundations

David B. Resnik

in Playing Politics with Science: Balancing Scientific Independence and Government Oversight

This chapter develops an account of the nature of science. It argues that science is useful (and valuable) because it is generally reliable and because it aspires to the goal of objectivity; it also ... More

This chapter develops an account of the nature of science. It argues that science is useful (and valuable) because it is generally reliable and because it aspires to the goal of objectivity; it also explains why science is generally reliable and why it is important for scientists to strive for objectivity. The chapter discusses some limitations on scientific objectivity and describes science's epistemological and ethical methods. Science's methods hold the key to the value of science because methodology promotes reliability and objectivity. One implication of this view is that social, political, economic, or other circumstances that interfere with the practice and methods of science can undermine the usefulness of science.Less

The Limitations of Financial Reporting

Wolfgang Ballwieser

in The Economics and Politics of Accounting: International Perspectives on Trends, Policy, and Practice

After a general introduction (Section 1), Section 2 discusses the objectives of financial reporting with respect to information. It explains the concept of decision usefulness by looking first at the ... More

After a general introduction (Section 1), Section 2 discusses the objectives of financial reporting with respect to information. It explains the concept of decision usefulness by looking first at the individual decision-model, and then at the measurement of economic wealth or income using financial statements. Section 3 briefly examines some of the attempts that have been made to test decision usefulness empirically, and gives an overview of some of the results. Section 3 is the conclusion.Less

Getting findings into policy

Carol Tannahill

in Evaluating Health Promotion: Practice and Methods

One criterion against which to measure the success of an evaluation is whether it is of use. This chapter focuses on the usefulness of findings for policy-makers. It starts by looking briefly at the ... More

One criterion against which to measure the success of an evaluation is whether it is of use. This chapter focuses on the usefulness of findings for policy-makers. It starts by looking briefly at the concept of evidence-based policy-making and then reviews some of the ways in which policy might be influenced by research ideas and findings, illustrating these processes with an example from Scotland.Less

The experience of HIA in Wales

John Kemm, Jayne Parry, and Stephen Palmer

in Health Impact Assessment

The development of health impact assessment (HIA) in Wales has taken place within a context of significant constitutional change and a new approach to policy making. This has provided opportunities ... More

The development of health impact assessment (HIA) in Wales has taken place within a context of significant constitutional change and a new approach to policy making. This has provided opportunities to explore the usefulness of HIA and to identify the practical issues around its application. This chapter describes the Welsh Assembly Government's work to develop the use of HIA. It highlights issues that are relevant to its use in policy making by government and by other organizations both nationally and locally.Less

Useful members of society or motiveless malingerers? Occupation and malingering in British asylum psychiatry, 1870–1914

Sarah Chaney

in Work, Psychiatry and Society, C. 1750-2015

This chapter explores the value placed on occupation as a measure of individual worth at the turn of the twentieth century. Within the asylum, providing residents with daily tasks was designed to ... More

This chapter explores the value placed on occupation as a measure of individual worth at the turn of the twentieth century. Within the asylum, providing residents with daily tasks was designed to counter introspection, while aiding the economic functioning of the institution with free labour. Yet this model also aimed to create ‘useful members of society’. This chapter argues that we can only understand Victorian and Edwardian models of work-based therapy in relation to workmen’s compensation and the threat of so-called malingering and outside the asylum.Less

Test It for Yourself

Eric Arbiter

in The Way of Cane: The Science, Craft, and Art of Bassoon Reed Making

Balancing learned information with proving or disproving its usefulness for ourselves.

Chapati Bodies: In Which Weakness, Not Maladjustment, Anchors The Body in Time

Lawrence Cohen

in No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things

This chapter examines the views of Nagwa residents, weakness as a structure, Muslims and other saints, the sound of dying, and the position of repose. Weakness is central to local experience and ... More

This chapter examines the views of Nagwa residents, weakness as a structure, Muslims and other saints, the sound of dying, and the position of repose. Weakness is central to local experience and ideology in Nagwa. The figure of the decrepit old man played by Ramji is as central to Nagwa ideology as it is to Brahmanical and Buddhist thought. In Ramji's depiction, the old man's weakness symbolizes both the perversion and ultimate failure of elite desire, its object here the young woman. In the histories of the families discussed here, two transitions marked shifts in the perception of the old person's voice and weakness: the loss of authority and the loss of usefulness.Less

The ‘Middle’ Wittgenstein (and the ‘Later’ Ramsey) on the Pragmatist Conception of Truth

Anna Boncompagni

in The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century

This chapter examines some remarks Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed on pragmatism in manuscripts and lectures during the first half of the 1930s. These remarks focus principally on the Jamesian ... More

This chapter examines some remarks Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed on pragmatism in manuscripts and lectures during the first half of the 1930s. These remarks focus principally on the Jamesian conception of truth, according to which, roughly, a belief or a proposition is true if it is useful. Wittgenstein acknowledges that this conception is able to capture some characters of ordinary language, but at the same time, he criticizes some aspects of it, and his criticism strongly resembles Frank Ramsey’s attitude towards the same topics. In this sense, it is argued that Ramsey had a role both for Wittgenstein approaching pragmatism, and for the partly negative attitude with which he came to judge it. Yet, the two thinkers’ general perspectives diverge when it comes to the place of theory in philosophical activity.Less

The Usefulness of a Plausible God

Mitchell Silver

in A Plausible God: Secular Reflections on Liberal Jewish Theology

This chapter examines the theologians' credible God's candidacy for belief by the standard of usefulness. It introduces a baseline God of the theologians, the God that ... More

This chapter examines the theologians' credible God's candidacy for belief by the standard of usefulness. It introduces a baseline God of the theologians, the God that will be tested for utility. In addition to the theologians' God and its variants, the chapter also provides a conception of a “traditional” God. When appraising the theologians' God's utility, the utility of the traditional God is a key standard to bring to bear. The chapter claims that as the creator of morality, God has failed to satisfy the scrupulous for thousands of years. The price of making God the creator of morality is that God stops being morally good. The old God was in a better logical position to be the teacher of morality than she was to be the creator of morality.Less

Drawing Threads Together

Andrew Steane

in Science and Humanity: A Humane Philosophy of Science and Religion

This continues the theme opened up by the previous chapter, by showing how religious experience operates and how it informs human life. This includes the experience of mercy invoked by music, for ... More

This continues the theme opened up by the previous chapter, by showing how religious experience operates and how it informs human life. This includes the experience of mercy invoked by music, for example, and the notion that we are fundamentally called into a loving relationship, and given a role to play. This is not about providing further components to scientific explanations, but it does encourage us to do science.Less

Towards a rational theory of human information acquisition

Jonathan D. Nelson

in The Probabilistic Mind:: Prospects for Bayesian cognitive science

This chapter considers the crucial question of the usefulness of data, with respect to a set of hypotheses under consideration. Some data are clearly irrelevant to the hypotheses of concern; some ... More

This chapter considers the crucial question of the usefulness of data, with respect to a set of hypotheses under consideration. Some data are clearly irrelevant to the hypotheses of concern; some decisively favour one hypothesis or another. But, in general, data modifies the probability of the hypotheses, but to a modest degree. Only with a measure of the usefulness of data is it possible to formulate a theory of which experiments should be carried out, or which observations should be made. It provides a thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a range of measures of evidential usefulness, drawn from a variety of fields of cognitive science.Less

Use, the Useful, and Public Utility: A Theory of Musical Value

Jann Pasler

in Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France

This chapter is concerned with the concept of usefulness. It tries to determine why this concept is still deeply meaningful in France, and examines the “useful” in music. It studies the tensions that ... More

This chapter is concerned with the concept of usefulness. It tries to determine why this concept is still deeply meaningful in France, and examines the “useful” in music. It studies the tensions that exist between the beautiful and the useful, along with the factors that kept the notion of utility viable, especially in the arts. Finally, the chapter discusses the concept of public utility and its power, and shows how music can be considered as a public utility.Less

On the inconvenient means and ends of participation

Sruti Bala

in The gestures of participatory art

Chapter II addresses the relationship between participatory art and the concept of ‘impact’. It investigates the assumptions around impact, as well as the methodological challenges of thinking the ... More

Chapter II addresses the relationship between participatory art and the concept of ‘impact’. It investigates the assumptions around impact, as well as the methodological challenges of thinking the impact of a work of art. Using the 2012 Spanish language production Afuera: lesbianas en escena (Outside: Lesbians on Stage) by the theatre collective Teatro Siluetas from Guatemala and El Salvador as a point of departure, the chapter reflects on the assessment of impact in relation to the question of participation. It critically engages with the field of evidence-led impact studies in the arts. It situates the debate on the usefulness or non-utility of participatory art in relation to social science scholarship pertaining to the ascendancy of ‘participation’ in the context of international development. It suggests that it is worthwhile extending the kinds of activities considered as relevant to a participatory aesthetic, to thus not only analyse performances as distinct works, but to place them in a longer-term aesthetic continuum with workshops, rehearsals, after-talks, meetings with the artists, and other para-theatrical events. The chapter grapples with the question of how to discuss impact in relation to participatory art without it being mortgaged into a matter of quantifiable impact alone.Less

Teaching in the UK

David Ellis

in Memoirs of a Leavisite: The Decline and Fall of Cambridge English

This is a description of Ellis's experiences as a teacher of literature at Kent and the way that changes in university organisation (devolved budgets, larger numbers), and in society as a whole (the ... More

This is a description of Ellis's experiences as a teacher of literature at Kent and the way that changes in university organisation (devolved budgets, larger numbers), and in society as a whole (the decline of literary culture), made Leavisian principles difficult to maintain. Yet if literary criticism was not at the heart of the subject, what was± Hard also to maintain was belief in the general social usefulness of reading great books, although one had to believe that it was a rewarding and enrichening experience for individuals in order to carry on teaching at all. The danger for the Leavisite was in thinking of the literary past in the same spirit as members of the society for the preservation of old buildings when, as T. S. Eliot had pointed out, it was always subtly changing in response to the most important new writing in the present.Less

The Illusory Benefits of Moral Responsibility

Bruce N. Waller

in Against Moral Responsibility

This chapter discusses how advocates of moral responsibility usually resort to practical usefulness when arguing for or investigating about moral responsibility. This dependence on practical ... More

This chapter discusses how advocates of moral responsibility usually resort to practical usefulness when arguing for or investigating about moral responsibility. This dependence on practical usefulness entails a system of moral responsibility that is maintained simply because it works. J. J. C. Smart offers the clearest account of this pragmatic justification of moral responsibility and the concept of reward and punishment. According to him, the system of reward and punishment does not work very well, but it works, and it is better than nothing. However, this chapter aims to demonstrate that this system is often more harmful than beneficial, it blocks better policies and deeper understanding, and—its benefits and detriments aside—it is fundamentally unfair.Less

William Cowper’s Gypsies

Sarah Houghton-Walker

in Representations of the Gypsy in the Romantic Period

Chapter 3 begins the author-centred section of the book by examining William Cowper’s description of a group of gypsies in The Task (1783). It argues that Cowper’s lines reflect a burst of critical ... More

Chapter 3 begins the author-centred section of the book by examining William Cowper’s description of a group of gypsies in The Task (1783). It argues that Cowper’s lines reflect a burst of critical interest in gypsies which followed the repeal of the Egyptians Act in the same year, which can be encountered in journals Cowper read, and which is itself a major factor in the way in which gypsies begin to be represented in the Romantic period. It concludes that in Cowper’s vocabulary, and in the anxieties about wandering, idleness, usefulness, and sublimity his lines suggest, we can see the germ of many of the features in which this book as a whole is interested.Less