Ecological Validity of the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29): an Italian Study of Court-Ordered,Psychological Injury Evaluations Using the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) as Criterion Variable

The Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29; Viglione, Giromini, & Landis, Journal of Personality Assessment, 99(5), 534–544, 2017) is a 29-item, recently published, self-administered test aimed at assessing the credibility of various symptom presentations. Although available research strongly supports the use of this symptom validity test in malingering-related contexts, to date, only few studies have analyzed data from real-life forensic evaluations. To fill this gap and explore ecological and convergent validity, the current study analyzed data from 74 court-ordered evaluations aimed at establishing the possible presence of psychological injury. Such evaluations are high-stakes situations in which exaggeration or malingering occur relatively often. We used a research-supported and popular symptom validity test, i.e., the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS; Smith & Burger, Journal of the American Academy on Psychiatry and Law, 25:180–183, 1997), as our criterion variable. The IOP-29 produced excellent area under the curve (AUC) values of .98 with a recommended SIMS total score cutoff (≥ 17) and .99 when eliminating too-close-to-classify cases (Rogers & Bender, 2018) and very large Cohen’s d effect sizes of 2.98 and 3.59, respectively. Crucially, when implementing established cut scores from previous research, the IOP-29 yielded very high specificity and sensitivity rates, and the predictions from the two tests were strikingly similar. Taken together, these findings support the strong convergent validity of the IOP-29 and its utility in applied clinical and forensic settings.     

Silence of the Innocents: Undocumented Immigrants’ Underreporting of Crime and their Victimization

Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.     

Wage labour and capitalism: a comparative and historical analysis of Eritrea and Kenya

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the development of capitalism in Eritrea and Kenya from a labour history perspective. Indeed, the assumption in this research is that capitalism can only be explained by taking into consideration free wage labour as one of the sine qua non conditions for the existence of the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, the article looks at the paradigmatic socio-economic shifts: from unfree to free labour, from free to precarious labour and from unfree to precarious labour. These are the result of the complicated relationship that exists between capital and labour. The point of departure of the analysis is the Nieboer-Domar hypothesis on the structural origins of slavery, which despite severe criticism, it has been largely remained unchallenged until the present. In Eritrea, colonised by Italy, and Kenya, colonised by England, free wage labour fully developed between the nineteenth and twentieth century. This could be considered the era of the advent of capitalism, with the advent, for a fraction of the working population, of labour relations based on wages. The precarisation of life of free wage workers is also partially analysed in this article.     

Arrhythmogenesis and diagnosis of cardiac sarcoidosis. An immunohistochemical study in a sudden cardiac death

We present an uncommon case of sudden cardiac death in a 34-year-old white woman. She was found lifeless at home by her parents. Three months before death she was recovered at the Emergency Room for chest pain, palpitation and loss of consciousness. Subsequent cardiological evaluation with ECG showed sinusal rhythm, QRS deviation to the left, QS aspect, asymmetric and rounded T waves and slight length of QT. During hospitalization she presented some episodes of supraventricular paroxysmal tachycardia and non-sustained ventricular tachycardia. No echocardiography alterations were found. An anti-arrhythmic treatment was prescribed. Autopsy revealed some fibrotic scarring in the myocardium of left ventricle. The histological examination of the heart revealed diffuse and extensive fibrosis with non-caseating sarcoid granulomas. The lungs, kidneys and lymph node also showed the same non-caseating granulomas. The diagnosis of sarcoidosis with massive and extensive cardiac involvement was established as cause of death.     

Age-at-death estimation by pulp/tooth area ratio in canines: study of a 20th-century Mexican sample of prisoners to test Cameriere's method

Accurate age estimation has always been a problem for forensic scientists, and apposition of secondary dentine is often used as an indicator of age. Cameriere et al. studied the pulp/tooth area ratio by peri-apical X-ray images of the canines, to observe the apposition of secondary dentine. The present study examines the application of this technique in a Mexican identified sample coming from the Department of Physical Anthropology of the INAH, at Mexico City. The main aim of this work is to test the reliability of this method in a skeletal sample of a specific population, different from the samples used for its development. The obtained regression model explained 96.2% of total variance (R(2) = 0.962) with a standard error of estimate of 1.909 and a standard deviation of 1.947. These results demonstrate great reliability and that the age/secondary dentine relationship is not variable in this specific population.     

The Positionless Middle Way: Weak Philosophical Deflationism in Madhyamaka

In this paper, I explore the connections between meta-ontological and meta-philosophical issues in two of Nāgārjuna’s primary works, the Mūlamadhyamakārikā and the Vigrahavyāvartanī. I argue for an interpretative framework that places Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka as a meta- and ultimately non-philosophical evaluation of philosophy. The paper’s primary argument is that an interpretative framework which makes explicit the meta-ontological and meta-philosophical links in Nāgārjuna’s thought is both viable and informative. Following Nāgārjuna, I start my analysis by looking at the positions that exist within the ontological debate and show that the Mādhyamika should be understood as an ontological deflationist who aims to discredit ontological questions altogether. I argue, however, that the Mādhyamika does not wish to engage in meta-ontological debates either and that Nāgārjuna’s ontological deflationist arguments necessarily lead to a position of philosophical deflationism: the rejection of all philosophical and meta-philosophical debates. Further on, I provide a sketch of denegation, the language operator in Madhyamaka that allows Nāgārjuna to make seemingly philosophical claims while not having the commitments that traditional philosophical claims do. I conclude with a defense of my interpretation of Madhyamaka as weak philosophical deflationism compared to other deflationist construals, an explicit discussion of the ways in which my understanding differs from contemporary western interpretations that prima facie resemble weak philosophical deflationism, and an identification of weak philosophical deflationism with dequitism, a variant of quetism.