Metric forensic anthropology decisions: Reliability and biasability of sectioning-point-based sex estimates

Subjective decisions make human cognitive processes more susceptible to bias and error. Specifically, research indicates that additional context biases forensic anthropologists’ morphological analyses. To address whether metric analyses are also subject to bias, we conducted a pilot study in which 52 experienced osteologists measured a difficult-to-classify human femur, with or without additional contextual information. Using a metric sectioning-point sex-estimation method, participants provided a sex estimate for individual skeletal element(s) and, when given multiple elements, the combined skeletal assemblage. Control group participants (n = 24) measured only the femur. In addition to the femur, bias group participants (n = 28) either measured a female humerus and viewed a female-biasing photograph (n = 14) or measured a male humerus and viewed a male-biasing photograph (n = 14). We explored whether the experts in the different groups would differ in: (1) femoral measurements; (2) femoral sex-estimation conclusions; and (3) final sex-estimation conclusions for the skeletal assemblage. Although the femoral measurements and femoral sex estimates were comparable across groups, the overall sex estimates in the female-biased group were impacted by contextual information—differing from both the control and male-biased groups (p < 0.001). Our results demonstrate that cognitive bias can occur even in metric sex-estimation conclusions. Specifically, this occurred when the metric data and single-element sex estimates were synthesized into an overall estimate. Thus, our results suggest that metric methods are most vulnerable to bias when data are synthesized into an overall conclusion, highlighting the need for bias countermeasures and comprehensive statistical frameworks for synthesizing metric data to mitigate the effects of cognitive bias.     

The Error in “Error Rate”: Why Error Rates Are So Needed,Yet So Elusive

Establishing error rates is crucial for knowing how well one is performing, determining whether improvement is needed, measuring whether interventions are effective, as well as for providing transparency. However, the flurry of activities in establishing error rates for the forensic sciences has largely overlooked some fundamental issues that make error rates a problematic construct and limit the ability to obtain a meaningful error rate. These include knowing the ground truth, establishing appropriate databases, determining what counts as an error, characterizing what is an acceptable error rate, ecological validity, and transparency within the adversarial legal system. Without addressing these practical and theoretical challenges, the very notion of a meaningful error rate is limited.     

Fingerprint error rate on close non‐matches

The accuracy of fingerprint identifications is critically important to the administration of criminal justice. Accuracy is challenging when two prints from different sources have many common features and few dissimilar features. Such print pairs, known as close non‐matches (CNMs), are increasingly likely to arise as ever‐growing databases are searched with greater frequency. In this study, 125 fingerprint agencies completed a mandatory proficiency test that included two pairs of CNMs. The false‐positive error rates on the two CNMs were 15.9% (17 out of 107, 95% C.I.: 9.5%, 24.2%) and 28.1% (27 out of 96, 95% C.I.: 19.4%, 38.2%), respectively. These CNM error rates are (a) inconsistent with the popular notion that fingerprint evidence is nearly infallible, and (b) larger than error rates reported in leading fingerprint studies. We conclude that, when the risk of CNMs is high, the probative value of a reported fingerprint identification may be severely diminished due to an elevated false‐positive error risk. We call for additional CNM research, including a replication and expansion of the present study using a representative selection of CNMs from database searches.     

京津冀协同发展背景下的政策协同评估研究——基于省级“十三五”专项规划文本的分析

从国家层面提出的京津冀协同发展战略,对于推动京津冀一体化,打造以创新为特征的世界级城市群具有重要指导意义。在此背景下,实现区域协同目标,需要率先发挥政策的先导作用。为了保障政策制定的绩效水平,对京津冀三地的政策协同状况进行评估具有重要意义。根据政策协同理论的相关内容,借鉴日趋成熟的政策分析模型,融合文本分析的量化研究方法,构建了基于纵向维度和横向维度的政策协同分析框架,同时运用政策协同量化标准对北京、天津、河北三地的省级"十三五"专项规划进行了指标评分和数据分析,得出了有关京津冀地区政策协同状况的研究发现。     

Confidence in an election authority and satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment of a failed election in Sweden

Contemporary research on electoral integrity has focused on the functioning, evaluation, and legitimacy of electoral processes in emerging democracies. By contrast, this study investigates whether a failed election in a well-established democracy can affect individuals' evaluations of the electoral management body, the Election Authority, and whether those evaluations affect satisfaction with democracy. Using the case of a Swedish regional election in 2010 that had to be rerun due to procedural mistakes in the vote handling, we found that, in the short term, individuals’ confidence in the Election Authority was reduced after it was announced that the election had to be rerun because of the mistakes. Subsequently, this decreased confidence was strongly associated with less satisfaction with democracy at the regional and national level. As good news for the authority, after a successful rerun election, confidence rebounded to the levels prior to the failed election.     

Rethinking measures of democracy and welfare state universalism: Lessons from subnational research

ABSTRACT

Democracy and the welfare state are two of the most extensively studied concepts and themes in the field of comparative politics. Debate about how to best measure the two concepts has failed to contemplate the extent to which political and social rights are uniformly present across distinct regions of the national territory, despite the presence of substantial subnational research that underscores wide variation inside countries. We argue that this omission hampers our understanding of the two phenomena and we propose a new measure of democracy and healthcare universalism, which we call the Adjusted Measures of Democracy and Welfare Universalism. The new measures integrate territorial inequality into existing national-level indicators, providing a more accurate picture of country performance and opening the door to new, multi-level theory building.     

北京青年发展状况调查报告

为推动北京青少年工作的创新发展,全面深入跟踪研究北京青少年的发展动态,对北京青年群体开展了大规模的青年发展状况调研活动。调查涉及个人需求、社会需求、"十二五"与青年等多个层面,个人需求涉及到知识文化诉求、高质量高层次的闲暇生活、择业取向;社会需求涉及到社会组织认可、政治民主评价、媒体导向、理想信仰、社会和谐、社会保障、择偶观等。根据调查数据及分析,文化需求成为青少年发展不可规避的主要问题,在"十二五"期间,对于作为时代先锐和中坚力量的青少年,应对其各种需求深入了解,并切实提出一些具有借鉴意义的政策措施。     

论“本质错误”——以罗马法为中心

在罗马法中,本质错误与身份错误、行为性质的错误、标的物错误并称为使行为无效的四种实质性错误。本质错误与材料错误相关又不等同于材料错误。本质错误的内涵见于D.18,1,9,2中的"醋为酒卖"案,是在社会经济功能影响下的标的物之内在特性发生错误。本质错误的外延见于"古杯"案及D.18,1,11、D.18,1,14等文本,涵涉了大部分的材料错误和性别错误,并可以作为一种兜底条款适用于那些对诸如艺术品价值、作者发生错误的情形。本质错误在近代演化为法国法的"实质错误"、意大利法的"本质上的错误"、瑞士法的"重大错误"、德国法和我国台湾地区法的"性质错误",在赋予法官自由裁量权的功能上,它们和中国大陆民法的错误制度殊途同归。     

美中贸易协调性的实证分析:垂直专业化视角

基于2005～2012年的月度数据进行实证分析,协整检验结果表明,美国对华出口与从中国进口存在长期稳定的协整关系。从误差修正模型看,短期内美国对华出口与从中国进口之间存在动态调整机制。根据格兰杰因果关系检验,在滞后6期内,美国对华出口与从中国进口之间只存在单向的因果关系,美国对华出口是美国从中国进口的格兰杰原因,美国对华出口增长是美国从中国进口增长的决定因素。脉冲响应函数分析表明,美国对华出口的某一冲击会给美国从中国进口增长带来同向冲击。这些实证结果表明垂直专业化分工在驱动着美中贸易,政府在制定平衡美中贸易的政策时,不应忽视垂直专业化分工以及市场对维持美中双边贸易均衡的约束机制。     

经济犯罪刑事治理模式研究

经济犯罪是犯罪领域中的一种特殊历史现象,在经济全球化的影响下,经济犯罪已成为刑事立法的重心。在法制发达的国家,把经济犯罪作为一种轻罪,并在刑事诉讼中设置了特别程序和措施。我国治理经济犯罪起步较晚,无论在实体法还是程序法上均有缺陷。借鉴域外治理经济犯罪的经验,结合我国国情,在实体法上丰富我国的刑罚手段,在程序法上设置特殊...