Introducing the Results of Basic Research

Successful resolution of the large-scale tasks advanced by the Twenty-sixth CPSU Congress is associated with the acceleration of scientific and technical progress, with the development of science as the fundamental basis of this progress. The problem of accelerating scientific and technical progress is primarily one introducing already attained scientific and technical results, the problem of securing their effective transfer to the sphere of material production. The results of basic research materialized in new, progressive technology become a serious factor in increasing the productivity of social labor and the national income. Marx emphasized that the process of reproduction everywhere has as its prerequisite, in addition to other factors, the influence "of the power of science as such and of science already incorporated and realized in production."¹     

Representing Theory and Theorising in Criminal Justice Studies: Practising Theory Considered

The author considers the role and place of theory in criminal justice studies. The argument is that the operation and interrogation of fundamental categories is integral to social scientific enquiry and if criminal justice studies is to resist a technocratic “protective service” orientation it must promote theorising and thinking conceptually via the texts which represent the discipline to undergraduates. Although theory is situated at the core of social science curricula, there is little or no agreement on its role or place in research and pedagogy. The dominant understanding of theory within criminal justice studies (including its sociological and criminological incarnation) is that it is something to be referred to. What is seldom emphasised in theory or methods texts is the practice of theorising. Texts that are designed to be the student’s first contact with the field of criminal justice studies, and which reflect broader attitudes toward social enquiry, seldom consider the methodological and pedagogical issues related to the production and role of analytic concepts and do not present social science as an imaginative or reflexive practice. Drawing on critical realist metatheory, this paper advances a distinction between social and sociological problems and social science and protective service toward illustrating that a social science approach to the study of criminal justice demands the operation and interrogation of analytic categories and explicit consideration of issues of epistemology and ontology. Works which seek to avoid this serve only to foster a passive rather than active engagement with their subject matter.     

Building better crime simulations: systematic replication and the introduction of incremental complexity

Computer simulation models have changed the ways in which researchers are able to observe and study social phenomena such as crime. The ability of researchers to replicate the work of others is fundamental to a cumulative science, yet this rarely occurs in computer simulations. In this paper, we argue that, for computer simulations to be seen as a legitimate methodology in social science, and for new knowledge to be generated, serious consideration needs to be given to how simulations could or should be replicated. We develop the concept of systematic replication, a method for developing simulation experiments that move towards a generalisable inference that is directed, explicit, and incorporates complexity incrementally. Finally, we outline how the discrete parts of this process might be carried out in practice, using a simple simulation model.

Social and social scientific perspectives in judicial interpretations of the constitution

It has been traditional to demarcateMuller v. Oregon as the first Supreme Court case to benefit from a social science perspective andBrown v. Board of Education of Topeka as the first case to rely on social science evidence. This article explores the hypothesis that social perspectives have long been a part of the Court's decisionmaking when it has confronted difficult social issues. Two 19th-century race opinions,Dred Scott v. Sandford andPlessy v. Ferguson, are used to support this position. The authors suggest that the social perspectives contained in the other articles in this special issue reflect a long-standing association between social science information and law.We appreciate the suggestions made by Michael J. Saks on an earlier draft of this article.     

Thirty Years of Social Science in Supreme Court Criminal Cases*

The Supreme Court early took note of extralegal, “social science” materials in Muller v. Oregon (1908), and a half-century later made specific reference to social science authorities in the famous footnote 11 of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Since Brown, much has been written about the Supreme Court's use of social science research evidence, but there has been little systematic study of that use. Those writing on the subject commonly focus on areas of law such as jury size, where social science has been used, and have generally assumed that social science information has been utilized in Supreme Court decisions with increasing regularity. Surprisingly little is known, however, about either the justices' baseline use of social science authorities, or many other aspects of their uses of social science information. The focus here is on the citation of social science research evidence in a sample of 240 criminal cases decided during the 30 years between the Supreme Court's 1958 and 1987 Terms. The resulting portrait contributes to a fuller understanding of the justices' use of social science materials, and may ultimately help promote more effective utilization of social science research evidence in Supreme Court decisions.     

In silico toxicity as a tool for harm reduction: A study of new psychoactive amphetamines and cathinones in the context of criminal science

The emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has raised many issues in the context of law enforcement and public drug policies. In this scenario, interdisciplinary studies are crucial to the decision-making process in the field of criminal science. Unfortunately, information about how NPS affect people's health is lacking even though knowledge about the toxic potential of these substances is essential: the more information about these drugs, the greater the possibility of avoiding damage within the scope of a harm reduction policy. Traditional analytical methods may be inaccessible in the field of forensic science because they are relatively expensive and time-consuming. In this sense, less costly and faster in silico methodologies can be useful strategies. In this work, we submitted computer-calculated toxicity values of various amphetamines and cathinones to an unsupervised multivariate analysis, namely Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and to the supervised techniques Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy and Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (SIMCA and PLS-DA) to evaluate how these two NPS groups behave. We studied how theoretical and experimental values are correlated by PLS regression. Although experimental data was available for a small amount of molecules, correlation values reproduced literature values. The in silico method efficiently provided information about the drugs. On the basis of our findings, the technical information presented here can be used in decision-making regarding harm reduction policies and help to fulfill the objectives of criminal science.     

ASSESSING AND COMMUNICATING SOCIAL SCIENCE INFORMATION IN FAMILY AND CHILD JUDICIAL SETTINGS: STANDARDS FOR JUDGES AND ALLIED PROFESSIONALS

Social science is increasingly important in judicial decision making and family law development. This increased use means that judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, and social scientists must assess the quality of social science information and communicate it in a multidisciplinary environment. This article provides tools for improving multidisciplinary communication by identifying logical, methodological, and community standards for assessment and communication that are fundamental both to the scientific method and to the inquiries the Daubert decision instructs judges to make in their gatekeeper evaluations of scientific information. Employing a common set of standards can result in a significant improvement in the quality of the social science knowledge used in judicial settings.     

Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co‐Production of Law and Science

This article combines Monahan and Walker's classification of social facts, social authority, and social frameworks with political‐institutionalism's view of law and science as competing institutional logics to explain how, and with what consequences, employment discrimination law and industrial‐organizational (I‐O) psychology became co‐produced. When social science is incorporated into enforcement of legislative law as social authority—rationale for judicial rule making—law's institutional logic of relying on precedent and reasoning by analogy ensures that social science will have ongoing influence on law's development. By helping set research agendas and providing new professional opportunities, institutionalized legal doctrine shapes social science knowledge. But because of differences in institutional logic, wherein legal cumulation is backward looking whereas scientific cumulation is forward looking, co‐production of law and science may produce institutional mismatch between legal doctrine and scientific knowledge.     

高技术立法规制问题的哲学探讨

近代以来 ,科学技术得到了迅猛的发展 ,而技术无疑是我们这个时代最引人注目的社会现象之一。由此导致体外受精 (试管婴儿 )技术、克隆人技术、人体基因重组技术等一系列高技术的出现。其中 ,任何一项高技术一旦运用于社会 ,就不单纯是一个技术问题 ,必定转化为社会、环境、法律、伦理、生态等问题。这不仅对社会、人们的观念造成极大冲击 ,也对人类生存提出了严峻挑战。如何利用法律 ,有效规范高技术就提到了议事日程。我国现有的科技法由于对科学、技术的本质没有深入的认识及立法的粗糙性 ,很难完成高技术时代的历史使命。因此 ,有必要从科技所涉及的最基本问题入手 ,经过哲学分析 ,对我国如何有效规制高技术提出立法建议     

The Penetration of Social Science into Legal Culture

Over the past 75 years, social science references in court decisions have changed from an anonymous footnote to an appendix to a brief ( Muller v. Oregon , 1908) to extensive discussion of social science methods and results to changing a rule of law based on social science propositions ( Hovey v. Superior Court , 1980). The acceptance of social science may be traced in state court decisions as well as in Supreme Court cases. The academic field of law has, since its entrance into the university, identified itself with the rhetoric, if not the model of science. Although earlier attempts to introduce social science into law were relatively unsuccessful, there is now a sufficient acceptance and a sufficient professional infrastructure to predict a growing influence of social science in law.     

Social science in supreme court death penalty cases: Citation practices and their implications

This study examines the use of evidence based on social science research in Supreme Court capital punishment cases decided between 1963 and 1985. These years mark the beginning of the Court's modern decisions regarding the death penalty and extend to the approximate midpoint in this body of jurisprudence. The frequency and the major correlates of social science research citations in the Supreme Court's death penalty cases are described, and these findings are contrasted with the justices' use of social science evidence in other types of criminal cases. The justices have used social science materials relatively often in capital punishment cases, although it does not necessarily follow that social science findings have been important to the decision of these cases. The results of this research are discussed, along with other issues relevant to the judicial use of research evidence based on social science.     

RNA分析技术在法医学中的应用

RNA是近年来分子生物学技术领域的研究热点之一,随着分子生物学技术的发展与成熟,RNA技术逐渐在法医学领域得到应用,用来处理传统的DNA分析方法难以解决的法医学问题,如推断死亡时间（PMI）,检测伤口形成时间以及体液鉴定等。本文综述介绍目前RNA分析技术在法医学中的国际发展趋势以及目前存在的局限性,为今后该技术在法医学领域的更广泛应用奠定基础。     

Certain Problems in the Theory of the Socialist State of the Entire People

Having decisively liberated itself from the consequences of the personality cult, the Communist Party has been creatively developing Marxist-Leninist theory in the past few years. It has advanced a number of theoretical propositions of utmost importance, having vast historical significance and based upon a precise analysis of the development of contemporary social life. One of the most important findings of Marxist-Leninist scientific thought, which is today progressing headlong, is the discovery of the socialist state of the entire people. The historical credit for this discovery belongs to the collective intelligence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its 22nd Congress which, in the Program it adopted, revealed and defined the principal tendencies and major paths of development of the state as an organization of the entire people which, under given circumstances, survives until the complete triumph of communism. In so doing, the 22nd Congress of the Party laid firm foundations for the theory of the socialist state of the entire people. This marks a new stage in the development of the science of the socialist state. In this connection it is important to emphasize that the further development of this theory is tied directly to the activity of our Party. And at the present time, in full accord with the Party Program, the creative process of further development of the theory of the state of the entire people is in progress. Persons in all the social sciences should take the most active part in this process. For it is they who are faced with the major and particularly noble task of intensive development of research work in that field of knowledge which is called upon to establish the scientific basis for the guidance of social development.     

Perceptions of coercion in interrogation: comparing expert and lay opinions

ABSTRACT

When confessions are entered into evidence in criminal courts, issues of coercion and voluntariness are important and often contested matters. Occasionally, defense attorneys proffer expert witnesses to testify about the coercive pressures of an interrogation and the risk of a false confession. Such testimony is often ruled inadmissible on the grounds that it does not inform the jury beyond its common knowledge. In our effort to test this judicial assumption about common knowledge, we surveyed jury-eligible laypeople (n?=?67) and social scientists specializing in interrogation and confessions (n?=?54) regarding their opinions about the coerciveness of prohibited interrogation tactics, maximization techniques, minimization techniques, and suspect risk factors and compared their ratings with a set of independent t tests. Laypeople gave lower ratings to the coerciveness of all sets of items representing interrogation techniques, and lower ratings to the vulnerabilities associated with suspect risk factors, as compared to social science experts. The disparities between laypeople’s and experts’ perceptions of coercion in interrogations demonstrate that such issues are not fully within the common knowledge of prospective jurors, and suggest the need to provide jurors with expert witness guidance when tasked with evaluating confession evidence.     

Researching the powerful: Problems and possibilities of social research

The culture of the powerful has yet to receive the scrutiny required for social science to build up a full picture of social relations. This paper attempts to examine the problems that confront the researcher in the study of powerful groups and institutions in our society. It is based on the author's experience of working on the first piece of independent social science research commissioned by the British Ministry of Defence — an enquiry into the relations between the military and the media at times of armed conflict, with particular reference to the Falklands conflict of 1982. Powerful interests will not provide the opportunity for social scientists to study their workings at first hand. However with the increased involvement of these interests in the sponsorship of research the social scientist is in a position to relate his or her dealings with the powerful as part of the research process. The paper focusses on four aspects of the research process: the commissioning of the project, the negotiation of access to the key figures and documentary material, the research techniques used, and the response to the findings of the study.     

Development of the Soviets and the Tasks of Science

The conditions of development of socialist society require intensification of the ties between science [nauka] and the practice of the building of communism. As L. I. Brezhnev emphasized in the Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the Twenty-fourth Party Congress, "theoretical interpretation of the phenomena of social life and its leading trends enables the Party to foresee the course of social processes and to develop the right political course, avoiding errors and subjectivist solutions." The Congress advanced the task of giving even greater attention to the development of theory and achieving an intimate connection of the social sciences with practical work and the solution of current problems in the building of communism.     

根据骨骺愈合程度推断青少年年龄

骨骺愈合程度作为推断青少年活体年龄的重要手段之一,在相关鉴定中得到了广泛的应用.随着技术发展,国内外众多学者利用骨骺愈合程度推断年龄的研究取得了很多成果,本文针对根据骨骺愈合程度推断年龄的方法的产生、发展、研究成果以及有待解决的问题等进行综述,以期为相关研究和实践提供参考.     

Autopoietic Law and the 'Epistemic Trap': A Case Study of Adoption and Contact

This paper examines autopoietic theory with reference to functionally differentiated social sub-systems, particularly law, science, and politics. It sets out to 'test' the practical relevance of autopoietic theory in relation to ongoing debates about post-adoption contact and personal identity issues. Law has resisted social scientific pressure to regulate post-adoption contact in the context of a social policy approach, which emphasizes the relationship between identity development and genealogical continuity. I argue that law's response to this pressure relates to the particular nature of adoption as this is expressed through legislation and case law. Law's refusal to intervene in post-adoption contact reflects its self-referential operations and its attempts to avoid epistemic entrapment by a social scientific discourse. Applying autopoietic theory to law's practical operations in adoption clarifies its explanatory value, provides a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between law, politics, and social science and indicates areas that require theoretical refinement.     

Twenty-Five Years of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Social Science in Law</Emphasis>

In this essay, we take the publication of the seventh edition of the casebook Social Science in Law (2010) as an opportunity to reflect on continuities and changes that have occurred in the application of social science research to American law over the past quarter-century. We structure these reflections by comparing and contrasting the original edition of the book with the current one. When the first edition appeared, courts’ reliance on social science was often confused and always contested. Now, courts’ reliance on social science is so common as to be unremarkable. What has changed—sometimes radically—are the substantive legal questions on which social science has been brought to bear.