Research on medical records without informed consent

Observational research involving access to personally identifiable data in medical records has often been conducted without informed consent, owing to practical barriers to soliciting consent and concerns about selection bias. Nevertheless, medical records research without informed consent appears to conflict with basic ethical norms relating to clinical research and personal privacy. This article analyzes the scope of these norms and provides an ethical justification for research using personally identifiable medical information without consent.     

Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary Organizations

Climate science research documents and predicts changes in the physical environment. This information informs policy decisions and public programs through the design of human interventions that promote adaptive management. Since the early 2000s, federal funding has led to the creation of transdisciplinary regional climate workgroups to facilitate integrative knowledge coproduction and promote shared use of research results by scientific and nonscientific stakeholders. Labeled “boundary organizations,” these workgroups are tasked with facilitating partnerships between climate science researchers and practitioners with expertise in multiple physical and social science disciplines. When these organizations are successful, scientific findings and practitioner experiences are integrated to synergistically create usable knowledge about adaptive management that provides direct public value and creates broader societal impacts. This article explores the broader impacts provided by these boundary organizations through the establishment of regional research agendas and the communication of research results in ways that influence regional public policy and promote adaptive management.     

Taking Capital Punishment Seriously

Although Asia is the most important region of the world when it comes to capital punishment, it is also one of the most understudied. This article identifies four research questions that deserve attention from students and scholars who believe taking capital punishment seriously requires studying Asia seriously too. What are the empirical contours of capital punishment in contemporary Asia? What are the histories of capital punishment in Asia? Can Western theories of capital punishment explain patterns and changes in Asia? And what is the future of capital punishment in Asia? If researchers take the trouble to explore these questions, the death penalty will not only become an interesting window into law and society in Asia, but Asia will prove to be an instructive window into the death penalty—the gravest real-life problem in the law.     

Street crime and new guns: Some implications for firearms control

The first mass trace of handguns seized by the police revealed that a disproportionate number had been first sold to a retail customer in the relatively recent past. This study examines recent data from major metropolitan areas to test the “new guns” hypothesis. The consistency of the data from a variety of cities with different state and local handgun control strategies tends to confirm the hypothesis. The implications of this finding for firearms control policy and criminological theory are discussed.     

Winners and losers and Why: A Study of Defamation litigation

This article summarizes the results of a study of 534 reported defamation cases decided over a period beginning in 1976 and ending just before the Hutchinson and Wolston decisions of mid-1979. A major aspect of the study was the comparison of media and nonmedia defamation cases, which appear quite different. Each case was studied to identify, among other things, the plaintiff and the defendant, the statement that provoked the suit, the context of that statement, the role of state and federal law in resolving the case, and the procedural stages at which each case was resolved. A follow-up study to identify changes since Hutchinson and Wolston is in progress.     

THE BOOK SHELF

Books reviewed in this article: 1. Block, Dr. William A. What Your Child Really Wants to Know About Sex – And Why . 2. Bingham, Sallie. The Way It Is Now . 3. Charny, Dr. Israel. Marital Love and Hate . 4. Cooper, Boyd, M.D. Sex Without Tears . 5. Cuse, Arthur R. Financial Guideline: Divorce . 6. Evslin, Dorothy. The Fortunate Sex . 7. Gorney, Roderil, M.D. The Human Agenda . 8. Halsell, Grace. Black/White Sex . 9. Hart, Harold (Ed.). Marriage: For and Against . 10. Kavanaugh, James. Faces In the City . 11. Satir, Virginia. Peoplemaking . 12. Steincrohn, Peter J., M.D. Antidotes for Anxiety . 13. Stuart, Irving R., Ph.D. and Lawrence Edwin Abt, Ph.D. Children of Separation and Divorce .     

Demographic and political components in the decline of British class voting 1964–1979

The weakening of the British class alignment since the early 1960s has been extensively documented in past research. This article seeks to identify components contributing to the extent of class alignment, so as to clarify what is that has declined, and when; and to speculate about the reasons for the decline and its implications for the future of the British party system. In fact only one component shows any systematic change over a fifteen year period, and this change can be placed quite specifically between 1966 and 1970. Several more recent events in British politics appear to have causes that can be traced to this original change.