On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research

Purpose

Many criminological scholars explore the social causes of crime while giving little consideration to the possibility that genetic factors underlie the observed associations. Indeed, the standard social science method (SSSM) assumes genetic influences do not confound the association between X and Y. Yet, a nascent stream of evidence has questioned the validity of this approach by revealing many criminological variables are at least partially affected by genetic influences. As a result, a substantial proportion of the literature may be misspecified due to uncontrolled genetic factors. No effort has been made to directly estimate the extent to which genetic confounding has biased the associations presented in criminological studies.

Methods

The present study seeks to address this issue by drawing on simulated datasets.

Results/Conclusions

Results suggest genetic confounding may account for a negligible portion of the relationship between X and Y when their correlation (r_yx) is larger than the correlation between genetic factors and Y (i.e., r_yx > r_yg). Genetic confounding appears to be much more problematic when the correlation between X and Y is in the moderate-to-small range (e.g., r_yx = .20) and the genetic effect is in the moderate-to-large range (e.g., r_yg ≥ .30).     

Solution or Smokescreen? Evaluating Industry Self-Regulation of Televised Food Marketing to Children

It is well established that children's exposure to television advertising for unhealthy food products contributes to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Given this finding, public health officials recommended that the government restrict unhealthy food marketing to children if the industry does not accomplish that goal voluntarily. Food marketers responded by adopting industry self-regulation several years ago, but this study finds that it has produced only marginal improvements in the overall nutritional quality of foods advertised to youth. Unless federal policy-makers intervene, it appears that unhealthy food marketing to children will continue to contribute to childhood obesity in the future.     

More Westminster than Westminster? The Office of Speaker across the Commonwealth

The office of Speaker at Westminster is one which has been used as a model for those who preside over the parliaments and assemblies of the countries that make up the Commonwealth. While the Westminster speakership has evolved and adapted itself to changing needs, those within the Commonwealth have stuck more rigidly to their origins. This paper will compare and contrast the different speakerships in the parliaments that follow the Westminster tradition. It will analyse just how closely they have managed to keep to those long-established traditions and assess how successful they have been in achieving the impartiality that is necessary for a neutral umpire. The duties and responsibilities both within and beyond the legislature will also be explored, as will the ceremonies associated with this office.     

Privacy principles,risks and harms

The protection of privacy is predicated on the individual's right to privacy and stipulates a number of principles that are primarily focused on information privacy or data protection and, as such, are insufficient to apply to other types of privacy and to the protection of other entities beyond the individual. This article identifies additional privacy principles that would apply to other types of privacy and would enhance the consideration of risks or harms to the individual, to groups and to society as a whole if they are violated. They also relate to the way privacy impact assessment (PIA) may be conducted. There are important reasons for generating consideration of and debate about these principles. First, they help to recalibrate a focus in Europe on data protection to the relative neglect of other types of privacy. Second, it is of critical importance at a time when PIA (renamed ‘data protection impact assessment’, or DPIA) may become mandatory under the European Commission's proposed Data Protection Regulation. Such assessment is an important instrument for identifying and mitigating privacy risks, but should address all types of privacy. Third, one can construct an indicative table identifying harms or risks to these additional privacy principles, which can serve as an important tool or instrument for a broader PIA to address other types of privacy.     

Campaign Intensity and Voting Correctly in Senate Elections

Starting from the premise that campaigns ought to have informational benefits for voters this study examines the characteristics of Senate electoral campaigns and their ability to facilitate “correct voting” as first described by Lau and Redlawsk (1997) Lau, Richard R. &; Redlawsk, David P. (1997) Voting correctly. American Political Science Review, 91(3), pp. 585–599. doi: 10.2307/2952076[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. Here, the political values and beliefs of voters are measured from the 1990 and 1992 Senate Election Studies to assess how far such beliefs match to their state's Senate candidates. The variation within Senate campaigns allows for a wider range of hypotheses to be tested about the conditions under which voting correctly occurs compared with prior studies that have focused on presidential elections. The findings are important in that they show a lower incidence of correct voting in Senate elections than in presidential races. However, this is moderated by individual knowledge, ideological sophistication, and a higher level of campaign intensity, all of which increase correct voting. The implications lend support to the normative value of campaigns in American politics.     

Towards a theory of cultural evaluation

From which evaluative base should we develop public policies designed to promote wellbeing among different cultural groups in different circumstances? This article attempts to advance an objective, universal theory of cultural evaluation grounded in a eudaemonistic account of human wellbeing. The approach evaluates cultures on the success with which they enable societies to promote the wellbeing of individuals through provision of needs and capabilities within their given, determinate circumstances. This provides the basis for a normative functionalism capable of identifying and explaining cultural deficits.     

Children’s Allegations of Sexual Abuse: A Model for Forensic Assessment

It is important both clinically and forensically to gain information to provide an understanding of the veracity of a child’s allegations of sexual abuse. Even though it is reasonable to hypothesize that most allegations are true—children are not infallible and thus some allegations are false. A systematic model of pathways to false allegations—however rare or common—is important because so much depends on this question (i.e., both false positives and false negatives are harmful to children). We propose that there are two major pathways to false allegations of child sexual abuse: (1) the child is lying and (2) the child has a false memory due to his or her problems in information processing. We conclude by presenting a more detailed protocol for more formally evaluating these pathways to false allegations in specific cases.     

Prometheus embattled: A post-9/11 report card on the National Security Agency

Five years after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has risen to the position of being the largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the US. Working in close conjunction with its English-speaking partners overseas, NSA is today the most prolific producer of top-quality intelligence information reaching senior US government policymakers and field commanders. But press reports over the past year concerning the Agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping program and problem-plagued modernization effort, have raised serious questions once again about the competency of the Agency's long-troubled management practices, as well as whether NSA, at the behest of the Bush administration, exceeded its legal authority by extending its operations into the US for the first time since the mid-1970s in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.