Kant on Wrongdoing,Desert, and Punishment

Law and Philosophy -     

Differential effects of high‐quality child care

In policy research a frequent aim is to estimate treatment effects separately by subgroups. This endeavor becomes a methodological challenge when the subgroups are defined by post‐treatment, rather than pre‐treatment, variables because if analyses are performed in the same way as with pre‐treatment variables, causal interpretations are no longer valid. The authors illustrate a new approach to this challenge within the context of the Infant Health and Development Program, a multisite randomized study that provided at‐risk children with intensive, center‐based child care. This strategy is used to examine the differential causal effects of access to high‐quality child care for children who would otherwise have participated in one of three child care options: no non‐maternal care, home‐based non‐maternal care, and center‐based care. Results of this study indicate that children participating in the first two types of care would have gained the most from high‐quality center‐based care and, moreover, would have more consistently retained the bulk of these positive benefits over time. These results may have implications for policy, particularly with regard to the debate about the potential implications of providing universal child care. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Minimal standards for the performance and interpretation of toxicology tests in legal proceedings.

There have been several high profile criminal and civil cases that have been litigated in recent years involving toxicologic analyses and interpretations of blood, urine, and other specimens for drugs of abuse. Disputes have erupted between prominent toxicologists and laboratory scientists as to the validity and interpretation of the data presented. The disputes centered around the fact that the procedures used in these cases had not been properly validated with analytical noise being misinterpreted as a positive result. As with any analyses, forensic tests must be conducted in a manner such that they meet the minimum standards accepted within the toxicology community. No conclusions as to presence or absence of drug, its concentration, or its physiologic effects can be made if there is a failure to meet these basic standards. Several cases are presented where these standard tenets may not have been followed.