Canada: Court affirms that prisoner health information must be treated as private and personal

On 8 April 2003, the Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division ruled that Correctional Services Canada (CSC) does not have a duty to warn an inmate of the potential violence or health hazards posed by a cellmate in the absence of clear and foreseeable danger.     

Response Latency Methodology for Survey Research: Measurement and Modeling Strategies

In public opinion research, response latency is a measure ofattitude accessibility, which is the ease or swiftness withwhich an attitude comes to mind when a respondent is presentedwith a survey question. Attitude accessibility represents thestrength of the association in memory between an attitude objectand an evaluation of the object. Recent research shows thatattitude accessibility, as measured by response latency, castslight on a wide range of phenomena of public opinion and politicalbehavior. We discuss response latency methodology for surveyresearch and advocate the use of latent response latency timers(which are invisible both to respondents and interviewers) asa low cost, low-maintenance alternative to traditional methodsof measuring response latency in public opinion surveys. Weshow that with appropriate model specification latent responselatency timers may provide a suitable alternative to the morecomplicated and expensive interviewer-activated timers.     

Proper assessment of the JFK assassination bullet lead evidence from metallurgical and statistical perspectives

The bullet evidence in the JFK assassination investigation was reexamined from metallurgical and statistical standpoints. The questioned specimens are comprised of soft lead, possibly from full-metal-jacketed Mannlicher-Carcano (MC), 6.5-mm ammunition. During lead refining, contaminant elements are removed to specified levels for a desired alloy or composition. Microsegregation of trace and minor elements during lead casting and processing can account for the experimental variabilities measured in various evidentiary and comparison samples by laboratory analysts. Thus, elevated concentrations of antimony and copper at crystallographic grain boundaries, the widely varying sizes of grains in MC bullet lead, and the 5-60 mg bullet samples analyzed for assassination intelligence effectively resulted in operational sampling error for the analyses. This deficiency was not considered in the original data interpretation and resulted in an invalid conclusion in favor of the single-bullet theory of the assassination. Alternate statistical calculations, based on the historic analytical data, incorporating weighted averaging and propagation of experimental uncertainties also considerably weaken support for the single-bullet theory. In effect, this assessment of the material composition of the lead specimens from the assassination concludes that the extant evidence is consistent with any number between two and five rounds fired in Dealey Plaza during the shooting.     

The application of pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) forensic analyses to tissue samples from an "Angel of Death" investigation

The case report of a serial killer who worked at several hospitals as a respiratory therapist is presented. The suspect was initially labeled a benevolent Angel of Death who ended the suffering of elderly patients through mercy killing. However, his subsequently declared motive for homicide was very different from other similar cases in medical settings. The application of new analysis techniques for the detection of pancuronium bromide in a series of aged exhumation tissues gave positive results and led to the resultant conviction of the therapist.     

Comparing Effect Sizes in Follow-Up Studies: ROC Area,Cohen's <Emphasis Type="Italic">d</Emphasis>, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">r</Emphasis>

In order to facilitate comparisons across follow-up studies that have used different measures of effect size, we provide a table of effect size equivalencies for the three most common measures: ROC area (AUC), Cohen's d, and r. We outline why AUC is the preferred measure of predictive or diagnostic accuracy in forensic psychology or psychiatry, and we urge researchers and practitioners to use numbers rather than verbal labels to characterize effect sizes. Strictly speaking, d values pertain only to variables scored on an interval scale. When the nondichotomous variable is ordinally scaled, r or AUC should be used. Nevertheless, the values in Table 1 allow one to compare the relative magnitudes across studies that have reported any of the three effect size measures.