Science, politics, and the regulation of dietary supplements: it's time to repeal DSHEA

Since the turn of the century, resourceful entrepreneurs have advertised a wide variety of purportedly simple and painless cures for cancer, including liniments of turpentine, mustard, oil, eggs, and ammonia; peat moss; arrangements of colored floodlamps; pastes made from glycerine and limburger cheese . . . [T]his historical experience does suggest why Congress could reasonably have determined to protect the terminally ill, no less than other patients, from the vast range of self-styled panaceas that inventive minds can devise. [Individuals have] the right to be treated by a health care practitioner with any medical treatment (including a treatment that is not approved, certified, or licensed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) that such individual desires or the legal representative of such individual desires. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be left alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.     

PRESIDENTIAL POLICY PREFERENCES AND SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENT SUCCESS

Presidential appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are major constitutional events. Few studies assess whether this political process benefits presidents with appointment opportunities. This article estimates the policy success of presidents since Eisenhower in appointing favorable justices on the racial equality issues. Previous research uses the president's party affiliation as an indirect measure of presidential preferences. This research examines the president's policy stance more directly by using presidential public statements on racial equality issues. An issue specific measure of presidential preferences shows that presidents have been more successful in appointing like-minded justices than reliance on presidential party would suggest. Regression estimates of the justices aggregate voting record on racial equality cases are robust even in light of other controls. The implications for democratic theory and future research are discussed.     

Presidents,Supreme Court justices,and racial equality cases: 1954–1984

This research assesses the policy success of presidents since Eisenhower in their appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court in racial equality cases from 1954–1984. The research examines presidential preferences in a much more detailed and sensitive manner than previous research. While past research has used presidential party as a measure of the policy preferences of presidents, we examine policy preferences in a very direct manner. Specifically, the preferences of presidents on racial equality issues are gauged by their public policy statements. These statements serve to tap the degree of liberalness, the level of attention, and the level of concern with judicial actions in racial equality matters. The results demonstrate that presidents have been much more successful in appointing like-minded justices than is suggested by the existing literature. In addition, it is shown that prior judicial experience is not related to presidential success. This is discussed in terms of the perennial debate over the political control of the Supreme Court and the congruence of Court policy making with majoritarian values.     

Electro-acupuncture to prevent prolonged postoperative ileus:A randomized clinical trial

AIM:To examine whether acupuncture can prevent prolonged postoperative ileus(PPOI)after intraperitoneal surgery for colon cancer. METHODS:Ninety patients were recruited from the Fudan University Cancer Hospital,Shanghai,China. After surgery,patients were randomized to receive acupuncture(once daily,starting on postoperative day 1, for up to six consecutive days)or usual care.PPOI was defined as an inability to pass flatus or have a bowel movement by 96 h after surgery.The main outcomes were time to first fl...     

The Polish underground organization Wolność i Niezawisłość and anti-Jewish pogroms, 1945–6

Tokarska-Bakir’s paper considers the deep-rooted cognitive habits among informers and reporters belonging to the Polish post-war, anti-Communist underground organization Wolno?? i Niezawis?o?? (Freedom and Independence) with regard to their perception of Polish Jews. The organization's archive is preserved in the National Archives in Krakow in Poland, and it thoroughly documents its members' social beliefs and fears. A theory of pogroms formulated by Senechal de la Roche understands the pogrom as an act of social control. Using the archival documents with that theory in mind, Tokarska-Bakir analyses Wolno?? i Niezawis?o?? in relation to the anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in Rzeszów, Krakow and Kielce in the years immediately following the Second World War.     

Social Influences on Online Political Information Search and Evaluation

Americans are turning to the Internet to learn about politics in greater and greater numbers. Under the current “Web 2.0” paradigm in which users are encouraged to interact with online content, voters encountering political information on the Internet are typically exposed to more than just the news; online information is often colored by the reactions of previous readers, whether in the form of displayed comments or in readily apparent tallies of the number of “likes” or “shares” a particular item has received. In this paper we consider the effect these social cues have on online political information search and evaluation. Using processing-tracing software to monitor the patterns of information search and evaluation among our subjects, we find that social cues can function as a heuristic, allowing voters to reach judgments similar to those of their more informed counterparts. However, we also find that negative cues can adversely influence candidate evaluation, making subjects less disposed to a candidate than they would be in the absence of such signals.     

A Mixture Model for the Number of Gunshot Residues Found on Suspects' Hands

Quantifying the strength of gunshot residue (GSR) evidence requires scientific knowledge about the number of particles expected to be found on individuals who were or were not involved in a shooting. However, controlled experiments demand expensive resources in terms of microscope time and labor, which restricts the data of most studies to only a small group of individuals. We suggest a novel method that exploits data collected routinely on suspects during the daily work of forensic laboratories. These observational data relate to both persons who were involved in a shooting and innocent individuals. We suggest a mixture approach with different models for the number of gunshot residue particles in each group and develop an iterative algorithm to estimate the probabilities of observing the evidence under the defense proposition that the suspect is innocent and under the prosecution assumption that he is not. The method is applied to data of more than 500 suspects collected by the Israel National Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science. The analysis shows that the probability of finding three or more GSR particles on the hands of innocent suspects is very small, less than 1.5 in 1000 cases. Our new method enables researchers to use data on real cases, possibly supplemented by experimental data, in order to estimate the probabilities of a given GSR finding under the defense and prosecution propositions.     

The ‘Heathrow’ Case: Polycentricity,Legislation, and the Standard of Review

The recent Court of Appeal decision in the ‘Heathrow’ case, Plan B Earth v Secretary of State for Transport is an illustration of the challenges of reviewing polycentric and expert decision-making. The issues raised in the case concerning the Planning Act 2008 are an illustration of a court's expository role in such contexts. The Court tackled directly a series of interpretive questions concerning the Planning Act 2008's obligations regarding the consideration of climate change. The Habitats and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive issues raised in the appeal, in contrast, were presented with the question of the intensity of review foregrounded in legal argument. The Court therefore sought to articulate the ‘standard of review’ and to apply it to the government's decisions. This way of framing the issue unfortunately sidelined the courts’ expository role in relation to intepreting the Habitats and SEA Directives, leaving key provisions under-analysed.