1,720,962 research outputs found
Regulating Attorney-Funded Mass Medical Screenings: A Public Health Imperative
Get PDFAttorney-funded mass medical screenings for asbestos and silica litigation have been shown to have a high rate of false positive diagnoses. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of asbestos and silica lawsuits have been based on unreliable medical evidence. Several analysts have discussed the financial and legal consequences for defendants and the courts. This paper adds to the discussion by focusing on the effects on the workers who are screened. I find that there are numerous breaches in acceptable medical procedures. Harms to workers include: unnecessary anxiety caused by false positive diagnoses, unwarranted x-ray exposures that increase the risk of cancer, and invasive procedures that may have resulted from false positive diagnoses. The most effective prevention of further abuses by attorney-funded litigation screenings would target the point at which the lawsuits are allowed to move forward in the courts. I recommend that judges carefully scrutinize asbestos and silica claims and dismiss any that are not based on reliable medical evidence; legislatures should establish medical standards for these suits; and medical authorities should investigate attorney-funded screening activities.Environment, Health and Safety
An Interview with Commissioner Mark B. McClellan, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Get PDFAEI-Brookings Joint Center Senior Fellow Judyth Pendell interviews FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan about liability, innovation and policy objectives.
The Adverse Side Effects of Pharmaceutical Litigation
Get PDFPrior research has demonstrated that a fear of unwarranted medical malpractice liability causes doctors and other healthcare practitioners to engage in self-protective activities, such as ordering unnecessary tests or treatments. This paper examines the impact that the liability system could have on prescription drug use. It reports on a Harris poll of doctors, pharmacists and patients. Situations where patients fail to receive appropriate medications as a direct result of the liability system are revealed. It recommends reforms that allow healthcare professionals to know with greater certainty which actions are likely to result in liability. A PowerPoint presentation on "Pharmaceutical Liability Study Report on Findings" prepared for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform can be viewed at http://www.aei-brookings.org/admin/pdffiles/phpgm.pdf .Health and Safety, Regulatory Reform
Introduction, "Issues in Civil Procedure: Advancing the Dialogue"
No full textThe challenges facing the judiciary in this country have increased dramatically over the past two decades. Civil and criminal filings have grown at a pace that far outstrips any growth in the number of judges or judicial resources. The burden of case backlogs has become ponderous. The complexity of cases has increased, with the emergence of mass toxic torts as perhaps the most striking example. Multiple plaintiffs and defendants, sometimes in the hundreds or even thousands, coupled with highly technical scientific and engineering issues, have posed new demands on the management skills and intellectual resources of the judiciary. At the same time, the litigation process has been the subject of unprecedented scrutiny. Though our civil justice system continues to serve as a central institution of social control, research has produced compelling empirical evidence of inefficiencies and extraordinary costs. This new information represents considerable progress toward a better understanding of the system, but it has substantially heightened public concern with its inner workings, increasing pressure on the judiciary to find and implement reforms
Foreword, "Modern Civil Procedure: Issues in Controversy"
No full textDespite the seemingly universal introduction of social science methods of instruction, the staples of legal education today differ little from those of many decades ago. Even the most sophisticated modern lawyer continues to remember and understand the basic principles of civil law in terms of rules propounded to resolve discrete disputes between two single parties. If asked to name the foundations of our civil law, the lawyer today, like the lawyer of the 1920s, would almost certainly list Pennoyer v. Neff, Hadley v. Baxendale, Brown v. Kendall, and, perhaps, Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Company. These cases are recognized today as possessing a certain quaintness, but they remain the building blocks from which our conceptions of civil liability derive. Regrettably, this conception of civil law is becoming increasingly anachronistic. The caseload of the modern civil judge is less likely to be dominated by an action involving an attempt to collect on a note against land (Pennoyer), or damages for delay in delivery (Hadley), or for suffering a hit from a stick (Brown) or a scale (Palsgraf), than by an action involving thejoinder of multiple parties with complex third-party liability claims asserting a causative link that requires complicated scientific understanding. However deeply they are revered, our ancient cases provide no more than a starting point for the unravelling of the difficult issues that are progressively overwhelming modern civil litigation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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