“The verdict is in: A study of jury decision making factors,moment of personal decision,and jury deliberations—from the jurors' point of view”

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into jury decision waking factors, jury decision timing, and the jury decision making process by talking to actual trial jurors. Three criminal jury trials were observed, and seventeen of the jurors were interviewed after each trial's completion. The data indicate that jurors were influenced by the evidence, witnesses, lawyers, and defendant in the trials. In two trials, jurors made their decisions early; one trial produced later decisions. The jurors' reports also demonstrate that jurors considered evidence and discussed the key issues during deliberation.     

我国医学期刊遵循临床试验注册制度的现状调查

临床试验注册的目的是减少临床试验报告的偏倚,提高研究的透明度和科学性。本研究调查了我国258种医学核心期刊的稿约,57种(22.1%)期刊稿约中要求遵循临床试验注册制度,其中50种期刊提出了具体的著录要求。进一步深入探讨各期刊发表的随机对照试验(RCT)中临床试验注册号著录格式及内容的一致性和准确性,以及RCT撰写遵循CONSORT报告指南是否对著录注册号有影响。本研究结果表明目前我国医学期刊对临床试验注册和报告指南的遵循情况并不理想,报告注册的RCT仅占17.2%,仍存在对注册制度重视不足及执行不严格等问题,而期刊要求遵循CONSORT声明可能对RCT的注册有积极的影响。建议医学期刊遵循临床试验注册制度,提高对其的正确认识和重视,这需要期刊审稿人、编辑及作者的共同参与,通过提高临床试验注册的比例,进而提升研究的透明度。     

学术概念扩散的引文编年展示——以“临床试验中的利益冲突”为例

本文采用引文编年可视化程序,辨析学术界对于"临床试验中的利益冲突"这一概念理解和认识发展的脉络,对于其在学科领域之间扩散的路径进行梳理;识别其在时空中传播的特征,发现与此概念联系密切的研究论题。     

Valuations of experimental designs in proteomic biomarker experiments and traditional randomised controlled trials

This article examines the shifting conditions for biomedical knowledge production by studying trends in the design of biomedical experiments. The basic premise of the study is that the very act of establishing a research design entails a process involving a series of valuations where different values are evoked, ordered, and displaced. In focus is the articulation and ordering of what counts as central values in research design for two kinds of biomedical treatment trials, namely the traditional randomised controlled trial (RCT) and the emerging new form of biomarker trials used to assess biomarker/treatment combinations (BTTs). The empirical material consists of textbooks (RCTs) and journal articles (BTTs). We ask how these materials articulate the various scientific, medical, and economic values at play. Among the differences uncovered are a difference in relation to what counts as ethical in relation to prior knowledge, differences in the flexibility in design as well as the valuation of the risk for false positives and false negatives. More broadly, the study shows how textual accounts of different ways of producing knowledge are linked to partly different valuations of ethics, flexibility, and risk as part of establishing the research design of biomedical experiments.     

Organizational trials of valuation: insights from the work of leaning the patient distribution process at a children’s hospital

Management devices from industrial sectors are proliferating in the public sector, a trend now being accused of undermining the proper values of public organizations. A prominent example of such a management device is lean management, which is a set of principles and tools employed by contemporary management consultants to eliminate waste and promote value – often for the sake of efficiency. While lean management has been particularly welcomed in the healthcare sector, healthcare professionals are increasingly resisting attempts at leaning their work processes. Applying the notion of trials of valuation, this study empirically unfolds the conflicts arising when lean management is used to reorganize the task of distributing patients to beds in a children’s hospital. Following the turn to value and the pragmatic tenet of studying values as the outcome of work, this paper suggests that the effects of a management device on the values of an organization can fruitfully be investigated for its ability to organize. Further, the paper contributes to the field of valuation studies with a heuristic to undertake such an investigation, directing attention towards the object of valuation, the temporal and spatial dimensions of the valuation situation, and the knowledge used to inform that valuation.     

"猴子审判"与美国自由教育原则

历史上的两次“猴子审判”相映成趣,两者都涉及美国的自由教育原则,但结果却大相径庭。第一次“猴子审判”借助自由教育原则帮助达尔文的进化论进入美国学校课堂,而新版“猴子审判”却在自由教育原则下试图用“神创论”和“智能设计论”取代进化论。“猴子审判”向美国自由教育原则提出了挑战,人们对自由教育原则进行实际的理性的反思。     

Health Sciences Patron Preference for Library Spaces: A Multisite Observational Study

Health sciences libraries are often challenged to make decisions regarding physical space allocation without quantitative data to support specific user preferences. This multisite, longitudinal study sought to answer the following questions related to academic health sciences libraries: (1) Which library spaces are popular with health sciences patrons? (2) How does time of day and allocated seating space affect patron choices? (3) What similarities and differences occur in space usage across four different health sciences libraries? Results suggest health sciences libraries must develop a nuanced understanding of their patrons’ preferences to best serve patrons’ needs regarding space allocation. Libraries can benefit from these types of methodological studies that target specific populations, supporting more informed space allocation decision making.     

Review on COVID-19 Etiopathogenesis,Clinical Presentation and Treatment Available with Emphasis on ACE2

In December 2019, Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China reported for the first time a cluster of patients infected with a novel coronavirus, since then there has been an outburst of this disease across the globe affecting millions of human inhabitants. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type-2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a member of beta coronavirus family which upon exposure caused a highly infectious disease called novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19, a probably bat originated disease was declared by World Health Organization (WHO) as a global pandemic in March 2020. Since then, despite rigorous global containment and quarantine efforts, the disease has affected nearly 56,261,952 laboratory confirmed human population and caused deaths of over 1,349,506 lives worldwide. Virus passes in majority through respiratory droplets and then enters lung epithelial cells by binding to angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and there it undergoes replication and targeting host cells causing severe pathogenesis. Majority of human population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 having fully functional immune system undergo asymptomatic infection while 5–10% are symptomatic and only 1–2% are critically affected and requires ventilation support. Older people or people with co-morbidities are severely affected by COVID-19. These categories of patients also display cytokine storm due to dysfunctional immune response which brutally destroys the affected organs and may lead to death in some. Real time PCR is still considered as standard method of diagnosis along with other serology, radiological and biochemical investigations. Till date, no specific validated medication is available for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Thus, this review provides detailed knowledge about the different landscapes of disease incidence, etiopathogenesis, involvement of various organs, diagnostic criteria’s and treatment guidelines followed for management of COVID-19 infection since its inception. In conclusion, extensive research to recognize novel pathways and their cross talk to combat this virus in precarious settings is our future positive hope.     

Quantifying risk associated with clinical trial termination: A text mining approach

Clinical trials that terminate prematurely without reaching conclusions raise financial, ethical, and scientific concerns. Scientific studies in all disciplines are initiated with extensive planning and deliberation, often by a team of highly trained scientists. To assure that the quality, integrity, and feasibility of funded research projects meet the required standards, research-funding agencies such as the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, pass proposed research plans through a rigorous peer review process before making funding decisions. Yet, some study proposals successfully pass through all the rigorous scrutiny of the scientific peer review process, but the proposed investigations end up being terminated before yielding results. This study demonstrates an algorithm that quantifies the risk associated with a study being terminated based on the analysis of patterns in the language used to describe the study prior to its implementation. To quantify the risk of termination, we use data from the clinicialTrials.gov repository, from which we extracted structured data that flagged study characteristics, and unstructured text data that described the study goals, objectives and methods in a standard narrative form. We propose an algorithm to extract distinctive words from this unstructured text data that are most frequently used to describe trials that were completed successfully vs. those that were terminated. Binary variables indicating the presence of these distinctive words in trial proposals are used as input in a random forest, along with standard structured data fields. In this paper, we demonstrate that this combined modeling approach yields robust predictive probabilities in terms of both sensitivity (0.56) and specificity (0.71), relative to a model that utilizes the structured data alone (sensitivity = 0.03, specificity = 0.97). These predictive probabilities can be applied to make judgements about a trial's feasibility using information that is available before any funding is granted.     

Medical librarians' knowledge and practices in locating clinical trials for systematic reviews

Objective:In regard to locating clinical trials for a systematic review, limited information is available about how librarians locate clinical trials in biomedical databases, including (1) how much information researchers provide librarians to assist with the development of a comprehensive search strategy, (2) which tools librarians turn to for information about study design methodology, and (3) librarians'' confidence levels in their knowledge of study design methodology. A survey was developed to explore these aspects of how a medical librarian locates clinical trials when facilitating systematic reviews for researchers.Methods:In this cross-sectional study, a 21-question survey was sent to medical librarians via several email listservs during April 2020. Respondents were limited to librarians who make the decisions on search terms for systematic reviews.Results:Responses (n=120) indicated that librarians were often asked to search for various types of clinical trials. However, there was not a consistent method for creating search strategies that locate diverse types of clinical trials. Multiple methods were used for search strategy development, with hedges being the most popular method. In general, these librarians considered themselves to be confident in locating trials. Different resources were used to inform study types, including textbooks, articles, library guides and websites.Discussion:Medical librarians indicated that while they felt confident in their searching skills, they did not have a definitive source of information about the various types of clinical trials, and their responses demonstrated a clear need and desire for more information on study design methodology.