Interobserver agreement and procedural fidelity: An odd asymmetry

We examined articles with experiments published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and in Behavior Analysis in Practice from 2017 through 2021 to determine how frequently procedural fidelity was assessed. When procedural fidelity was assessed, we determined how often a measure of interobserver agreement for those fidelity data was provided. We also determined how often a measure of interobserver agreement for participants' behavior was provided. Across both journals and all years, 54.7% of relevant articles provided a measure of procedural fidelity. Of them, 17.7% provided a measure of interobserver agreement for procedural fidelity. In marked contrast, 96.4% provided interobserver agreement data for participants' behavior. It is unfortunate that applied behavior analysts frequently fail to provide procedural fidelity data and, when they do, often fail to provide interobserver agreement data for the fidelity data. Reviewers for, and editors of, behavior-analytic journals are encouraged to strongly consider the relative value of procedural fidelity and agreement on procedural fidelity measures when rendering recommendations on the suitability of a given submission.     

Should Authors be Requested to Suggest Peer Reviewers?

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights.     

A Lewisian Trilemma

According to one reading of the thesis of Humean Supervenience, most famously defended by David Lewis, certain ‘fundamental’ (non‐modal) facts entail all there is but do not supervene on less fundamental facts. However, in this paper I prove that it follows from Lewis' possible world semantics for counterfactuals, in particular his Centring condition, that all non‐modal facts supervene on counterfactuals. Humeans could respond to this result by either giving up Centring or abandoning the idea that the most fundamental facts do not supervene on less fundamental facts. I argue that either response should in general be acceptable to Humeans: the first since there is nothing particularly Humean about Centring; the latter since Humeans should, independently of the result I present, be sceptical that the supervenience of one fact upon another by itself says anything about ‘fundamentality’. ¹      

Temporal necessity; Hard facts/soft facts

Conclusion In conclusion, then, the notion of temporal necessity is certainly queer and perhaps a misnomer. It really has little to do with temporality per se and everything to do with counterfactual openness or closedness. We have seen that the future is as unalterable as the past, but that this purely logical truth is not antithetical to freedom or contingency. Moreover, we have found certain past facts are counterfactually open in that were future events or actualities to be other than they will be, these past facts would have been different as a consequence. God's beliefs about the future are such past facts. Moreover, the effects of actions which God would have taken had He believed differently are also such past facts. Oddly enough, then, virtually any past fact is potentially counterfactually open, and the only necessity that remains is purely de facto. We, of course, do not in general know which events of the past depend counterfactually on present actions, and those cases we do know about seem rather trivial. Our intuitions of the necessity, unalterability, and unpreventability of the past as opposed to the future stem from the impossibility of backward causation, which is precluded by the dynamic nature of time and becoming. But the counterfactual dependence of God's beliefs on future events or actualities is not a case of backward causation: rather future-tense propositions are true in virtue of what will happen, given a view of truth as correspondence, and God simply has the essential property of knowing all and only true propositions. With regard to the future, virtually all facts are counterfactually open, and therefore future-tense propositions are not temporally necessary. Propositions thus move from being temporally contingent to being temporally necessary when all the opportunities to affect things counterfactually have slipped by. Hence, the mere fact that an event is past is no indication that it is counterfactually closed. This is especially evident in the case of God's foreknowledge. If we say that God foreknows that I shall do x and therefore I cannot refrain from doing x, lest I change God's past foreknowledge, we are being deceived by a modality which has nothing to do with my power or freedom. All that is impossible is the conjunction of God's foreknowledge that p and of ~ p; but this modality in sensu composito has no bearing on my ability to act such that ~ p would be true and God would have foreknown differently. Temporal necessity, then, turns out to be only obliquely temporal and modally weak, certainly no threat to freedom or divine foreknowledge.     

A comparison of conflict of interest policies at peer-reviewed journals in different scientific disciplines

Scientific journals can promote ethical publication practices through policies on conflicts of interest. However, the prevalence of conflict of interest policies and the definition of conflict of interest appear to vary across scientific disciplines. This survey of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals in 12 different scientific disciplines was conducted to assess these variations. The survey identified published conflict of interest policies in 28 of 84 journals (33%). However, when representatives of 49 of the 84 journals (58%) completed a Web-based survey about journal conflict of interest policies, 39 (80%) reported having such a policy. Frequency of policies (including those not published) varied by discipline, from 100% among general medical journals to none among physics journals. Financial interests were most frequently addressed with relation to authors; policies for reviewers most often addressed non-financial conflicts. Twenty-two of the 39 journals with policies (56%) had policies about editors’ conflicts. The highest impact journals in each category were most likely to have a published policy, and the frequency of policies fell linearly with rank; for example, policies were published by 58% of journals ranked 1 in their category, 42% of journals ranked third, and 8% of journals ranked seventh (test for trend, p = 0.003). Having a conflict of interest policy was also associated with a self-reported history of problems with conflict of interest. The prevalence of published conflict of interest policies was higher than that reported in a 1997 study, an increase that might be attributable to heightened awareness of conflict of interest issues. However, many of the journals with policies do not make them readily available and many of those policies that were available lacked clear definitions of conflict of interest or details about how disclosures would be managed during peer review and publication.     

MONKEYS, TYPEWRITERS, AND OBJECTIVE CONSEQUENTIALISM

There have been several recent attempts to refute objective consequentialism on the grounds that it implies the absurd conclusion that even the best of us act wrongly. Some have argued that we act wrongly from time to time; others have argued that we act wrongly regularly. Here I seek to strengthen reductio arguments against objective consequentialism by showing that objective consequentialism implies that we almost never act rightly. I show that no matter what you do, there is almost certainly something else you could do that would have even better consequences. If objective consequentialism is true, the ratio of the number of your right actions to the number of your wrong actions is very close to zero.     

Hume and Kant on the social contract

Conclusion In this lecture I have attempted to survey the main points of contention between Hume and Kant with respect to their treatment of social or original contract theory. I have tried to show that their conflicts, running as they do to the heart of each thinker's moral philosophy, are very deep indeed. If nothing else, they show the conceptual dependence of social and political philosophy upon moral philosophy and were worth exploring at least for that reason. I have not, of course, said anything about the most important question of all: which, if either, of the two theories is true? Pehaps we can begin an exploration of that question together.A lecture presented at the David Hume Bicentennial Symposium, University of Arizona, September 17, 1976. An earlier version of the lecture was presented to the Department of Philosophy, Loyola University (Chicago), in 1975. The lecture was also presented at the 1977 meeting of the Hume Society, University of Virginia, October 29, 1977.     

Citation Networks of Communication Journals, 1977–1985 Cliques and Positions,Citations Made and Citations Received

This article analyzes the pattern of citations among all communication journals covered by the first nine years of the Journal Citation Reports volume of the Social Sciences Citation Index (Garfield, 1977–1985). It approaches these analyses from two perspectives: (1) bibliometric analysis of citation flows, ratios, and impact factors, and (2) network analysis of both cohesion-based and position-based citation patterns. The field of communication exhibits clear clustering and inbreeding, consisting of cliques of interpersonal journals, mass media journals, and residual isolate journals. Citation patterns within and across these cliques have been very stable from 1977 through 1985. The cohesion analyses show that Human Communication Research and Communication Education provide weak ties from mass media journals to interpersonal communication journals. The Journal of Communication is cited the most strongly by the most journals, and provides, by means of citations, bidirectional channels for the flow of scientific information between mass media journals and interpersonal journals. The positional analyses show that the set of journals that has similar citing patterns is somewhat different from the set of journals that is cited similarly. In particular, the set of sources for the research reported in articles in these journals is not similar to the set of journals that refer to the articles in these journals.     

Medical journals' conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews

The purpose of the study was to assess medical journals’ conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews. We examined book reviews published in 1999, 2000, and 2001 (N=1,876) in five leading medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal (BMJ), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. The main outcome measure was journal publication of reviews of books that had been published by the journal’s own publisher, that had been edited or authored by a lead editor of the journal, or that posed another conflict of interest. We also surveyed the editors-in-chief of the five journals about their policies on these conflicts of interests. During the study period, four of the five journals published 30 book reviews presenting a conflict of interest: nineteen by the BMJ, five by the Annals, four by JAMA, and two by the Lancet. These reviews represent 5.8%, 2.7%, 0.7%, and 0.7%, respectively, of all book reviews published by the journals. These four journals, respectively, published reviews of 11.9%, 25.0%, 0.9%, and 1.0% of all medical books published by the journals’ publishers. Only one of the 30 book reviews included a disclosure statement addressing the conflict of interest. None of the journals had a written policy pertaining to the conflicts of interest assessed in this study, although four reported having unwritten policies. We recommend that scientific journals and associations representing journal editors develop policies on conflicts of interest pertaining to book reviews. Disclosure: R.M. Davis was North American editor of the BMJ from 1998 to 2001, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, which publishes JAMA. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of any organization with which the authors have been affiliated.     

Evil and God's Toxin Puzzle

I show that Kavka's toxin puzzle raises a problem for the “Responsibility Theodicy,” which holds that the reason God typically does not intervene to stop the evil effects of our actions is that such intervention would undermine the possibility of our being significantly responsible for overcoming and averting evil. This prominent theodicy seems to require that God be able to do what the agent in Kavka's toxin story cannot do: stick by a plan to do some action at a future time even though when that time comes, there will be no good reason for performing that action (and very good reason not to). I assess various approaches to solving this problem. Along the way, I develop an iterated variant of Kavka's toxin case and argue that the case is not adequately handled by standard causal decision theory.     

Children and “junk food” advertising: Critique of a recent Australian study

A field experiment by Australian public health researchers Norman, Kelly, McMahon, and others allegedly demonstrated that primary school children's physical health is threatened by exposure to “junk food” advertising. Their study was published in the international health journal Appetite and was clearly intended to influence government regulatory policy. The methodology of the study was taken, without acknowledgement, from an earlier American study in the Journal of Consumer Research and much other research on children's consumer behavior, including pioneering studies conducted by the present author? was ignored. Also, quite unforgivably, the researchers neglected to cite Australia's already strict regulatory controls on and guidelines for advertising directed to children. The present author sent a rejoinder to Appetite pointing out the many problems with Norman et al.'s research and recommending that their article be withdrawn, but the editor insisted I revise it to remove almost all the criticisms, which I naturally refused to do. Instead, by publishing this article in JCB, the present author is hoping to make consumer researchers aware of the sort of poorly performed and ideologically influenced research relating to marketing and consumer behavior that is appearing in the health journals. The present article also contributes more generally by exposing problems that must be avoided in experimental research on consumer behavior.     

Qualitative research in psychology: Could William James get a job?

Considering the case of William James, the author examines the likelihood of a successful career as a qualitative researcher in contemporary U.S. psychology. Fifty-seven journals affiliated with the American Psychological Association or its divisions were analyzed to show the place of qualitative research in U.S. psychology over the past 50 years. Journal abstracts, mission statements, and a short e-mail questionnaire from editors were used to understand patterns and trends in qualitative research in U.S. psychology. Editors are generally accepting of qualitative work, although mission statements do not always signal likely interest in qualitative work. The amount of qualitative work published is comparably low, but patterns of increased publication are found in some journals. Trends in methodologies, topics of research, and ways in which qualitative research enters journals over time are discussed. Suggestions for the publication of qualitative work are provided.     

Research Productivity and Performance of Journals in the Creativity Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the research productivity and performance of creativity studies between 1965 and 2012. A dataset was constructed using all publications and citations retrieved from four key journals that publish creativity research: Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB), Gifted Child Quarterly (GCQ), Creativity Research Journal (CRJ), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (PACA). Major findings in this study include: (a) During the study period, the four journals have published 1,891 articles on creativity and they have been cited 11,709 times; (b) the impact factors of the four journals increased from lower than .50 in 2002 to over 1.0 in 2012; in 2012 PACA had the highest impact factor, followed by CRJ; (c) JCB published the most creativity papers and CRJ had the most citations; (d) about a third of the articles published in the four journals have never been cited. Implications for the field of creativity are discussed.