Cheap Renewable Contracts Could Be Options In Disguise

Cheap Renewable Contracts Could Be Options In Disguise
Financial Times, September 25 2017
https://www.ft.com/content/f19f4944-a11a-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2

Jonathan Ford

When prices tumble for a product or service, there is generally an observable reason. It might be a cunning technological fix that dramatically boosts productivity, for instance, or the sudden slide in a key input cost. But nothing so obvious can convincingly explain why it is suddenly much cheaper to produce electricity from offshore wind turbines.

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Check also:

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation. By Jess Shankleman

Bloomberg, September 19, 2017 + September 22, 2017

http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/subsidy-free-wind-farms-risk-ruining.html
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 The latest round of renewable auctions has seen two big projects awarded contracts guaranteeing a fixed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for their output when the blades start turning sometime in the next decade. That is a very big dip from the first round, which required subsidies of some £150/MWh to be profitable. Even the cheapest of previous vintages were north of £110.

It is not so long since British wind power bosses were vowing — amid widespread scepticism — that they could reduce costs to £100/MWh by 2020. Yet these auction results suggest a far steeper decline in offshore costs.

Of course, it is always worth peering behind the headlines to put numbers in context. The sums quoted are 2012 prices. The actual figure in today’s money is therefore £64/MWh; a still subsidy-rich 50 per cent above the current wholesale price of about £40.

The real question though is how the industry can support such a reduction. Take overall costs, for instance. Most studies do not yet point to projects breaking even at £57.50. According to a recent review by the UK’s Offshore Wind Programme Board, so-called levelised costs for new wind projects at the point of commitment (ie not yet built, but button decisively pressed) declined by 7 per cent annually from £142/MWh in 2010-11 to just £97 in 2015-16, driven by factors such as the use of larger turbines and better siting. But while these are impressive figures even they cannot explain a further £40 drop in such a short space of time.

What’s more, by far the biggest component of those costs is capital expenditure, and another study suggests that progress here is much more nuanced. A new report led by Gordon Hughes, a former professor of economics at Edinburgh University, and published by the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, has analysed the reported capital costs of 86 projects across Europe. These show that while technological advances are driving down costs by 4 per cent annually, this gain is being offset as the industry moves out into deeper and more challenging waters. So, depending on where future projects are sited, there may even be no clear downward trend at all.

It may be possible that the auction-winning projects have specific reasons for being able to deliver low prices. For instance, the Hornsea II project sponsored by Denmark’s Dong Energy sits next to a first farm that is also being built by the same company (at far higher rates of subsidy), offering the opportunity to share support infrastructure, as well as the link between the turbines and the grid.

But it is also possible that the promoters view the CFD contract as a pretty loose commitment. “Potentially these bids could be seen as more of an option on future capacity,” said Allan Baker, Société Générale’s global head of power advisory and project finance at Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance Summit last week.

Just three giant wind farms have taken all the capacity in the current auction, which at 3.2GW is equivalent to 60 per cent of Britain’s current offshore fleet. That means the competition is in effect shut out.

The contracts do not represent an absolute commitment. According to the UK government, the developers could withdraw were they unable to obtain financing, with only a limited penalty. What they would mainly lose was the right to pop the same project into a later auction round.

So to the extent, for instance, that contracts depend on yet-to-be developed technologies, such as 15MW turbines, or squeezing contractor prices, there would be little cost to cancelling were developers not to get the deals they hoped for.

And even beyond construction, the CFD could conceivably be revoked by the operator were it prepared to pay a significant, not ruinous, financial penalty, Prof Hughes reckons. So should wholesale prices rise well above the level of the fixed strike price in future, developers might be able to flip across and benefit from (superior) market rates. That might happen, for instance, were the government to introduce a higher carbon price.

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation. By Jess Shankleman

Bloomberg, September 19, 2017 + September 22, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/subsidy-free-wind-farms-risk-ruined-reputations-for-industry

Energy companies that stunned the world by offering to build wind farms with no subsidy may ruin the industry’s reputation by never actually delivering on their promises.
That’s the warning of industry executives, who are cautious about the future of zero-subsidy offshore wind farms planned in Germany this year. Developers led by Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG and Dong Energy A/S are betting they can sell the electricity they produce from the wind farms at a profit without any help from taxpayers.
“The offshore wind industry needs to be careful,” Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president at Statoil ASA’s New Energy Solutions unit, said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in London on Tuesday. “They’re taking on these options, and when you get to the delivery date, if they’re not able to build the projects, it will ruin the reputation of the industry.”
The German government may not have the right rules in place to ensure developers actually deliver on their winning bids, said Thomas Karst, senior vice president at MHI Vestas Offshore Wind AS.
“The regulatory power lies with the owners of the concessions and they may or may not get built, so that model from the regulatory point of view doesn’t really work,” Karst said at the same conference.

It’s not just in Germany where the costs of offshore wind power are falling. The U.K. and Netherlands have both seen record low bids during the past year that surprised even industry insiders. Last week, developers led by Dong won bids to develop wind farms in British waters for as little as 57.50 pounds ($77.61) a megawatt-hour, well below the cost of the next nuclear reactors.
Winning bidders in the German auctions based business cases on giant wind turbines, soaring as high as The Shard in London and generating as much as 15 megawatts of power each. Those machines haven’t been built yet and aren’t due until the next decade.
“The question is are they actually deliverable? Potentially these bids could be seen as more of an option on future capacity,” said Allan Baker, global head of power advisory and project finance at Societe Generale SA.

The robotic system has reduced rejects from 20 pct to 5 pct, mostly due to improvements in hygiene & handling

Spanish farm produce supplier reduces human workers from 500 to 100 using robots. David Edwards. Robotics & Automation News, September 19, 2017, www.roboticsandautomationnews.com/2017/09/19/spanish-farm-produce-supplier-reduces-human-workers-from-500-to-100-using-robots/14148/

Spanish farm produce supplier El Dulze has reduced its human workforce from 500 down to just 100 with the use of robots, according to a report on FruitNet.com.

The company is said to be using Fanuc robots – LR Mate 200iB models – which use vision systems to even out the production line so the vegetables are not bunched up too close together for packing.

The robots also appear to be picking heads of lettuce and placing them in containers, or plastic packaging.

A total of 68 robots have been installed at the El Dulze facility in Murcia, and they process approximately 550,000 heads of lettuce every day.

The robotic system is also said to have reduced rejects from 20 per cent to 5 per cent, mostly due to improvements in hygiene and handling.

Managing director José Sánchez is quoted by FruitNet.com as saying: “This business has traditionally been labour intensive but today labour is increasingly unavailable.

“This region has a major shortage of labour – many workers in the industry are immigrants but this hasn’t solved our problem.

“As minimal skill is needed we have a real problem with labour and turnover of these workers is high – they just seem to come and go.

“Reducing the amount of people has made everything more hygienic and damage to the lettuces caused by handling is now minimal.”

Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India's Child Labor Ban

Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India's Child Labor Ban. Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K. Lakdawala, and Nicholas Li. https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19602.html

ABSTRACT: While bans against child labor are a common policy tool, there is very little empirical evidence validating their effectiveness.  In this paper, we examine the consequences of India’s landmark legislation against child labor, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986. Using data from employment surveys conducted before and after the ban, and using age restrictions that determined who the ban applied to, we show that child wages decrease and child labor increases after the ban. These results are consistent with a theoretical model building on the seminal work of Basu and Van (1998) and Basu (2005),  where families use child labor to reach subsistence constraints and where child wages decrease in response to bans, leading poor families to utilize more child labor. The increase in child labor comes at the expense of reduced school enrollment. We also examine the effects of the ban at the household level.  Using linked consumption and expenditure vdata, we find that along various margins of household expenditure, consumption, calorie intake and asset holdings, households are worse off after the ban.

JEL Codes: I38, J22, J82, O12

Check also: A Fine is a Price. Uri Gneezy & Aldo Rustichini. The Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, January 2000. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468061

Abstract: The deterrence hypothesis predicts that the introduction of a penalty that leaves everything else unchanged will reduce the occurrence of the behavior subject to the fine. We present the result of a field study in a group of day‐care centers that contradicts this prediction. Parents used to arrive late to collect their children, forcing a teacher to stay after closing time. We introduced a monetary fine for late‐coming parents. As a result, the number of late‐coming parents increased significantly. After the fine was removed no reduction occurred. We argue that penalties are usually introduced into an incomplete contract, social or private. They may change the information that agents have, and therefore the effect on behavior may be opposite of that expected. If this is true, the deterrence hypothesis loses its predictive strength, since the clause “everything else is left unchanged” might be hard to satisfy.

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In a day-care center for little children... The contract signed at the beginning of the year states that the day-care center operates between 0730 and 1600. There is no mention of what happens if parents come late to pick up their children. In particular, before the beginning of the study, there was no fine for coming late. When parents did not come on time, one of the teachers had to wait with the children concerned. Teachers would rotate in this task, which is considered part of the job of a teacher, a fact that is clearly explained when a teacher is hired. Parents rarely came after 1630. [...] At the beginning of the fifth week [of 20 weeks in the study], we introduced a fine [of little money for each child and 10 minutes delay] in six of the 10 day-care centers,7 which had been selected randomly. [...] At the beginning of the seventeenth week, the fine was removed with no explanation.

[...] Fact 1.—The effect of introducing the fine was a significant increase in the number of late-coming parents.
Fact 2.—Removing the fine did not affect the number of late-coming parents relative to the time of the fine. In particular, this number remained higher in the treatment group than in the control group.
Fact 3.—There is no significant difference in the behavior of the test group and the control group in the initial 4 weeks, and there is no significant trend in the test group.

Dark Personalities on Facebook: Harmful Online Behaviors and Language

Dark Personalities on Facebook: Harmful Online Behaviors and Language. Olga Bogolyubova et al. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.032

Highlights
•    We explore the interplay of the Dark Triad, harmful online behaviors and language
•    Psychopathy and male gender predict engagement in harmful online behaviors
•    Facebook users with dark traits have identifiable language characteristics
•    Findings are consistent with previous research using non-linguistic criteria

Abstract: The goal of this paper was to assess the connection between dark personality traits and engagement in harmful online behaviors in a sample of Russian Facebook users, and to describe the language they use in online communication. A total of 6,724 individuals participated in the study (mean age = 44.96 years, age range: 18–85 years, 77.9% — female). Data was collected via a purpose-built application, which served two purposes: administer the survey and download consenting user’s public wall posts, gender and age from the Facebook profile. The survey included questions on engagement in harmful online behaviors and the Short Dark Triad scale; 15,281 wall posts from 1,972 users were included in the dataset. These posts were subjected to morphological, lexical and semantic analyses. More than 25% of the sample reported engaging in harmful online behaviors. Males were more likely to send insulting or threatening messages and post aggressive comments; no gender differences were found for disseminating other people’s private information. Psychopathy and male gender were the unique predictors of engagement in harmful online behaviors. A number of significant correlations were found between the dark traits and numeric, lexical, morphological and semantic characteristics of the participants’ posts.

Keywords: Dark Triad; Facebook; cyber aggression; Russian language; distributional semantics; word clustering

Individual differences in the effects of baby images on attitudes toward getting married

Individual differences in the effects of baby images on attitudes toward getting married. Charles G. Lord, , Christopher J. Holland, and Sarah E. Hill. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 121, 15 January 2018, Pages 106–110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.029

Highlights
•    Women who had viewed images of smiling babies wanted to get married sooner.
•    This effect occurred for both 18- to 25-year-old and 18- to 45-year-old women.
•    Baby image priming increased accessibility of thoughts about having children.
•    Baby image priming increased positivity of thoughts about having children.
•    All of these effects occurred for women, but not for men.

Abstract: Previous research on determinants of marital and reproductive timing focused on factors prominent in evolutionary theories. We focused on complementary factors prominent in research on attitudes, social cognition, and personality. Attitude construal and situated inference theories hold that priming can increase the accessibility of specific concepts, and that valence of the primed concepts can affect subsequent judgments. In two studies, one with college students and the other with a larger, more diverse sample, women, but not men, wanted to get married sooner if they had than had not recently seen images of smiling babies. Primed women also listed a greater number of and more positive children-related thoughts about marriage. These results suggest that subtle contextual cues can alter accessibility of relevant concepts, affect attitudes even on important issues, and work differently for different individuals. The results also suggest closer links between evolutionary, social cognitive, and personality theories.

Keywords: Attitudes; Construal theories; Priming; Sex differences; Situated inference; Accessibility

European Paradox or Delusion—Are European Science and Economy Outdated?

European Paradox or Delusion—Are European Science and Economy Outdated? Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro Francis Narin. Science and Public Policy, scx021, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scx021

Abstract: The European Union (EU) seems to presume that the mass production of European research papers indicates that Europe is a leading scientific power, and the so-called European paradox of strong science but weak technology is due to inefficiencies in the utilization of this top level European science by European industry. We fundamentally disagree, and will show that Europe lags far behind the USA in the production of important, highly cited research. We will show that there is a consistent weakening of European science as one ascends the citation scale, with the EU almost twice as effective in the production of minimal impact papers, while the USA is at least twice as effective in the production of very highly cited scientific papers, and garnering Nobel prizes. Only in the highly multinational, collaborative fields of Physics and Clinical Medicine does the EU seem to approach the USA in top scale impact.

Keywords: European paradox, research performance, research assessment, citation analysis.

The Mortality and Myocardial Effects of Antidepressants Are Moderated by Preexisting Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis

The Mortality and Myocardial Effects of Antidepressants Are Moderated by Preexisting Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis. Maslej M.M. et al. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, https://doi.org/10.1159/000477940

Abstract

Background: Antidepressants (ADs) are commonly prescribed medications, but their long-term health effects are debated. ADs disrupt multiple adaptive processes regulated by evolutionarily ancient biochemicals, potentially increasing mortality. However, many ADs also have anticlotting properties that can be efficacious in treating cardiovascular disease. We conducted a meta-analysis assessing the effects of ADs on all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in general-population and cardiovascular-patient samples.

Methods: Two reviewers independently assessed articles from PubMed, EMBASE, and Google Scholar for AD-related mortality controlling for depression and other comorbidities. From these articles, we extracted information about cardiovascular events, cardiovascular risk status, and AD class. We conducted mixed-effect meta-analyses testing sample type and AD class as moderators of all-cause mortality and new cardiovascular events.

Results: Seventeen studies met our search criteria. Sample type consistently moderated health risks. In general-population samples, AD use increased the risks of mortality (HR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.14-1.55) and new cardiovascular events (HR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.08-1.21). In cardiovascular patients, AD use did not significantly affect risks. AD class also moderated mortality, but the serotonin reuptake inhibitors were not significantly different from tricyclic ADs (TCAs) (HR = 1.10, 95% CI: 0.93-1.31, p = 0.27). Only “other ADs” were differentiable from TCAs (HR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.08-1.69). Mortality risk estimates increased when we analyzed the subset of studies controlling for premedication depression, suggesting the absence of confounding by indication.

Conclusions: The results support the hypothesis that ADs are harmful in the general population but less harmful in cardiovascular patients.

‘Barbie Doll Syndrome’. A case report of body dysmorphic disorder

„Das Barbie Syndrom“. Ein Fallbericht über die Körperdysmorphe Störung (=‘Barbie Doll Syndrome’. A case report of body dysmorphic disorder). Gruber, M., Jahn, R., Stolba, K. et al. Neuropsychiatr (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-017-0241-2

Summary

Background: This case report aims to present a 37-year-old women striving to shape her body like a Barbie doll of which she has been fascinated since childhood. She could hardly tolerate any deviation from this beauty ideal. She has been admitted to the psychosomatic ward due to an eating disorder.

Methods: The ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria were established for axis I disorders and the German version of the SCID II interview (for DSM-4) was applied for axis II disorders. Additionally, the “modified Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for body dysmorphic disorder” was carried out.

Results: The diagnosis of dysmorphophobia (ICD-10: F45.21) or body dysmorphic disorder (DSM-5: 300.7) and bulimia nervosa (ICD-10: F50.2; DSM-5: 307.51) was confirmed. The patient fulfilled criteria of an avoidant, depressive and histrionic personality disorder.

Psychopharmacological treatment with Fluoxetine was started and the patient participated in an intensive inpatient psychosomatic program. The body image, self-concept and the sense of shame were therapeutic key topics.

Conclusion: The present case report focuses on body dysmorphic disorder as a distinctive entity with high prevalence. Diagnostic criteria of different classification systems were contrasted and comorbidity with eating disorders was discussed. In clinical praxis, body dysmorphic disorder remains underdiagnosed, especially when cooccurring with an eating disorder. However, the correct diagnosis could be relevant for therapy planning.

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approx translation: [The appearance of the patient is impressive. Her artificial style with toupled hair and artificial hair parts (Beehive hair style), a heavily painted face with a focus on the eyes, framed by the thick eyelid with the false eyelashes and the delicate, somewhat aged skin with the dark solarium-browned complexion. The physique is delicate except the large breasts.

The patient grew up with a stable twin-sister and an older sister in stable family circumstances. She describes the twin sister as her "mirror image", both had always placed great emphasis on their appearance, compared to each other and revised and criticized each other. At school, the sisters would sometimes have been teased because of their "mirror image". Furthermore she describes a great fascination for Barbie dolls, which would continue today. At the age of 17, she met her ex-husband, with whom she became engaged and had two children. After the birth of the second child had a postpartum depression with a resulting bonding disorder to the son. The patient did not seek professional help. Four years later, she describes a two-year "happy phase", which leads her back to the successful professional life (good merit as unskilled assistant). She would have received recognition and be able to face more self-respect.

[...]

The patient suffers from hard-to-correct beliefs about physical disfigurement, a disturbance of body perception ("the belly would be too fat," "the legs would be too straight," "the butt would be too shallow," "cellulite would be too strong, the skin too pale ") and forced thoughts through the constant comparison of one's own appearance with others. There are numerous body-related fears ("getting too fat," "hair could slip," the make-up could be blurred), as well as social-phobic fears ("fear of appearance and behavior affect others embarrassingly or embarrassingly" ). The patient is compulsive with food and the external appearance and invests up to three hours daily in the body care and cosmetics (camouflage) and two to three hours daily in the course of ritualized eating / vomiting. At the same time, there is also a strong reinsurance tendency with frequent glances in the mirror, selfies or queries. It shows an avoidance behavior (avoids strangers looking intently, to visit public baths, or to show herself naked).]

Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, also in the sciences, including the medical ones

Fake news and post-truth pronouncements in general and in early human development. Victor Grech. Early Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2017.09.017

Highlights
•    Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common.
•    They are also being to science and to medicine.
•    This editorial reviews this unsavoury trend.
•    It also highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development.
•    We, as scientists, must continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Abstract: Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, and are unfortunately also progressively being applied to the sciences, including the medical sciences. This editorial briefly reviews this unsavoury trend and highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development. Science is arguably the last metanarrative with any significant cachet in the postmodern period. We, as scientists, must strive to ensure that our work is transparent and of the highest possible standard so as to continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Keywords: MeSH: Humans; Public opinion; Science; Social media

Check also: Polarized Mass or Polarized Few? Assessing the Parallel Rise of Survey Nonresponse and Measures of Polarization. Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman. The Journal of Politics, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/polarized-mass-or-polarized-few.html

Captive gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food with a stick

Luef, E. M., & Heschl, A. (2017). Triadic interactions with tools in a gorilla. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 4(2), 136–145. https://doi.org/10.12966/abc.01.05.2017

Abstract - Triadic interactions are an important developmental milestone for young human infants, ultimately enabling them to acquire language. When an infant and a caregiver share attention regarding an object, the label given to the object becomes linked with the object, hence referential communication is established through which infants learn to associate words with meanings. In fact, triadic interactions are considered so crucial to human language development that their phylogenetic origins have become the focus of investigation to study the evolutionary history of language. In this paper, we report a communicative instance of a captive zoo gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food. The gorilla seemed to initiate a series of combined triadic interactions with different tools used as pointing devices while attempting to recruit a human for help. Even though it is a single observation event, we argue that the gorilla possessed relevant knowledge about the various purposes for which a specific tool can be used and utilized sophisticated communicative means in her interaction with humans.

Keywords – Gorilla communication, Pointing gesture, Triadic reference, Shared attention, Social tool use, Flexible gesture-tool combinations

The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers -- Policemen need to sleep better

The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers. Lois James. Police Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611117732974

Abstract: Research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat. Little is known however about the stability of implicit racial bias in police officers, whose attitudes could be expected to fluctuate based on their day-to-day encounters or from internal stressors such as fatigue. To investigate, this study tested 80 police officers using the Weapons Implicit Association Test (IAT) on four separate occasions. Officers’ sleep was also monitored using wrist actigraphy. Officers’ IAT scores varied significantly across the testing days (f = 2.36; df = 1.468; p < .05), and differences in IAT scores were associated with officers’ sleep (f = 6.49; df = 1.468; p < .05). These findings indicate that implicit racial bias was not stable among officers, and that when officers slept less prior to testing they demonstrated stronger association between Black Americans and weapons. The implications of these findings within the current climate of police–citizen unrest are discussed.

Doctors should be more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, & enhancing their communication skills

Ioannidis, J. P. A., Stuart, M. E., Brownlee, S. and Strite, S. A. (), How To Survive the Medical Misinformation Mess. Eur J Clin Invest. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/eci.12834

Abstract: Most physicians and other healthcare professionals are unaware of the pervasiveness of poor quality clinical evidence that contributes considerably to overuse, underuse, avoidable adverse events, missed opportunities for right care and wasted healthcare resources. The Medical Misinformation Mess comprises four key problems. First, much published medical research is not reliable or is of uncertain reliability, offers no benefit to patients, or is not useful to decision makers. Second, most healthcare professionals are not aware of this problem. Third, they also lack the skills necessary to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence. Finally, patients and families frequently lack relevant, accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance at the time of medical decision-making. Increasing the reliability of available, published evidence may not be an imminently reachable goal. Therefore, efforts should focus on making healthcare professionals, more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, and enhancing their communication skills so that they can effectively summarize and discuss medical evidence with patients to improve decision-making. Similar efforts may need to target also patients, journalists, policy makers, the lay public and other healthcare stakeholders.

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In our encounters with students, clinicians, and others working in the healthcare industry (including academicians, researchers, editors, peer reviewers, pharmacists, regulators, politicians and employees of insurance companies, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry and new technology companies), we have found a lack of the basic skills required for determining a study’s reliability and applicability. For example, in a pre-test administered to a sampling of more than 500 physicians, clinical pharmacists and other healthcare professionals attending evidence-based medicine (EBM) training programs in 2002 and 2003, 70 percent failed a simple 3-question critical appraisal training program test. The three pre-test questions were designed to determine if attendees could recognize the absence of a control group, understand the issue of overestimating benefit when provided with relative risk reduction information without absolute difference information, and determine whether an intention-to-treat analysis was performed. Surprisingly, among those who reported feeling confident to evaluate the medical literature, 72 percent failed the test, even with generous criteria for correct answers [25]. We have repeated the same pre-test with various groups each year with similar results.

Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease

Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease. Antonio Terracciano et al.
JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2816.

 Key Points

Question  Do changes in personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia?

Findings  In a cohort study that followed up 2046 older adults for as long as 36 years, no evidence of significant change in self-rated personality was found before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia.

Meaning  No personality changes that could be characterized as an early sign of dementia were found.

Abstract
Importance  Changes in behavior and personality are 1 criterion for the diagnosis of dementia. It is unclear, however, whether such changes begin before the clinical onset of the disease.

Objective  To determine whether increases in neuroticism, declines in conscientiousness, and changes in other personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

Design, Setting, and Participants  A cohort of 2046 community-dwelling older adults who volunteered to participate in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging were included. The study examined personality and clinical assessments obtained between 1980 and July 13, 2016, from participants with no cognitive impairment at first assessment who were followed up for as long as 36 years (mean [SD], 12.05 [9.54] years). The self-report personality scales were not considered during consensus diagnostic conferences.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Change in self-rated personality traits assessed in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer disease and other dementias with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a 240-item questionnaire that assesses 30 facets, 6 for each of the 5 major dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Results  Of the 2046 participants, 931 [45.5%] were women; mean (SD) age at first assessment was 62.56 (14.63) years. During 24 569 person-years, mild cognitive impairment was diagnosed in 104 (5.1%) individuals, and all-cause dementia was diagnosed in 255 (12.5%) participants, including 194 (9.5%) with Alzheimer disease. Multilevel modeling that accounted for age, sex, race, and educational level found significant differences on the intercept of several traits: individuals who developed dementia scored higher on neuroticism (β = 2.83; 95% CI, 1.44 to 4.22; P < .001) and lower on conscientiousness (β = −3.34; 95% CI, −4.93 to −1.75; P < .001) and extraversion (β = −1.74; 95% CI, −3.23 to −0.25; P = .02). Change in personality (ie, slope), however, was not significantly different between the nonimpaired and the Alzheimer disease groups (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.08 to 0.08; P = .91; conscientiousness: β = −0.06; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.04; P = .24). Slopes for individuals who developed mild cognitive impairment (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.12 to 0.12; P = .98; conscientiousness: β = −0.09; 95% CI, −0.23 to 0.05; P = .18) and all-cause dementia (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.02; 95% CI, −0.06 to 0.10; P = .49; conscientiousness: β = −0.08; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.00; P = .07) were also similar to those for nonimpaired participants.

Conclusions and Relevance  No evidence for preclinical change in personality before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia was identified. These findings provide evidence against the reverse causality hypothesis and strengthen evidence for personality traits as a risk factor for dementia.

The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence

Reisenzein, R., Horstmann, G. and Schützwohl, A. (2017), The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence. Topics in Cogn Sci. doi:10.1111/tops.12292
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12292/full

Abstract: Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema-discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema-discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition-change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema-discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self-report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise.

Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters

Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters. Peter Enns, Julius Lagodny and Jonathon Schuldt. Statistics, Politics and Policy, https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2017-0003

Abstract: Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Different explanations have been offered for these results, including non-response bias and late deciders. We argue, however, that these explanations cannot fully account for Trump’s underperformance in October surveys. Utilizing data from two national polls that we conducted in October of 2016 (n>2100 total) as well as 14 state-level polls from October, we find consistent evidence for the existence of “hidden” Trump supporters who were included in the surveys but did not openly express their intention to vote for Trump. Most notably, when we account for these hidden Trump supporters in our October survey data, both national and state-level analyses foreshadow Trump’s Election Day support. These results suggest that late-breaking campaign events may have had less influence than previously thought and the findings hold important implications for how scholars, media, and campaigns analyze future election surveys.

Check also: Social Desirability Bias and Polling Errors in the 2016 Presidential Election. Andy Brownback and Aaron Novotny. University of Arkansas Working Paper, July 2017, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/social-desirability-bias-and-polling.html

The Foreign Investor Bias and Its Linguistic Origins

The Foreign Investor Bias and Its Linguistic Origins. Russell Lundholm, Nafis Rahman & Rafael Rogo. Management Science, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2812

Abstract: We study how misaligned language between the investor and the firm contributes to the underweighting of foreign securities in an international portfolio. In particular, we document a significant U.S. institutional investor bias against firms located in Quebec relative to firms located in the rest of Canada (ROC). The differential bias is surprising given that (i) Quebec and the other Canadian provinces share the same nationality, federal law, stock exchange, and accounting standards; (ii) their regulatory filings are prepared in English and French; and (iii) U.S. institutional investors are sophisticated and located close to Quebec and the ROC. We also examine Quebec firms with different levels of French versus English online presences as well as those with CEOs who have U.S. work experience or board members or financial analysts who reside in the United States. We find that each factor affects the relative underweighting of investment in Quebec versus the ROC. Finally, we contrast the holdings of institutional investors located in the United Kingdom and France to bolster our conclusion that incongruent languages contribute to the underweighting of Quebec firms relative to firms in the ROC.

Keywords: home bias; investor bias; language; Quebec

My comment: In our search of homogeneity we can go so far as to avoid some business opportunities if we feel the other part will be too foreign for our tastes.

Altruists lie like the others unless lying hurts another party

Do the Altruists Lie Less? Rudolf Kerschbamer, Daniel Neururer, and Alexander Gruber. August 28, 2017. https://ideas.repec.org/p/inn/wpaper/2017-17.html

Abstract: Much is known about heterogeneity in social preferences and about heterogeneity in lying aversion -- but little is known about the relation between the two at the individual level. Are the altruists simply upright persons who do not only care about the well-being of others but also about honesty? And are the selfish those who lie whenever lying maximizes their material payoff? This paper addresses those questions in experiments that first elicit subjects.social preferences and then let them make decisions in an environment where lying increases the own material payo¤ and has either consequences for the payoffs of others or no consequences for others. We find that altruists lie less when lying hurts another party but we do not find any evidence in support of the hypothesis that altruists are more (or less) averse to lying than others in environments where lying has no effects on the payoffs of others

Mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and emergence of collective memory: Influence of emotional valence, group structure, and information distribution

Choi, H.-Y., Kensinger, E. A., & Rajaram, S. (2017). Mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and emergence of collective memory: Influence of emotional valence, group structure, and information distribution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(9), 1247-1265.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000327

Abstract: Social transmission of memory and its consequence on collective memory have generated enduring interdisciplinary interest because of their widespread significance in interpersonal, sociocultural, and political arenas. We tested the influence of 3 key factors—emotional salience of information, group structure, and information distribution—on mnemonic transmission, social contagion, and collective memory. Participants individually studied emotionally salient (negative or positive) and nonemotional (neutral) picture–word pairs that were completely shared, partially shared, or unshared within participant triads, and then completed 3 consecutive recalls in 1 of 3 conditions: individual–individual–individual (control), collaborative–collaborative (identical group; insular structure)–individual, and collaborative–collaborative (reconfigured group; diverse structure)–individual. Collaboration enhanced negative memories especially in insular group structure and especially for shared information, and promoted collective forgetting of positive memories. Diverse group structure reduced this negativity effect. Unequally distributed information led to social contagion that creates false memories; diverse structure propagated a greater variety of false memories whereas insular structure promoted confidence in false recognition and false collective memory. A simultaneous assessment of network structure, information distribution, and emotional valence breaks new ground to specify how network structure shapes the spread of negative memories and false memories, and the emergence of collective memory.

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Check: Social contagion of memory. HENRY L. ROEDIGER III, MICHELLE L. MEADE, and ERIK T. BERGMAN. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2001, 8 (2), 365-371, https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196174

Abstract: We report a new paradigm for studying false memories implanted by social influence, a process we call the social contagion of memory. A subject and confederate together saw six common household scenes (e.g., a kitchen) containing many objects, for either 15 or 60 sec. During a collaborative recall test, the 2 subjects each recalled six items from the scenes, but the confederate occasionally made mistakes by reporting items not from the scene. Some intrusions were highly consistent with the scene schema (e.g., a toaster) while others were less so (e.g., oven mitts). After a brief delay, the individual subject tried to recall as many items as possible from the six scenes. Recall of the erroneous items suggested by the confederate was greater than in a control condition (with no suggestion). Further, this social contagion effect was greater when the scenes were presented for less time (15 sec) and when the intruded item was more schema consistent (e.g., the toaster). As with other forms of social influence, false memories are contagious; one person’s memory can be infected by another person’s errors.

Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but more negatively

Tattoo or taboo? Tattoo stigma and negative attitudes toward tattooed individuals. Kristin A Broussard & Helen C Harton. The Journal of Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2017.1373622

ABSTRACT: Tattoos are common in the United States; however, tattooed persons may be perceived as having more negative character and as more deviant than people without tattoos. College students (Study 1) and community members (Study 2) viewed images of men and women with tattoos or the same images with the tattoos digitally removed and rated the targets’ characteristics. Half of the participants viewed a target with a tattoo, and half viewed that target without it, allowing for both within- (participants all rated one male and one female target with a tattoo and another without) and between-participants (participants rated either the tattooed or non-tattooed version of a single target) comparisons. Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but more negatively on other character attributes than the same target images with the tattoos removed. The stigma associated with tattoos appears to still exist, despite the prevalence of tattoos in modern culture.

KEYWORDS: Tattoo, stigma, gender, stereotypes

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Tattooed people also judge negatively other tattooed individuals, like the non-tattooed do.

How many laypeople holding a popular opinion are needed to counter an expert opinion?

How many laypeople holding a popular opinion are needed to counter an expert opinion? Jos Hornikx, Adam J. L. Harris & Jordy Boekema. Thinking & Reasoning, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2017.1378721

Abstract: In everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of (lay) people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions.

KEYWORDS: Expert opinion, popular opinion, Bayesian argumentation

Invasive interventions are associated with substantially large placebo effects

Route of Placebo Administration: Robust Placebo Effects in Laboratory and Clinical Settings. Tao Liu. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.09.018

Highlights
•    Pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses.
•    Robust placebo analgesia in the context of anticipating an upcoming pain.
•    Enhanced placebo effects associated with invasive procedures

Abstract: Recent advances in laboratory and clinical research have greatly enhanced our understanding of placebo effects. However, little progress has been made in translational research that can well integrate these findings. This article examines pivotal role of placebo administration in subsequent placebo responses, providing a unified framework that accounts for robust placebo effects in both laboratory and clinical settings.

Keywords: placebo effects; placebo administration; route of administration; pain; pain anticipation; learning; conditioning; verbal suggestion; belief; reward expectation; appetitive motivation; emotion; anxiety; brain mechanisms; descending pain modulation; RCTs; invasive placebo; sham invasive procedure; acupuncture; clinical practice

Depression is not due to interaction of genetics and childhood trauma -- study of 5,765 subjects from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium

Does childhood trauma moderate polygenic risk for depression? A meta-analysis of 5,765 subjects from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Wouter J. Peyrot, et al. Biological Psychiatry, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.09.009

Abstract

Background: The heterogeneity of genetic effects on Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) may be partly attributable to moderation of genetic effects by environment, such as exposure to childhood trauma (CT). Indeed, previous findings in two independent cohorts showed evidence for interaction between polygenic risk scores (PRS) and CT, albeit in opposing directions. This study aims to meta-analyze MDD-PRSxCT interaction results across these two and other cohorts, while applying more accurate PRS based on a larger discovery sample.

Methods and Materials: Data were combined from 3,024 MDD cases and 2,741 controls from nine cohorts contributing to the MDD Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. MDD-PRS were based on a discovery sample of approximately 110,000 independent individuals. CT was assessed as exposure to sexual or physical abuse during childhood. In a subset of 1957 cases and 2002 controls, a more detailed 5-domain measure additionally included emotional abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect.

Results: MDD was associated with the MDD-PRS (OR=1.24, p=3.6e-5, R2=1.18%) and with CT (OR=2.63, p=3.5e-18 and OR=2.62, p=1.4e-5 for the 2- and 5-domain measures respectively). No interaction was found between MDD-PRS and the 2-domain and 5-domain CT measure (OR=1.00, p=0.89 and OR=1.05, p=0.66).

Conclusions: No meta-analytic evidence for interaction between MDD-PRS and CT was found. This suggests that the previously reported interaction effects, although both statistically significant, can best be interpreted as chance findings. Further research is required, but this study suggests that the genetic heterogeneity of MDD is not attributable to genome-wide moderation of genetic effects by CT.

The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity

As a preventive measure against possible complains in the future about bias, I share this:

The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity. Ayanna Howard and Jason Borenstein. Science and Engineering Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9975-2

Abstract: Recently, there has been an upsurge of attention focused on bias and its impact on specialized artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Allegations of racism and sexism have permeated the conversation as stories surface about search engines delivering job postings for well-paying technical jobs to men and not women, or providing arrest mugshots when keywords such as “black teenagers” are entered. Learning algorithms are evolving; they are often created from parsing through large datasets of online information while having truth labels bestowed on them by crowd-sourced masses. These specialized AI algorithms have been liberated from the minds of researchers and startups, and released onto the public. Yet intelligent though they may be, these algorithms maintain some of the same biases that permeate society. They find patterns within datasets that reflect implicit biases and, in so doing, emphasize and reinforce these biases as global truth. This paper describes specific examples of how bias has infused itself into current AI and robotic systems, and how it may affect the future design of such systems. More specifically, we draw attention to how bias may affect the functioning of (1) a robot peacekeeper, (2) a self-driving car, and (3) a medical robot. We conclude with an overview of measures that could be taken to mitigate or halt bias from permeating robotic technology.

Revenue fell under receiverships: Can Europe Run Greece? Lessons from U.S. Fiscal Receiverships in Latin America, 1904-3

Maurer, Noel and Arroyo Abad, Leticia, Can Europe Run Greece? Lessons from U.S. Fiscal Receiverships in Latin America, 1904-31 (June 13, 2017). George Washington University Working Paper, June 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3026330

Abstract: In 2012 and again in 2015, the German government proposed sending German administrators to manage Greece’s tax and privatization authorities. The idea was that shared governance would reduce corruption and root out inefficient practices. (In 2017 the Boston Globe proposed a similar arrangement for Haiti.) We test a version of shared governance using eight U.S. interventions between 1904 and 1931, under which American officials took over management of Latin American fiscal institutions. We develop a stylized model in which better monitoring by incorruptible managers does not lead to higher government revenues. Using a new panel of data on fiscal revenues and the volume and terms of trade, we find that revenue fell under receiverships. Our results hold under instrumental variables estimation and with counterfactual specifications using synthetic controls.

Chimps do not “do what the others do” merely to fit in, nor suffer for attacks against non-group members

Do Chimpanzees Conform to Social Norms? Laura Schlingloff, and Richard Moore. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, Jul 2017. ISBN: 978-1138822887. DOI 10.4324/9781315742250.ch36

Many studies on social influences on human behavior – including the famous Asch conformity experiments (1951) – show that we change our behavior to fit in with the crowd. [...]

To investigate whether chimpanzees copy for affiliative reasons, van Leeuwen and colleagues tested whether they abandon individually learned information in favor of a majority strategy. They found that chimpanzees do not change a first-learned strategy to conform to a majority, although they will do so to gain higher rewards (van Leeuwen et al. 2013; see also Hrubesch, Preuschoft and van Schaik 2009; and van Leeuwen and Haun 2013). This suggests that chimpanzees are not motivated to “do what the others do” merely to fit in (Leeuwen and Haun 2013).

[...] In human communities, not only do individuals prefer to conform, they also uphold the principles of their group – for example, by punishing those who do not conform. In humans, third-party enforcement of arbitrary conventional norms emerges in children as young as three years (Schmidt, Rakoczy and Tomasello 2012). Humans are also willing to suffer costs in order to sanction norm violations, even if they themselves were not harmed by the violation (Fehr and Fischbacher 2004). Currently, there is no evidence that chimpanzees enforce social norms. While they punish those who harm them directly (Jensen, Call and Tomasello 2007), this is consistent with them punishing out of revenge, and not because they think group norms should be upheld. They do not seem to engage in ‘third-party punishment’. For example, Riedl and colleagues (2012) found that chimpanzees would not retaliate against a conspecific when a third party’s food was stolen.

[...]

Apes looked longer at videos of unfamiliar individuals committing infanticidal attacks than at control videos (e.g., of chimpanzees behaving aggressively towards adults). However – with the exception of one individual who performed threat displays towards the video screen – watching infanticide did not elicit negative emotional arousal. The authors interpret the findings as showing that while chimpanzees may recognize norm violations, these violations elicit strong emotional responses only when they affect group members.

Genomic Imprinting Is Implicated in the Psychology of Music

Genomic Imprinting Is Implicated in the Psychology of Music. Samuel Mehr et al. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617711456

Abstract: Why do people sing to babies? Human infants are relatively altricial and need their parents’ attention to survive. Infant-directed song may constitute a signal of that attention. In Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare disorder of genomic imprinting, genes from chromosome 15q11–q13 that are typically paternally expressed are unexpressed, which results in exaggeration of traits that reduce offspring’s investment demands on the mother. PWS may thus be associated with a distinctive musical phenotype. We report unusual responses to music in people with PWS. Subjects with PWS (N = 39) moved more during music listening, exhibited greater reductions in heart rate in response to music listening, and displayed a specific deficit in pitch-discrimination ability relative to typically developing adults and children (N = 589). Paternally expressed genes from 15q11–q13, which are unexpressed in PWS, may thus increase demands for music and enhance perceptual sensitivity to music. These results implicate genomic imprinting in the psychology of music, informing theories of music’s evolutionary history.