Journal articles: 'Independent experts'

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Niederberger, Aurel. "Independent experts with political mandates: ‘Role distance’ in the production of political knowledge." European Journal of International Security 5, no. 3 (February 7, 2020): 350–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/eis.2019.31.

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AbstractSome experts take on political mandates and simultaneously base their authority on a claim to independence: this balancing act enables international organisations (IOs) to incorporate ‘independent’ experts and generate ‘objective’ knowledge around their policies. However, how do these experts reconcile the contradictory roles of a mandated expert and an independent expert? I address this question by taking recourse to Goffman's sociology and two related concepts: sociological ambivalence refers to situations in which a person faces conflicting expectations. This conflict can be remedied through role distance, that is, behaviour that signals a degree of disaffection from the role one is currently performing while one simultaneously continues to perform that role. I conduct a case study of ‘independent’ experts hired by the UN Security Council to monitor sanctions, analysing how their position is sociologically ambivalent and how their knowledge practices are interlaced with performances of role distance. The findings have two implications for macro-phenomena: first, by keeping their contradictory role constellation functional, experts make it possible for IOs to mobilise ‘independent expertise’. Second, because experts perform role distance through the way they produce knowledge, role distance leaves traces in political knowledge.

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Brown, Stephen K., Manoj Shivlani, David Die, David B. Sampson, and Tina A. Ting. "The Center for Independent Experts." Fisheries 31, no. 12 (December 2006): 590–600. http://dx.doi.org/10.1577/1548-8446(2006)31[590:tcfie]2.0.co;2.

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Carraro, Valentina. "Electing the experts: Expertise and independence in the UN human rights treaty bodies." European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 3 (January 4, 2019): 826–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354066118819138.

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Independent experts are employed in international organizations to carry out a variety of functions, including conducting independent evaluations of state performance in a given policy area. In the field of human rights, a well-known example of the use of independent expertise in public organizations is that of the United Nations treaty bodies, committees of independent experts in charge of monitoring state compliance with the major United Nations human rights treaties. Considering the sensitive tasks that these experts perform, and the fact that they are elected by states, the question of whether they actually possess the required levels of independence and expertise to fulfil their role arises. This article proposes and applies a framework to study the formal and informal processes leading to the appointment of expert committees in international bodies, and to assess their level of expertise and independence. Data were collected by means of an original survey and 40 semi-structured interviews. The article shows that the overall level of independent expertise possessed by committees is surprisingly high when considering the highly political electoral process. Therefore, it argues that to study the expertise and independence of expert committees, one should conceive of them as groups that might be able to maintain a certain independence from the states that have elected them.

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Carter, M. "The not so independent tobacco experts." BMJ 348, apr25 5 (April 25, 2014): g2908. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2908.

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Lequesne, Christian, and Philippe Rivaud. "The Committees of Independent Experts: expertise in the service of democracy?" Journal of European Public Policy 10, no. 5 (January 2003): 695–709. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350176032000124041.

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Mazzola, Paul, Dionigi Gerace, and Adam Reich. "Quality of Independent Expert Reports Used in Australian Takeovers." Australasian Business, Accounting & Finance Journal 14, no. 4 (2020): 61–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.14453/aabfj.v14i4.5.

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In this article, the authors investigate whether there has been an improvement in the quality of independent expert reports following ASIC's revisions to RG111 and RG112. These revisions include additional disclosures on the valuation methodologies used and explanation if the valuation was materially different from the company's recent trading price. It was expected that these revisions have led to an improvement in report quality where quality is determined by the accuracy of the expert's valuation. Results show that after the 2011 revisions, valuations became more accurate based on updated measures of report quality. However, experts with higher fees did not provide higher quality reports on average. The ﬁndings indicate that the independence provisions within the new rules were effective. Furthermore, they warn commissioning firms that higher fees are not necessarily indicative of higher quality reports.

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Jacobs, Robert A. "Methods For Combining Experts' Probability Assessments." Neural Computation 7, no. 5 (September 1995): 867–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/neco.1995.7.5.867.

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This article reviews statistical techniques for combining multiple probability distributions. The framework is that of a decision maker who consults several experts regarding some events. The experts express their opinions in the form of probability distributions. The decision maker must aggregate the experts' distributions into a single distribution that can be used for decision making. Two classes of aggregation methods are reviewed. When using a supra Bayesian procedure, the decision maker treats the expert opinions as data that may be combined with its own prior distribution via Bayes' rule. When using a linear opinion pool, the decision maker forms a linear combination of the expert opinions. The major feature that makes the aggregation of expert opinions difficult is the high correlation or dependence that typically occurs among these opinions. A theme of this paper is the need for training procedures that result in experts with relatively independent opinions or for aggregation methods that implicitly or explicitly model the dependence among the experts. Analyses are presented that show that m dependent experts are worth the same as k independent experts where k ≤ m. In some cases, an exact value for k can be given; in other cases, lower and upper bounds can be placed on k.

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Shunevych, K. "FORENSIC EXAMINATION IN LATVIA’S CRIMINAL PROCESS." Criminalistics and Forensics, no. 65 (May 18, 2020): 159–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.33994/kndise.2020.65.16.

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The article provides a theoretical analysis of the organization of the forensic examination in Latvia. In particular, the author investigates the organizational aspects of the forensic examination: legislative regulation of the status of the entity authorized to conduct the forensic examination; the possibility to conduct the forensic examination in criminal proceedings by private experts; peculiarities of taking up a position (obtaining a license to practice) and terminating a forensic expert etc. It is determined that according to the legislation of Latvia the right to carry out expert activity in the Republic of Latvia belongs to both state and private experts: state experts are people who carry out their activity in the state expert institutions. Private experts are involved in carrying out expertise by concluding civil contracts as self-employed people or as the forensic experts who are members of professional non-governmental associations. There are five state expert institutions in Latvia: the State Bureau of Judicial Expertise (accredited in 2008), the Forensic Directorate of the State Police (accredited in 2006), the State Medical Examination Center (accredited in 2013), the Examination Service under the General Directorate of the State border guards and the State Riga Psychiatric and Drug Center LLC. Since 1996, the Association of Independent Experts of Latvia has been operating in Latvia, comprising private court experts. All experts who may be involved in criminal proceedings must be certified. Certified expert information is placed in the Official Register of Forensic Experts. The Council of Forensic Experts is the compiler of the Register. The Register of Forensic Experts and any changes thereto shall be published on the website of the Judicial Administrations. In addition to the Register of Forensic Experts, there is a Register of Methods of Forensic Examination, which is also compiled by the Council of Forensic Experts. It should be noted that in Latvia a unified standard and qualification requirements have been developed for persons wishing to carry out forensic activities, which are enshrined in the legislation of Latvia and a procedure has been developed for certification of experts, as well as certification of expert research methodologies. At the same time, certain problems arise in practice (for example, the subjectively greater trust of the court in the expert’s conclusions provided by the state expert organization), requiring an urgent solution for the effective functioning of the system of forensic expert activity in Latvia.

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Basili, Marcello, and Luca Pratelli. "Aggregation of not independent experts’ opinions under ambiguity." Structural Safety 52 (January 2015): 144–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.strusafe.2014.04.001.

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Ebrahimpour, Reza, Ehsanollah Kabir, Hossein Esteky, and Mohammad Reza Yousefi. "View-independent face recognition with Mixture of Experts." Neurocomputing 71, no. 4-6 (January 2008): 1103–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2007.08.021.

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Stibernitz, Barbara. "A Brief Comment on Science-based Risk Regulation Within the European Union." European Journal of Risk Regulation 3, no. 1 (March 2012): 86–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1867299x00001847.

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Nowadays as political decision making involves such a huge range of complex matters, scientific experts have become more and more involved in European risk regulation. The support by so-called independent experts may, on the one hand, be seen as a guarantee of rational decision making, increasing the quality of decisions as well as the general acceptance of all people affected. On the other hand, the number of expert groups, scientific committees and agencies helping the Commission in fulfilling its duties is vast and confusing.In addition, scientific advisory bodies often face the burden of unrealizable independence, as well as a lack of transparency and democratic control. This article sums up the central position of science-based risk regulation within the European Union (EU), referring to the necessity for expert opinion as well as to consequent problems concerning the involvement of these experts in risk regulatory actions.

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Chen, Ziyi. "All Experts Are NOT Made Equal: Independent Directors’ Financial Expertise and Corporate Strategy." Academy of Management Proceedings 2019, no. 1 (August 1, 2019): 16849. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2019.16849abstract.

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Avedyan, E. D., and Le Thi Trang Linh. "The dependence of the majority voting decision-making probabilities on a multi-expert binary system experts number." Informatization and communication, no. 1 (March 31, 2020): 7–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.34219/2078-8320-2020-11-1-7-14.

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The article presents the analytical results of the decision-making by the majority voting algorithm (MVA). Particular attention is paid to the case of an even number of experts. The conditional probabilities of the MVA for two hypotheses are given for an even number of experts and their properties are investigated depending on the conditional probability of decision-making by independent experts of equal qualifications and on their number. An approach to calculating the probabilities of the correct solution of the MVA with unequal values of the conditional probabilities of accepting hypotheses of each statistically mutually independent expert is proposed. The findings are illustrated by numerical and graphical calculations.

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Burrowes, Ashley, and Ann Hendricks. "Independent financial experts: From wished for to wistful thinking." Managerial Finance 31, no. 9 (September 1, 2005): 52–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03074350510769866.

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The aftermath of the Enron collapse included Congressional legislation known as the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX), which was rushed into law on July 29, 2002, by President Bush. This legislation, aimed at restoring confidence in the financial markets, addresses many aspects of corporate governance. This article addresses the audit committee provisions of SOX, particularly the requirements for independent membership and financial expertise. The article outlines the legislative requirements and then discusses the possible effects of this ‘patch‐up’. Is it too little too late and how long will the patch last?

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Biederman, Irving. "Vision: A Product of a Society of Independent Experts." Current Biology 30, no. 18 (September 2020): R1043—R1045. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.07.017.

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Grenier, Jonathan H., D. Jordan Lowe, Andrew Reffett, and Rick C. Warne. "The Effects of Independent Expert Recommendations on Juror Judgments of Auditor Negligence." AUDITING: A Journal of Practice & Theory 34, no. 4 (February 1, 2015): 157–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/ajpt-51064.

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SUMMARY Audit firms claim that they are subject to unreasonable litigation risk and that legal reforms are needed. One frequently proposed reform is to utilize independent (i.e., court-appointed) experts to examine case facts and provide recommendations to the court. This study provides theory and evidence to examine the general effects of such recommendations on jurors' judgments and, also, more specifically, to inform critics' concerns that jurors will merely “rubber stamp” independent experts' recommendations. Results of an experiment indicate that independent experts' recommendations shift jurors' judgments in the direction of the recommendation, but that such effects depend on jurors' perceptions of the experts' credibility. Further, consistent with critics' concerns, independent experts' recommendations reduce jurors' sensitivity to specific case facts in some, but not all, contexts. Specifically, when the experts conclude that the auditors were negligent, jurors' negligence judgments are insensitive to variation in specific case facts (the auditors' use versus nonuse of a specialist), but are sensitive to such variation when the experts conclude that the auditors were not negligent. Implications for theory, practice, and regulation are discussed. Data Availability: Available from the authors upon request.

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Moynihan, Ray. "Key opinion leaders: independent experts or drug representatives in disguise?" BMJ 336, no. 7658 (June 19, 2008): 1402–3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39575.675787.651.

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Gietzmann, Miles, and Ye Wang. "Goodwill valuations certified by independent experts: Bigger and cleaner impairments?" Journal of Business Finance & Accounting 47, no. 1-2 (November 6, 2019): 27–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12411.

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Borodina, O. A. "Prospective Directions of Prosecutor’s Offi ce Activity in Enhancing the Institution of Independent Anti-Corruption Expertise." Actual Problems of Russian Law 16, no. 1 (January 28, 2021): 136–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.17803/1994-1471.2021.122.1.136-146.

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One of the measures to prevent corruption in Russia is the anti-corruption expertise of regulatory legal acts and their drafts. This is the only measure aimed at eliminating the causes of corruption in the field of lawmaking. The prosecutor’s office is considered to be the most effective body to implement it. The Institute of Independent Anti-Corruption Expertise has not been operational today as far as is necessary. In the course of the research, some prosecutors and accredited independent experts were surveyed. Both groups of respondents proved the effectiveness of this preventive measure, noting that it needs improving. As part of the study, the author attempts to identify the problems faced by independent experts, as well as the prosecutors themselves, and proposes ways to solve these problems and enhance independent experts by means of the prosecutor’s office activities. The study showed that it is necessary to improve the conceptual apparatus of the legal institution (e.g., the lack of definitions of “corruption” and “corruptogenic factor”), the mechanism of interaction between prosecutors and independent experts when conducting anti-corruption expertise of both existing acts and projects. Prosecutors can play a coordinating role with a clearer departmental regulation of this activity, take measures of moral encouragement of independent experts, most actively report on their work in carrying out anti-corruption expertise, while involving independent experts in it. Additional regulation of this activity is necessary at the level of both federal law and organizational and administrative documents of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. According to the study, 63% of independent experts named the improvement of the mechanism of their participation in anti-corruption expertise as one of the main factors in enhancing their activities.

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Atanasov, Pavel, Andreas Diamantaras, Amanda MacPherson, Esther Vinarov, Daniel M. Benjamin, Ian Shrier, Friedemann Paul, Ulrich Dirnagl, and Jonathan Kimmelman. "Wisdom of the expert crowd prediction of response for 3 neurology randomized trials." Neurology 95, no. 5 (June 16, 2020): e488-e498. http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/wnl.0000000000009819.

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ObjectiveTo explore the accuracy of combined neurology expert forecasts in predicting primary endpoints for trials.MethodsWe identified one major randomized trial each in stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that was closing within 6 months. After recruiting a sample of neurology experts for each disease, we elicited forecasts for the primary endpoint outcomes in the trial placebo and treatment arms. Our main outcome was the accuracy of averaged predictions, measured using ordered Brier scores. Scores were compared against an algorithm that offered noncommittal predictions.ResultsSeventy-one neurology experts participated. Combined forecasts of experts were less accurate than a noncommittal prediction algorithm for the stroke trial (pooled Brier score = 0.340, 95% subjective probability interval [sPI] 0.340 to 0.340 vs 0.185 for the uninformed prediction), and approximately as accurate for the MS study (pooled Brier score = 0.107, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.081 to 0.133 vs 0.098 for the noncommittal prediction) and the ALS study (pooled Brier score = 0.090, 95% CI 0.081 to 0.185 vs 0.090). The 95% sPIs of individual predictions contained actual trial outcomes among 44% of experts. Only 18% showed prediction skill exceeding the noncommittal prediction. Independent experts and coinvestigators achieved similar levels of accuracy.ConclusionIn this first-of-kind exploratory study, averaged expert judgments rarely outperformed noncommittal forecasts. However, experts at least anticipated the possibility of effects observed in trials. Our findings, if replicated in different trial samples, caution against the reliance on simple approaches for combining expert opinion in making research and policy decisions.

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Au, Pak Hung. "The loser's curse in the search for advice." Theoretical Economics 14, no. 3 (2019): 1015–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.3982/te2531.

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An agent searches sequentially for advice from multiple experts concerning the payoff of taking an operation. After incurring a positive search cost, the agent can consult an expert whose interest is partially aligned with him. There are infinitely many experts, each has access to an identically and conditionally independent signal structure about the payoff, and each makes a recommendation after observing the signal realization. We find that the experts face a loser's curse, which could hamper the quality of information transmission. This effect is illustrated by studying the limit of equilibria with vanishing search cost. The main findings are as follows. First, there are signal structures with which both the agent's payoff and social welfare are strictly lower than the alternative scenario in which the agent commits to consulting a single expert only. Second, under some signal structures, no information can be transmitted in equilibrium, even though informative recommendation is possible if the agent could commit to a single expert. Finally, we identify the necessary and sufficient condition that ensures perfect information aggregation in the limit.

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Hinton, Geoffrey E. "Training Products of Experts by Minimizing Contrastive Divergence." Neural Computation 14, no. 8 (August 1, 2002): 1771–800. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089976602760128018.

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It is possible to combine multiple latent-variable models of the same data by multiplying their probability distributions together and then renormalizing. This way of combining individual “expert” models makes it hard to generate samples from the combined model but easy to infer the values of the latent variables of each expert, because the combination rule ensures that the latent variables of different experts are conditionally independent when given the data. A product of experts (PoE) is therefore an interesting candidate for a perceptual system in which rapid inference is vital and generation is unnecessary. Training a PoE by maximizing the likelihood of the data is difficult because it is hard even to approximate the derivatives of the renormalization term in the combination rule. Fortunately, a PoE can be trained using a different objective function called “contrastive divergence” whose derivatives with regard to the parameters can be approximated accurately and efficiently. Examples are presented of contrastive divergence learning using several types of expert on several types of data.

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Kamrat-Lang, Debora. "Healing Society: Medical Language in American Eugenics." Science in Context 8, no. 1 (1995): 175–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0269889700001940.

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The ArgumentAmerican eugenics developed out of a cultural tradition independent of medicine. However, the eugenicist Harry Hamilton Laughlin and some legal experts involved in eugenic practice in the United States used medical language in discussing and evaluating enforced eugenic sterilizations. They built on medicine as a model for healing, while at the same time playing down medicine's concern with its traditional client: the individual patient. Laughlin's attitude toward medicine was ambivalent because he wanted expert eugenicists, rather than medical experts, to control eugenic practice. In contrast, legal experts saw eugenics as an integral part of medicine, though one expert challenged basing the judicial system on eugenically minded medicine. All in all, the medicalization of American eugenics involved expanding the scope of medicine to include the mutilation of individuals for the benefit of society. The judicial system was medicalized in that an expanded medicine became the basis of legislation in the thirty states that permitted eugenic sterilizations

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Kelly, Dylan, Karen A. Beattie, and Maggie J. Larché. "Pulmonary arterial hypertension screening of systemic sclerosis patients in clinical practice: an independent chart review." Journal of Scleroderma and Related Disorders 2, no. 3 (July 19, 2017): 231–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.5301/jsrd.5000247.

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Patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) are at increased risk of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Guidelines recommend annual screening with pulmonary function testing (PFT) and transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE). Through auditing the charts of 11 rheumatologists associated with McMaster University, we evaluated the proportion of SSc patients without PAH or pulmonary fibrosis who receive annual TTE, PFT, and dyspnea screening. Screening rates between self-identified SSc experts and non-experts were compared. In cases where screening tests were abnormal, charts were reviewed for evidence of cardiologist or respirologist referral. In total, 136 patients’ charts were included. Annual screening for dyspnea was very common (88% of patients, 119/134). Annual PAH screening via TTE (74%, 100/135) and PFT (79%, 107/136) was less common. Annual dyspnea screening, TTE, and PFT were more commonly performed by SSc experts than by non-experts (94% vs. 83%, p = 0.03; 85% vs. 61%, p = 0.002; 93% vs. 62%, p<0.001, respectively). Nearly all patients with an abnormal TTE (10/11, 91%) and PFT (12/14, 86%) received appropriate referrals. Future research should explore reasons for differences in screening rates between SSc experts and non-experts. Given that rheumatologists screen for dyspnea more often than they order PFT and TTE, there may be barriers to ordering these tests that warrant further investigation.

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MacMillan, Jean, Eileen B. Entin, and Daniel Serfaty. "Evaluating Expertise in a Complex Domain–Measures Based on Theory." Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 37, no. 17 (October 1993): 1152–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/154193129303701706.

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Human factors practitioners are often concerned with defining and evaluating expertise in complex domains where there may be no agreed-upon expertise levels, no single right answers to problems, and where the observation and measurement of real-world expert performance is difficult. This paper reports the results of an experiment in which expertise was assessed in an extremely complex and demanding domain–military command decision making in tactical warfare. The hypotheses of the experiment were: 1) command decisionmaking expertise can be recognized in practice by domain experts; 2) differences in the command decisionmaking expertise of individuals can be identified even under conditions that do not fully replicate the real world; and 3) observers who are not domain experts can recognize the expert behaviors predicted by a mental-model theory about the nature of expertise. In the experiment, the expertise of military officers in developing tactical plans was assessed independently by three “super-expert” judges, and these expertise-level ratings were correlated with independent theory-based measures used by observers who were not domain experts. The results suggest that experts in a domain have a shared underlying concept of expertise in that domain even if they cannot articulate that concept, that this expertise can be elicited and measured in situations that do not completely mimic the real world, and that expertise measures based on a mental-model theory can be used effectively by observers who are not experts in the domain.

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Hansmann, Ralf, Harald A. Mieg, Helmut W. Crott, and Roland W. Scholz. "Shifting students’ to experts’ complex systems knowledge." International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 4, no. 2 (June 1, 2003): 151–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14676370310467168.

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This paper includes three analyses concerning: expert support in the selection of impact variables for scientific models relevant to environmental planning, the quality of students’ individual estimates of corresponding impacts before and after a group discussion, and the accuracy of artificially‐aggregated judgments of independent groups. Participants were students of environmental sciences at ETH Zurich. The first analysis revealed that during participation in an environmental case study, students’ individual estimates of impacts of variables which have been suggested by experts increased, as compared to the estimates of impacts of additional variables, which have been selected by the students. The remaining analyses consider group discussions on the strength of particular environmental impacts. The quality of the estimates was analyzed referring to expert estimates of the impacts.

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Łuków, Paweł. "Moral or Ethical Experts? The Role of Bioethicists in a Democratic Society." Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai Bioethica 66, Special Issue (September 9, 2021): 120. http://dx.doi.org/10.24193/subbbioethica.2021.spiss.78.

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"It is often believed that if bioethicists are to play the role of experts, the nature of their expertise must be explained and the authority of their advice justified. This presentation will be a moderate challenge to this view. It will be contended that the nature of bioethical expertise and the source of bioethicists’ authority depends on the kind of advice that is expected from them. If one expects a moral advice, i.e. a self-standing instruction about what to do in a given situation, it is indeed hardly possible to identify a moral expert in a rational way, and so to take their advice as authoritative. If, however, the counsel sought is to be an ethical advice, that is, a recommendation guided by a particular normative context, bioethicists can be sufficiently good experts and their instructions can enjoy a significant authority. Since bioethics is a field of research and social practice which developed in a democratic society, the bioethicist’s advice presupposes the normative framework of the values and ideals of democracy such as mutual recognition and respect, liberty and equality. Accordingly, although a bioethicist is not to be expected to be a moral expert (this role belongs, for example, to spiritual or religious leaders), she can be an ethical expert, who – on the ground of her knowledge of the values and ideals of a democratic society, ethical theory and, among other things, social theory and law – can offer a reliable advice which addresses a particular problem. The expert status of a bioethicist and the authority of her advice derives crucially from the values and ideals of a democratic society and her ethical knowledge, rather than from a moral insight into a realm of context-independent values. "

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Aarts, Rembrant, Lennard Van Wanrooij, Evert Bloemen, and Geert Smid. "Expert medico-legal reports: The relationship between levels of consistency and judicial outcomes in asylum seekers in the Netherlands." Torture Journal 29, no. 1 (May 22, 2019): 36–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/torture.v29i1.111205.

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Introduction: If asylum applicants need to prove that they have been persecuted in their home country, expert judgment of the psychological and physical consequences of torture may support the judicial process. Expert medico-legal reports can be used to assess whether the medical complaints of the asylum seeker are consistent with their asylum account. It is unclear which factors influence medical expert judgement about the consistency between an asylum seeker’s symptoms and story, and to what extent expert medico-legal reports are associated with judicial outcomes. Methods: We analysed 97 medico-legal reports on traumatised asylum seekers in the Netherlands. First, we evaluated the impact of trauma-related and other variables on experts’ judgments of the consistency of symptoms and story. Second, we evaluated the effect of experts’ judgments of symptom-story consistency on subsequent judicial outcomes. Results: Gender, receipt of mental health care and trauma-related variables were associated with symptomstory consistency. Positive asylum decisions were predicted by expert judgments about the presence of physical signs and symptoms of torture, and ill-treatment and their consistency with the refugee’s story, but not psychological symptoms. Conclusion: These results suggest that standardised procedures for the documenting of medical evidence by independent experts can improve judicial decision quality and the need to improve psychological and psychiatric assessments.

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Han, Shi-Fan, Hong-Xia Ren, Xiu-Juan Wang, Xiao-Ding Yue, and Si-Yu Dou. "The eligibility criteria, training content, and scope of practice for prescriptive authority for midwives: a modified Delphi study†." Frontiers of Nursing 6, no. 3 (November 7, 2019): 191–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/fon-2019-0035.

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Abstract Objective To investigate the necessary eligibility criteria for prescriptive authority for midwives, gather suggestions from experts on training content for prescriptive authority for midwives, and explore the scope of practice of their prescriptive authority in certain circumstances. The results of this study could serve as a reference for the development of policies on prescriptive authority for midwives. Methods Based on a literature search and semistructured interviews, a modified Delphi method was first used to conduct 2 rounds of expert consultation on eligibility criteria and training content for prescriptive authority for midwives. This stage included nursing experts (20) and medical experts (16) engaged in midwifery in many tertiary Grade A hospitals in China. Subsequently, consultation on the scope of practice of prescriptive authority for midwives was conducted with nursing experts (18) and medical experts (14) engaged in midwifery in many tertiary Grade A hospitals in China. The suggestions from the experts were analyzed using statistical methods to confirm the eligibility criteria for prescriptive authority, training content, circumstances, scope of practice for prescriptive authority, and the prescription forms. Results Among the consulted experts, 70.59% (the highest acceptance rate) considered an undergraduate degree to be the minimum educational requirement for midwives to be eligible for prescriptive authority, 85.29% (the highest acceptance rate) considered the supervisor nurse to be the minimum technical position experience necessary for midwives to be eligible for having prescriptive authority, and 50% (the highest acceptance rate) considered 5 years to be the minimum number of years of experience in the specialty for midwives to be eligible for prescriptive authority. The applicants should at least be practicing at Grade C hospitals, which was the consensus among 91.18% of the consulted experts. Among the consulted experts, 100%, 100%, 97.06%, 94.12%, and 94.12% agreed that the applicants should have knowledge in pharmacology, laws and ethics, nursing, diagnostics, and midwifery, respectively. The consulted experts confirmed 22 related course topics and identified 6 specific circumstances in which the midwives could partially practice prescriptive authority, including uterine atony, excessive uterine contraction, postpartum hemorrhage, premature rupture of fetal membranes, normal labor, and neonatal asphyxia. Under these 6 circumstances, the consulted experts commonly agreed that there were 20 medication prescriptions and 13 auxiliary examination prescriptions that could be prescribed by midwives. Of these prescriptions, 51.5% were independent prescriptions, 30.3% were protocol prescriptions, and the remaining 18.2% were both independent and protocol prescriptions. Conclusions Midwives who have an undergraduate degree, supervisor nurse position, and 5 years of practice in Grade C hospitals are considered eligible to apply for prescriptive authority. Partial prescriptive authority could be granted after regulated training in fundamental theories and practices, which could improve the independence and professionalism of midwifery.

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Rufino, Katrina A., Marcus T. Boccaccini, Samuel W. Hawes, and Daniel C. Murrie. "When experts disagreed, who was correct? A comparison of PCL-R scores from independent raters and opposing forensic experts." Law and Human Behavior 36, no. 6 (2012): 527–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0093988.

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Harrison, Róisín Elaine, Martin Giesel, and Constanze Hesse. "Temporal-order judgement task suggests chronological action representations in motor experts and non-experts." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 73, no. 11 (July 6, 2020): 1879–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021820936982.

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Motor priming studies have suggested that human movements are mentally represented in the order in which they usually occur (i.e., chronologically). In this study, we investigated whether we could find evidence for these chronological representations using a paradigm which has frequently been employed to reveal biases in the perceived temporal order of events—the temporal-order judgement task. We used scrambled and unscrambled images of early and late movement phases from an everyday action sequence (“stepping”) and an expert action sequence (“sprinting”) to examine whether participants’ mental representations of actions would bias their temporal-order judgements. In addition, we explored whether motor expertise mediated the size of temporal-order judgement biases by comparing the performances of sprinting experts with those of non-experts. For both action types, we found significant temporal-order judgement biases for all participants, indicating that there was a tendency to perceive images of human action sequences in their natural order, independent of motor expertise. Although there was no clear evidence that sprinting experts showed larger biases for sprinting action sequences than non-experts, considering sports expertise in a broader sense provided some tentative evidence for the idea that temporal-order judgement biases may be mediated by more general motor and/or perceptual familiarity with the running action rather than specific motor expertise.

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Suntsov, Yu I., and S. V. Kudryakova. "Epidemiology of impaired glucose tolerance." Problems of Endocrinology 45, no. 2 (April 4, 1999): 48–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.14341/probl11750.

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In 1980, the WHO Expert Committee on Diabetes Mellitus (DM) proposed a new classification of diabetes. In it, impaired glucose tolerance (NTG) was identified as an independent clinical class. This was due to the following: diabetes, primarily non-insulin-dependent (NIDDM), as a rule, develops gradually, and several stages can be distinguished in its development [35, 55]. The first of them, according to many experts, is NTG.

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Reynolds, K. M., and E. H. Holsten. "Relative importance of risk factors for spruce beetle outbreaks." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 24, no. 10 (October 1, 1994): 2089–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x94-268.

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Nine factors were initially suggested by spruce beetle (Dendroctonusrufipennis (Kby.)) experts in Alaska as potentially important in determining the risk of a spruce beetle outbreak in stands. Factors suggested were stand hazard, size and trend of spruce beetle population in neighboring stands, degree–days in the past June, total rainfall in the past summer, and availability of four types of breeding material. Risk factors were organized into a hierarchical model of spruce beetle risk, and the relative importance of factors for determining risk was analyzed in three stages with the analytic hierarchy process. This process derives subjective estimates of factor importance values through a process of pair-wise comparisons. Analysis in stage 1 involved independent responses of two experts from Alaska. In stage 2, three experts from Alaska provided responses as a group. In stage 3, five experts, representing Alaska, British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountain region, provided responses as a group. In the final stage of analysis, stand hazard and windthrown trees were identified as the two most important factors determining risk of a spruce beetle outbreak. Hazard and windthrow were considered about equally important and together accounted for almost two-thirds of the total allocation of importance values among risk factors. The analytic hierarchy process is an effective method for eliciting expert knowledge and can be a useful tool for development of expert systems in natural resource management, where even expert knowledge is often incomplete.

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Christian, Jennifer. "Two Faulty Beliefs about Independent Medical Evaluators and Impartial Physicians." Guides Newsletter 21, no. 5 (September 1, 2016): 9–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2016.sepoct02.

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Abstract Patients and their advocates tend to be skeptical about reports produced by independent medical evaluators (IMEs) and file reviewers. There are legitimate reasons for this skepticism, but the author points out two common but erroneous beliefs that create unnecessary distrust in disability benefits and workers’ compensation claim management systems. First, despite patients’ faith in their own doctors, treating physicians as a group are not a reliable source of accurate and unbiased information. Second, although justice attempts to be even-handed, impartial physicians should not find for both sides equally (ie, should not attempt to achieve parity in outcomes), particularly because any case sent for review has some feature that raised questions in the mind of an experienced observer. This experienced observer requires an impartial, expert physician advisor who can confirm that the treating physician is doing the right thing or validate the claims manager's concerns. When claims or case managers are doing a good job of selecting cases for referral, one should expect that most of their decisions will favor the insurer/defense. The more expert the claims/case managers are, the more likely the independent physicians will agree because the claims/case managers are accurately detecting real problems and concerns. In counseling their patients, physicians should not discredit the work of independent experts; doing so increases distrust, resentment, and anger and encourages passivity rather than problem-solving.

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Sirotkina, O. V., T. N. Ishchuk, E. V. Parmon, and E. V. Shlyakhto. "ISSUES OF MEDICAL SPECIALISTS EDUCATION. FOUNDATION OF INSTITUTE OF INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL EXPERTS." Russian Journal of Cardiology, no. 9 (January 1, 2016): 41–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.15829/1560-4071-2016-9-41-45.

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Peer, P., Ž. Emeršič, J. Bule, J. Žganec-Gros, and V. Štruc. "Strategies for Exploiting Independent Cloud Implementations of Biometric Experts in Multibiometric Scenarios." Mathematical Problems in Engineering 2014 (2014): 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/585139.

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Cloud computing represents one of the fastest growing areas of technology and offers a new computing model for various applications and services. This model is particularly interesting for the area of biometric recognition, where scalability, processing power, and storage requirements are becoming a bigger and bigger issue with each new generation of recognition technology. Next to the availability of computing resources, another important aspect of cloud computing with respect to biometrics is accessibility. Since biometric cloud services are easily accessible, it is possible to combine different existing implementations and design new multibiometric services that next to almost unlimited resources also offer superior recognition performance and, consequently, ensure improved security to its client applications. Unfortunately, the literature on the best strategies of how to combine existing implementations of cloud-based biometric experts into a multibiometric service is virtually nonexistent. In this paper, we try to close this gap and evaluate different strategies for combining existing biometric experts into a multibiometric cloud service. We analyze the (fusion) strategies from different perspectives such as performance gains, training complexity, or resource consumption and present results and findings important to software developers and other researchers working in the areas of biometrics and cloud computing. The analysis is conducted based on two biometric cloud services, which are also presented in the paper.

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Strode, Aina. "Participatory Action Research for Development of Prospective Teachers' Professionality during Their Pedagogical Practice." Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education 4, no. 1 (February 2, 2015): 80–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/dcse-2013-0007.

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Abstract Implementation of participatory action research during pedagogical practice facilitates sustainable education because its objective is to understand professional practice, enrich the capacity of involved participants and an opportunity to make inquiries for the improvement of quality. In the research of professional practice, subjects explore themselves; research is critically informative, active and action-oriented. Basing on the analysis of the prospective teachers' professional independence formation during pedagogical practice, the conditions for the individual's sustainable professional development are updated, the principles of organising pedagogical practice are determined. The experts' opinion method was applied in the evaluation of the developed practice model. Four experts from four Latvian universities were involved in the questionnaire; the content analysis of expert opinions was performed. As a result, the opportunities of the developed model to ensure sustainable education as well as its strengths and weaknesses were determined. Activation of the holistic and action approaches to develop students' independent professional activity and ensure sustainable education, cooperation context, targeted planning of the student-centred process, orientation to students' self-experience, respect of research aspects were completely appreciated.

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van Trigt, Anke M., Lolkje T. W. de Jong-van den Berg, Flora M. Haaijer-Ruskamp, Jaap Willems, and T. (Dirk) F. J. Tromp. "Medical journalists and expert sources on medicines." Public Understanding of Science 3, no. 3 (July 1994): 309–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0963-6625/3/3/005.

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We describe here how medical journalists writing for Dutch daily newspapers use experts when dealing with medicines. Two approaches, interviews and content analysis, were used to answer the research questions. Both methods show that journalists can find relevant experts to give them information about various medicines. The pharmacist, however, is not one of them. Furthermore, the content analysis shows that two types of experts can be distinguished: the objective and independent experts who were often cited alone in an article, and the subjective experts who frequently were cited in combination with other experts.

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Kohnen, Angela M., and E. Wendy Saul. "Literacy instruction for life online." Phi Delta Kappan 99, no. 6 (February 26, 2018): 33–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0031721718762420.

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As information is becoming easier to access and harder to evaluate, literacy teachers face new challenges in helping students become astute independent readers. Building on the ideas of Lewis Mumford, the authors argue for embracing the role of the generalist — or “expert information seeker” who is able to identify and evaluate different types of sources and who trusts experts’ knowledge without accepting every statement they make as absolute truth.

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Uemura, Hiroshi. "The Attributes of Japanese Corporate Governance Influencing the Quality of Internal Controls." Applied Finance and Accounting 2, no. 1 (January 29, 2016): 119. http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/afa.v2i1.1342.

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This study examines the corporate governance characteristics that influence the improvement in the quality of internal controls. Previous studies suggest that corporate governance independence and expertise affect the quality of internal controls (Krishnan et al. 2005; Hoitash et al. 2009). In Japan, however, any company that discloses significant deficiencies (SD) in internal controls has the motive to increase the independence of corporate governance to mitigate any subsequent negative consequences. As a result, independent directors are made the scapegoats, rather than allowing them to fulfill the expectation of improvement in the quality of internal controls. On the other hand, directors with financial expertise that have a high status in a company do influence the improvement in SD in internal controls. This suggests that in Japan it is important to provide financial experts with the power and authority to improve the quality of internal controls in the short term, due to the difference in the provisions between the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (J-SOX) and the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). The requirements in Japanese Corporate Law (JCL) for independent directors are not as strict as those within SOX. Therefore, companies in which the boards are able to promote expert directors to important positions improve the quality of internal controls more often than those that are not. It is thus revealed that auditors should be able to discuss with the financial experts as to what is required to improve any significant deficiencies that are detected in the process of internal control audits.

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Schaal, Stefan, and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Constructive Incremental Learning from Only Local Information." Neural Computation 10, no. 8 (November 1, 1998): 2047–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089976698300016963.

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We introduce a constructive, incremental learning system for regression problems that models data by means of spatially localized linear models. In contrast to other approaches, the size and shape of the receptive field of each locally linear model, as well as the parameters of the locally linear model itself, are learned independently, that is, without the need for competition or any other kind of communication. Independent learning is accomplished by incrementally minimizing a weighted local cross-validation error. As a result, we obtain a learning system that can allocate resources as needed while dealing with the bias-variance dilemma in a principled way. The spatial localization of the linear models increases robustness toward negative interference. Our learning system can be interpreted as a nonparametric adaptive bandwidth smoother, as a mixture of experts where the experts are trained in isolation, and as a learning system that profits from combining independent expert knowledge on the same problem. This article illustrates the potential learning capabilities of purely local learning and offers an interesting and powerful approach to learning with receptive fields.

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Grilli, Gianluca, Giulia Garegnani, Aleš Poljanec, Andrej Ficko, Daniele Vettorato, Isabella De Meo, and Alessandro Paletto. "Stakeholder analysis in the biomass energy development based on the experts’ opinions: the example of Triglav National Park in Slovenia." Folia Forestalia Polonica 57, no. 3 (September 1, 2015): 173–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ffp-2015-0017.

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Abstract The paper presents a method for identifying and classifying local stakeholders involved in renewable energy development. The method is based on the expert assessment and comprises three main steps: (1) identification of the independent experts considering their expertise and knowledge of the local context; (2) identification of the local stakeholders based on expert assessment; and (3) analytical categorisation of stakeholders taking into account the professional relationship network. Using forest biomass (bioenergy) production as example, the stakeholder analysis is illustrated on the case study of Triglav National Park, which is characterised by a high potential of woody biomass production and a large number of stakeholders involved in land use and management. The first stage of stakeholder analysis identifies the key stakeholders to be involved in bioenergy development, through a survey with local experts. The results highlight eight key stakeholders and several primary and secondary stakeholders that should be involved to ensure socially acceptable decision-making about the renewable energy development in the Triglav National Park.

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Kristanto, Andi. "Integration of a Constructivism Approach in E-learning Photography Subjects: Feasibility and Effectiveness in Learning." Journal of Education Technology 5, no. 2 (June 20, 2021): 167. http://dx.doi.org/10.23887/jet.v5i2.33380.

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Lack of lecture time was a serious problem and must be addressed immediately in the study of photography courses because of the large amount of material; the number of cameras is not comparable to that of students. Moreover, conventional learning through the face of the muka by using PowerPoint makes students bored and less interested in learning. This research aimed to develop e-learning with a constructive approach to photography subjects triangle exposure material and know the feasibility and effectiveness. This research was a type of research R &D (Research and Development )using the Addie model, Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. This study involved three validators, namely learning design experts, material experts, media experts and student motorcycle taxis, and there were control classes and experiments with a sample count of 80 students per class. The method of collecting data using questionnaire instruments and tests. Method analysis data using descriptive percentage and independent test t-test samples. The average assessment results of each expert's percentage were: (a) the assessment of learning design experts 96.66% of the excellent category; (b) material experts 95% excellent category; (c) media experts 95.58% excellent category, individual trials 84.05% excellent category, individual trials 88.37% excellent category. The effectiveness of constructivist e-learning with significant results in sig (2-tailed) column of 0.00 or significance of < 0.05. Based on the research results obtained, e-learning with a viable constructivist approach and effective implications used in lectures on photography courses.

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Tashchiyan, G. O., A. V. Sushko, and M. S. Kaz. "The Subjects of Automated Competitiveness Monitoring of Science-Intensive Products in Engineering." Applied Mechanics and Materials 770 (June 2015): 701–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.770.701.

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Manufacturing competitive science-intensive engineering products is one of the most important tendencies of the modern stage of Russian economy development. Various means are applied to assess the competitiveness including automated competitiveness monitoring of science-intensive products at machinery production. A separate issue is building a team of experts for the survey. To solve this problem we engage a forward-looking businessman, a professional manager, an independent expert and a potential consumer as the subjects of the dialogue.

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Ruiner, Caroline, and Ursula Liebhart. "How multi-optional experts maintain and enhance their employability." German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung 32, no. 1 (February 2018): 52–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2397002217749774.

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How do freelancers and workers with frequently changing employment relationships top up their know-how and make themselves more employable? Highly skilled experts with multiple employment options must stay ahead of the game as they move from one job to market themselves for the next one. This article analyses how multi-optional experts improve their employability. It is based on a qualitative study of 17 multi-optional experts in knowledge-intensive industries such as information technology (IT), the media and consultancy as flexible employment is increasing and employability is critical in these highly dynamic fields. The study shows that multi-optional experts maintain and enhance their employability with various, mainly informal and self-organised learning methods. It identifies four types of worker – Flexible Adapter, Flexible Independent, Permalancer and Independent Freelancer – whose vocational development includes reactive, organisation-focused, active and self-focused strategies. In order to contribute to a better understanding of multi-optional experts’ employability this article focuses on their strategies, particularly on how they select and combine learning methods, and examines their motives to enhance their further development.

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Azad, Reza. "Pose-Independent Face Recognition Using Biologically Inspired Feature Set and Mixture of Experts." International Journal of Image, Graphics and Signal Processing 6, no. 9 (August 8, 2014): 27–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.5815/ijigsp.2014.09.04.

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Turanin, Vladislav Yu, Sergey A. Rubano, Yuliya S. Gusakova, Marina A. Sorokoletova, and Anastasiya A. Beletskaia. "INCENTIVES FOR INDEPENDENT ANTI-CORRUPTION EXPERTS OF NORMATIVE LEGAL ACTS AND THEIR PROJECTS." TURKISH ONLINE JOURNAL OF DESIGN ART AND COMMUNICATION 8 (March 1, 2018): 49–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.7456/1080mse/007.

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Kfir, I. "Ted Piccone, Catalysts for CHANGE: How the UN's Independent Experts Promote Human Rights." Human Rights Law Review 14, no. 2 (May 15, 2014): 391–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngu004.

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Ebrahimpour, Reza, Ehsanollah Kabir, and Mohammad Reza Yousefi. "Improving mixture of experts for view-independent face recognition using teacher-directed learning." Machine Vision and Applications 22, no. 2 (November 18, 2009): 421–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00138-009-0232-9.

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Horning, Sandra J., Malik E. Juweid, Heiko Schoder, Gregory Wiseman, Alex McMillan, Lode J. Swinnen, Ranjana Advani, Randy D. Gascoyne, and Andrew Quon. "Interim Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma: Independent Expert Nuclear Medicine Evaluation of ECOG 3404." Blood 112, no. 11 (November 16, 2008): 372. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v112.11.372.372.

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Abstract Background: Positive interim PET scans have been associated with inferior outcomes in DLBCL treated with chemotherapy, alone or with rituximab. In the ECOG 3404 study for bulky and advanced DLBCL, PET scans at baseline and after 3 R-CHOP are centrally reviewed by a single reader; those with positive scans cross-over to R-ICE after 4 R-CHOP, whereas those with negative scans continue on R-CHOP. The primary endpoint of E3404 is progression-free survival. To determine the reproducibility of interim PET scan interpretation, we convened an expert panel. Methods: Three external nuclear medicine physicians visually scored baseline and interim PET scans independently and blinded to other clinical information or outcome. ECOG study criteria were binary (0,1) based on residual disease in initially involved sites with uptake greater than the liver. London criteria were on a scale of 0–5, where 4–5 was positive, based on increased uptake relative to the liver. Overall scores and agreement among experts were evaluated for both criteria, with application of the kappa statistic to correct for chance. Results: Using the ECOG criteria, external reviewers were in complete agreement in 68% of 38 interim scans and completely agreed with the central review in the same 68% cases. Agreement among the experts was 71% employing the London criteria in these cases. The range of PET+ interim scans by reviewer was 16.8% to 34.2% (p=NS) by both ECOG and London criteria. The kappa statistic for overall pairwise correlation between readers was 0.445 (0.396–0.533) using ECOG and 0.502 (0.396–0.630) using London criteria – indicating moderate consistency. Areas of disagreement often, but not exclusively, related to bone disease, the shape and focality of residual uptake, splenic disease, and rare scans without CT-fusion. Conclusions: These data show that visual criteria, either ECOG or London in this series, for interim PET results are moderately reproducible among individual nuclear medicine experts. Our finding of variability among experts indicates the need for caution in interpreting interim PET results in studies and in practice. Review of all E3404 cases is planned after accrual is completed (projected 12/08). Other ongoing studies evaluating interim PET after 1–3 cycles of therapy, the application of quantitative criteria, and consensus panels may provide further valuable information.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Independent experts'

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