Do predictions obtained from models constitute information on which reliable decisions can be made? Is it necessary, that to be of interest, predictions and other information generated by models must be true? This paper investigates the relation between the model and reality, information and truth. It will argue that meaningful data need not necessarily be true in order to constitute informatio...

During the period from 2001 to 2010 police officials in India were lured by a team of pseudo-scientists, from the Forensic Laboratories in Bangalore and Ahmadabad to make use of narcoanalysis, polygraph test and brain fingerprinting to extract confessions from accused persons. All the three tests, preceded by a pre-test interview and interrogation, were conducted by the one and the same expert ...

The article is primarily concerned with the notion of a truth-maker. An explication for this notion is offered, which relates it to other notions of making something such-andsuch. In particular, it is shown that the notion of a truth-maker is a close relative of a concept employed by van Inwagen in the formulation of his Consequence Argument. This circumstance helps understanding the general me...

Social sensing has emerged as a new data collection paradigm in networked sensing applications where humans are used as “sensors” to report their observations about the physical world. While many previous studies in social sensing focus on the problem of ascertaining the reliability of data sources and the correctness of their reported claims (often known as truth discovery), this paper investi...

In recent years more and more computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are being used routinely in hospitals. Imagebased knowledge discovery plays important roles in many CAD applications, which have great potential to be integrated into the next-generation picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). Robust medical image segmentation tools are essentials for such discovery in many CAD app...

After every influenza pandemic (including the Russian of the 1890s and the Spanish influenza of 1918–1919), learned commentaries have reflected on the clinical presentation of the disease, noting that the great majority of cases were very mild, so mild that they corresponded much more to the symptoms of an upper respiratory tract infection than to an influenza-like illness with fever and prostr...

Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promi...