In 2009, my surprise at the amount of unethical behavior uncovered during my first 4 years as Editor-in-Chief of CHEST led me to comment on the role of conflict of interest and scientific misconduct in the reporting of scientific information.1 While a very small part of scientific misconduct was determined to be intentional, by far the greater part was deemed unintentional, since it was not int...

Despite the military’s captivation with high technology systems, human performance remains the keystone of successful military operations. Computerized, digitized, networked, and even robotic or biochemical performance enhancement tools can be force multipliers of great value; but they are only as useful as the human designers engineer them, and are only as productive as clever human operators ...

The European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (EFSPI) engages more than 2000 statisticians through its ten national organizations. Amongst other things, EFSPI is involved in reviewing regulatory guidelines under development, including the draft FDA guideline on non-inferiority clinical trials. This review resulted in several critical comments relating to as follows: (i...

Organizational culture is widely recognized as a significant factor influencing organizational success. A simulation was developed for a high-tech client to direct change in their culture. Simulation content was captured in ethnographic interviews with employees and included cultural ideals. Significant employee attitude change was measured. Teaching students about organizational culture is dif...

During 2003-2013, fatality rates for oil and gas extraction workers decreased for all causes of death except those associated with fall events, which increased 2% annually during 2003-2013 (1). To better understand risk factors for these events, CDC examined fatal fall events in the oil and gas extraction industry during 2005-2014 using data from case investigations conducted by the Occupationa...

BACKGROUND The United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for the protection of the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness and security of human drugs and biological products through the enforcement of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and related regulations. These enforcement activities include regulatory letters (i.e. warning letters and no...

NASA exploration initiatives encompass many disciplines within multiple organizations. Exchanging information without loss of meaning is a critical challenge. Differences in vocabularies are embedded in the variety of tools and systems used. This paper describes a large-scale project called NASA Exploration Initiative Ontology Models (NExIOM), which is meeting the challenge through a semantic a...

The international initiatives by various agencies (such as World bank, FAO, UN, FIG, etc.) suggest that cadastre and land registration systems are currently undergoing major changes worldwide. On such changes, the emerging trends focus on easy access to land, security of land tenure, establishment and operation of efficient land markets, formalization of property rights, incorporating customary...

Using a dataset of over 1.6 million inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) from 1990 through 2010, we explore the determinants of inspection and enforcement outcomes. OSHA is an institutionally split agency, with the federal agency conducting inspections in 25 states and state agencies conducting inspections in the remaining 25. The geographic variety and range over 21 ...