Main features of a performance monitoring systems operating on loops of refinery plants are illustrated together with examples of application and achieved results. The system analyses data recorded by the DCS during routine operation and originates verdicts about performance of control loops; also indications of causes of low performance and different strategies to adopt are given (retuning, va...

The present study examined the influence of physical evidence in support of an alibi, type of crime, and alibi salaciousness on the verdict, sentencing, and credibility perceptions of 317 undergraduate mock jurors who read fabricated police and court summaries. Alibis substantiated by physical evidence were accompanied by fewer guilty verdicts, higher believability, and more positive character ...

Experimental psychologists increasingly are asked to give expert testimony in court, especially with regard to issues of eyewitness reliability. Whether or not experimental psychologists should give expert testimony on these matters is a controversial issue. The empirical literature suggests that potential jurors do not have a good understanding of the variables influencing eyewitness accuracy ...

BACKGROUND Few investigations have addressed malpractice litigation after thyroid surgery. The purpose of this medico-legal review was to provide a more comprehensive picture of medico-legal trends in thyroid surgery. METHODS Reviewed were all expert opinions on claims of malpractice after thyroid surgery, commissioned between 1995 and 2010 at 1 tertiary center, and their corresponding verdic...

Although courts in the United States and Canada regularly admit graphic photographs into evidence, little research exists on whether such evidence prejudices the decisions of jurors. Mock jurors (N = 120) read a detailed trial transcript of a murder trial, and were either presented with color, black and white, or no photographs of an actual murder victim. The proportion of guilty verdicts in th...

Social choice theory deals with mutual compatibilities of various choice criteria or desiderata. It thus provides a natural angle to look at methods for finding consensus. We distinguish between three types of settings of consensus-reaching. Firstly, we may be looking for the correct decision. This is typically the setting where the participants have different degrees of expertise on an issue t...

Average accuracy of jury verdicts for a set of cases can be studied empirically and systematically even when the correct verdict cannot be known. The key is to obtain a second rating of the verdict, for example, the judge’s, as in the recent study of criminal cases in the United States by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). That study, like the famous Kalven-Zeisel study, showed only m...

Debate over civil justice reform in the United States frequently centers on the extent to which damage awards granted by juries have been escalating over time. However, past studies on civil juries have been hampered by lack of data on verdicts spanning a sufficiently long time period. Average jury awards tend to be highly variable from year to year, making it difficult to distinguish trends ov...