The GRADE method (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) provides a tool for rating the quality of evidence for systematic reviews and clinical guidelines. This article aims to analyse conceptually how well grounded the GRADE method is, and to suggest improvements. The eight criteria for rating the quality of evidence as proposed by GRADE are here analysed in terms...

Decision Neuroscience Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, 2 Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, Department of ...

Adjuvants mainly interact with the innate immune response and are used to enhance the quantity and quality of the downstream adaptive immune response to vaccine antigens. Establishing the safety of a new adjuvant-antigen combination is achieved through rigorous evaluation that begins in the laboratory, and that continues throughout the vaccine life-cycle. The strategy for the evaluation of safe...

Well-known difficulties in defining P-wave onset and offset may restrict the accuracy and reproducibility of P-wave dispersion measurements. To achieve greater precision in measuring P-wave dispersion, simultaneous digital recording of all 12 ECG leads and onscreen measurement of P wave characteristics is mandatory to examine atrial fibrillation risk.

The divided visual field methodology has been used to examine a wide variety of lateralised processes. When conducting such studies it is important to employ a number of strict controls in order to maximise the effectiveness of the paradigm for examining the processing of stimuli by each hemisphere. The use of these controls is discussed in this paper. The following issues are discussed: select...

This article uses a case of oil and gas exploration as the starting point for methodological considerations in the study of sociomateriality. I argue a sociomaterial research continuum ranging from " hard " to " soft " sociomateriality depending on how the technology-human relationship is conceptualised in the literature. In the hard end, there can be no understanding of the one without the oth...

This paper investigates the methodological foundations of a new research field called chance discovery, which aims to detect future opportunities and risks. By drawing on concepts from cybernetics and system theory, it is argued that chance discovery best applies to open systems that are equipped with regulatory mechanisms to approximate an ‘ideal’ state. We will motivate anticipation as an add...

The Happiness Scale Interval Study deals with survey questions on happiness, using verbal response options, such as 'very happy' and 'pretty happy'. The aim is to estimate what degrees of happiness are denoted by such terms in different questions and languages. These degrees are expressed in numerical values on a continuous [0,10] scale, which are then used to compute 'transformed' means and st...

1 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience (LPEN), Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Favaloro University, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2 UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile 3 National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina 4 Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia 5 ...