Scientific Certitude

Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude

Analyses of public policy regularly express certitude about the consequences of alternative policy choices. Yet policy predictions often are fragile, with conclusions resting on critical unsupported assumptions or leaps of logic. Then the certitude of policy analysis is not credible. I develop a typology of incredible analytical practices and gives illustrative cases. I call the...

Cause of death and CRT device selection: striving for certitude?

Implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices have had a significant favourable impact on hospitalization and mortality among patients with heart failure (HF). Despite some degree of overlap, the therapeutic rationales for these two forms of device-based therapies are distinct, where ICDs abort arrhythmic death and CRT devices improve cardiac func...

Certitude and controversy in the interdisciplinary treatment of acute angiocholitis

Results We present the results of 87 patients with acute angiocholitis, evaluated and treated by a multidisciplinary team. The results are influenced mainly by the multiple therapeutic options and especially by how they were set for this pathology, for which there is no gold standard regarding the treatment. The particularity of this study stems from the fact that although all patients were ini...

Cardinal Newman and Jury Verdicts: Reason, Belief, and Certitude

Tailoring of Feedback in Web-Based Learning: The Role of Response Certitude in the Assessment

This paper analyzes the challenges of tailoring feedback to the student’s response certitude during the assessment in Web-based Learning systems (WBLSs). We present the summary of the results of a series of experiments related to the online assessment of students through multiplechoice quizzes, where students had to select the confidence level and were able to request different kinds of feedbac...