Trust, regulatory processes and NICE decision-making: Appraising cost-effectiveness models through appraising people and systems.

This article presents an ethnographic study of regulatory decision-making regarding the cost-effectiveness of expensive medicines at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England. We explored trust as one important mechanism by which problems of complexity and uncertainty were resolved. Existing studies note the salience of trust for regulatory decisions, by which the appraisal of people becomes a proxy for appraising technologies themselves. Although such (dis)trust in manufacturers was one important influence, we describe a more intricate web of (dis)trust relations also involving various expert advisors, fellow committee members and committee Chairs. Within these complex chains of relations, we found examples of both more blind-acquiescent and more critical-investigative forms of trust as well as, at times, pronounced distrust. Difficulties in overcoming uncertainty through other means obliged trust in some contexts, although not in others. (Dis)trust was constructed through inferences involving abstract systems alongside actors’ oral and written presentations-of-self. Systemic features and ‘forced options’ to trust indicate potential insidious processes of regulatory capture

Notes on the <i>Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa</i>

The following exegetical and textcritical remarks are based on a cursory reading of Caland's Jaiminīya-brāhmaṇa in Auswahl. The present paper covers about 50 pages of this publication. The notes may be helpful for a new edition of the text and for a translation of this brāhmaṇa, part of which I hope to undertake in the future (the agniṣṭoma section).</jats:p