Does discussion lead to opinion change within Political Science students? A pedagogical exercise of deliberative democracy

While the model of deliberative democracy gives a crucial role to dialog, empirical evidence has not yet established if discussion helps to reach a better understanding of political issues and, above all, if individuals are prepared to change their views. It is still unclear when the deliberative model, and more specifically discussion, could be usefully employed as a teaching tool, to improve students’ knowledge. This article presents an exercise performed within the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the LUISS University of Rome. Students were asked to discuss in the classroom the issues related to the course, and to cast a vote on selected issues before and after deliberation. Although our sample is not representative, we have gathered evidence from the same population on a rather large number of issues. Students changed their view in 24.6% of cases, and they agreed that discussion increased their understanding, while those with strong ex-ante views resulted more reluctant to change their opinions because of discussion. The analysis also showed the presence of individuals that are more likely to be permeable to discussion while others that are more likely to be impermeable

The Returns to Criminal Capital

Human capital theory (Becker 1962; Mincer 1958; Schultz 1960; 1961) posits that individuals can increase their labor market returns through investments in education and training. This concept has been studied extensively across several disciplines. An analog concept of criminal capital, while the focus of speculation and limited empirical study, remains considerably less developed theoretically and methodologically. This paper offers a formal theoretical model of criminal capital indicators and tests for greater illegal wage returns using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, many of whom participate in illegal income-generating activities. Our results reveal that, consistent with human capital theory, there are important illegal wage premiums associated with investments in criminal capital, notably an increasing but declining marginal return to experience and a premium for specialization. Further, as in studies of legal labor markets, we find strong evidence that, if left unaccounted for, non-random sample selection causes severe bias in models of illegal wages. Theoretical and practical implications of these results, along with directions for future research, are discussed

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome