Οι προθεσμίες της αναψηλάφησης

Το ένδικο μέσο της αναψηλάφησης αποτελεί έναν από τους τρόπους διάσπασης του ουσιαστικού δεδικασμένου. Η δυνατότητα άσκησης αναψηλάφησης και φυσικά η ευδοκίμησή της ανατρέπουν την επιτευχθείσα ασφάλεια δικαίου στις έννομες σχέσεις, όπως αυτές είχαν διαμορφωθεί με την τελεσίδικη απόφαση κατόπιν άσκησης ή παρόδου της προθεσμίας των τακτικών ενδίκων μέσων της έφεσης και της ανακοπής ερημοδικίας. Επιπλέον, συχνά οι υπό δικαστική διάγνωση έννομες σχέσεις και δικαιώματα είναι τέτοιας σπουδαιότητας, ώστε ο νομοθέτης να αξιώνει το αμετάκλητο της απόφασης ως βαθιό ωριμότητάς της για την διάπλαση ή την διάγνωσή τους. Για τους λόγους αυτούς οι προθεσμίες της αναψηλάφησης πρέπει να είναι εκ των προτέρων σαφείς και ορισμένες. Ωστόσο, η αναψηλάφηση δεν πρέπει να αντιμετωπίζεται ως ένα εμπόδιο στον πορεία προς το απρόσβλητο της αποφάσεως, αλλά ως η έσχατη δυνατότητα του διαδίκου να ανατρέψει μια άδικη απόφαση. Έτσι, είναι όχι μόνο θεμιτή, αλλά και αναγκαία η αναζήτηση της ασφάλειας δικαίου με την ύπαρξη δίκαιων αποφάσεων, εντός ενός οριοθετημένου χρονικού και τυπικού πλαισίου, ώστε να μην διαταράσσεται αενάως η κοινωνική ειρήνη. Κατά τα ανωτέρω, η αναψηλάφηση φαίνεται το καταλληλότερο από τα ένδικα μέσα για να καταδείξει τον σκοπό της πολιτικής δίκης, την πραγμάτωση ουσιαστικού και δικονομικού δικαίου ως αντικειμενικής ενότητας. Συνεπώς, η προθεσμία της αναψηλάφησης αποτελεί τον κεντρικό άξονα επί του οποίου ισορροπούν από την μία πλευρά η αναζήτησης της αλήθειας και της ουσιαστικής δικαιοσύνης και από την άλλη η επιτευχθείσα δια του δεδικασμένου ασφάλεια δικαίου. Για την εξισορρόπηση αυτή, ο νομοθέτης επέλεξε μεν την πρόβλεψη καταχρηστικής και γνήσιας προθεσμίας, όπως στα λοιπά ένδικα μέσα, αλλά σηματοδότησε την εκκίνηση της προθεσμίας από διαφορετικό χρονικό σημείο ανάλογα με τον προβλεπόμενο λόγο. Άλλοτε το εύρος της προθεσμίας διαφέρει ανάλογα με το αντικείμενο της διαφοράς. Στην παρούσα εργασία, προς ανάδειξη της προβληματικής επί των προθεσμιών της αναψηλάφησης, αναπτύσσεται αρχικά η διάκριση των προθεσμιών σε γνήσιες και καταχρηστικές και οι συνέπειες αυτής της διάκρισης. Ακολούθως, παρουσιάζεται η ιδιαιτερότητα των προθεσμιών στο ένδικο μέσο της αναψηλάφησης και γίνεται μια σύγκριση αυτών με τις προθεσμίες στην αίτηση αναθεωρήσεως του δημοσίου δικονομικού δικαίου, καθώς και με τις προθεσμίες της αναψηλάφησης σε άλλες έννομες τάξεις. Εκτενής αναφορά γίνεται στην γνήσια προθεσμία που προβλέπεται για κάθε λόγο αναψηλάφησης, όπως και στην καταχρηστική προθεσμία, αλλά και στα ζητήματα που ανακύπτουν από την συσχέτιση των προθεσμιών αυτών. Επιπροσθέτως, αναλύεται η προβλεπόμενη προθεσμία στην περίπτωση θανάτου του νομιμοποιούμενου και η προβληματική σχετικά με την επιταγή αναφοράς της τήρησης της προθεσμίας στο δικόγραφο και τα προβλεπόμενα αποδεικτικά μέσα. Επιπλέον, γίνεται λόγος για την κατά κανόνα απουσία ανασταλτικού αποτελέσματος της προθεσμίας άσκησης αναψηλάφησης και οι δυνατότητες κατ’ εξαίρεσης χορήγησής του. Τέλος, αναφέρονται οι συνέπειες απώλειας της προθεσμίας και η δυνατότητα επαναφοράς των πραγμάτων στην προηγούμενη κατάσταση.The legal remedy of revision is a way of breaking the legal precedent. Revision' s time-limits should be a priori certain for the reason of legal certainty. On the other hand, promoting truth and real justice are among the highest purposes of justice. The legislator attempts to balance these purposes by setting the revisions time-limits. This thesis presents the particularities of revisions time-limits, the start of the period for each reason, the limitation period for bringing a revision and how revision's time-limits are affected by one another. Moreover in this thesis are presented the suspensory effects of revision and the consequences of the loss of the deadline

A Field Synopsis on Low-Penetrance Variants in DNA Repair Genes and Cancer Susceptibility

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Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium Testing of Biological Ascertainment for Mendelian Randomization Studies

Mendelian randomization (MR) permits causal inference between exposures and a disease. It can be compared with randomized controlled trials. Whereas in a randomized controlled trial the randomization occurs at entry into the trial, in MR the randomization occurs during gamete formation and conception. Several factors, including time since conception and sampling variation, are relevant to the interpretation of an MR test. Particularly important is consideration of the “missingness” of genotypes that can be originated by chance, genotyping errors, or clinical ascertainment. Testing for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) is a genetic approach that permits evaluation of missingness. In this paper, the authors demonstrate evidence of nonconformity with HWE in real data. They also perform simulations to characterize the sensitivity of HWE tests to missingness. Unresolved missingness could lead to a false rejection of causality in an MR investigation of trait-disease association. These results indicate that large-scale studies, very high quality genotyping data, and detailed knowledge of the life-course genetics of the alleles/genotypes studied will largely mitigate this risk. The authors also present a Web program (http://www.oege.org/software/hwe-mr-calc.shtml) for estimating possible missingness and an approach to evaluating missingness under different genetic models

Selection in Reported Epidemiological Risks: An Empirical Assessment

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies may be subject to selective reporting, but empirical evidence thereof is limited. We empirically evaluated the extent of selection of significant results and large effect sizes in a large sample of recent articles. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We evaluated 389 articles of epidemiological studies that reported, in their respective abstracts, at least one relative risk for a continuous risk factor in contrasts based on median, tertile, quartile, or quintile categorizations. We examined the proportion and correlates of reporting statistically significant and nonsignificant results in the abstract and whether the magnitude of the relative risks presented (coined to be consistently ≥1.00) differs depending on the type of contrast used for the risk factor. In 342 articles (87.9%), ≥1 statistically significant relative risk was reported in the abstract, while only 169 articles (43.4%) reported ≥1 statistically nonsignificant relative risk in the abstract. Reporting of statistically significant results was more common with structured abstracts, and was less common in US-based studies and in cancer outcomes. Among 50 randomly selected articles in which the full text was examined, a median of nine (interquartile range 5–16) statistically significant and six (interquartile range 3–16) statistically nonsignificant relative risks were presented (p = 0.25). Paradoxically, the smallest presented relative risks were based on the contrasts of extreme quintiles; on average, the relative risk magnitude was 1.41-, 1.42-, and 1.36-fold larger in contrasts of extreme quartiles, extreme tertiles, and above-versus-below median values, respectively (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Published epidemiological investigations almost universally highlight significant associations between risk factors and outcomes. For continuous risk factors, investigators selectively present contrasts between more extreme groups, when relative risks are inherently lower

The Impact of Imputation on Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies

Genotype imputation is often used in the meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), for combining data from different studies and/or genotyping platforms, in order to improve the ability for detecting disease variants with small to moderate effects. However, how genotype imputation affects the performance of the meta-analysis of GWAS is largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the effects of genotype imputation on the performance of meta-analysis through simulations based on empirical data from the Framingham Heart Study. We found that when fix-effects models were used, considerable between-study heterogeneity was detected when causal variants were typed in only some but not all individual studies, resulting in up to ∼25% reduction of detection power. For certain situations, the power of the meta-analysis can be even less than that of individual studies. Additional analyses showed that the detection power was slightly improved when between-study heterogeneity was partially controlled through the random-effects model, relative to that of the fixed-effects model. Our study may aid in the planning, data analysis, and interpretation of GWAS meta-analysis results when genotype imputation is necessary

Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science

John Ioannidis and colleagues argue that the current system of publication in biomedical research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data

Local Literature Bias in Genetic Epidemiology: An Empirical Evaluation of the Chinese Literature

BACKGROUND: Postulated epidemiological associations are subject to several biases. We evaluated whether the Chinese literature on human genome epidemiology may offer insights on the operation of selective reporting and language biases. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We targeted 13 gene-disease associations, each already assessed by meta-analyses, including at least 15 non-Chinese studies. We searched the Chinese Journal Full-Text Database for additional Chinese studies on the same topics. We identified 161 Chinese studies on 12 of these gene-disease associations; only 20 were PubMed-indexed (seven English full-text). Many studies (14–35 per topic) were available for six topics, covering diseases common in China. With one exception, the first Chinese study appeared with a time lag (2–21 y) after the first non-Chinese study on the topic. Chinese studies showed significantly more prominent genetic effects than non-Chinese studies, and 48% were statistically significant per se, despite their smaller sample size (median sample size 146 versus 268, p < 0.001). The largest genetic effects were often seen in PubMed-indexed Chinese studies (65% statistically significant per se). Non-Chinese studies of Asian-descent populations (27% significant per se) also tended to show somewhat more prominent genetic effects than studies of non-Asian descent (17% significant per se). CONCLUSION: Our data provide evidence for the interplay of selective reporting and language biases in human genome epidemiology. These biases may not be limited to the Chinese literature and point to the need for a global, transparent, comprehensive outlook in molecular population genetics and epidemiologic studies in general

Quantifying Selective Reporting and the Proteus Phenomenon for Multiple Datasets with Similar Bias

Meta-analyses play an important role in synthesizing evidence from diverse studies and datasets that address similar questions. A major obstacle for meta-analyses arises from biases in reporting. In particular, it is speculated that findings which do not achieve formal statistical significance are less likely reported than statistically significant findings. Moreover, the patterns of bias can be complex and may also depend on the timing of the research results and their relationship with previously published work. In this paper, we present an approach that is specifically designed to analyze large-scale datasets on published results. Such datasets are currently emerging in diverse research fields, particularly in molecular medicine. We use our approach to investigate a dataset on Alzheimer's disease (AD) that covers 1167 results from case-control studies on 102 genetic markers. We observe that initial studies on a genetic marker tend to be substantially more biased than subsequent replications. The chances for initial, statistically non-significant results to be published are estimated to be about 44% (95% CI, 32% to 63%) relative to statistically significant results, while statistically non-significant replications have almost the same chance to be published as statistically significant replications (84%; 95% CI, 66% to 107%). Early replications tend to be biased against initial findings, an observation previously termed Proteus phenomenon: The chances for non-significant studies going in the same direction as the initial result are estimated to be lower than the chances for non-significant studies opposing the initial result (73%; 95% CI, 55% to 96%). Such dynamic patters in bias are difficult to capture by conventional methods, where typically simple publication bias is assumed to operate. Our approach captures and corrects for complex dynamic patterns of bias, and thereby helps generating conclusions from published results that are more robust against the presence of different coexisting types of selective reporting

International ranking systems for universities and institutions: a critical appraisal

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ranking of universities and institutions has attracted wide attention recently. Several systems have been proposed that attempt to rank academic institutions worldwide.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We review the two most publicly visible ranking systems, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University 'Academic Ranking of World Universities' and the Times Higher Education Supplement 'World University Rankings' and also briefly review other ranking systems that use different criteria. We assess the construct validity for educational and research excellence and the measurement validity of each of the proposed ranking criteria, and try to identify generic challenges in international ranking of universities and institutions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>None of the reviewed criteria for international ranking seems to have very good construct validity for both educational and research excellence, and most don't have very good construct validity even for just one of these two aspects of excellence. Measurement error for many items is also considerable or is not possible to determine due to lack of publication of the relevant data and methodology details. The concordance between the 2006 rankings by Shanghai and Times is modest at best, with only 133 universities shared in their top 200 lists. The examination of the existing international ranking systems suggests that generic challenges include adjustment for institutional size, definition of institutions, implications of average measurements of excellence versus measurements of extremes, adjustments for scientific field, time frame of measurement and allocation of credit for excellence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Naïve lists of international institutional rankings that do not address these fundamental challenges with transparent methods are misleading and should be abandoned. We make some suggestions on how focused and standardized evaluations of excellence could be improved and placed in proper context.</p