BUILDING TRUST IN COMMUNITIES: STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

On November 24, 2022, Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) Dennis Murray of Thames Valley Police presented Building Trust in Communities: Strategic and Tactical Considerations. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were the ways in which legitimacy influences community trust, the strategic and tactical considerations for organisations seeking to raise legitimacy, and the ways in which law enforcement can successfully build long-term and sustained trust in communities.   Received: 2023-01-15Revised: 2023-01-1

Aspects of William Whewell's philosophy of science

The name of William Whewell is certainly more familiar to most philosophers nowadays than it was a few years ago. No longer merely regarded as an opponent of Mill, Whewell, over a period of recent years,1 has emerged as a philosopher of merit in his own right. Indeed this latest judgement has now proceeded to the point where an influential modern thinker can claim in a major work that "throughout this book the view is being maintained that theory can fruitfully be looked upon as the imaginative construction of models according to well-chosen principles, and that, in many ways, the theory of "Ideas" in Whewell's sense, is more helpful in the theory of theories and scientific method generally, than the 2 logic of statements". The favour with which aspects of Whewell's thought are being greeted in some quarters, as an aid in the construction of an alternative philosophy of science to that represented by the tradition of Mill, is a noteworthy phenomenon. Its explanation, however, would be a large task involving no less than a critical summation of the whole of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British philosophy up until the present. Such a task is obviously beyond the scope of this thesis. Yet if any such summation were to be undertaken in the future, the problem of the historical status of Whewell's philosophy within its own Century would be an issue of importance. This thesis, therefore, is an attempt to place Whewell's thought within the context of Nineteenth Century philosophical problems and issues, particularly as they are related to matters of science. Consequently, it is more inclined to be a history, though a critical one, than an attempt at direct philosophising. Such a history is required, apart from the intrinsic interest of the topic itself, by any attempt to take the overview of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British philosophy that has been suggested. This is particularly the case in connection with the problems which Whewell1s philosophy, as a species of Kant's, could not solve in its own day, and which continue to trouble philosophers who look back favourably in the direction of Kant. As a history, the thesis opens in Chapter I with a sketch of Whewell's life, followed by a general statement of the motives and intentions of Whewell's philosophical stance. Chapters II and III treat in turn the two pillars of Whewell's thinking, necessary truth and induction, and trace his attempts to reconcile his particular viewpoints on each. The problems associated with this reconciliation are brought out most fully in Chapter IV, and the Final Chapter deals with the fate of Whewell's philosophy, conditioned as it was by the problems which it faced, during the later Nineteenth Century

Semi-automatic selection of summary statistics for ABC model choice

A central statistical goal is to choose between alternative explanatory models of data. In many modern applications, such as population genetics, it is not possible to apply standard methods based on evaluating the likelihood functions of the models, as these are numerically intractable. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a commonly used alternative for such situations. ABC simulates data x for many parameter values under each model, which is compared to the observed data xobs. More weight is placed on models under which S(x) is close to S(xobs), where S maps data to a vector of summary statistics. Previous work has shown the choice of S is crucial to the efficiency and accuracy of ABC. This paper provides a method to select good summary statistics for model choice. It uses a preliminary step, simulating many x values from all models and fitting regressions to this with the model as response. The resulting model weight estimators are used as S in an ABC analysis. Theoretical results are given to justify this as approximating low dimensional sufficient statistics. A substantive application is presented: choosing between competing coalescent models of demographic growth for Campylobacter jejuni in New Zealand using multi-locus sequence typing data

Assessing The Appearance Of Auditor Independence Using Behavioral Research Methodology

Recent archival studies have examined the association between auditor independence and non-audit services. The results of these studies suggest that fees for non-audit services are not associated with indicators of auditor independence in fact whereas these fees are associated with financial statement users’ perceptions of auditor independence (i.e., independence in appearance). The present study attempts to reconcile these conflicting findings by using a behavioral research methodology that provides greater control over the independent variables and measures more directly financial statement users’ perceptions. Our results indicate that fees for financial information systems development services do not affect perceptions of auditor independence, whereas, fees for tax services adversely affect perceptions of independence. Overall, the results provide mixed support for the recent Securities and Exchange Commission policy changes on auditor independence

Do State Accountancy Boards Diligently Exercise Their Disciplinary Powers?

Certified public accountants (CPAs), similar to many other professionals, are regulated by the individual jurisdictions within the United States.  State accountancy boards issue licenses, which enable CPAs to offer their services to the public.  In addition to issuing licenses only to qualified applicants, state boards help protect the public by disciplining CPAs who violate provisions of their state accountancy laws.  This paper investigates the diligence with which state boards exercise their disciplinary powers.  We identified 73 CPAs who were disciplined by the Securities and Exchange Commission between 1996 and 1998.  State boards acted in 59 (80.8 percent) of these cases.  Overall, we conclude that state boards appear to be exercising their disciplinary powers in those cases where the SEC has disciplined a CPA.  Protection of the public appears to be a priority for many boards.  There is some evidence, however, that for a few boards their disciplinary efforts could be more forcefully exercised

Does intermittent pneumatic compression reduce the risk of post stroke deep vein thrombosis?:The CLOTS 3 trial: statistical analysis plan

BACKGROUND: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common and important complication of stroke. The CLOTS 3 trial aims to determine whether, compared with best medical care, best medical care plus intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) in immobile stroke patients reduces the risk of proximal deep vein thrombosis (DVT). METHODS/DESIGN: The CLOTS 3 trial is a multicenter, parallel group trial with centralized randomization (minimization) to ensure allocation concealment. The protocol has been published (Trials 2012, 13:26) and is available in full at: http://www.clotstrial.com. Between December 2008 and September 2012, 105 centers in the UK recruited 2,876 immobile stroke patients within the first 3 days of their hospital admission. Patients were allocated to best medical care or best medical care plus IPC. Ultrasonographers performed a compression Doppler ultrasound scan to detect DVT in each treatment group at 7 to 10 days and 25 to 30 days. The primary outcome cluster includes symptomatic or asymptomatic DVT in the popliteal or femoral veins detected on either scan. Patients will be followed up by postal or telephone questionnaire at 6 months from randomization to detect later symptomatic DVT and pulmonary embolism (PE), and to measure functional outcome (Oxford Handicap Scale) and quality of life (EQ-5D-3L). The ultrasonographers performing the scans are blinded to treatment allocation, whereas the patients and caregivers are not. The trial has more than 90% power to detect a 4% absolute difference (12% versus 8%) in risk of the primary outcome and includes a health economic analysis. Follow-up will be completed in April 2013 and the results reported in May 2013. In this update, we describe the statistical analysis plan. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN: ISRCTN9352999