Scientific validity

An inventory of existing test methods, together with an appreciation of the scientific validity, sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility of these methods. 

A key element in planning and conducting clinical trials is to ensure that they have scientific validity and objectivity. This is particularly relevant with respect to Phase II and III studies, where it is desired to demonstrate a positive benefit to risk outcome. Responses to a drug among a patient population are rarely homogeneous and clear-cut. Thus, sound statistical principles must be applied in order to be able to distinguish significant effects from random events. 

Many and varied field techniques involved in the planning, execution, and direction of the field portion of worker exposure and re-entry studies have been considered. Suffice it to say that there are many ways to perform such studies, and the important thing to remember is that good scientific thought and planning will produce an excellent study. The scientific validity of such studies should rest on the basic principles of science. There are various guidelines and protocols which may be followed for regulatory... 

The recent position of the USA is to take into consideration the scientific validity of the tool, and not necessarily the validation process. This is the philosophy adopted within the Tox21 (http //epa.gov/ncct/Tox21/) and ToxCast (http //www. epa.gov/ncct/toxcast/) initiatives. The reason for this is that the validation process takes 10 years or more before a method is officially approved, and this period would seriously limit the possibility to rapidly produce the necessary data needed within few years. Furthermore, the techniques are rapidly changing. 

Note - This glossary is by no means exhaustive but it hopefully contains most of the more important terms you will come across in a typical NMR environment. Some of the entries may not even have featured in the text itself. Whilst every effort has been made to make the entries scientifically valid, please note that it is sometimes difficult to condense a highly complex topic into a pithy three-line explanation, so some of the definitions are sketchy to say the least ... 

The scientific and philosophical problems of such reductionist claims have been extensively debated.6 This paper will not deal with questions of scientific validity, but rather with some of the policy implications and applications of reductionist modes of thinking about the body and behavior. 

The property needs to be of a nature that control or background measurements also can be made so that the effects of the pollutant can be precisely determined (4) The property needs to be sensitive enough to indicate pollution but also sufficiently robust not to give false alarms (5) The property needs general scientific validity based upon reliable and... 

In the conventional vision, product quality is mainly based on external, nutritive and sensory properties and is strongly directed by traders and trends. Besides tastiness and ripeness, organic consumers expect products to have properties such as vitality and coherence , which are not easy to define and thus to explain and transfer. In the past, experimental parameters have been proposed to estimate vitality and coherence , but they were neither scientifically validated nor related to a validated quality concept with relation to human health. 

With real data, a more scientifically valid approach would be to correct the nonlinearity from physical theory. In the current case, for example, a scientifically valid approach would be to convert the data to transmission mode, subtract the stray light and reconvert to absorbance the nonlinear wavelengths would have become linear again. There are, of course, several things wrong with this procedure, all of them stemming from the fact that this data was created in a specific way for a specific purpose, not necessarily to be representative of real data ... 

Furthermore, true fundamental understanding could also be applied in reverse. Then instrument manufacturers could concentrate on those aspects of construction and operation that affect the transferability situation, and be able to verify their capabilities in an unambiguous, scientifically valid and agreed-on manner. 

In 1998, EPA and DOD requested that the NRC independently review the AEGLs developed by NAC. In response to that request, the NRC organized within its Committee on Toxicology the Subcommittee on Acute Exposure Guideline Levels, which prepared this report. This report is the first volume in the series Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Selected Airborne Chemicals. It reviews the appropriateness of the AEGLs for four chemicals for their scientific validity, completeness, and consistency with the NRC guideline reports. 

The NRC subcommittee s review of the AEGL reports prepared by NAC and its contractors involves oral and written presentations to the subcommittee by the authors of the reports. The NRC subcommittee provides advice and recommendations for revisions to ensure scientific validity and consistency with the NRC guideline reports (NRC 1993, in press). The revised reports are presented at subsequent meetings until the subcommittee is satisfied with the reviews. Because of the enormous amount of data presented in the AEGL reports, the NRC subcommittee can not verify all the data used by NAC. The NRC subcommittee relies on NAC for the accuracy and completeness of the toxicity data cited in the AEGLs reports. 

Exposure-response data from animal studies were used to derive acute exposure guideline level (AEGL) values for arsine. AEGL values derived with animal data which had complete exposure data were more scientifically valid than AEGLs estimated from limited anecdotal human data. The greater conser... 

Yet Crowley went significantly beyond the claim to scientific validity made by his immediate predecessors in the Golden Dawn and positioned the A.A. as a kind of official sanctioning body for experimental validity and for scientific training. Crowley laid down a set of numbered rules governing experiments, proclaiming, for example ... 

While Theosophists claims to ownership of scientifically valid knowledge of the subatomic world ultimately foundered, as their insights lacked the scientific persuasiveness gained from instrumentation and reproducible results,... 

More recently, Robert A. Nelson s collection, Adept Alchemy (1998), continues to assert alchemy s scientific validity and its relationship to modem atomic science. Nelson s anthology intends to help alchemists working in the so-called dry path to transmutation. It includes extracts and summaries of work from the Middle Ages through the late twentieth century by Hermetic alchemists, chemists, and physicists, including the 1980 transmutation of bismuth into gold by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. (Nelson also includes the more controversial methods of Joe Champion in the 1990s. Champion was convicted of fraud in Arizona because he had not produced the results he claimed for investors.) Across the century, then, followers of occult alchemy have clearly continued to make connections to modern atomic science. 

The genotypes to be detected by a genetic test must be shown by scientifically valid methods to be associated with the occurrence of a disease. The observations must be independently replicated and subject to peer review" (Holtzman and Watson, 1998, p. 25). 

I recommend reading Rebpse Prevention, by G. Alan Marlatt and Judith Gordon (New York Guilford Press, 1985). Although many books have been written since this one, this is the original classic that introduced the relapse model and prevention methods we still use today. These strategies have been scientifically validated for many years now. A new edition of this book edited by Marlatt and Dennis Donovan is due out soon. 

There is no scientifically valid evidence that anti aging drugs presently on the market can increase longevity (Turnheim 2004), hence aging is still an inevitable process. 

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