Faculty Bibliography

Home ownership has potentially significant consequences for welfare state policy. High owner-occupancy rates may function as private insurance where social spending is low (a substitution effect). Alternatively, state income redistribution policies could raise the number of home owners (an income effect). Cross-national time-series data show that social spending is negatively related to home ownership, and mediates the positive relationship between income inequality and owner-occupancy rates. This suggests that owner-occupancy acts as a form of social insurance over the life course. Future welfare state researchers should consider the issue of home ownership in analyses of inequality and the social safety net.

This study uses exogenous variation in sibling sex composition to estimate the causal effect of sibship size on boys' Probabilities of private school attendance and grade retention. Using the 1990 U.S. Census, we find that for second-born boys, increased sibship size reduces the likelihood of private school attendance by six percentage points and increases grade retention by almost one percentage point. Sibship size has no effect for first-born boys. Instrumental variable estimates are largely consistent across racial groups, although the standard errors are larger for nonwhites as they have smaller sample sizes and this renders them insignificant at traditional alpha levels.

Stress caused by chronic difficulties encountered by people residing in poor urban neighborhoods is associated with health problems and disease in developed countries, but the relationship between neighborhood stress and health in developing nations, such as India, has not been assessed. In this study, the authors administered the City Stress Inventory, a self-report measure assessing stress experienced as a function of environmental conditions unique to living in large cities that was validated in the United States, to 163 high school students in New Delhi, India. Components of urban stress in India, with some modifications, appear to be similar to components of urban stress reported by adolescents in the United States. Urban stress was predictive of high blood pressure as reported by the adolescents 'parents. In addition, urban stress also predicted health habits, such as chewing tobacco and alcohol use, and psychosocial characteristics, such as hostility. Adolescents' reports of parental stress concerning money and social pressures were also associated with city stress. The current study indicates that the City Stress Inventory is valid in an Indian sample and is predictive of health problems

Parts of a draft of Mr. [Ariel Sharon]'s Kadima Party platform were published Monday in the newspaper Maariv, which had obtained a copy. The draft says the party will pursue peace efforts with the Palestinians, acknowledging that such a move would ultimately require Israel to relinquish more land and result in the establishment of a Palestinian state. [Kadima] will work to define Israel's permanent borders if it wins the election, it says. ''The basic tenet of the peace process is two national states,'' the platform says. Kadima's goal will be to ''lay the foundations to shape the permanent borders of the state of Israel.'' Israeli officials say they have not made a final decision on whether Palestinians in East Jerusalem will be allowed to vote inside the city limits. Israel has permitted Palestinians there to vote in previous Palestinian elections, including the one that chose the president of the Palestinian Authority last January

Over the next few days, [Bill Porter] sobered up, but still looked shriveled and malnourished -- the classic cirrhotic. Despite his weakness, though, there was a sprinkling of Southern charm. Porter beguiled the staff in his weather-beaten voice with tales of being a ranch hand, a pharmacist, a bank teller -- all of which Dr. [Kamal Singh] found amusing, but hard to believe. Except the part about doing time for embezzlement. But alcoholics confabulate, often grandiosely, so when Porter said he was a world-famous writer, Dr. Singh knew that the alcohol had caused some permanent damage to the brain. Over the next week, Dr. Singh found that the days in the hospital were slightly less dreary. Porter's anecdotes were entertaining -- like the one about fleeing to Honduras to avoid the embezzlement trial -- and Dr. Singh felt almost inspired. Most alcoholics were lost causes, but just maybe he could get Porter into rehab. Dr. Singh poked his head into Porter's room before heading home on Dec. 24. Porter was barely visible beneath the sheets. ''Procure me a Christmas present, doc,'' Porter croaked, with a feeble wave of his stick. ''Impart a medicine to make me strong.''

A series of scientific scandals in the 1970s and 1980s challenged the scientific community's faith in these mechanisms to root out malfeasance. In response, the United States has over the last two decades added extra protections, including new laws and government investigative bodies. fraud after fraud made the weaknesses of that system impossible to ignore. In the early 1980s, a young cardiology researcher, Dr. John Darsee, was found to have fabricated much data for more than 100 papers he wrote while working at Harvard and Emory Universities. His work appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The American Journal of Cardiology, among other top publications. The difficulty, the editors said, was that journals could go only so far in fraud inquiries before needing the aid of national investigative bodies and professional associations that oversee scientific research. But in the Indian and Canadian cases, they added, such bodies either did not exist or refused to help, so 'the doubts are unresolved.'

The findings, which are being reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, show that the virus can rapidly mutate in certain patients to become Tamiflu resistant. Tamiflu might need to be given in larger amounts and for longer than currently recommended for human influenza viruses, the report said. It also said Tamiflu might need to be used in combination with other drugs in some cases. Scientists have predicted that the A (H5N1) strain would become resistant to Tamiflu in an unknown percentage of cases. Three is too small a number of cases to determine how often the virus will become resistant to Tamiflu and to draw conclusions about the wider use of that drug at this time, Dr. [Keiji Fukuda] said. Of the eight patients being reported today, four survived and four died. Among survivors, the amount of A (H5N1) influenza virus dropped rapidly to levels where tests could not detect it, presumably accounting for the patients' recovery. In two of the fatal cases, the virus rapidly mutated to become Tamiflu resistant and overwhelm the body. The remaining two patients died, possibly because they received Tamiflu too late to stop the virus from multiplying and causing its damage

BACKGROUND: Evidence supporting professionalism as a critical measure of competence in medical education is limited. In this case-control study, we investigated the association of disciplinary action against practicing physicians with prior unprofessional behavior in medical school. We also examined the specific types of behavior that are most predictive of disciplinary action against practicing physicians with unprofessional behavior in medical school. METHODS: The study included 235 graduates of three medical schools who were disciplined by one of 40 state medical boards between 1990 and 2003 (case physicians). The 469 control physicians were matched with the case physicians according to medical school and graduation year. Predictor variables from medical school included the presence or absence of narratives describing unprofessional behavior, grades, standardized-test scores, and demographic characteristics. Narratives were assigned an overall rating for unprofessional behavior. Those that met the threshold for unprofessional behavior were further classified among eight types of behavior and assigned a severity rating (moderate to severe). RESULTS: Disciplinary action by a medical board was strongly associated with prior unprofessional behavior in medical school (odds ratio, 3.0; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.9 to 4.8), for a population attributable risk of disciplinary action of 26 percent. The types of unprofessional behavior most strongly linked with disciplinary action were severe irresponsibility (odds ratio, 8.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.8 to 40.1) and severely diminished capacity for self-improvement (odds ratio, 3.1; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.2 to 8.2). Disciplinary action by a medical board was also associated with low scores on the Medical College Admission Test and poor grades in the first two years of medical school (1 percent and 7 percent population attributable risk, respectively), but the association with these variables was less strong than that with unprofessional behavior. CONCLUSIONS: In this case-control study, disciplinary action among practicing physicians by medical boards was strongly associated with unprofessional behavior in medical school. Students with the strongest association were those who were described as irresponsible or as having diminished ability to improve their behavior. Professionalism should have a central role in medical academics and throughout one's medical career.

Dr. [Hwang Woo Suk] has insisted on his innocence but said he would retract the Science paper. Now questions are growing about his earlier work, including Snuppy, the dog he claims to have cloned. Yesterday, news agencies reported that Seoul National University officials investigating Dr. Hwang's claims locked down his laboratory, impounded his computer and interviewed his colleagues, among other actions. The difficulty, the editors said, was that journals could go only so far in fraud inquiries before needing the aid of national investigative bodies and professional associations that oversee scientific research. But in the Indian and Canadian cases, they added, such bodies either did not exist or refused to help, so ''the doubts are unresolved.'' [Donald Kennedy], editor of Science, above. Reporters surrounding Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, below, at Seoul National University. (Photos by Above, Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service; below, Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)(pg. F6)