Search results for "rigour"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Ardeola, a Scientific Journal of Ornithology: Cooperative Survivorship within the Red Queen Game
2016
Editorial.-- et al.
Improving scientific rigour in conservation evaluations and a plea deal for transparency on potential biases
2020
Abstract The delivery of rigorous and unbiased evidence on the effects of interventions lay at the heart of the scientific method. Here we examine scientific papers evaluating agri‐environment schemes, the principal instrument to mitigate farmland biodiversity declines worldwide. Despite previous warnings about rudimentary study designs in this field, we found that the majority of studies published between 2008 and 2017 still lack robust study designs to strictly evaluate intervention effects. Potential sources of bias that arise from the correlative nature are rarely mentioned, and results are still promoted by using a causal language. This lack of robust study designs likely results from …
Applying Biomimicry to Cities: The Forest as Model for Urban Planning and Design
2021
International audience; The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems.
Development of novel functional ingredients: Need for testing systems and solutions with Caenorhabditis elegans
2016
Abstract Background Nutrition is increasingly understood as a means of maintaining health and well-being and the market for functional foods keeps growing in double-digits. Functional nutrition is seen by many as the interphase between food and pharmaceuticals. In fact, players from both sides are increasingly making moves in the form of strategic alliances, M&A operations and co-investments which are bringing the two realms closer together. Food regulations to prove safety of novel ingredients or to support health claims are every day more stringent and the general public is also increasingly informed about the science, risks and benefits of what they eat. All this presents a magnificent o…
Systematic review of guidelines for internal validity in the design, conduct and analysis of preclinical biomedical experiments involving laboratory …
2020
Over the last two decades, awareness of the negative repercussions of flaws in the planning, conduct and reporting of preclinical research involving experimental animals has been growing. Several initiatives have set out to increase transparency and internal validity of preclinical studies, mostly publishing expert consensus and experience. While many of the points raised in these various guidelines are identical or similar, they differ in detail and rigour. Most of them focus on reporting, only few of them cover the planning and conduct of studies. The aim of this systematic review is to identify existing experimental design, conduct, analysis and reporting guidelines relating to preclinic…
Protocol for a systematic review of guidelines for rigour in the design, conduct and analysis of biomedical experiments involving laboratory animals
2018
Objective Within the last years, there has been growing awareness of the negative repercussions of unstandardized planning, conduct and reporting of preclinical and biomedical research. Several initiatives have set the aim of increasing validity and reliability in reporting of studies and publications, and publishers have formed similar groups. Additionally, several groups of experts across the biomedical spectrum have published experience and opinion-based guidelines and guidance on potential standardized reporting. While all these guidelines cover reporting of experiments, an important step prior to this should be rigours planning and conduction of studies. The aim of this systematic revi…
Computational Models That Matter During a Global Pandemic Outbreak
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with scholars under pressure to respond to policymakers’ demands for advice despite the absence of adequate, trusted data. Understanding the pandemic requires fine-grained data representing specific local conditions and the social reactions of individuals. While experts have built simulation models to estimate disease trajectories that may be enough to gu…
Entrepreneurship and small businesses in Russia: A review of empirical research
2011
PurposeEntrepreneurship and small businesses in Russia have been of academic interest for over 15 years. This paper seeks to bring together current knowledge concerning the phenomenon, and to suggest further directions for research.Design/methodology/approachThe study consists of a systematic review of 48 refereed empirical articles on entrepreneurship and small businesses in Russia.FindingsFrom the articles reviewed it appears that entrepreneurs in Russia use non‐material resources to overcome the financial and institutional obstacles, which still seem to afflict the market. However, theoretical and methodological issues are, in many cases, poorly reported and this undermines the scientifi…
A GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR A STANDARDIZED COMPETENCE ASSESSMENT PROCEDURE
2017
The methodological rigour in the competence assessment represents a strategic choice to achieve a successful promotion of human capital. The role of personal and professional competences has been recognized in every professional areas and a huge number of studies have contributed to better understand how competence affect individual and organizational behaviour and what are the best methods to assure its effective assessment. The paper aims to propose an operative and standardized competence assessment procedure coherent with the more recognized international qualification frameworks, even if allowing customized reports. The proposed procedure is the result of the operationalization of a ge…
The Procedural Approach to Texts
2016
The intention of this chapter is to show the peculiarities of the point of view of Dressler and de Beaugrande, expressed in their work. The position taken by the two authors in their Introduction is a veiled criticism against van Dijk and Petőfi, which are accused of excessive rigour. Dressler and de Beaugrande’s procedural approach avoids the use of logical bases and they propose a point of view closer to cognitive science. According to Dressler and de Beaugrande, the heart of the procedural approach is semantics. In their view, knowledge and meaning are sensitive to the situation in which they are used. So, the two authors believe that framing the texts and the knowledge about the real wo…