Editorial

This general issue of Critical Survey ranges from mediaeval to modern literature and drama.

The Four Prominent Indicators of Diagnostic Testing: Consistency among their Values Reported in Saudi Medical Journals

We provide a novel method for validating any purported set of the four most prominent indicators of diagnostic testing (Sensitivity, Specificity, Positive Predictive Value, and Negative Predictive Value), by observing that these indicators constitute three rather than four independent quantities. This observation has virtually been unheard of in the open medical literature. We defined two functions, which serve as consistency criteria, since each of them checks consistency for any set of four numerical values claimed to be the four basic diagnostic indicators. Most of the data we came across in various Saudi medical journals met our criteria for consistency, but in a few cases, there were obvious unexplained blunders. We relate our present findings to the more general issue of detection and ramifications of flawed, fabricated or wrong data. We observe that the research field handling the detection of flawed data is still in its infancy, and hope that this field will reach maturity very soon.

2. Leadership from the Top

This chapter examines the general issue of leadership in the British political system and the stresses and strains of this task, examining the role of the prime minister. As well as being leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, able to command a majority, and potentially able to get government business through Parliament and into law, the prime minister has executive powers, which helps keep this focus. Despite the power of the position and its importance in the British system of government, there are fundamental weaknesses in the role that come from the instabilities of party politics. Overall, the picture of prime ministerial and core executive power and capacity is a mixed one that is changeable over time. In recent years, over Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, the prime minister's fate can change dramatically, even week-by-week.

Critical Rationalism and Trust in Science

In this paper, I consider whether the critical rationalist philosophy of science may provide a rationale for trusting scientific knowledge. In the first part, I refer to several insights of Karl Popper’s social and political philosophy in order to see whether they may be of help in offsetting the distrust of science spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second part, I address the more general issue of whether the theoretical principles of the critical rationalist philosophy of science may afford a foundation for building trust in science. Both parts of the discussion, confined for the sake of the argument largely to the repudiation of the concept of good reasons for considering a theory to be true, imply that this question would have to be answered negatively. Against this, I argue that such a conclusion is based on a misconception of the nature of scientific knowledge: critical rationalism views science as a cognitive regime which calls for bold theories and at the same time demands a rigorous and continuous distrust towards them, and it is precisely this attitude that should be adopted as a compelling argument for trusting science.

Legal institutions securing socially recognised rightsof the subjects participating in legal transactions, based on the example of legitimate expectative

The article “Legal Institutions Securing Socially Recognised Rights of the Subjects Participating in Legal Transactions, Based on the Example of Legitimate Expectative” sheds light on the concept of legitimate expectative as a separate right. It gives arguments in favor of qualifying this type of right as legitimate since it protects legally important issues connected with the transactions undertaken by the participants of the market. The article also draws attention to the decisions of the international tribunals and the European legislatives that grant the position of the legitimate expectative in the general system of law. Coined by the German doctrine of law under the names: Anwartschaft, Wartenrecht and Zwischenrecht, the notion of expectative becomes widely recognised in other European countries, also in Poland, which is highlighted in the text. The protection of the said right in the Polish law system is mainly guaranteed by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, in the described in the article decisions of 1989, 1993 and 1996. The topic of the article is not only the analysis of the said right of expectative but it also aims at a more general issue which is the creation of the new rights in very traditional civil law systems, especially in the Polish one. The summary of the analysis shown in the article leads to the conclusion that new rights and regulations are necessary, and the source of them should stem from the needs of the society, not the needs of the state.

Volume 13, 2021 Number 1: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 2: Special Articles on Health Humanities and General Articles Volume 12, 2020 Number 1: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 2: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 3: Special Collection on “India and Travel Narratives”, guest-edited by Ms. Somdatta Mandal, PhD Number 4: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 5: 1st RIOC Conference Issue Number 6: Special Articles on Health Humanities and General Articles Volume 11, 2019 Number 1: (Special Issue on Human Rights and Literature, guest-edited by Prof. Pramod K. Nayar) Number 2: General Issue Number 3: General Issue Volume 10, 2018 Number 1: (Special Issue on “Interrogating Cultural Translation: Literature and Fine Arts in Translation and Adaptation”, in collaboration with the Department of English, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham) Number 2: (On Frankenstein 200, 1818-2018 and the General Areas) Number 3: (General Issue) All Issues>> Of Crows and Humans: The Affective Economy of Mourning and Grieving

This paper aims to examine the representation of animals in Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015), a multi-awarded novel about an academic’s struggles on coping with the grief of losing his wife. Previous scholarship on Grief is the Thing with Feathers focuses on an anthropocentric approach to grief and melancholia. However, I argue these emotions can be approached through an examination of the Crow, a fantastical talking bird who makes itself known during the funeral, against the human protagonists of the novel. My approach focuses on how the Crow manages to facilitate what Sara Ahmed calls an “affective economy” which aids the human characters to process their emotions. I critically analyze in this paper how the novel blurs the boundary that separates the human and beasts through its representation of animal emotion. I speculate on how the moments of encounter between the crow and humans emphasize the acts of touching and smelling as a mode to cope with melancholia and grief. Lastly, I look at how its hybridization of prose and poetry performatively imitates affective and emotional responses to personal loss.

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Editorial:

DiGeSt 8(1) General Issue - Editorial