Sampling bias is an evaluator’s worst foe: A research note on an evaluation study of predictors for success in medical school

Frischenschlager, Haidinger, and Mitterauer (FHM hereafter) reported an evaluation study of predictors for success in Austrian medical undergraduates (Croat Med J. 2005;46:58-65). Since most of the international literature on medical education topics still comes from the USA and the UK, in principle this Central European contribution is much needed and to be welcomed. However, several obvious and grave study limitations make the data and findings of FHM markedly less useful than the authors suggest. Relatedly, in the current absence of other Austrian studies on that topic it is foreseeable that the FHM evidence could be used to inform policy decisions in regards to medical education issues in Austria and, possibly so, elsewhere in Central Europe. I strongly opine that, due to the study’s design deficiencies, this should be avoided. The main purpose of the present comment is therefore to elucidate the shortcomings of this study as well as to stimulate further discussion and research.

Theatre Policies of Soviet Stalinism and Italian Fascism Compared, 1920–1940s

In this article Alexander Golovlev offers a comparative examination of the theatre policies of Fascist Italy and Stalinist Soviet Union. He argues that, although the two regimes shared parallel time frames and gravitated around similar institutional solutions, Italian Fascism was fundamentally different in its reluctance to destroy the privately based theatre structure in favour of a state theatre and to impose a unified style, while Stalin carried out an ambitious and violent campaign to instil Socialist Realism through continuous disciplining, repression, and institutional supervision. In pursuing a nearly identical goal of achieving full obedience, the regimes used different means, and obtained similarly mixed results. While the Italian experience ended with the defeat of Fascism, Soviet theatres underwent de-Stalinization in the post-war decades, indicating the potential for sluggish stability in such frameworks of cultural-political control. Alexander Golovlev is Research Fellow at the International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences, National Research University, Higher School of Economics / Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, and ATLAS Fellow, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines/ Université Paris-Saclay. His most recent publications include ‘Sounds of Music from across the Sea: Musical Transnationality in Early Post-World-War-II Austria’, in Yearbook of Transnational History 1 (2018) and ‘Von der Seine an die Salzach: die Teilnahme vom Straßburger Domchor an den Salzburger Festspielen und die französische Musikdiplom atie in Österreich während der alliierten Besatzungs zeit’, Journal of Austrian Studies (2018). He is currently working on the political economy of the Bolshoi theatre under Stalinism.

Encrypted Astronomy, Astral Mythologies, and Ancient Mexican Studies in Austria, 1910-1945

This paper examines the beginnings of Austrian studies on ancient Mexico by analyzing the work of Damian Kreichgauer and Friedrich Röck in the early twentieth century. Both argued that a priest elite intentionally “coded” astronomical data in ancient Mexican manuscripts. The first section of the article sheds light on the theoretical background of this interpretation. The main section, based on numerous archival sources, is dedicated to the deciphering procedure elaborated by Röck, the first director of the Ethnological Museum in Vienna (today Weltmuseum Wien). Since Röck’s method seemed to revolutionize the discipline, it gained a great deal of attention from German Nazi authorities. The final section deals with Röck’s student Karl Anton Nowotny, who elaborated an ethnographic approach of ancient Mexican studies in Austria after World War II. This study provides new insights into the historical background of post-war ancient Mexican studies in Austria.