The EU considers tightening bans on compensating donors of Substances of Human Origin (SoHO)

 Peter Jaworski considers an  EU proposal this month to harmonize across the EU bans on paying donors for Substances of Human Origin (SoHO).  Presently Germany, Austria and Chechia allow payment to plasma donors.

The E.U. Doesn't Want People To Sell Their Plasma, and It Doesn't Care How Many Patients That Hurts. The United States currently supplies about 70 percent of the plasma used to manufacture therapies for the entire world.  by PETER JAWORSKI 

"The European Union looks like it might take the foolish step of banning financial incentives for a variety of substances of human origin, including blood, blood plasma, sperm, and breast milk. The legislation on the safety and quality of Substances of Human Origin includes an approved amendment that says donors can only be compensated for "quantifiable losses" and that such donations are to be "financially neutral." This legislation is supposed to harmonize the rules across the 27 member countries, promote safety, with the ban on financial incentives intended to avoid commodification and the exploitation of the poor. 

...

"Already the E.U. is dependent on plasma collected in the United States for around 40 percent of the needs of its 300,000 rare disease patients. They're not as dependent as Canada because Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic allow a flat-fee donor compensation model and so are able to have surplus collections that contribute 56 percent of the E.U. total. The remaining 23 countries, each of which runs a plasma collection deficit, manage just 44 percent. 

"So what is likely to happen if the new rules make this flat-fee donor compensation model illegal? Will safety improve and commodification and exploitation be avoided? No, the E.U. will just become even more dependent on the United States."

Smart toilets and data privacy

 Something to sit and think about:

Smart toilets could leak your medical data, warn security experts. by Matthew Sparkes New Scientist, Volume 259, Issue 3456, 2023, Page 14, ISSN 0262-4079, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(23)01720-7. 

"A range of start-ups and research projects have developed smart toilets to monitor everything from heart rate to the consistency of stools and the presence of certain proteins in urine that indicate disease. One device even features an “anus camera” that takes a photo from below for identification, something that has been described as the “polar opposite of facial recognition”.*

...

"One concern was the privacy of people other than the owner: are visitors consenting to have photographs or measurements taken? There were also worries about the risk of losing sensitive data to hackers, as well as the possibility of companies selling the data on. And if smart toilets were installed in public areas or workplaces, there would be questions about who has access to that data, it was argued.The group of experts concluded that smart toilets shouldn't be sold as consumer devices, but instead as medical devices that have to meet high regulatory standards for privacy and safety (arXiv, doi.org/ksx5).

"Chase Moyle at smart toilet start-up Coprata says he set out to build a consumer device because creating a medical device under US Food and Drug Administration regulations would raise the price by a factor of 10. It would also mean that, in the US, insurance companies would only offer it to people with diagnosed conditions.

...

"Alan Woodward at the University of Surrey, UK, says so-called internet of things (IoT) devices, such as heart rate monitors and CCTV cameras, have often been found to have security flaws, including a smart toilet with a computer-controlled bidet. He fears the same could be true for medical-focused smart toilets. “With a lot of IoT devices, security has never been uppermost in the mind and yet something like a smart toilet is collecting some very personal data,” he says. “They're making these weird devices because they can, but nobody's thought through ‘should we?’”

#########

See also (for the first instance of that quote I can find):

‘Smart toilet’ monitors for signs of disease. A disease-detecting “precision health” toilet can sense multiple signs of illness through automated urine and stool analysis, a new Stanford study reports.  April 6, 2020 - By Hanae Armitage, Stanford Medicine News

"One of the most important aspects of the smart toilet may well be one of the most surprising — and perhaps unnerving: It has a built-in identification system. “The whole point is to provide precise, individualized health feedback, so we needed to make sure the toilet could discern between users,” Gambhir said. “To do so, we made a flush lever that reads fingerprints.” The team realized, however, that fingerprints aren’t quite foolproof. What if one person uses the toilet, but someone else flushes it? Or what if the toilet is of the auto-flush variety?

"They added a small scanner that images a rather camera-shy part of the body. You might call it the polar opposite of facial recognition. In other words, to fully reap the benefits of the smart toilet, users must make their peace with a camera that scans their anus.

“We know it seems weird, but as it turns out, your anal print is unique,” Gambhir said. The scans — both finger and nonfinger — are used purely as a recognition system to match users to their specific data. No one, not you or your doctor, will see the scans."

#######

Also, Meet the winners of the 2023 Ig Nobel Prizes 

"Public Health Prize

Citation: "Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a variety of technologies—including a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link—to monitor and quickly analyze the substances that humans excrete."

Nobel Symposium on Social Networks Lund, Sweden, August, 2023

A Nobel Symposium on Social Networks was held in Lund last month.The papers don't appear to be online, but it ended with a round table discussion:

"You can join in online when the symposium ends with an open “round table discussion” with a panel of leading scientists on August 24 at 14:00. The discussion will be introduced by Tommy Andersson, Professor in Economics at LUSEM and Member of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The panelists are Prof. Matthew Jackson, Prof. Albert-Laszlo Barbasi, Prof. Kathleen M. Carley, Prof. Damon Centola, Prof. Vittoria Colizza, and Prof. David Lazer."

Stanford was well represented. Aside from my colleague Matt Jackson, Mark Granovetter joined the symposium itself by Zoom (which I guess is a weak link).

Round table discussion: Nobel Symposium on the Future of Network Analysis

 

Nobel watchers, take note.

Big ideas at Stanford; interviews by Ran Abramitzky

 

Big Ideas

Stanford’s Nobel Laureates and MacArthur “Genius” Fellows talk with H&S Senior Associate Dean Ran Abramitzky about their award-winning research and their personal and professional paths.

Open to the Stanford community.

Autumn quarter (Thursdays, 3 – 4:20 pm, at CEMEX. The talk series is open to the Stanford community, and is also offered to undergrads as a 1-unit course (syllabus attached).

9/28: Market Design with Alvin Roth

10/12: Causal Inference with Guido Imbens

10/19: Energy with Steven Chu

10/26: Pediatric Neuro-oncology with Michelle Monje

11/2: Auctions with Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson

11/9: Experimental Physics with Monika Schleier-Smith

11/16: Bioorthogonal Chemistry with Carolyn Bertozzi

11/30: Natural Language Processing with Dan Jurafsky

12/7: Innovation with Heidi Williams

Update:

Ran Abramitzky and Al Roth

Support for hepatitis C human challenge studies, in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology

 Here's a call for action, in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology:

Joint statement in support of hepatitis C human challenge studies by Harvey J Alter, Eleanor Barnes, Mia J Biondi, Andrea L Cox, Jake D Eberts, Jordan J Feld, T Jake Liang, Josh Morrison, Charles M Rice, Naglaa H Shoukry, David L Thomas, Jennifer Van Gennip, Charles Weijer, on behalf of other signatories †, Published:September 20, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-1253(23)00314-X

"We, the 121 undersigned, believe that human challenge studies among adult volunteers will be critical in the development of hepatitis C vaccines.

...

"Despite the advent of safe and highly effective direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatments, the ongoing toll of hepatitis C remains high among low-income and middle-income countries and vulnerable populations such as people who inject drugs. Millions of new infections occur annually, outpacing cures in some regions,1 with progress further disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Without a change in strategy and the development of new tools, we will not reach the ambitious goal set out by WHO of elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030. This will require an effective hepatitis C vaccine—“the best insurance for the future”, as highlighted by a recent announcement of the White House national hepatitis C elimination programme.2

...

"Human challenge studies for a hepatitis C vaccine could accelerate vaccine development dramatically. The effort to establish the model and test an initial vaccine candidate could take as little as 3 years. If that candidate fails, subsequent studies to test others could provide evidence of efficacy as quickly as 1 year.

"It is only because of the remarkably effective treatments that we can now consider human challenge studies for hepatitis C. With DAAs, cure rates of people without cirrhosis are reliably over 98%, with highly effective salvage regimens for the few who do not respond to a first course of therapy.5,  6 We are confident that in the era of DAAs, human challenge studies can be done in accordance with the highest ethical and safety standards. Healthy volunteers providing fully informed consent would be infected for at most 6 months before treatment and would be free to go about their lives with the right to request treatment and withdrawal from a study at any time. Acute infection causes no or few symptoms in most, and unlike in most challenge studies, where the risk of transmission necessitates quarantine of participants, the risk of passing hepatitis C to others is very low in day-to-day life.

"The impact of a vaccine would be enormous: reducing transmission, preventing cirrhosis, and most importantly, markedly reducing the rate of liver cancer, the world's second-most deadly cancer in terms of total fatalities.7 The global success of hepatitis B vaccine in achieving these goals exemplifies the importance of an effective hepatitis C vaccine. With the prospect of such a significant advance, we have confidence that people will volunteer to participate in hepatitis C challenge studies, and with such a strong team of experts worldwide, we are confident this approach will lead to the development of a successful hepatitis C vaccine."

**********

† Here's the full list of 121 signers of the letter

*********

1Day Sooner has a related web page with some background: https://www.1daysooner.org/hepatitis-c-open-letter

**********

Earlier related posts:

Monday, May 15, 2023

Eliminating Hepatitis C, now that there's a cure (even though it's expensive)

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Challenge trials for a Hepatitis C vaccine

Sunday, November 1, 2020

What do we know about the effects of payments to participants in challenge trials for vaccines, and other public spirited activities?

Drugs, drug economics, and violence in Colombia and Ecuador, as Colombia withdraws from the war on drugs

 Fighting a war on drugs hasn't yielded clear successes (at any point in the supply chain), but surrendering is no picnic either. The WSJ has the story from Colombia, and the Guardian reports on the situation in Ecuador.

Here's the WSJ story:

Colombian Cocaine Production Sees Record Surge. The country’s output of the drug, which reaches far corners of the world, rises 24%, U.N. says. By Juan Forero

"Colombia has set a record in the estimated production of cocaine, the United Nations said Monday, as President Gustavo Petro’s government tries a less punitive approach to fighting drugs.

"The amount of cocaine manufactured in Colombia, the world’s largest producer, rose to 1,738 tons in 2022, compared with 1,400 tons the year before, a 24% increase, with the cocaine shipped not only to the U.S. but increasingly to Europe and other continents, said officials presenting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s annual report on Colombia’s cocaine trade. Some 22 million people worldwide consume the drug.

...

"The size of Colombia’s coca fields and the production of cocaine has been rising fast since 2013, when the government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos began a process that by 2015 phased out a U.S.-sponsored program to spray coca fields from crop dusters with the herbicide glyphosate. 

...

"The leftist government of Petro, who took office 13 months ago, has characterized the war on drugs as a failure and veered away from a hard-line approach to dealing with coca farmers. For Colombia to reduce cocaine production to 900 tons by 2026, Justice Minister Néstor Iván Osuna, said Bogotá would hold negotiations with armed groups, build roads and provide social services. The state also offered assistance for the so-called cocaleros, or farmers, to produce legal crops.

...

"There is additional cause for concern, he said, because of the increasing importance to traffickers of 15 so-called “productive enclaves,” which make up only 14% of all the land dedicated to coca but produce 44% of all the coca in Colombia. In those regions, powerful gangs are intensely focused on the production of high-quality cocaine and the entire economy is linked with the cocaine trade. Those regions are particularly lawless as well as close to transnational drug routes.

...

"About 65% of all the coca in Colombia is now in the provinces of Nariño and Putumayo, which border Ecuador, and Norte de Santander in the northeast bordering Venezuela. All three provinces are hard-hit by violence and lack schools, paved roads, hospitals and other state institutions—as is Ecuador, where the homicide rate has skyrocketed as Colombian cocaine has flowed in."

########

Here's the Guardian report on Ecuador:

‘We should treat it as a war’: Ecuador’s descent into drug gang violence. Successive governments have been unable to rein in violence as South American country became cocaine superhighway.  by Dan Collyns 

"In recent years, the South American nation has experienced a nightmarish descent into violence, with successive governments proving unable to rein in organized crime factions. Last month, the cartels showed their power with a mass hostage-taking in six prisons, in an apparent response to the prison transfer of a senior gang leader.

"Before that, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in broad daylight less than two weeks before the election’s first round.

...

"But the country’s armed forces and police appear to be losing the battle against the narcos who have turned the country into a cocaine superhighway as gangs – both inside and outside the weak and overcrowded prison system – vie for drug trafficking routes, with backing from powerful Mexican cartels.

"Drug trafficking is not new in Ecuador, thanks to its location – sandwiched between the world’s main cocaine producers Colombia and Peru – its porous borders and major Pacific Ocean ports. The amount of cocaine seized at the country’s ports has tripled since 2020 to 77.4 tonnes last year.

"But in recent years, the scale of the accompanying violence has rocketed. Ecuador saw 4,600 violent deaths in 2022, double the previous year, and the country is set to break the record again with 3,568 violent deaths in the first half of 2023. Of those, nearly half were in Guayas, the province that includes Guayaquil, where nearly 1,700 people have been murdered so far this year.

#########

Earlier posts on further down the supply chain:

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Homelessness and fentanyl, in Oregon and California

Friday, July 14, 2023

Harm reduction is not a panacea: drug use and drug policy in Portugal, and San Francisco

Mathematics and Computer Science of Market and Mechanism Design: SLMath introductory workshop (videos)

Last week I gave the opening talk of the week long  Introductory Workshop at SLMath, on Mathematics and Computer Science of Market and Mechanism Design.  Some of the video lectures are now online here (consisting mostly of slides and voice).

My talk introduces the general themes of market design by recounting the history and challenges facing the market for new doctors from 1900 through this year.

Berkeley's Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly known as the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) has a commanding view of the SF Bay.

Organ transplantation in China: in transition--and controversy about paying funeral costs

 I recently spoke at the CAST transplant conference in Hong Kong (see picture), and the underlying theme of my talk, and of many talks there, was the transition of transplantation in China, and what its future might hold.

Jie-Fu HUANG is the other speaker on Zoom (to my right and your left), and Haibo Wang is on the far left on stage.

Here are two of my opening slides (using 2021 data from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation)

On the left, you see that, today, China and India already perform more kidney transplants than any country in the world except the U.S.  On the right, you see that, by virtue of their large populations, they accomplish this despite their quite low rates of transplants per million population, compared to the U.S. and countries in Europe.  So if China and India can raise their transplant rates to rates comparable to the U.S. and Europe, most of the transplants in the world will be done in Asia, and many many additional lives will be saved.

Note that China mostly transplants kidneys from deceased donors, while India mostly transplants kidneys from living donors. So they have different paths (and plenty of untapped potential) for raising donation and transplantation rates.  And their paths to their current positions have also been very different.

Here is a recent account reflecting China's recent progress:

Chen, Zhitao, Han, Ming, Dong, Yuqi, Zeng, Ping, Liao, Yuan, Wang, Tielong, et al. (2023). First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China: 5-year Experience at a High-volume Donor and Recipient Liver Transplant Center. Transplantation, 107, 1855-1859. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000004561

" In 1972, our center performed the first living donor kidney transplantation in China. Since then, kidney and liver transplant programs have evolved. By the beginning of the 21st century, organ transplantation had advanced, and clinical liver transplants have been performed successfully at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.1

"Organ shortage has been a prominent feature at our institution as it has been around the world. Starting in the early 1980s, many organs had been procured from inmates on death rows. This unethical approach has been rightfully criticized by the worldwide community. As a consequence, the source of organs for transplants has solely been replaced by voluntary donations from Chinese citizens since January 1, 2015.

...

"Moreover, policies and methods for humanitarian aid to donor families were established. Those policies follow WHO guidelines while recognizing specific aspects of the Chinese culture. The State Ministry of Health and the Red Cross Society of China launched a pilot project on organ donation after the death of citizens in 2010 and established the China Organ Donation Committee. The principle of this pilot project was to learn from the experiences and standards in developed countries while recognizing national conditions and the social reality in China aiming to build an ethical and effective scientific organ donation and transplantation system.2

**********

In the same issue of Transplantation as the above article is this invited commentary by Ascher and Delmonico, both former Presidents of The Transplanation Society (of which Transplantation is the official journal). They largely approve of the effort China has made in transplants, but they have a big reservation.

Ascher, Nancy, MD, PhD & Delmonico, Francis. (2023). Organ Donation and Transplantation in China. Transplantation, 107, 1880-1882. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000004562

"The date of 2015 is important for the review of any organ transplantation report from China because of the public proclamation in the media in 2015 prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners. Clinical transplantation articles antecedent to 2015 have been consistently rejected by Transplantation and the international community because the source of the transplanted organs was most often an incarcerated prisoner. China took a major step to condemn this practice publicly in 2015. However, because there is no law or regulation that prohibits this unethical practice, there has been ongoing concern that this practice may be continuing. Notwithstanding such a reality, there have been regulations that are citable and may be reflective of the changing experience of organ donation and transplantation in China that are consistent with the World Health Organization (WHO) Guiding Principles.

...

"WHAT CONTINUES TO BE OBJECTIONABLE

"The Chinese Red Cross is prominent in the organ donation process and a center of support for deceased donor families designated by the Red Cross as humanitarian aid to donor families.7 However, such humanitarian aid, although not limited to China, should not be misinterpreted to be an effort because it includes payment to elicit consent for donation. The Sun Yat-sen publication suggests that the Red Cross policies follow WHO guidelines while recognizing specific aspects of Chinese culture without elaboration as to the cultural details. A payment to donor families for funeral expenses or other monetary incentives should be recognized as a form of commercialization and would not comply with WHO guidelines."

**********

Some background may help put this objection in perspective. Doctors Delmonico and Ascher are prominent signatories of a declaration that payments to families of organ donors are crimes against humanity (as are payments to living donors, and both are declared comparable to transplanting organs from executed prisoners, and to be organ trafficking. See my 2017 post.)

So, they raise the question of whether saving many lives by increasing deceased donation in China will be justified if it involves paying funeral expenses of donors.  

My guess is that Chinese health authorities, thinking of the many lives to be saved, will think that this act of generosity to families of deceased donors will indeed be justified, taking account of (see above) "national conditions and the social reality in China aiming to build an ethical and effective scientific organ donation and transplantation system." 

Many people in China and elsewhere might even think that little if any justification is needed for generosity, particularly generosity to families of deceased donors, that is to families who are themselves generous.

Kidney Paired Donation in Developing Countries: a Global Perspective

 Vivek Kute and his colleagues argue that one of the lessons from the developing world is that kidney exchange can save many lives, but may need to be organized differently in some ways than in the developed world.

Kidney Paired Donation in Developing Countries: a Global Perspective by Vivek B. Kute, Vidya A. Fleetwood, Sanshriti Chauhan, Hari Shankar Meshram, Yasar Caliskan, Chintalapati Varma, Halil Yazıcı, Özgür Akın Oto & Krista L. Lentine, Current Transplantation Reports (2023)  (here's a link that may provide better access]

Abstract

...

"Despite the advantages of KPD programs, they remain rare among developing nations, and the programs that exist have many differences with those of in developed countries. There is a paucity of literature and lack of published data on KPD from most of the developing nations. Expanding KPD programs may require the adoption of features and innovations of successful KPD programs. Cooperation with national and international societies should be encouraged to ensure endorsement and sharing of best practices.

Summary

KPD is in the initial stages or has not yet started in the majority of the emerging nations. But the logistics and strategies required to implement KPD in developing nations differ from other parts of the world. By learning from the KPD experience in developing countries and adapting to their unique needs, it should be possible to expand access to KPD to allow more transplants to happen for patients in need worldwide."

...

" Despite the advantages of KPD programs, they remain rare in the developing world, and the programs that exist have many differences with those of developed countries. Program structure is one of these differences: multi-center, regional, and national KPD programs (Swiss, Australia, Canada, Dutch, UK, USA) are more common in the developed than the developing world, whereas single center programs are more common

...

"kidney exchanges frequently take weeks to months to obtain legal permission in India despite the fact that only closely-related family members (i.e., parents, spouse, siblings, children, and grandparents) are allowed to donate a kidney [47].

...

"Protecting the privacy of a donor, including maintaining anonymity when requested, is common practice among developed countries but uncommon in developing nations. Anonymous allocation during KPD is a standard practice in the Netherlands, Sweden, and other parts of Europe, but this is not the case in countries such as India, Korea, and Romania [14, 48, 49]. In areas where anonymity is not maintained, the intended donor/recipient pair must meet and share medical information once a potential exchange is identified, but before formal allocation of pairs occurs. The original donor/ recipient pair may refuse the proposed exchange option for any reason and continue to be on the waitlist. In India, nonanonymous KPD allocation is standard practice and has the goal of increasing trust and transparency between the transplant team and the administrative team [14, 49]. Countries differ in philosophical approaches to optimizing trust and transparency, and objective data on most effective practices would benefit the global community."

********

Tomorrow I hope to have a few words to say about the equally unique situation in China.

######

Update:

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Organ transplantation in China: in transition--and controversy about paying funeral costs

Vic Fuchs (1924-2023)

My friend and neighbor Vic Fuchs, the dean of American health economists, passed away on Friday.  

He was just a few months short of 100, but in the last year he finished revising the third edition of his 1975 book,  Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice.

He bravely bore some physical ailments, but his mind remained sharp, and he was always a pleasure to talk to. (He used to joke "I'm in perfect health: my psychiatrist says its all in my body.")

He kept abreast of current events, and remained informed and concerned about the state of the health care system in the U.S., and democracy.

Vic Fuchs speaking at the memorial conference for Ken Arrow, Oct. 9, 2017

##########

Update: here's a Stanford obit:

Victor Fuchs, pioneer of health care economics, has died

Fuchs’ influence and tireless devotion to the field of health care economics and the Stanford community spanned decades.

September 18, 2023 | Krysten Crawford

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023, Cambridge MA

 Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023

Friday, October 27

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 1: Equity

9:00 am

Equal Pay for Similar Work

Diego Gentile Passaro, Brown University

Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University

Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, Brown University

9:45 am

Market Design for Social Justice: A Case Study on A Constitutional Crisis in India

Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

M. Utku Ünver, Boston College

10:30 am

Break

Session 2: Artificial Intelligence

10:45 am

Artificial Intelligence and Statistical Collusion

Martino Banchio, Google Research

Giacomo Mantegazza, Stanford University

11:30 am

Combining Human Expertise with Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Evidence from Radiology

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Alex Moehring, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Pranav Rajpurkar, Harvard University

Tobias Salz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

12:15 pm

Lunch

Session 3: Auctions

1:30 pm

Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price

Alexander Haberman, Stanford University

Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Unobserved Auctions

Hao Li, University of British Columbia

Michael Peters, University of British Columbia

3:00 pm

Entry and Exit in Treasury Auctions

Jason Allen, Bank of Canada

Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER

Eric Richert, University of Chicago

Milena Wittwer, Boston College

3:45 pm

Break

Session 4: Mechanism Design for Social Good

4:15 pm

Test-Optional Admissions

Wouter Dessein, Columbia University

Alexander P. Frankel, University of Chicago

Navin Kartik, Columbia University

5:00 pm

Maximizing the Effect of Altruism

Nicholas T. Wu, Yale University

Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research

Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research

5:45 pm

Adjourn

6:30 pm

Group Dinner at Bambara (across the street from the Royal Sonesta)

Saturday, October 28

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 5: Distributed Ledgers

9:00 am

The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and Anonymous, Decentralized Trust on the Blockchain

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

9:45 am

Can Open Decentralized Ledgers be Economically Secure?

Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago

Rafael Pass, Cornell University

Elaine Shi, Carnegie Mellon University

10:30 am

Break

Session 6: School Choice

11:00 am

Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: Robust Analysis of School Choice

Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University

Dong Woo Hahm, University of Southern California

YingHua He, Rice University

11:45 am

Search and Biased Beliefs in Education Markets

Patrick Agte, Princeton University

Claudia Allende, Stanford University and NBER

Adam Kapor, Princeton University and NBER

Christopher Neilson, Yale University and NBER

12:30 pm

Lunch

Session 7: Signalling and Screening

1:30 pm

Comparison of Screening Devices

Frank Yang, Stanford University

Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Privacy Preserving Signals

Philipp Strack, Yale University

Kai Hao Yang, Yale University

3:00 pm

Adjourn

Regulating research and research misconduct

 Peer review is a clunky process that often misfires, but it helps to keep up the quality of published research. Much the same can be said about procedures for investigating allegations of research misconduct: they help clean up the research record, but they can also harm the innocent (particularly when accusations may be weaponized against competitors).*

Nature has the story of an investigator whose research was put on hold for four years before the accusations against him were dismissed after a lengthy investigtion:

‘Gagged and blindsided’: how an allegation of research misconduct affected our lab. Bioengineer Ram Sasisekharan describes the impact of a four-year investigation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which ultimately cleared him.  by Anne Gulland

"In May 2019, a phone call to Ram Sasisekharan from a reporter at The Wall Street Journal triggered a chain of events that stalled the bioengineer’s research, decimated his laboratory group and, he says, left him unable to help find treatments for emerging infectious diseases during a global pandemic.

"The journalist had rung Sasisekharan, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, for his comment on an article in the journal mAbs that had been published a few days previously1. The article alleged that Sasisekharan and his co-authors had “an intent to mislead as to the level of originality and significance of the published work”.

...

"At first, Sasisekharan assumed this was a storm he could weather by providing scientific evidence to refute the allegation, which related to two papers he had published with collaborators, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)2 and Cell Host & Microbe3. But then, MIT received a formal complaint of research misconduct against Sasisekharan, triggering an internal investigation that took more than three years and only concluded this March, when he was exonerated.

...

"Although the accusation had a huge impact on him in terms of his reputation, it was even harder for his staff, he says. “A lab is like a family — you have undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdocs. The culture of a group and how we communicate is what makes it vibrant, and it was terrible to see how the lab suffered as a consequence of these very public allegations.” He adds: “You get really isolated, you stop being invited to things. There was this dark cloud hanging over us because we just couldn’t talk about it openly or defend ourselves.”

#######

*the postscript of this previous post comes to mind.