The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates perfectly how the operation of science changes when questions of urgency, stakes, values and uncertainty collide -in the 'post-normal' regime. Well before the coronavirus pandemic, statisticians were debating how to prevent malpractice such as p-hacking, particularly when it could influence policy 1 . Now, computer modelling is in the limelight, with politicians presenting their policies as dictated by 'science' 2 . Yet there is no substantial aspect of this pandemic for which any researcher can currently provide precise, reliable numbers. Known unknowns include the prevalence and fatality and reproduction rates of the virus in Pandemic politics highlight how predictions need to be transparent and humble to invite insight, not blame.
This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions:
Why is the study of valuation topical?
What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore?
What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation?
The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identifies a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention.
Co-authors: Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Patrik Aspers, Stefan Beljean, Alexandra Bidet, Alberto Corsín, Emmanuel Didier, Marion Fourcade, Susi Geiger, Klaus Hoeyer, Michèle Lamont, Donald MacKenzie, Bill Maurer, Jan Mouritsen, Ebba Sjögren, Kjell Tryggestad, François Vatin, Steve Woolgar.
Information policing seems to be pervading public security police all around the world. This review asks whether this appellation describes a homogeneous set of phenomena. Compstat was the first program to massively computerize policing. The literature reviewed here follows its fate in the United States and, on a global scale, in France, where the program was imported. The review successively discusses the perspective of managers who were favorable to the program and that of “statactivists,” activists who use statistics, who were opposed to it. Despite the many differences intervened during the importation process, especially in the balance of expertise and publicity, some points seem to be common to both contexts, such as the building of a computer infrastructure, a specific use of the data, and the constructive tensions between the police institution and its critics.
Drawing upon several sets of victimisation surveys in France, this article examines for the first time for this country the variables associated with victims' reporting behaviour on the one hand, with their decision to file a formal complaint on the other. The seriousness of the effects of the offence-material or physical-is a determining variable which largely confirms previous internationally established knowledge. However, the specific contribution of this study is to highlight the role, a minority role to be sure but one that is clearly distinguishable, of certain attitudes such as punitiveness (among those who file formal complaints) and scepticism with regard to public institutions (among non reporting victims). In this sense, the study of reporting also informs us about the more or less confident relationship between the population and the institutions that bear the responsibility for its security. In order to consider these types of results it is necessary for surveys to include not only questions about the factual elements of victimisation but also to delve into the respondents' opinions, so as to allow the piecing together of attitudes and types of social representation.
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