People live complicated lives and, unlike laboratory scientists who can control all aspects of their experiments, epidemiologists have to work with that complexity. As a result, no epidemiological study can ever be perfect. Even an apparently straightforward survey of, say, alcohol consumption in a community, can be fraught with problems. Who should be included in the survey? How do you measure alcohol consumption reliably? All we can do when we conduct a study is aim to minimise error as far as possible, and then assess the practical effects of any unavoidable error. A critical aspect of epidemiology is, therefore, the ability to recognise potential sources of error and, more importantly, to assess the likely effects of any error, both in your own work and in the work of others. If we publish or use flawed or biased research we spread misinformation that could hinder decision-making, harm patients and adversely affect health policy. Future research may also be misdirected, delaying discoveries that can enhance public health.

The book opens with an odd fact of our time: we grow up having our writing corrected at every turn, and yet the actual writing most people do goes far beyond what is considered “correct English.” If we imagine a basic continuum of writing in English, it ranges from informal to formal, personal to impersonal, and interpersonal to informational writing. That range allows us to do all kinds of different things with writing. But only a small part of it is considered “correct,” because of what the book calls Language Regulation Mode. The introduction explains Language Regulation Mode, how it fixates on errors, and how it makes it hard to think about writing any other way. We learn to see writing only through the lens of writing myths, which tell us only some writing counts, and only some writers are smart and will succeed. Then, the introduction offers an alternative: Language Exploration Mode, which focuses on patterns instead of errors, and learning more about the diverse language of our world today--a continuum of informal digital writing, workplace writing, formal school writing, and otherwise, all correct for its purpose.

In our laboratory, we currently perform verification of specimen identity (VSI) by having two laboratory personnel independently check and verify the identity of each patient, gamete specimen and embryo at each step that is susceptible to a mismatch so that we can assure accurate and complete traceability throughout the processes. Since this is the system currently in place in our laboratory, this method of verification and witnessing is the main focus of discussion in this chapter. In the future, we plan to implement an electronic witnessing system following as recommended by Chapman (2019).

Chapter 1 argues that Heidegger, like many reconstructive interpreters, takes up the main question posed by the first Critique and attempts to identify Kant’s most plausible line of response to it, consulting the claims in Kant’s text alongside Heidegger’s own beliefs. Because Heidegger seeks to attribute true claims to Kant, his method of interpretation resembles that of Davidson and Gadamer. However, Heidegger improves on their method, because he recognizes the methodological role of disagreement in coming to agree with some author, thereby making room for differences in view between interpreter and text. He argues that we should expect great thinkers to struggle with their subject matter, offering competing strands of argument as they attempt to work out their view. The interpreter, therefore, must isolate the most promising strand of argument, differentiating it from less compelling arguments. Accordingly, Heidegger offers a two-strand interpretation of Kant that differentiates an insightful line of argumentation prioritizing imagination from a less promising line prioritizing understanding. Further, Heidegger offers a theory of error explaining why Kant struggles with his subject matter: Kant retreats to his less compelling argument due to the anxiety he experiences in uncovering the fundamental structure of the human being.

Although the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties devotes nine articles to invalidity of treaties, cases rarely arise in practice. Circumstances covered by the Convention include violation of internal law, error, fraud, corruption, coercion and violation of a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens). Article 46 of the Convention covers the first of these, providing that a state may not invoke the fact that its consent to be bound has been expressed in violation of its internal law unless that violation was manifest and concerned a rule of fundamental importance. The chapter examines the meaning of the key terms of this provision and possible cases in which this might arise. In the context of coercion, the chapter looks at treaties which might be concluded by the threat or use of force, peace treaties and unequal treaties. The scope of peremptory norms (jus cogens) is also discussed, together with the consequences of invalidity.

The two major sources of error are chance (random error) and confounding bias (systematic error). After correcting for these two kinds of error, one can then assess or assert causation. These are the “Three Cs.”

This chapter explore human factors, also known as ergonomics, which is an established scientific discipline that has become integral in healthcare in recent years. The catalyst for this in the UK was the Clinical Human Factors Group led by Martin Bromiley. Martin’s wife Elaine died following errors made during a routine operation when the theatre team failed to respond appropriately to an unanticipated anaesthetic emergency in part because of a variety of human factors. There is still confusion around the term ‘human factors’. This is partly because human factors cannot be explored in isolation but need to be understood in the context of human activity, error, and the culture around error.

This chapter identifies and explains the fundamental role and responsibilities of the perioperative practitioner essential to the surgical scrub role; this includes surgical counts, sharps safety, specimen managements, and waste disposal. The scrub practitioner is a recognised member of the perioperative team, performing a crucial role in preparing the operating theatre environment for surgical procedures. They must ensure it is clean, ready, and safe to receive the surgical patient. The scrub practitioner should possess the requisite technical and non-technical skills, and theoretical underpinning knowledge of anatomy and physiology to optimally perform their role.

It is a struggle to hold society together. Historically, that task has fallen both to law and religion. Sovereignty, the source of law’s binding power, like the miracle in Carl Schmidt’s political theology, lies outside law itself. That origin coincides with the kenotic excess of the sacred.

This chapter explores that strange excess through a visual genealogy of shifting sovereign imaginaries. They range from early modern legal emblems picturing the transcendental body of the King, to modern and late modern paintings and films depicting a metaphysical shift to the sacred body of the People. The question this visual history confronts is not whether the sacred binds the nomos of law, but how? The corporeal image goes beyond conceptual abstraction. It is a site from which desire (what Freud calls the cathexis of libido) binds us to values, rituals, and institutions. Libidinal investment ties us to a shared symbolic identity; disinvestment, by contrast, invites psychic and political-legal collapse.

As the contemporary crisis in liberal democracy deepens, we ask: what sovereign imaginary will break the pall of collective anxiety and unrest, and will it come in the service of human flourishing?

The study of one type of error—the conviction of innocent people—has gained enormous importance, attracting increasing academic research and indeed giving birth to an activism geared towards obtaining the exoneration of innocent victims of unjust court convictions. One of the issues that has produced the greatest number of studies has been identifying factors that increase the probability that convictions of innocent people will occur. Among its results is the consensus that a group of "evidentiary practices" exists that may explain the errors. The present work sets out to describe, from the evidence available, the most problematic evidentiary practices in relation to the use of expert evidence. According to the empirical data available, this is one of the most relevant factors in the system’s production of wrong decisions. Based on a more refined diagnosis of which practices are most problematic in the use of this evidence, I hope to make it possible to gauge the system’s weaknesses. This will allow me to develop proposals and strategies for risk prevention and minimization. Diminishing and anticipating errors not only seems a realistic goal or a reasonable aspiration, but also an imperative for the system

Here I explicate two methodological burdens for the kind of eliminativist views about free will and moral responsibility that might threaten a prescriptive preservationist view of reactive blame. The first burden is that eliminativists must fix the skeptical spotlight, and offer at least some comparative support for their claim that the error they identify for free will and moral responsibility that threatens blame cannot be resolved by abandoning some other assumption, belief, or feature of our concept. Second, eliminativists must explicitly motivate elimination over some variety of revisionist preservation. I call this second burden the motivational challenge, and examine two possible eliminativist strategies for meeting it. The first involves appeals to gains and losses intended to directly motivate elimination, and the second involves explicit appeal to some claim about the essence of free will and moral responsibility. What both of these strategies reveal is that their success ultimately depends on thorny issues about reference and essence.

I argue that Aristotle thinks of perception as veridical, and that phantasia – as a secondary motion consequent on perception – is responsible for all sensory error. I neutralize passages where Aristotle seems to countenance misperception by defending what I call an “object-oriented reading,” which holds that though Aristotle says we can make errors about the objects of perception, he is not committed to thinking that we can perceive them erroneously, as there are faculties besides perception (including phantasia) that engage with the objects of perception. According to the object-oriented reading, apparent misperception results when a false phantasia is mistaken for a perception, something that is possible due to the similarities between perception and phantasia. Nonetheless, since the faculties are distinct, perception remains veridical. I also address how this conception of phantasia can explain Aristotle’s appeals to phantasia in contexts like memory, thought, and animal motion.

This chapter proposes a contextual approach to the history of early modern logic and method from the perspective of the late seventeenth-century debate over the relative worth of ancient and modern learning. Reflections on a modern “art of thinking” by authors on both sides of the debate contributed to the construction of an image of philosophical modernity at the high point of the Scientific Revolution, which would subsequently help fashion the self-understanding of the Enlightenment. This image was inherently polemical and pluralistic, as shown by analyzing the variety of canons of authors and by identifying the diversity of positions on the ingredients of the modern “art of thinking” in their writings. And yet the points of disagreement also reveal an underlying consensus about the core features a logic required: that an art of thinking would have to express the natural operations of the human mind, would ground the pursuit of the sciences, and would be capable of leading the mind to the discovery of genuinely novel and valuable truths about the natural world. This chapter also provides a reevaluation of the traditional canon of important thinkers who are thought to have spearheaded modernity.