Some weekly newsletter we have going on here.
Cooper, Z., Doyle Jr, J. J., Graves, J. A., & Gruber, J. (2022). Do Higher-Priced Hospitals Deliver Higher-Quality Care? (No. w29809). National Bureau of Economic Research.
(RA) This paper, which I’ll aim to read in full, is one of many recent econometric-type documents which are forcing me to evaluate the relative value of service that my career choice provides to society. It's difficult to match these things up with my personal experience working with patients though. It could be that much of my current exposure has been in fields where medical treatment is more appropriate rather than the areas where more waste is occurring. But I would find that unlikely, I’ll reflect more on this as I move along through different departments with differing acuity of patients.
Matthew Mitchell, Certificate-of-Need Laws: How They Affect Healthcare Access, Quality, and Cost (Mercatus)
(RE) I suppose the response would be something like, "If you can't prove that the area you wish to expand into is actually fulfilling a need, then why should we let you expand?" Which makes sense and yet its upside-down cousin is also quite convincing: "Why would I want to expand these services if they won't be used?"
Regulatory costs of expansion then limit the development of new groups. This is like the invisible graveyard, only for healthcare centers. How many possible new hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and other resources could there be without CON laws? There must be a difference-in-difference or nearest neighbor comparison to be made with some of the other states which have made this change. I'll keep an eye on this and do some more reading as the current state I live in and will practice in is governed by multiple CON regulations. Since I'd like to eventually open a private practice, this will undoubtedly be a component of its development.
Alex Tabarrok, What Operation Warp Speed Did, Didn’t and Can’t Do (Marginal Revolution)
(RE) Operation Warp Speed was about just that, Speed. After my exposure to both the private and public healthcare discovery to market pipeline, it seems obvious to me that the best way to accelerate a project would be to remove its speed limits. Months for IRB feedback, administrative bulk, and the bulwark of funding applications were the primary things that slowed down our groups. Several of them were not actually carrying out research that posed harm to any individuals and usually not even lab mice. I wonder how much work that is currently required to undergo IRB processing could safely be fast-tracked around those systems.
Nicole Ruiz, A Deeper Dive into Near-Term Quantum & Applications in Drug Discovery (Compound)
(RE) This seems like a good review of various efforts at near-term drug discovery using quantum computation platforms. I was unfamiliar with most of the organizations and initiatives that she mentioned throughout. That there are potentially so many groups with practical quantum computational applications on the horizon is very encouraging. My impression was that the limitations on maintaining quantum computers were too high for much widespread exploration to be occurring. Success in this field would be a tremendous boon for biotechnology and another notch in making biology a reliable and designable tool for humanity. Certainly shaping up to be a trend of the 2020s.
Raymond, C. L., & Benbow, C. P. (1986). Gender differences in mathematics: A function of parental support and student sex typing? Developmental Psychology, 22(6), 808–819. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.22.6.808
(RA) This paper was discussed in a textbook I was reading and seems to show the intuitive, but depending on your worldview, surprising outcome that, "Results indicate that patterns of parental support did not vary as a function of child's gender. Fathers tended to be perceived to be somewhat more involved with their children's mathematical activities and mothers with their verbal activities, although these perceptions were not strong. Fathers were not more involved with mathematically talented children than with verbally talented ones, nor was the reverse found for mothers. In addition, children were not strongly sex-typed. Moreover, children's sex-typing did not relate to perceived parental behaviors or to SAT scores. It is suggested that these aspects of socialization did not relate to current sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability, which have been shown to relate to later sex differences in achievement in quantitative areas."
Still an old social science paper, so strong prior to this specific study not surviving deeper investigation/reproduction. Although this matches my priors and what I believe to be the status of contemporary research into the issue at hand.
Reissman, C., Aron, A., & Bergen, M. R. (1993). Shared activities and marital satisfaction: Causal direction and self-expansion versus boredom. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10(2), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/026540759301000205
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Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.273
(RA) Both papers are were referenced in a paper I was reading. Findings seemed to be that self-defined exciting activities are associated with higher marital satisfaction, which was not true for simply spending more time together or spending time together doing pleasant activities. The second paper seems to show this holding for even short-length activities. Older social science paper.
Lyubomirsky, S. (2011). Hedonic adaptation to positive and negative experiences. Oxford University Press.d https://escholarship.org/content/qt2w73s294/qt2w73s294.pdf
(RE) This paper was the initial inspiration and provided source material for an upcoming piece on hedonic adaptation. Good review of the subject and various methods to address either slowing or accelerating an individual’s rate of adaptation. Useful throughout.