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Freeman, James B. Arguments about Arguments. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37(4): 525-540.

We survey the contents of Finocchiaro's papers collected in Arguments about Arguments, pointing out, where appropriate, their expected interest for readers of Philosophy of the Social Sciences. The papers include essays about argument theory and reasoning, the nature of fallacies and fallaciousness, critiques of noteworthy contributions to argumentation theory, and historical essays on scientific thinking.

Weisburd, David, Cynthia M. Lum, and Anthony Petrosino. Does Research Design Affect Study Outcomes in Criminal Justice? The ANNALS of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 578(1): 50-70.

Does the type of research design used in a crime and justice study influence its conclusions? Scholars agree in theory that randomized experimental studies have higher internal validity than do nonrandomized studies. But there is not consensus regarding the costs of using nonrandomized studies in coming to conclusions regarding criminal justice interventions. To examine these issues, the authors look at the relationship between research design and study outcomes in a broad review of research evidence on crime and justice commissioned by the National Institute of Justice. Their findings suggest that design does have a systematic effect on outcomes in criminal justice studies. The weaker a design, indicated by internal validity, the more likely a study is to report a result in favor of treatment and the less likely it is to report a harmful effect of treatment. Even when comparing randomized studies with strong quasi-experimental research designs, systematic and statistically significant differences are observed.

Madfis, Eric. Averting School Rampage: Student Intervention Amid a Persistent Code of Silence. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 12(3): 229-249.

Pulling from in-depth interviews with school administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers directly involved in thwarting rampage attacks at 11 Northeastern schools, this study considers the extent to which students have broken through a “code of silence,” discouraging them from informing on their peers. While findings support prior research indicating the vital preventative role of students’ coming forward with information about threats, close scrutiny of averted incidents reveals that scholars and educational practitioners have overestimated the extent to which the student code of silence has diminished post-Columbine. Even in these successfully averted incidents, numerous students exposed to threats still did not come forward; those who did were rarely close associates or confidants of accused students; and some who did ultimately come forward did so as a result of being personally threatened or in order to deflect blame away from themselves, rather than out of altruistic concern for others.

Borum, Randy, Dewey G. Cornell, William Modzeleski, and Shane R. Jimerson. What Can Be Done About School Shootings? Educational Researcher 39(1): 27-37.

School shootings have generated great public concern and fostered a widespread impression that schools are unsafe for many students; this article counters those misapprehensions by examining empirical evidence of school and community violence trends and reviewing evidence on best practices for preventing school shootings. Many of the school safety and security measures deployed in response to school shootings have little research support, and strategies such as zero-tolerance discipline and student profiling have been widely criticized as unsound practices. Threat assessment is identified as a promising strategy for violence prevention that merits further study. The article concludes with an overview of the need for schools to develop crisis response plans to prepare for and mitigate such rare events.