Not doing so is how the biggest mistakes have been made, she points out, particularly in Africa.

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At medical schools, pharma companies, and even at the FDA, biostatisticians and clinical researchers recognize that retrospective data when treated with appropriate bias-controlling statistical methods, can in fact be reliable, particularly as it points to direction of influence and the general magnitude of effect.

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Sternberg (provost and senior vice president and professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University), which recently appeared in InsideHigherEd and raises a number of points which are worth additional comment, particularly since I think Sternberg misses the real reason behind college rankings in the first place.

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Much of the information about year 2000, particularly what's on the Internet, is in English, he points out.

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Krugman points out that austerity measures in Europe have not been particularly successful in staunching the pain of struggling economies so far.

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Mark Roberts of Montgomery Securities, a San Francisco investment bank, points out that the one soon to occur in the Internet will be particularly savage because it depends on the fickle and cut-throat consumer market (businesses such as mobile telephones and fax machines began in the corporate market).

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Both candidates hammered their points home in debates and personal appearances, but the frequently aired television spots gave the race a particularly nasty tone.

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