scholarly journals On the authenticity of COVID-19 case figures

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0243123
Author(s):  
Adrian Patrick Kennedy ◽  
Sheung Chi Phillip Yam
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Fraud Detection ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
World Health ◽  
Benford’S Law ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Benford's Law ◽  
Formal Statistical Analysis ◽  
Health Organization

In this article, we study the applicability of Benford’s law and Zipf’s law to national COVID-19 case figures with the aim of establishing guidelines upon which methods of fraud detection in epidemiology, based on formal statistical analysis, can be developed. Moreover, these approaches may also be used in evaluating the performance of public health surveillance systems. We provide theoretical arguments for why the empirical laws should hold in the early stages of an epidemic, along with preliminary empirical evidence in support of these claims. Based on data published by the World Health Organization and various national governments, we find empirical evidence that suggests that both Benford’s law and Zipf’s law largely hold across countries, and deviations can be readily explained. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is among the first to present a practical application of Zipf’s law to fraud detection.

Benford's law, Zipf's law and the pore properties in solids

2020 ◽  
Vol 292 ◽  
pp. 109735
Author(s):  
Antigoni G. Margellou ◽  
Philippos J. Pomonis
Keyword(s):  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Benford’S Law ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Benford's Law ◽  
Pore Properties

scholarly journals Power Laws, Prices and National Accounts: Are There Any Irregularities?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciprian Florin Pater ◽  
Deni Mazrekaj
Keyword(s):  
Data Quality ◽  
Price Index ◽  
Consumer Price Index ◽  
Power Laws ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Benford’S Law ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
High Data ◽  
Benford's Law

Many economic regularities have been found to adhere to power laws. In this paper, we apply Benford’s law to consumer price index data from Norway and Zipf’s law on a Norwegian report about the history of Norwegian national accounts. Norway is a particularly interesting country to study as it scores among the highest-ranked countries on data quality. We find that the consumer price index adheres to Benford’s law, showing high data quality. On the other hand, our results do indicate that the report does not adhere to Zipf’s law.

scholarly journals A Note on Distributions of True versus Fabricated Data

1996 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 776-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore P. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Goodness Of Fit ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
Benford’S Law ◽  
Accounting Data ◽  
Goodness Of Fit Tests ◽  
Benford's Law

New empirical evidence and statistical derivations of Benford's Law have led to successful goodness-of-fit tests to detect fraud in accounting data. Several recent case studies support the hypothesis that fabricated data do not conform to expected true digital frequencies.

scholarly journals Australian National Enterovirus Reference Laboratory annual report, 2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A Roberts ◽  
Linda K Hobday ◽  
Aishah Ibrahim ◽  
Bruce R Thorley
Keyword(s):  
Surveillance System ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Performance Criterion ◽  
World Health ◽  
Reference Laboratory ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Disease Surveillance System ◽  
Enterovirus A71 ◽  
Clinical Surveillance ◽  
Health Organization

Australia monitors its polio-free status by conducting surveillance for cases of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) in children less than 15 years of age, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Cases of AFP in children are notified to the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit or the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance System and faecal specimens are referred for virological investigation to the National Enterovirus Reference Laboratory. In 2017, no cases of poliomyelitis were reported from clinical surveillance and Australia reported 1.33 non-polio AFP cases per 100,000 children, meeting the WHO performance criterion for a sensitive surveillance system. Three non-polio enteroviruses, coxsackievirus B1, echovirus 11 and enterovirus A71, were identified from clinical specimens collected from AFP cases. Australia established enterovirus and environmental surveillance systems to complement the clinical system focussed on children and an ambiguous vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 was isolated from sewage in Melbourne. In 2017, 22 cases of wild polio were reported with three countries remaining endemic: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

scholarly journals Establishment of the South Korean national antimicrobial resistance surveillance system, Kor-GLASS, in 2016

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (42) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyukmin Lee ◽  
Eun-Jeong Yoon ◽  
Dokyun Kim ◽  
Seok Hoon Jeong ◽  
Jong Hee Shin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Surveillance System ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
World Health ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Organization

Surveillance plays a pivotal role in overcoming antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacterial pathogens, and a variety of surveillance systems have been set up and employed in many countries. In 2015, the World Health Organization launched the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) as a part of the global action plan to enhance national and global surveillance and research. The aims of GLASS are to foster development of national surveillance systems and to enable collection, analysis and sharing of standardised, comparable and validated data on AMR between different countries. The South Korean AMR surveillance system, Kor-GLASS, is compatible with the GLASS platform and was established in 2016 and based on the principles of representativeness, specialisation, harmonisation and localisation. In this report, we summarise principles and processes in order to share our experiences with other countries planning to establish a national AMR surveillance system. The pilot operation of Kor-GLASS allowed us to understand the national burden of specific infectious diseases and the status of bacterial AMR. Issues pertaining to high costs and labour-intensive operation were raised during the pilot, and improvements are being made.

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