L'efficacité c'est bien, l'impact c'est top [Efficacy is good, impact is great].

This article summarizes the different stages of research for the development of medical interventions and their specific characteristics in terms of design, population, resources, importance of results and scientific interest. The emphasis is focused on the two final stages of development, the effectiveness and the impact. An example from our own experience is given to illustrate the reduction of the effect of an intervention against malaria in young children at different stages of the development of the intervention, and the parallel decrease of the recognition by the scientific community of the importance of these results.

Investigating Neuroanatomical Features in Top Athletes at the Single Subject Level.

In sport events like Olympic Games or World Championships competitive athletes keep pushing the boundaries of human performance. Compared to team sports, high achievements in many athletic disciplines depend solely on the individual's performance. Contrasting previous research looking for expertise-related differences in brain anatomy at the group level, we aim to demonstrate changes in individual top athlete's brain, which would be averaged out in a group analysis. We compared structural magnetic resonance images (MRI) of three professional track-and-field athletes to age-, gender- and education-matched control subjects. To determine brain features specific to these top athletes, we tested for significant deviations in structural grey matter density between each of the three top athletes and a carefully matched control sample. While total brain volumes were comparable between athletes and controls, we show regional grey matter differences in striatum and thalamus. The demonstrated brain anatomy patterns remained stable and were detected after 2 years with Olympic Games in between. We also found differences in the fusiform gyrus in two top long jumpers. We interpret our findings in reward-related areas as correlates of top athletes' persistency to reach top-level skill performance over years.

When does charisma matter for top-level leaders? Effect of attributional ambiguity

One stream of leadership theory suggests leaders are evaluated via inferential observer processes that compare the fit of the target to a prototype of an ideal (charismatic) leader. Attributional theories of leadership suggest that evaluations depend on knowledge of past organizational performance, which is attributed to the leader's skills. We develop a novel theory showing how inferential and attributional processes simultaneously explain top-level leader evaluation and ultimately leader retention and selection. We argue that observers will mostly rely on attributional mechanisms when performance signals clearly indicate good or poor performance outcomes. However, under conditions of attributional ambiguity (i.e., when performance signals are unclear), observers will mostly rely on inferential processes. In Study 1 we tested our theory in an unconventional context-the U.S. presidential election-and found that the two processes, due to the leader's charisma and country economic performance, interact in predicting whether a leader is selected. Using a business context and an experimental design, in Study 2 we show that CEO charisma and firm performance interact in predicting leader retention, confirming the results we found in Study 1. Our results suggest that this phenomenon is quite general and can apply to various performance domains.

Why Women Rarely Rise to the Top: A Social Identity Model of Leader Prototypes.

Purpose We propose a social identity model of leader prototypes to address why the maleness of leader prototypes is more pronounced among men than among women (e.g., Schein, 2001). Specifically, we argue that individuals project their ingroup prototype (e.g., a male prototype) onto a valued other category (e.g., leaders) (e.g., Wenzel, Mummendey, Weber, & Waldzus, 2003) in order to maintain a positive ingroup (e.g., gender) identity. We hypothesized that both women and men engage in ingroup projection of their gender prototype on their leader prototype, and we expected this effect to be stronger for men than women. We also investigated intelligence as a moderator of ingroup projection. Methodology Participants (276 students, University of Lausanne) assessed to what extent attributes on a list of gender traits were characteristic of a successful leader. We computed relative ingroup similarity scores (e.g., Waldzus & Mummendey, 2004) representing the difference between how characteristic ingroup traits are for a successful leader, and how characteristic outgroup traits are for a successful leader. Results Results showed that men engaged in ingroup projection while women engaged in outgroup projection, and that men engaged in ingroup projection to a greater extent. We also found a small, but positive effect of intelligence on ingroup projection among men. Limitations The use of a student sample might limit the external validity of our findings. Implications Our findings contribute to research on the under-representation of women in managerial roles, and introduce intelligence as a predictor of ingroup projection. Value Our study allows for a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive representations of leaders of men and women.