Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain had been fighting an ongoing battle against quack remedies, and had wanted specifically to get carbolic acid on the poisons register since 1882. Although without sympathy for the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company itself, Simpson casts doubt on whether "Carlill" was rightly decided. "The analytical problems arose in a particularly acute form in the smoke ball case. Thus it seemed very peculiar to say that there had been any sort of agreement between Mrs. Carlill and the company, which did not even know of her existence until January 20, when her husband wrote to them
Name-letter effect English, German, French or Spanish revealed a name-letter effect for the Roman alphabet as well as for Cyrillic. The researchers concluded mastery pleasure is not the principal cause of the name-letter effect. In a follow-up study Hoorens, Nuttin, Herman and Pavakanun tested the strength of the name-letter effect among elementary-school children, in a cross-sectional experimental design involving Flemish and Hungarian second, fourth, and sixth graders. Instead of finding the name-effect to decrease with age as might be expected, they found it increased, thus proving that mastery pleasure is not the principal cause. They also investigated name-letter effects in bilingual Thai