Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Input: Consider Input: Nguyen’s suicide has sparked a contentious legal battle headed to Massachusetts’ highest court over whether schools can be held responsible when students take their own lives. The case is being closely watched by colleges and universities, who say a decision against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would place an unreasonable burden on untrained employees to stop suicides. “It would be groundbreaking,” said Gary Pavela, a consultant on law and policy issues in higher education and author of a book about legal questions surrounding student suicides. “It would cause alarm in higher education,” he said. The student’s family says his death was preventable and that the school had a legal duty to use reasonable care to protect him from harm. Nguyen’s professors and other MIT officials knew he was a suicide risk, but failed to get him the help he needed, an attorney for Nguyen’s family argues. Months before Nguyen’s death, a professor encouraged his colleagues to pass him or they might have “blood on their hands.” Moments before Nguyen jumped, the professor “read him the riot act” over an email Nguyen sent to another MIT official that they deemed inappropriate, court records say. “Academic freedom is not a license to needlessly and recklessly endanger students known to be at risk of death with impunity; and this court should not allow it to become one at institutions that routinely admit students — many with mental health issues — as young as their mid-teens,” attorney Jeffrey Beeler wrote in court documents. Beeler declined to comment and said Nguyen’s family didn’t want to speak to the media. MIT says the school wasn’t aware of the severity of his condition and he was treated by outside professionals and refused on-campus resources. None of the nine professionals who treated Nguyen while he was at MIT believed he was an imminent risk of killing himself, the school says. “Mr. Nguyen’s suicide was a tragedy. That does not warrant a legal conclusion that MIT or any individual associated with MIT had a legal duty to prevent it,” attorneys for the school, two professors and one dean named in the lawsuit say in court documents. MIT, which refused to answer questions about the case, said in a statement it “remains committed to the well-being of its students, offering a robust network of support resources, including comprehensive mental health services.” Nguyen’s family attorney disputes the idea that the man didn’t want help and has accused MIT of blaming the victim. No state supreme court has ever found that colleges and universities have a legal duty to prevent student suicides, MIT’s attorneys say. Courts have generally been reluctant to do so because, among other things, suicide is an impulsive act that’s difficult to predict, Pavela said. A Massachusetts trial court judge ruled in 2005 that an MIT housemaster and dean could be held responsible for the death of a woman who lit herself on fire in her dorm room. But Elizabeth Shin’s case, which was later settled for an undisclosed amount, never reached the state’s highest court. The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments in Nguyen’s case on Tuesday after a lower court judge tossed the lawsuit last year. A group of 18 colleges and universities — including Harvard University and Boston College — is urging the court to reject the case, saying a decision in favor of the family could have devastating consequences. Fear of liability may cause professors and others without mental health expertise to overreact to concerns, which in turn could discourage students from coming forward with their problems, the schools say. Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatry expert at Columbia University, agrees. “To the extent that you heighten every resident assistant’s sensitivity to the risk of suicidality, with the threat of liability hanging over them, they are far more likely to over predict, over intervene, see it where it’s not,” Appelbaum said. The Nguyen family attorney and their supporters — including the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys — say the schools’ concerns are baseless. Beeler, in his filing, said he merely wants the court to affirm that the duty to provide reasonable care “extends to the ivory tower as it does every other civilized corner of the Commonwealth.” Thomas Murphy, chair of the amicus committee of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, says a jury should get to decide whether MIT was negligent and caused Nguyen’s suicide. “Maybe the school can convince them that they didn’t cause (Nguyen’s suicide) and it was going to happen anyway,” he said. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://twitter.com/aedurkinricher. Read more of her work at http://bit.ly/2hIhzDb

Output: Case stirs question of school liability for student suicides.


Input: Consider Input: The state had 1,742 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Saturday. Most of the cases and deaths have been in Clark County, which is Nevada’s most populous and includes metro Las Vegas. Gov. Steve Sisolak announced Saturday that the federal government has approved Nevada’s request to declare a major disaster declaration for the state. He said that move will unlock additional federal assistance for residents affected by the coronavirus pandemic. On March 12, Sisolak signed a state declaration of emergency, which is a required step to request a federal major disaster declaration. Sisolak’s request asked for help under a variety of programs, including assistance for unemployment, legal services, crisis counseling and mass care and emergency assistance. Federal help is needed because the public health crisis “is beyond the capabilities of the state, local and tribal governments,” Sisolak said. Most people with the virus experience mild or moderate fever and coughing for two to three weeks. Some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, can face severe illness including pneumonia and death.

Output: Nevada has 94 new coronavirus cases, pushing total to 1,836.


Input: Consider Input: Again, no treatment is involved. Speculation about the relative costs of high red meat vs. high white meat diets would not be productive. The reporter does a fair job describing the study and the findings. The article includes such details as size of the study population, the duration of the study and the method of data collection. But, as already discussed, this kind of study can’t establish cause-and-effect or risk. Just statistical associations. However, once it started describing risk, it did that incompletely as well. It compaes the relative risk of death by heart disease and cancer in the highest- vs. lowest-red meat consumption groups for both men and women. But the story suffers because it describes the findings only in terms of relative risk–men who ate the most red meat had a 27 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease compared to those who ate the least, for instance. But the story fails to put these percentages into context. In the example above, about 1.2 percent of the men who ate the most red meat died of heart disease during the 10-year study, compared to .06 percent of those who ate the least red meat Looking at male deaths by all causes, about 4 percent of the red meat group died, compared to about 2 percent of the least-red-meat group. Overall, about 13 percent of study participants died during the 10-year study. This is not to suggest the findings are insignificant. But reporters should always include absolute data to help readers understand the size of the risk an individual faces. (But , as already stated, risk language was risky in this story to begin with.) The story focuses plainly on the death risks of the diets studied. However, risks are stated only in relative terms, not in absolute terms. We won’t penalize the story for that here, but we do under “quantification of benefits.” The report is based on results of a large, prospective epidemiological dietary study. The reporter mentions the important caveats: that the study group may be healthier than the general adult population, and the data is based on self-reports of eating habits, which can be unreliable. We’ve already commented on the “association does not equal causation” issue, so we won’t rule this criterion unsatisfactory for that flaw. Because the story confuses association with causation, it indeed does commit disease-mongering repeatedly. It may frighten readers into thinking that cause-and-effect has been established when, in fact, only a statistical association has been established. For example, the story says: It’s a common pitfall of such stories. Association does not equal causation. It’s not journalists who get it wrong. Scientists and physicians commonly express this incorrectly. But that doesn’t make it acceptable. Most stories we saw on this study stated this incorrectly. The reporter does an excellent job sourcing the story. Sources include The reporter gets extra points for including two industry sources. While their thoughts appear very late in the story, including them both makes the story seem–and actually be–more credible. There are no financial conflicts to report. In several places, the article appropiately indicates that limiting red meat in the diet may improve health. The reporter carefully avoids implications that more extreme options, such as a meatless diet, would cut death risk more. This is a study of subjects’ voluntary diets, so no “treatment” is involved. The story makes no claims for the novelty of this kind of research or this general finding. In the second paragraph the report states that these findings “bolster[s] prior evidence” about the risks of diets high in red meat. Given the number of sources cited, the story does not appear to rely on the Archives of Internal Medicine press release or any other news release.


Output: Study: Lots of red meat increases mortality risk