Perhaps the treatment will be slightly more equivocal if the result is extremely close, but I wouldn't count on it: both Mr. Romney's initial apparent win in Iowa and the subsequent reversal of that result had a fair amount of impact on the tenor of news coverage, even though they came by the tiniest of margins.
While journal impact factors may thus indeed provide a meaningful qualitative measure of impact, a fair quantitative comparison requires a more sophisticated journal classification system, together with multiple field-specific impact statistics per journal.
Given that we scientists are usually more concerned with achieving the best impact factor more than getting our paper into the most appropriate journal, perhaps a 70 30 split stacked toward the high impact end of the ladder, then it is a fair estimation that improving impact factor is how we should spend our time and energy.
The White House reduced the damage by sparing some safety-net programs and making sure the military budget bore a fair share of the impact.
"The law requires that they receive a fair trial without the impact of racial bias".
This timeframe was decided upon to enable a fair assessment of the impact of the policy on each drug.
The UK cancer clinical guidelines are sufficient in number and variety to provide a fair window on the impact of cancer research on clinical practice, not only in the United Kingdom, but in other leading countries, particularly in western Europe.
Of course, we have already heard a fair amount about the likely impact of the Tories' efficiency savings on public sector jobs, with one adviser to Cameron admitting that 40,000 jobs could go.
Over all, cautioned Jim Kurth, deputy director of the national wildlife refuge system at the wildlife service, "we don't have a fair sense systemwide of the impact of oil and gas drilling in the refuges".
This investigation is worthwhile because, as we argued earlier, test takers' attitude is believed to be part of test impact, and a fair test should function equally among different groups of test takers.
