The Science of Settler Colonialism: A Canadian History of the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis

This dissertation interrogates the history of the thrifty gene hypothesis, or the idea that Indigenous bodies are genetically predisposed to type-II diabetes. Though the hypothesis has been rejected by the scientific community at large as well as the very scientists who invented it, it continues to inform Canadian state literature and clinical guidelines in 2018. Thus, in an attempt to historicize (rather than debunk) the failed but long-lived hypothesis, I trace its origins through four successive chapters focused singularly on major figures in its production. All of these figures are white male scientists who travelled to Indigenous communities, made scientific observations, and contributed to a colonialist discourse of Indigenous disappearance by suggesting that Indians or Aboriginal people were biologically unfit to survive contact with (settler) colonial societies despite centuries of evidence to the contrary. Thus, while my main critique in this dissertation concerns the reproduction of a baseless and racist hypothesis within the registers of Canadian healthcare administration, I am also heavily exercised with documenting a history wherein southern settler scientists have travelled to northern Indigenous communities, extracted blood, bone marrow, and other biological materials, and used their scientific observations to cast Indigenous bodies rather than settler structures as the root cause of high-rates of chronic disease across the Canadian north. Troublingly, I note that the University of Torontos Sioux Lookout Project was deeply embedded in these histories of settler colonial science. Thus, on the basis of the history reviewed in this dissertation, I argue that the post-war professionalization of Canadian genetics, endocrinology, epidemiology, as well as nutritional and metabolic sciences has as a historical condition of possibility the settler colonial creation of the reserve system and the production of an isolated Indigenous population that faces chronically high rates of nutrition-related diseases

Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense: A Practical Text for Critical and Creative Thinking

The information explosion has made us information rich, but wisdom poor. Yet, to succeed in business and in life, we must distinguish accurate from bogus sources, and draw valid conclusions from mounds of data. This book, written for a general adult audience as well as students, takes a new look at critical thinking in the information age, helping readers to not only see through nonsense, but to create a better future with innovative thinking. Readers should see the practicality of enhancing skills that make them more innovative and employable, especially in a day when companies increasingly seek original thinkers, global visionaries, and thought leaders. Targeting high school seniors and college freshmen, but useful to all adult readers, the authors examine surprising and costly mental errors made by respected business leaders, entertainment moguls, musicians, civic leaders, generals and academics. Then, the authors draw practical applications to help readers avoid such mistakes and think more creatively in each field. Although written in an engaging and popular style, over 600 end notes provide authority to this content-rich document. Thus writers, researchers, teachers, and job seekers should find it a useful starting point for research into this important field. Home school teachers and public school educators will find an accompanying free website with lesson plans and teaching tips. It\u27s also a low-cost alternative to expensive texts. (The hard copy is priced reasonably and a pdf of the entire book will be offered free to students on their digital platforms.) Each chapter ends with thought questions and tips for further research.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/facbooks2015/1011/thumbnail.jp

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 9: All Formats—Combined Alphabetical Listing

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. This volume contains all listings in all formats, arranged alphabetically by author or main entry. In other words, it combines the listings from Volume 1 (Monograph and Serial Titles), Volume 3 (Periodical Articles), and Volume 7 (Audio/Visual Materials) into a comprehensive bibliography. (There may be additional materials included in this list, e.g. duplicate items and items not yet fully edited.) As in the other volumes, coverage of this material begins around 1994, the final year covered by De Waal's bibliography, but may not yet be totally up-to-date (given the ongoing nature of this bibliography). It is hoped that other titles will be added at a later date. At present, this bibliography includes 12,594 items

Disinformation, Science Communication and Trust: Food Rumours in Thailand

Abstract False information on the internet is one of the important global agendas. It becomes much more intensive since the rise of social media uses. The information leads people to have false beliefs and actions. There are many types of false information on the Internet. However, the food rumour is an influential issue attracting attention from social media users, especially in Thailand. It is normally composed of attractive headings and false scientific claims in order to convince the readers. One of the effective solutions to this problem is delivering the debunking of the information to the public, preventing them from misunderstanding these rumours. Since the rumours have contained scientific claims, debunking rumours, as a result, is a part of science communication. This study has three parts; rumour content, experts and people. This is paralleled to three empirical studies; disinformation in rumours, science communication from debunkers and the way people trust in the rumours and the debunkers. The thesis begins addressing the questions of features of food rumours on Facebook in Thailand during 2013-2016 because this period represents a huge increase in the use of social media. The feature of rumours will be completed by analysing the content. The following part explores the response from relevant stakeholders by in-depth interviews of government, social influencers, NGOs, media agencies and private sectors. The outcome of the interview will give us an idea of the current status of science communication. The last component goes back to people, as a layperson, assuming that they do not know about science. The study will investigate trust in the way they trust in rumours and in debunkers by an experimental survey. The experiment will give the results as to the source that people have more trust in; the government or the social influencer. The overall outcome hopes for people to detect rumours, help experts develop better science communication and encourage people to develop their science knowledge skil

The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future

Contemporary politics is dominated by a liberal creed that champions ‘negative liberty’ and individual happiness. This creed undergirds positions on both the right and the left – free-market capitalism, state bureaucracy and individualism in social life. The triumph of liberalism has had the effect of subordinating human association and the common good to narrow self-interest and short-term utility. By contrast, post-liberalism promotes individual fulfilment and mutual flourishing based on shared goals that have more substantive content than the formal abstractions of liberal law and contract, and yet are also adaptable to different cultural and local traditions. The book apply this analysis to the economy, politics, culture, and international affairs. In each case, having diagnosed the crisis of liberalism, it proposes post-liberal alternatives, notably new concepts and fresh policy ideas. The book demonstrates that, amid the current crisis, post-liberalism is a programme that could define a new politics of virtue and the common good

Mystery and Possibility: Spiritualists in the Nineteenth-century South

Spiritualism, the belief that people could communicate with the spirits of the dead, swept through the United States and western Europe in the 1850s. Rooted in mankind's timeless yearning to understand what becomes of the human spirit after death, it was complicated by the mid-nineteenth century's urge to explain the world rationally and scientifically. The rage for scientific explanation was complicating the need to understand life and death within the comforting tenets of unquestioned Christian faith. Spiritualism promised what traditional religion could not: By asking questions of the dead through a medium, people sought proof that the spirits of departed loved ones--and personal immortality--awaited them in heaven. This dissertation examines the interpretation of this phenomenon, long thought by scholars to have been unattractive to southerners because of its association with northeastern reform movements, by individuals in the South. It explores and explains the extent to which white southerners incorporated Spiritualism into their folk, cultural and religious belief systems. It sketches a map of how Spiritualism spread through the South along networks of commerce, community and kinship. Perhaps most significantly, this project brings to light the social, geographic and racial diversity of southerners who took an active interest in parting the veil between this world and the unknown. Did it matter, does it now? Beyond denominational monographs, the history of the South must include studies of southerners' examination, construction, modification and uses of belief if we are to understand what being human meant to them and in turn see more clearly how the South was a part of the national discourse. At the same time, while their northern counterparts were linking Spiritualism with abolition and a host of other reforms, most southerners who communed with spirits seem to have believed that--whatever might be said to the contrary--doing so was every bit as orthodox as evangelical Christianity.Doctor of Philosoph