Community Peer Review: A method to bring consent and self-determination into the sciences

Community peer review is a method that extends the ethics of consent into scientific practices. It gives communities affected by scientific research the ability to determine whether research may cause them harm and be part of determining how knowledge should best circulate to reduce or eliminate that harm. This paper introduces the method of community peer review by first looking at the concepts of consent and refusal, then outlining the steps to community peer review, using a case study of community meetings on a study of plastic ingestion by fish to elucidate the details of each step. Steps include: hiring a community member to the team; researching the social, cultural, and economic contexts of the community; identify the community; ensure skills for community conversation are in place; call the community meeting; conduct the community meeting; and analyze feedback for consent and refusal. Community peer review is premised on the idea that research is not inherently good and can cause harm, and that the best people to know whether and what kinds of harms are likely to occur are community members rather than researchers. The second premise is that the researcher’s “right” to research never supersedes a community’s right to not be harmed

Living Within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity: Reflections from Memorial University

This report is a result of an interdisciplinary discussion among graduate students from various disciplines at Memorial University that took place on April 24, 2020. The key messages and discussion points emerged from the workshop were: • We should rethink “carrying capacity” to include multi-species collectives. That is, carrying capacity should move away from its anthropocentric focus to account for non-human beings, including technology. We question the utility of ecological metaphors such as “survival of the fittest” in describing the social world and suggest we redirect our attention towards a more mutualistic society. • Translating this new way of thinking about carrying capacity as a multi-species collective into policy requires moving away from a focus on individual behaviors to redesigning the economic system and ensuring sound and effective governance. We identified capitalism and flawed governance systems as some of the main barriers for “living within the earth’s carrying capacity”, while recognizing that reimagining these is a complex, but important, challenge. • Lastly, we recognize and appreciate the variety of ways in which different disciplines use and respond to issues of “carrying capacity”. The group identified cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing as a great opportunity to understand and mitigate human impacts on earth

Developmental Exposure to Aroclor 1254 Alters Migratory Behavior in Juvenile European Starlings (<i>Sturnus vulgaris</i>)

Birds exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals during development could be susceptible to neurological and other physiological changes affecting migratory behaviors. We investigated the effects of ecologically relevant levels of Aroclor 1254, a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) mixture, on moult, fattening, migratory activity, and orientation in juvenile European starlings (<i>Sturnus vulgaris</i>). Birds were orally administered 0 (control), 0.35 (low), 0.70 (intermediate), or 1.05 (high) μg Aroclor 1254/g-body weight by gavage from 1 through 18 days posthatch and later exposed in captivity to a photoperiod shift simulating an autumn migration. Migratory activity and orientation were examined using Emlen funnel trials. Across treatments, we found significant increases in mass, fat, and moulting and decreasing plasma thyroid hormones over time. We observed a significant increase in activity as photoperiod was shifted from 13L:11D (light:dark) to 12L:12D, demonstrating that migratory condition was induced in captivity. At 12L:12D, control birds oriented to 155.95° (South-Southeast), while high-dosed birds did not. High-dosed birds showed a delayed orientation to 197.48° (South-Southwest) under 10L:14D, concomitant with apparent delays in moult. These findings demonstrate how subtle contaminant-induced alterations during development could lead to longer-scale effects, including changes in migratory activity and orientation, which could potentially result in deleterious effects on fitness and survival

Revista Temas Agrarios Volumen 26; Suplemento 1 de 2021

1st International and 2nd National Symposium of Agronomic Sciences: The rebirth of the scientific discussion space for the Colombian Agro.1 Simposio Intenacional y 2 Nacional de Ciencias Agronómicas: El renacer del espacio de discusión científica para el Agro colombiano