From Paternalistic to User-Centred Security: Putting Users First with Value-Sensitive Design

Usable security research to date has focused on making users more secure, by identifying and addressing usability issues that lead users to making mistakes, or by persuading users to pay attention to security and make secure choices. However, security goals were set by security experts, who were unaware that users often have other priorities and value security differently. In this paper, we present examples of circumventions and non-adoption of secure systems designed under this paternalistic mindset. We argue that security experts need to identify user values and deliver on them. To do that, we need a methodological framework that can conceptualise values and identify those that impact user engagement with security. We show that (a) engagement with, and adherence to security, are mediated by user values, and that (b) it is necessary to model those values to understand the nature of security’s failures and to design viable alternatives

Characterization of actinomycetes antagonistic to Phytophthora fragariae var. rubi, the causal agent of raspberry root rot

Onze souches d'actinomycetes ayant la capacité de protéger les plants de framboisiers (Rubus strigosus) contre les infections causées par les Phytophthora ont été caractérisées. Il a été montré que toutes les souches appartenaient au genre Streptomyces. Deux souches (EF-34 et EF-76) croissaient à 4, 15 et 30°C sur un milieu V8 agar dont le pH avait été ajusté entre 5 et 9. Sept souches dont EF-34 et EF-76 pouvaient hydrolyser les parois cellulaires de Phytophthora et inhiber la croissance du champignon à 15°C et à des pH variant entre 5 et 9. Toutes les souches inhibaient la croissance du P. fragariae var. rubi et du Pythium ultimum. La croissance d'autres espèces fongiques et de bactéries à Gram négatif n'était inhibée qu'en présence de trois souches (EF-14, EF-72 et EF-76). Les onze actinomycetes antagonistes ont été classés en quatre groupes selon leur résistance à divers pesticides utilisés pour protéger les cultures de framboisiers. La souche EF-76 a été caractérisée plus en détail. Cette souche a été identifiée comme étant le Streptomyces hygroscopicus var. geldanus, et produisait l'antibiotique geldanamycine.Eleven actinomycete strains that were previously shown to protect raspberry (Rubus strigosus) plants against Phytophthora infection were characterized. all were shown to belong to the genus Streptomyces. Two strains (EF-34 and EF-76) grew at 4, 15 and 30°C on V8 agar between pHs 5 to 9. Seven strains including EF-34 and EF-76 had both the ability to hydrolyze Phytophthora cell walls and to inhibit Phytophthora growth at 15°C between pHs 5 to 9. all actinomycetes inhibited the growth of P. fragariaevar. rubi and of Pythium ultimum. The growth of other fungal species and of Gram-negative bacteria was inhibited only in the presence of three strains (EF-14, EF-72, and EF-76). The eleven antagonistic actinomycetes were classified into four groups with regard to their resistance to various pesticides used to protect raspberry crops. Strain EF-76 was further characterized. This strain was identified as Streptomyceshygroscopicus var. geldanus, and it was shown to produce geldanamycin, a known antibiotic

Evidence-based activism: Patients' organisations, users' and activist's groups in knowledge

This article proposes the notion of ‘evidence-based activism’ to capture patients’ and health activists’ groups’ focus on knowledge production and knowledge mobilisation in the governance of health issues. It introduces empirical data and analysis on groups active in four countries (France, Ireland, Portugal and the United Kingdom), and in four condition-areas (rare diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and childbirth). It shows how these groups engage with, and articulate a variety of credentialed knowledge and ‘experiential knowledge’ with a view to explore concerned people’s situations, to make themselves part and parcel of the networks of expertise on their conditions in their national contexts, and to elaborate evidence on the issues they deem important to address both at an individual and at a collective level. This article argues that in contrast to health movements which contest institutions from the outside, patients’ and activists’ groups which embrace ‘evidence-based activism’ work ‘from within’ to imagine new epistemic and political appraisal of their causes and conditions. ‘Evidence-based activism’ entails a collective inquiry associating patients/activists and specialists/professionals in the conjoint fabrics of scientific statements and political claims. From a conceptual standpoint, ‘evidence-based activism’ sheds light on the ongoing co-production of matters of fact and matters of concern in contemporary technological democracies

The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma

Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This longstanding question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a non-trivial-scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work onthe adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished: They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts

Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups

BACKGROUND: Conventional systematic review techniques have limitations when the aim of a review is to construct a critical analysis of a complex body of literature. This article offers a reflexive account of an attempt to conduct an interpretive review of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups in the UK METHODS: This project involved the development and use of the method of Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS). This approach is sensitised to the processes of conventional systematic review methodology and draws on recent advances in methods for interpretive synthesis. RESULTS: Many analyses of equity of access have rested on measures of utilisation of health services, but these are problematic both methodologically and conceptually. A more useful means of understanding access is offered by the synthetic construct of candidacy. Candidacy describes how people's eligibility for healthcare is determined between themselves and health services. It is a continually negotiated property of individuals, subject to multiple influences arising both from people and their social contexts and from macro-level influences on allocation of resources and configuration of services. Health services are continually constituting and seeking to define the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention, while at the same time people are engaged in constituting and defining what they understand to be the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention. Access represents a dynamic interplay between these simultaneous, iterative and mutually reinforcing processes. By attending to how vulnerabilities arise in relation to candidacy, the phenomenon of access can be better understood, and more appropriate recommendations made for policy, practice and future research. DISCUSSION: By innovating with existing methods for interpretive synthesis, it was possible to produce not only new methods for conducting what we have termed critical interpretive synthesis, but also a new theoretical conceptualisation of access to healthcare. This theoretical account of access is distinct from models already extant in the literature, and is the result of combining diverse constructs and evidence into a coherent whole. Both the method and the model should be evaluated in other contexts

Critically evaluating collaborative research: why is it difficult to extend truth tests to reality tests?

We argue that critical evaluation achieves the reflexivity needed to facilitate collaboration by proposing boundary-negotiating artefacts to configure a joint action domain. Those objects become mediators for innovation by triggering controversies, conceived preventatively via an organized extension of what Boltanski calls ‘truth tests’ to ‘reality tests’ so that they dynamize ongoing affairs. However, critical evaluation must also anticipate actors’ reappropriation of boundary-negotiating artefacts in the effort to protect their rights, stakes or room for manoeuvre. Three scenarios commonly arise: avoidance or utopian projecting, enactment of inverted reality tests, and disavowal through role exchange. The article develops these propositions through the reconstruction of a modified theory-based evaluation of a collaborative research programme. The programme set out to explore how evidence from health research could be used rapidly and effectively in the context of practical problems and organizational challenges, so an internal evaluation was set up to facilitate learning during the process. What ensued, however, was a loss of trust between partners, resolved only by repositioning the evaluation as a reflective academic study, reducing its reflexive capacity to intervene on the level of activity and organizational integration. We conclude that doing successful critical evaluation and, more generally, achieving political pertinence for social scientific discourses depends on creating the conditions in which actors are able to take the risks and share the costs associated with the enhanced level of reflexivity necessary to engage in collective action as well as knowledge production

Validar a guerra: a construção do regime de Expertise estratégica

This article is intended to contribute to the interpretative analysis of war. For that purpose, it investigates how some apparatuses located in strategic thinking help to make modern war a social practice considered both technically feasible and, at the same time, legitimate for soldiers. In so doing, it makes use of two different but closely related theoretical fields, pragmatic sociology (finding inspiration in the work of scholars such as Luc Boltanski, Nicolas Dodier and Francis Chateauraynaud), and the sociology of scientific knowledge (based mostly on the work of Bruno Latour). On the one hand, the sociology of scientific knowledge has developed a productive questioning of the construction of scientific facts that is particularly relevant to the present research. On the other hand, pragmatic sociology generates a compatible framework able to describe collective actions. The combination of both approaches allows the description of the formation of a strategic expertise regime that supports the technical legitimacy of the use of military force. Together, the sociology of scientific knowledge and pragmatic sociology bring a particularly relevant perspective to research pertaining to war.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

A Reply to My Critics: The Critical Spirit of Bourdieusian Language

Drawing on my article “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation”, this paper provides a detailed response to the above commentaries by Lisa Adkins, Bridget Fowler, Michael Grenfell, David Inglis, Hans-Herbert Kögler, Steph Lawler, William Outhwaite, Derek Robbins and Bryan S. Turner. The main purpose of this “Reply to my critics” is to reflect upon the most important issues raised by these commentators and thereby contribute to a more nuanced understanding of key questions arising from Bourdieu’s analysis of language