Improving lives in Scotland : a wellbeing approach

This paper has been developed from a programme of work supported by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute, Scotland’s Futures Forum and partners in 2014, which focused on wellbeing in Scotland. Such an approach takes a balanced look across social, economic and environmental dimensions to understand what influences the wellbeing of citizens and society at large and to assess its progress. The wellbeing of individuals and society is influenced by a wide range of factors that are interrelated and often self-reinforcing. A broad conclusion that can be drawn from a wellbeing perspective is that fairer, more inclusive societies tend to be happier, more prosperous and have better developed social capital and fewer social problems. Scotland is considered to be one of the leading countries in the world in measuring wellbeing, although there are a number of areas where this could be improved. While measurement plays an important role in assessing progress and focussing resources, it must be used carefully and a number of issues need to be taken into account. A wellbeing framework provides an opportunity to actively engage citizens, join up policy and practice and prevent the need for often costly remedial action. Actively engaging, enabling and empowering citizens will not only improve policy and practice and strengthen democracy it will also directly improve wellbeing

“Can It Read My Mind?” – What Do the Public and Experts Think of the Current (Mis)Uses of Neuroimaging?

Emerging applications of neuroimaging outside medicine and science have received intense public exposure through the media. Media misrepresentations can create a gulf between public and scientific understanding of the capabilities of neuroimaging and raise false expectations. To determine the extent of this effect and determine public opinions on acceptable uses and the need for regulation, we designed an electronic survey to obtain anonymous opinions from as wide a range of members of the public and neuroimaging experts as possible. The surveys ran from 1st June to 30 September 2010, asked 10 and 21 questions, respectively, about uses of neuroimaging outside traditional medical diagnosis, data storage, science communication and potential methods of regulation. We analysed the responses using descriptive statistics; 660 individuals responded to the public and 303 individuals responded to the expert survey. We found evidence of public skepticism about the use of neuroimaging for applications such as lie detection or to determine consumer preferences and considerable disquiet about use by employers or government and about how their data would be stored and used. While also somewhat skeptical about new applications of neuroimaging, experts grossly underestimated how often neuroimaging had been used as evidence in court. Although both the public and the experts rated highly the importance of a better informed public in limiting the inappropriate uses to which neuroimaging might be put, opinions differed on the need for, and mechanism of, actual regulation. Neuroscientists recognized the risks of inaccurate reporting of neuroimaging capabilities in the media but showed little motivation to engage with the public. The present study also emphasizes the need for better frameworks for scientific engagement with media and public education

Evaluating four fish-based indices of biotic integrity for similar measures of ecological condition

While the use and development of biological indices for management and planning purposes has increased in popularity over the past few decades, many of their properties are rarely evaluated. Using stream fish community data from numerous watersheds across several management jurisdictions, this study compared and evaluated four different indices of biotic integrity to assess their use in biomonitoring programs. With multivariate comparisons, statistical resampling and species replacements, sensitivities of indices to changes in community composition were examined. While indices were positively correlated at a large scale, different relationships among indices were found across the spatial regions represented by management jurisdictions. Indices responded differently to replacements of native with non-native species as well as year-to-year changes in community composition (i.e., species turnover). Variability generated through bootstrap resampling showed the potential to change resulting scores up to a value of 50, altering stream health designations that are commonly used in decision-making. The differences in index scoring seen due to differences in the four calculations prevent large-scale comparisons and integrated management from taking place across management jurisdictions. This paper emphasizes that the potential advantages and limitations of indices of biotic integrity must be considered when developing/choosing one for use in a given region