Problem Formulation and Fairness

Formulating data science problems is an uncertain and difficult process. It requires various forms of discretionary work to translate high-level objectives or strategic goals into tractable problems, necessitating, among other things, the identification of appropriate target variables and proxies. While these choices are rarely self-evident, normative assessments of data science projects often take them for granted, even though different translations can raise profoundly different ethical concerns. Whether we consider a data science project fair often has as much to do with the formulation of the problem as any property of the resulting model. Building on six months of ethnographic fieldwork with a corporate data science team---and channeling ideas from sociology and history of science, critical data studies, and early writing on knowledge discovery in databases---we describe the complex set of actors and activities involved in problem formulation. Our research demonstrates that the specification and operationalization of the problem are always negotiated and elastic, and rarely worked out with explicit normative considerations in mind. In so doing, we show that careful accounts of everyday data science work can help us better understand how and why data science problems are posed in certain ways---and why specific formulations prevail in practice, even in the face of what might seem like normatively preferable alternatives. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings, arguing that effective normative interventions will require attending to the practical work of problem formulation.Comment: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '19), January 29-31, 2019, Atlanta, GA, US

Algorithms, governance, and governmentality:on governing academic writing

Algorithms, or rather algorithmic actions, are seen as problematic because they are inscrutable, automatic, and subsumed in the flow of daily practices. Yet, they are also seen to be playing an important role in organizing opportunities, enacting certain categories, and doing what David Lyon calls ‘‘social sorting.’’ Thus, there is a general concern that this increasingly prevalent mode of ordering and organizing should be governed more explicitly. Some have argued for more transparency and openness, others have argued for more democratic or value-centered design of such actors. In this article, we argue that governing practices—of, and through algorithmic actors—are best understood in terms of what Foucault calls governmentality. Governmentality allows us to consider the performative nature of these governing practices. They allow us to show how practice becomes problematized, how calculative practices are enacted as technologies of governance, how such calculative practices produce domains of knowledge and expertise, and finally, how such domains of knowledge become internalized in order to enact self-governing subjects. In other words, it allows us to show the mutually constitutive nature of problems, domains of knowledge, and subjectivities enacted through governing practices. In order to demonstrate this, we present attempts to govern academic writing with a specific focus on the algorithmic action of Turnitin

Cytotoxic edema associated with hemorrhage predicts poor outcome after traumatic brain injury

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is rarely used in the acute evaluation of traumatic brain injury (TBI), but may identify findings of clinical importance not detected by computed tomography (CT). We aimed to characterize the association of cytotoxic edema and hemorrhage, including traumatic microbleeds, on MRI obtained within hours of acute head trauma and investigated the relationship to clinical outcomes. Patients prospectively enrolled in the Traumatic Head Injury Neuroimaging Classification study (NCT01132937) with evidence of diffusion-related findings or hemorrhage on neuroimaging were included. Blinded interpretation of MRI for diffusion-weighted imaging and hemorrhage was conducted, with subsequent quantification of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values. Of 161 who met criteria, 82 patients had conspicuous hyperintense lesions on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) with corresponding regions of hypointense ADC in proximity to hemorrhage. Median time from injury to MRI was 21 (10-30) hours. Median ADC values per patient grouped by time from injury to MRI were lowest within 24 hours after injury. ADC values associated with hemorrhagic lesions are lowest early after injury, with an increase in diffusion during the subacute period, suggesting transformation from cytotoxic to vasogenic edema during the subacute post-injury period. Of 118 patients with outcome data, 60 had Glasgow Outcome Scale Extended <6 at 30/90 days post-injury. Cytotoxic edema on MRI (OR 2.91 [1.32-6.37], P=0.008) and TBI severity (OR 2.51 [1.32-4.74], P=0.005) were independent predictors of outcome. These findings suggest that in TBI patients with findings of hemorrhage on CT, patients with DWI/ADC lesions on MRI are more likely to do worse

Performative Work: Bridging Performativity and Institutional Theory in the Responsible Investment Field

Callon’s performativity thesis has illuminated how economic theories and calculative devices shape markets, but has been challenged for its neglect of the organizational, institutional and political context. Our seven-year qualitative study of a large financial data company found that the company’s initial attempt to change the responsible investment field through a performative approach failed because of the constraints posed by field practices and organizational norms on the design of the calculative device. However, the company was subsequently able to put in place another form of performativity by attending to the normative and regulative associations of the device. We theorize this route to performativity by proposing the concept of performative work, which designates the necessary institutional work to enable translation and the subsequent adoption of the device. We conclude by considering the implications of performative work for the performativity and the institutional work literatures

Changes in Plasma von Willebrand Factor and Cellular Fibronectin in MRI-Defined Traumatic Microvascular Injury

The neuropathology of traumatic brain injury (TB) is diverse, including primary injury to neurons, axons, glial cells, vascular structures, and secondary processes, such as edema and inflammation that vary between individual patients. Traumatic microvascular injury is an important endophenotype of TBI-related injury. We studied patients who sustained a TBI requiring ER evaluation and had an MRI performed within 48 h of injury. We classified patients into 3 groups based on their MRI findings: (1) those that had evidence of traumatic microvascular injury on susceptibility or diffusion weighted MRI sequences without frank hemorrhage [Traumatic Vascular Injury (TVI) group; 20 subjects]. (2) those who had evidence of intraparenchymal, subdural, epidural, or subarachnoid hemorrhage [Traumatic Hemorrhage (TH) group; 26 subjects], and (3) those who had no traumatic injuries detected by MRI [MRI-negative group; 30 subjects]. We then measured plasma protein biomarkers of vascular injury [von Willebrand Factor (vWF) or cellular fibronectin (cFn)] and axonal injury (phosphorylated neurofilament heavy chain; pNF-H). We found that the TVI group was characterized by decreased expression of plasma vWF (p &lt; 0.05 compared to MRI-negative group; p &lt; 0.00001 compared to TH group) ≤48 h after injury. cFN was no different between groups ≤48 h after injury, but was increased in the TVI group compared to the MRI-negative (p &lt; 0.00001) and TH (p &lt; 0.00001) groups when measured &gt;48 h from injury. pNF-H was increased in both the TH and TVI groups compared to the MRI-negative group ≤48 h from injury. When we used the MRI grouping and molecular biomarkers in a model to predict Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOS-E) score at 30–90 days, we found that inclusion of the imaging data and biomarkers substantially improved the ability to predict a good outcome over clinical information alone. These data indicate that there is a distinct, vascular-predominant endophenotype in a subset of patients who sustain a TBI and that these injuries are characterized by a specific biomarker profile. Further work to will be needed to determine whether these biomarkers can be useful as predictive and pharmacodynamic biomarkers for vascular-directed therapies after TBI

Embodied cognitive ecosophy: the relationship of mind, body, meaning and ecology

The concept of embodied cognition has had a major impact in a number of disciplines. The extent of its consequences on general knowledge and epistemology are still being explored. Embodied cognition in human geography has its own traditions and discourses but these have become somewhat isolated in the discipline itself. This paper argues that findings in other disciplines are of value in reconceptualising embodied cognition in human geography and this is explored by reconsidering the concept of ecosophy. Criticisms of ecosophy as a theory are considered and recent work in embodied cognition is applied to consider how such criticisms might be addressed. An updated conceptualisation is proposed, the embodied cognitive ecosophy, and three characteristics arising from this criticism and synthesis are presented with a view to inform future discussions of ecosophy and emotional geography

Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies. The Example of Hypoglycaemia.

We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body¿s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship

Gifting, Exchange and Reciprocity in Thai Annual Reports: Towards a Buddhist Relational Theory of Thai Accounting Practice

This paper analyses the inter-relationship of human agency and socio-economic structure in the determination of Thai accounting. It demonstrates that determination of accounting practice lies neither in the individual agency of human practice, nor in the forces of socioeconomic structure per se, but rather in patterns of relational practice. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Mauss [5TD$DIF](1925) to analyse accounting practice as revealed in Thai company annual reports, this paper elaborates a Buddhist relational theory of accounting practice that focuses on the importance of patterns of practice [6TD$DIF]generated by gifting, exchange and reciprocity. It studies theways that accounting as evidenced in the relational practices of Thai annual reports creates patterns of corporate, societal and state identity in late 20th and early 21st-century Thailand. The article also relates this Thai Buddhist conceptualisation of practice to other theoretical approaches, particularly Foucault, Giddens and Latour, which accounting historians have adapted to express the interaction of human and structural agency in practice. In doing so, the paper seeks to highlight some of the limitations in such accounting theorisation and emphasise the importance of a focus on normative patterns of relational practice as an explanation of accounting formation. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved