Ethics in action: Consent-gaining interactions and implications for research practice

This article deals with the topic of social psychological research methods in practice, by examining how informed consent is gained from research participants. In most research, the consent-gaining process is hidden from analytic scrutiny and is dealt with before data collection has begun. In contrast, conversation analytic research, which records interactional encounters from beginning to end, enables examination of this methodological 'black box'. We explored how 'requests' to consent in research played out across different institutional settings. We found that participants had to 'opt-out' of a research process that was already underway. Consent-gaining sequences constrained opting out in two ways: (1) because research activity was already underway, it must be stopped affirmatively by participants; (2) consent-gaining turns were tilted in favour of continued participation, making opting out a dispreferred response. We also found a mismatch between what ethics guidelines specify about consent-gaining 'in theory' and what actually happens 'in practice'. Finally, we make suggestions about interventions in and recommendations for existing practice to best achieve informed consent. © 2012 The British Psychological Society

Ethics in action: consent-gaining interactions and implications for research practice

This article deals with the topic of social psychological research methods in practice, by examining how informed consent is gained from research participants. In most research, the consent-gaining process is hidden from analytic scrutiny and is dealt with before data collection has begun. In contrast, conversation analytic research, which records interactional encounters from beginning to end, enables examination of this methodological ‘black box’. We explored how ‘requests’ to consent in research played out across different institutional settings. We found that participants had to ‘opt-out’ of a research process that was already underway. Consent-gaining sequences constrained opting out in two ways: (1) because research activity was already underway, it must be stopped affirmatively by participants; (2) consent-gaining turns were tilted in favour of continued participation, making opting out a dispreferred response. We also found a mismatch between what ethics guidelines specify about consent-gaining ‘in theory’ and what actually happens ‘in practice’. Finally, we make suggestions about interventions in and recommendations for existing practice to best achieve informed consent

Conversation analysis, language, and sexuality

This chapter describes and illustrates a conversation analytic approach to language and sexuality. We start by exploring contrasts between conversation analytic and other approaches to connecting language as a practice and sexuality as an identity topic. We set this discussion in a broader ethnomethodological context, drawing out key themes and debates that have emerged since the inception of ethnomethodological approaches to the study of gender and sexuality in the 1960s, including notions such as ‘doing’ gender and sexuality and ‘passing’. We review briefly the controversial debates about the analytic tractability of identity topics, like sexuality and gender, in the conversation analytic tradition. After summarizing conversation analytic work on sexuality specifically, we illustrate what this approach offers to language and sexuality scholars, showing the methodological steps involved as well as the possibilities for applying findings in the real world beyond scholarly debate

Reporting Microaggressions: Kinship Carers’ Complaints about Identity Slights

From SAGE Publishing via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: epub 2020-10-28Publication status: PublishedThe psychological concept of “microaggression” has refocused interest on what counts as prejudicial action. It redirects attention from standard socio-cognitive explanations of overt prejudice among social groups toward recipients’ perspectives of largely unwitting and subtle everyday racism. Microaggression studies define common implicit identity challenges faced by minority groups, including kinship carers. However, criticisms of the “microaggressions program” raise difficulties inherent in establishing prejudicial action from accounts of necessarily ambiguous actions, and contend that reliance on self-reporting inevitably lacks validity. This conversation analytic (CA) study offers a complementary approach: from videos of ten kinship carer support groups it shows how participants construct accountabilities for prejudicial actions in their retrospective reports of questions, challenges and suspicions in ways that build these actions as microaggressive. It addresses methodological shortcomings in microaggression studies, and extends CA research on accountability in offense construction, and on prejudicial social actions that are contested and difficult to analyze

Comparing Microbiome Sampling Methods in a Wild Mammal: Fecal and Intestinal Samples Record Different Signals of Host Ecology, Evolution

Processing of multimodal information is essential for an organism to respond to environmental events. However, how multimodal integration in neurons translates into behavior is far from clear. Here, we investigate integration of biologically relevant visual and auditory information in the goldfish startle escape system in which paired Mauthner-cells (M-cells) initiate the behavior. Sound pips and visual looms as well as multimodal combinations of these stimuli were tested for their effectiveness of evoking the startle response. Results showed that adding a low intensity sound early during a visual loom (low visual effectiveness) produced a supralinear increase in startle responsiveness as compared to an increase expected from a linear summation of the two unimodal stimuli. In contrast, adding a sound pip late during the loom (high visual effectiveness) increased responsiveness consistent with a linear multimodal integration of the two stimuli. Together the results confirm the Inverse Effectiveness Principle (IEP) of multimodal integration proposed in other species. Given the well-established role of the M-cell as a multimodal integrator, these results suggest that IEP is computed in individual neurons that initiate vital behavioral decisions

Neural Tube Defects and Folate Pathway Genes: Family-Based Association Tests of Gene–Gene and Gene–Environment Interactions

BACKGROUND: Folate metabolism pathway genes have been examined for association with neural tube defects (NTDs) because folic acid supplementation reduces the risk of this debilitating birth defect. Most studies addressed these genes individually, often with different populations providing conflicting results. OBJECTIVES: Our study evaluates several folate pathway genes for association with human NTDs, incorporating an environmental cofactor: maternal folate supplementation. METHODS: In 304 Caucasian American NTD families with myelomeningocele or anencephaly, we examined 28 polymorphisms in 11 genes: folate receptor 1, folate receptor 2, solute carrier family 19 member 1, transcobalamin II, methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase 1, serine hydroxymethyl-transferase 1, 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), 5-methyltetrahydrofolate-homo-cysteine methyltransferase, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate-homocysteine methyltransferase reductase, betaine-homocysteine methyltransferase (BHMT), and cystathionine-beta-synthase. RESULTS: Only single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in BHMT were significantly associated in the overall data set; this significance was strongest when mothers took folate-containing nutritional supplements before conception. The BHMT SNP rs3733890 was more significant when the data were stratified by preferential transmission of the MTHFR rs1801133 thermolabile T allele from parent to offspring. Other SNPs in folate pathway genes were marginally significant in some analyses when stratified by maternal supplementation, MTHFR, or BHMT allele transmission. CONCLUSIONS: BHMT rs3733890 is significantly associated in our data set, whereas MTHFR rs1801133 is not a major risk factor. Further investigation of folate and methionine cycle genes will require extensive SNP genotyping and/or resequencing to identify novel variants, inclusion of environmental factors, and investigation of gene–gene interactions in large data sets

Pacific anthropogenic carbon between 1991 and 2017

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Carter, B. R., Feely, R. A., Wanninkhof, R., Kouketsu, S., Sonnerup, R. E., Pardo, P. C., Sabine, C. L., Johnson, G. C., Sloyan, B. M., Murata, A., Mecking, S., Tilbrook, B., Speer, K., Talley, L. D., Millero, F. J., Wijffels, S. E., Macdonald, A. M., Gruber, N., & Bullister, J. L. Pacific anthropogenic carbon between 1991 and 2017. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 33(5), (2019):597-617, doi:10.1029/2018GB006154.We estimate anthropogenic carbon (Canth) accumulation rates in the Pacific Ocean between 1991 and 2017 from 14 hydrographic sections that have been occupied two to four times over the past few decades, with most sections having been recently measured as part of the Global Ocean Ship‐based Hydrographic Investigations Program. The rate of change of Canth is estimated using a new method that combines the extended multiple linear regression method with improvements to address the challenges of analyzing multiple occupations of sections spaced irregularly in time. The Canth accumulation rate over the top 1,500 m of the Pacific increased from 8.8 (±1.1, 1σ) Pg of carbon per decade between 1995 and 2005 to 11.7 (±1.1) PgC per decade between 2005 and 2015. For the entire Pacific, about half of this decadal increase in the accumulation rate is attributable to the increase in atmospheric CO2, while in the South Pacific subtropical gyre this fraction is closer to one fifth. This suggests a substantial enhancement of the accumulation of Canth in the South Pacific by circulation variability and implies that a meaningful portion of the reinvigoration of the global CO2 sink that occurred between ~2000 and ~2010 could be driven by enhanced ocean Canth uptake and advection into this gyre. Our assessment suggests that the accuracy of Canth accumulation rate reconstructions along survey lines is limited by the accuracy of the full suite of hydrographic data and that a continuation of repeated surveys is a critical component of future carbon cycle monitoring.The data we use can be accessed at CCHDO website (https://cchdo.ucsd.edu/) and GLODAP website (https://www.glodap.info/). This research would not be possible without the hard work of the scientists and crew aboard the many repeated hydrographic cruises coordinated by GO‐SHIP, which is funded by NSF OCE and NOAA OAR. We thank funding agencies and program managers as follows: U.S., Australian, Japanese national science funding agencies that support data collection, data QA/QC, and data centers. Contributions from B. R. C., R. A. F., and R. W. are supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (Data Management and Synthesis Grant: N8R3CEA‐PDM managed by Kathy Tedesco and David Legler). G. C. J. is supported by the Climate Observation Division, Climate Program Office, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce and NOAA Research (fund reference 100007298), grant (N8R1SE3‐PGC). B. M. S was supported by the Australian Government Department of the Environment and CSIRO through the Australian Climate Change Science Programme and by the National Environmental Science Program. N. G. acknowledges support by ETH Zurich. This is JISAO contribution 2018‐0149 and PMEL contribution 4786. We fondly remember John Bullister as a treasured friend, valued colleague, and dedicated mentor, and we thank him for sharing his days with us. He is and will be dearly missed

Resisting the mantle of the monstrous feminine : women's construction and experience of premenstrual embodiment

The female reproductive body is positioned as abject, as other, as site of defciency and disease, the epitome of the ‘monstrous feminine.’ Premenstrual change in emotion, behavior or embodied sensation is positioned as a sign of madness within, necessitating restraint and control on the part of the women experiencing it (Ussher 2006). Breakdown in this control through manifestation of ‘symptoms’ is diagnosed as PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) or PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder), a pathology deserving of ‘treatment.’ In this chapter, we adopt a feminist material-discursive theoretical framework to examine the role of premenstrual embodiment in relation to women’s adoption of the subject position of monstrous feminine, drawing on interviews we have conducted with women who self-diagnose as ‘PMS sufferers.’ We theorize women’s self-positioning as subjectifcation, wherein women take up cultural discourse associated with idealized femininity and the reproductive body, resulting in self-objectifcation, distress, and self-condemnation. However, women can resist negative cultural constructions of premenstrual embodiment and the subsequent self-policing. We describe the impact of women-centered psychological therapy which increases awareness of embodied change, and leads to greater acceptance of the premenstrual body and greater self-care, which serves to reduce premenstrual distress

High Density SNP Screen in A Large Multiplex Neural Tube Defect Family Refines Linkage to Loci at 7p21-Pter And 2q33.1-35

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are considered complex with both genetic and environmental factors implicated. To date, no major causative genes have been identified in humans despite several investigations. The first genomewide screen in NTDs (Rampersaud et al. 2005) demonstrated evidence of linkage to chromosomes 7 and 10. This screen included forty-four multiplex families and consisted of 402 microsatellite markers spaced approximately 10 cM apart. Further investigation of the genomic screen data identified a single large multiplex family, pedigree 8776, as primarily driving the linkage results on chromosome 7