Ethics Identities Science and Technology
Distribution of Risk
"Distribution of risk" is a concept found in philosophical studies of science and technology, especially those dealing with ethics -"Distribution of risk" refers to the idea that not everyone is affected equally by new technologies or by technoscientific knowledge work -Any technological change has potential benefits, risks, and harms; "distribution of risk" is the idea that not every person faces the same risks -In particular, those groups or communities that are marginalized or that on average have less institutional power (economic, political, social, cultural, media, etc.) are the most likely to face the fewest benefits and the most risks and harm
using its services and, per its privacy policy, ultimately the only way to really get back all of your privacy is to delete your account. less obvious are the ways Facebook joins the dots between the data points it collects, building up a picture of who you are and what you might be interested in—whether or not it's 100 percent accurate doesn't really matter, because it can still sell targeted adverts at a higher rate.
"Even if people are aware of what data they're telling Facebook about themselves, they're unaware about the types of correlations that Facebook can make based on that data," Bruce Schneier, a security expert and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, told Gizmodo. "This is normal—we tend to focus on the data collection because that's easier to see. I think the real problem are the correlations, which are much harder to see." As Facebook's algorithms get smarter, its automated tracking gets smarter too. For example, facial recognition is a handy little AI trick you can use when you want to call up all the pictures you and your best buddy have been in together, but it also means Facebook can now recognize you in photos without you actually having to go to the trouble of tagging yourself, something that's got the platform into hot water in Europe "Settings can be complex and while I think [Facebook] does try to provide notices on changes, I believe the typical user ignores it," adds Spiezle,
"Eduardo," a Mexican-American man who initially identified as white Hispanic with Native American ancestry. His ancestry tests reported Native American, Celtic and Jewish ancestry. Eduardo embraced a new Jewish identity, explaining:
"I always looked up to the Jewish people and Jewish friends and neighbors. I just feel better now because I'm one of them...I thought of them as higher than me: I have just now reached the top with them." Consumers like Eduardo often rely on stereotypes about what groups look and act like in deciding which ones to embrace.
ollege rankings, employment application screeners, policing and sentencing algorithms, workplace wellness programs, and the many inappropriate ways credit scores reward the rich and punish the poor.
"in Florida, adults with clean driving records and poor credit scores paid an average of $1552 more than the same drivers with excellent credit and a drunk driving conviction." (
What kinds of biases affect science?
-According to Intemann, cultural biases can also affect science, and so being better able to address cultural biases makes for better science -The question of how to best correct for confirmation bias, or sampling biases, or other common biases are considered questions related to scientific methodology - in other words, scientists are expected to be aware of these biases and strategize about how to address them, as part of doing science and as an inherent part of understanding how science works. I.e., to be a good scientist, one has to understand common biases and how to design their studies in a way that addresses these common biases. -Intemann's claim (found in other STS work) suggests that cultural biases - and the question of how to account for cultural biases when doing scientific work - might also be considered a scientific matter that scientists should be concerned with, not just for ethical reasons but also as a part of their expertise on scientific methodology -What do you think of this implication?
What is bias?
-Bias is not the same as having an opinion -Most communications scholars would argue that some degree of 'bias' exists in all communication -Confirmation bias, for example, in science, is something that a good experiment designer will always guard against -Why do studies often use control groups? How does a control group account for potentially misleading interpretations or conclusions? -Unacknowledged bias, bias which the writer and/or audience may be unaware of, is most likely to skew conclusions, since if you don't know the bias is there, you can't address it or even try to compensate for it
Epistemic benefits: review
-Epistemology is the study of how knowledge works - how it is made, what makes it good, how it relates to power, etc. -Philosophers of science call things that make science better (more rigorous, more innovative, etc.) "epistemic benefits" -Epistemology of science is a key part of Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Eugenics
-Eugenics is closely connected to the discussion in previous weeks on social Darwinism -Note that evolutionary biology, as a field, does not assert that some groups are inherently superior or inferior to others; rather, the measure is not about who or what is inherently better or more "advanced" but rather being better adapted to a particular environment; changing the environment can make something less or more well adapted and less or more likely to survive. A dog is not inherently "more evolved" than a bug, for example. -Eugenics has a long history of being characterized by unrigorous or shoddy science, often with falsified data, but there are also ethical questions raised by eugenics in terms of the harm that it can cause
Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
-Examine the chapter "Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass." (starting page 156 in the book - page 24 of the PDF) -Intemann (the article you'll read later this week) argues for the following epistemic benefits of including different perspectives and cultural traditions in mainstream global scientific communities - how could this chapter in Kimmerer provide additional evidence for these claims? In other words, according to this chapter in Kimmerer, how could additional cultural traditions help global scientific communities in: -Generating new research questions -Proposing Alternative Hypotheses and Interpretations of Data -Accessing Accurate and Complete Data from Human Subjects (perhaps something similar if not exactly the same in Kimmerer) -Opening up new lines of evidence
Science and models, cont.
-For some knowledge, there is consensus or near consensus within a scientific community; this might be thought of as established knowledge. It is still possible for new observations or new models to challenge, disprove, or revolutionize this knowledge, but for now, a relevant scientific community has basically agreed that - according to all that the community currently knows - this model is the best one that has been offered up until this point -For other knowledge, there are many competing models or interpretations of the observations, or even competing ideas about which observations are most credible and relevant; if the scientific community has not sufficiently figured out which model is better, it is a current debate or current question -Note that a responsible scientist will acknowledge that the scientific community has not yet agreed or reached consensus, even if they are trying to strongly argue for one particular model; as you recall from guidelines for this class, accurately characterizing the work of sources - even if you disagree - is what makes academic inquiry possible
Intemann's article: the NSF
-Funding is one way to see how a society, or how particular institutions, value different types of -The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a major source of funding for research in the US (and sometimes elsewhere) -The Broader Impact Criteria are part of every application for funding -"Broader Impacts: The potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes" "Examples of Target Outcomes for Broader Impacts Activities: -Full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in STEM -Improved STEM education and educator development at any level uIncreased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology uImproved well-being of individuals in society -Development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce -Increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others -Improved national security -Increased economic competitiveness of the United States -Enhanced infrastructure for research and education" -Source: https://broaderimpacts.psu.edu/nsf-guidelines-and-trends/
Pecans
-How is mast fruiting used as a metaphor for human relationships? What if this book is not using mast fruiting as a metaphor, but rather is suggesting that mast fruiting and other scientific phenomena provide us with models for understanding relationships more generally, in terms of how networks of influence, togetherness, mutual dependence, and knowledge transmission are more complex and entangled than they appear at first?
Increased Objectivity Rationale
-Intemann reviews decades of research showing that cultural and social processes shape scientific work -Scholars have studied scientists to see at the ground level how concepts and questions and hypotheses slowly become something more like a "scientific fact" with many in-between steps on the way -Optionally, in case you're interested, Sharon Traweek, Wendy Chun, Bruno Latour, and Karen Barad are examples of scholars who do this - Barad is both a philosopher and a physicist -Communities are the way that science increases objectivity, not individuals. -When a community work to hold one another accountable to the standards of knowledge work that they share, that is what increases rigor; one individual who is not accountable to anyone or anything is not likely to consistently produce reliable knowledge -- especially when doing the very difficult and complex work of creating entirely new knowledge -FYI - Not all philosophers of science would use the phrase "objectivity" the way Intemann does
Talented Workforce Rationale
-Intemann uses evidence that unexamined biases in hiring/promotion/etc. (ways of evaluating technoscientific work) is detrimental to goal of maximizing a talented workforce (There are studies that indicate that diverse perspectives leader to higher achievement in team efforts) -Intemann also asks: Who is underrepresented? The author mentions people from marginalized identities, people with eldercare or childcare responsibilities, and people from rural areas, and others -Do you think the COVID era could exacerbate or make worse these issues of underrepresentation?
Mistakes in phrenology, cont.
-It was common in 19th century European and US cultures to speak as if the differences between groups of human beings (genders, races, socioeconomic classes) were analogous to different species (or even that they were different species). -19th century phrenologists then concluded that groups of human beings with different average skull sizes had different intelligence/morality/maturity/were more or less "advanced." -They used the average skull size difference between men and women to support this belief, not taking into account overall average body size -They then found evidence that different races and social classes had different average skull sizes, which is false -Was it confirmation bias or intentional falsification of data? Unclear, but it could have been a combination. -Scientists today do NOT believe brain size or skull size differences within a species tell us anything about intelligence or morality, etc.
Nature
-Kimmerer critiques the way that predominant culture in the US doesn't make room for imagining positive interactions with the environment - what are the stakes of this imagining? -Where have we seen "conventional metaphors" that suggest that nature is something that people should try to dominate? Where do we see conventional metaphors that suggest that nature and human beings are in an antagonistic relationship?
Scientific Rigor
-Much of what we call scientific rigor is based on the idea that researchers should be aware of things that commonly distort data or interpretation of data and correct for those things as best as they are able. -Sufficient sample size -Control groups -Longitudinal study -Historically, prejudices and oppression around gender, race, and class are a common source of bias; how might researchers "correct" for this bias?
"Science of Race"
-Note that Frederick Douglass argued that "scientific writers, not less than others, write to please, as well as to instruct, and even unconsciously to themselves, (sometimes,) sacrifice what is true to what is popular" and that the "whole argument in defense of slavery becomes utterly worthless the moment the African is proved to be equally a man with the Anglo-Saxon. The temptation, therefore, to read the Negro out of the human family is exceeding strong." -Douglas here observes that the scientists of his own time were biased by the racist attitudes of the time. The popularity of racist beliefs, the economic and cultural investment in slavery, and the unconscious beliefs of scientists could all have contributed, according to Douglas -Even many phrenologists who were against slavery believed in the racist and incorrect findings of race science -Douglas was one of many thinkers of the time who critiqued race science -It may be "ahistorical" or not historically accurate to argue that "everyone at that time believed x, y, and z" - closer historical examination often shows that even widespread beliefs were challenged by some -Why might it be important to identify people in past time periods who resisted predominant ideas of their time, especially ideas that were used to justify oppression?
STS and history of science
-One goal of STS is to examine how understanding culture, identities, and history can make for more rigorous science, including by avoiding making similar mistakes as in the past. Based on the articles on the history of science: -How might studying cultural influences on classification systems lead to better science and better communication of science? -How might studying cultural influences on classification systems allow people to articulate ethical challenges and dilemmas in more precise, nuanced, or informed ways?
Phrenology
-Phrenology was a 19th century scientific field that developed ways to gain information about an individual (or group's) character, intelligence, flaws, etc., by examining skull size and shape, especially the bumps on the skull -We now know that these conclusions were false (and ridiculous). It was also harmful to groups other than wealthy European-descended men (and anyone whose skull shape was considered less than ideal). -But phrenology was believed by most scientists at that time, so it's an important example for understanding how very smart people can get the science completely wrong for a very long time -A phrenologist might feel the bumps on someone's head to draw conclusions about their intelligence, criminality, or morality
Indigenous science This PowerPoint
-Raises key questions and complexities to contextualize and help you think about the readings by Popp and Kimmerer -Asks you to think about how the creative writing choices of Kimmerer has an effect on the claims she is making - consider how reading this book is a different experience for the audience than reading a traditional web article or scholarly article on similar topics
But what are scientists and STEM workers doing when they do science?
-Remember that a great deal of science is trying to find a model or interpretive framework that fits with observations of the natural world. -A model does not have to be perfect to be valuable - it might be a better fit with observations than previous models, or address a contradiction or problem related to previous models. -Example: Newtonian physics greatly improved on what was there before Newton. Later it would be found that the Newtonian model does not work for quantum physics - but that doesn't change the fact that Newtonian physics was a model that worked very well for many types of physics questions, and that it was a huge improvement on the models that European thinkers had before Newton's work -If a model is a bad fit for the observations, then a scientific community is likely to reject the model -Keep in mind that each specialization or sub-specialization may have a different community of science workers that hold one another accountable to the standards of the community
Braiding Sweetgrass
-Robin Kimmerer is a Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York -How does this book incorporate different types of book - popular science book, personal memoir, creative writing, etc.? What is accomplished by combining these genres? -How does the book suggest that understanding lived experience, understanding the natural world, and understanding history, culture, and power are all connected?
ranking humankind
Americans were debating the future of slavery and the role of African Americans in the nation at a time when scientists were trying to understand the world by naming, sorting, and categorizing every part of it.
19th century science
-The 19th century is a time that shaped much of how we do science and other research today -The biases of that time are more obvious to us now, so it's easier to identify how their cultural biases shaped their science -Phrenology and hysteria are often used for comparison when talking about the dangers and harms of science that reinforces stereotypes about gender and race. -Who was harmed by these examples? -Institutionalization of women by whoever had "custody" -Forced hysterectomies, dangerous conditions -Phrenology was used to justify slavery; violence against non-Europeans, women, and lower social classes; aspects of the criminal justice system; the idea that only some people would benefit from education; predecessor to eugenics movements, which led to white supremacist movements and segregation, Nazi-ism and the Holocaust.
Enlightenment
-The Enlightenment was a time that saw huge changes in European societies, involving these and many other aspects: -Politics, government, and economics -Science, Philosophy -Cultural attitudes toward reason, progress, the capabilities of what intellectual exploration can do to improve the world -Francis Bacon was an Enlightenment scientist - recall how influential he was on the history of science -This time was also when European colonialism spread European ideas around the world to at least some locations on every populated continent, including the Americas, and so the Enlightenment - and its legacies on later time periods - had a global impact on science, politics, and cultures uA key way that Enlightenment thinkers developed their fields of knowledge was to develop classification systems to put things into defined categories
Hysteria
-The article notes that ancient ideas about gender and health were transformed in the 19th century; those that put forth ideas about "hysteria" often believed that they were helping women and some believed that they were rejecting the anti-woman prejudices of the past -Some historians believe that sexual pleasure was regularly part of the treatment of hysteria in 19th century England, but other historians disagree; the article does not mention the full debate -Forced institutionalization and sterilization were treatments that were considered appropriate at the time -Women were not considered equals under the law; it would have been easy for any father or husband to claim that a woman's behavior was hysterical and have her institutionalized, especially as "unfeminine" or non-submissive behaviors could be seen as hysteria -Consider the way that gender roles were categorized at the time, as well as the way that health conditions were categorized, and how these two classifications systems intersect to shape 19th century medical practices around hysteria
"The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations", cont.
-The article notes that being "feeble-minded" "was also a very malleable term that was used to define large categories of people that again, were disliked by someone who was in the decision-making position. So, women who were thought to be overly interested in sex, licentious, were sometimes deemed feebleminded. It was a broad category and it was very hard to prove at one of these feeblemindedness hearings that you were not feebleminded." -Compare this to the article on hysteria; both articles consider how people, especially women, who did not conform to social expectations for women were "pathologized"; their behavior, which was a choice based on their ideas and experiences, was viewed as a symptom, which justified them being institutionalized and forced to be sterilized -What are the risks when institutions (medical, scientific, educational, government) can define "diseases" or "threats" in broad and vague ways? -A common ethical conundrum: How do institutions create systems that allow for people with physical or mental health issues to be supported but prevent abuses of institutional power (sometimes from well-intentioned individuals) that penalize people for breaking social norms?
"The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations"
-The article shows how prejudices around class, race, disability, and gender can interact to shape policies and actions -Why do you think the logic of eugenics had appeal to some people in the time period? -Why do you think that Anne Frank is used as an example at the end of the article? (If you're not familiar with the history of Anne Frank, it would be appropriate to look her up) -Where do you see that Enlightenment ideas and ideas about phrenology might be influential on eugenics movements?
"Ranking Humankind"
-This article shows how the development of modern racial categories was a product of European attitudes toward non-European peoples -Ideas about race were also influenced by the Enlightenment desire to make sense of the world by naming and defining categories and in particular ranking these categories -Many Enlightenment thinkers also ranked different European groups or nationalities as "higher" or "lower" than other European groups -The development of these racial categories clearly had a big impact on the world long after the Enlightenment -Therefore, in Science and Technology Studies, the development of modern racial categories is a well-known example of how prejudice and oppression shapes - but is also shaped by - science
Intemann: Why Diversity Matters
-This is a scholarly article, meaning that it was written by a scholarly expert who specializes in the subject matter, for an audience of experts, and published in a journal that subjects articles to a peer review process where other experts have to agree that the article meets the academic standards of the field. -The purpose is to talk about how the diversity components valued by the NSF funding process has the additional benefit of making science intellectually better -The author calls these improvements "epistemic benefits": "epistemology" refers to the study of how we know what we know, or how knowledge comes about -Epistemology also includes the study of how knowledge is valued in different communities, how people decide to trust certain knowledge, and how power, history, and culture shape how knowledge is made/spread/interpreted/evaluated -The audience for a philosopher's scholarly article is often other philosophers, but since this philosophical work is designed to help shed light on how to help communities of scientists, the audience for this piece is also scientists
Fertilization: a longer history
A much older example of gendered scientific storytelling can be seen in ancient Greek understandings of reproduction. Aristotle, and many ancient Greeks, believed that the father is the true parent because the sperm is the seed which eventually grows into a person, while the womb is merely the ground that the seed is planted in. •In the ancient Greek play The Eumenides, Apollo argues that the father is more a parent than the mother: " That word mother—we give it to the one who bears the child.However, she's no parent, just a nurseto that new life embedded in her. The parent is the one who plants the seed,the father. Like a stranger for a stranger, she preserves the growing life, unlessgod injures it." Where are there parallels to the texts discussed in Martin?
How science (and other knowledge) gets made often involves
-Understanding the current conversation about a topic/deciding which previous knowledge is important for you to know about and which isn't -Deciding on an important question to investigate -Deciding the best way to investigate that question -Deciding on which resources, institutional settings, etc., are best for investigating the question (these are not always in this order) -Participating in conversations and collaborations to develop this knowledge -Crafting how to communicate this knowledge so it has the impact you want on your chosen audience -Communities decide the value of this knowledge and react accordingly - for example, for a particle physics article, it is other particle physics (not biologists or geologists) who usually decide on the value -But governments and other groups that provide funding can influence how knowledge is valued, as can popular culture, the arts, and education systems when they choose what to focus on Note: why "made"? Knowledge that people in a particular society have but didn't used to have can be referred to as knowledge that has been made out of particular processes; this does not imply necessarily that knowledge is not also "discovered," as that is a separate philosophical debate
common inaccurate and misleading media stereotypes of people with mental illness:
1. People with mental illnesses are criminal or violent. 2. People with mental illness look different than others 3. People with mental illnesses are childish and silly 4. Mental illnesses are all severe - or all alike 5. Psychiatric hospitals cause more harm than good 6. People with mental illnesses can't recover
two most common definitions of trope
1. The term "trope" often refers to commonly used storylines, themes, character types, devices, etc. 2. In literary study, the term "tropes" can also refer to "figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of words
digital trail
1. what you've searched for. 2. your age and gender 3. whether your relationship is going to last. 4. where you've travelled, 5. police know where you're driving right now — at least in the U.K. CCtv 6. how fast you were going when you were traveling. 7. where you live and work 8. where your cat lives 9. Your credit card company knows what you buy. 10. Your grocery store knows what brands you like. 11. HR knows when you're going to quit your job. Workday is testing out an algorithm that analyzes text in documents and can predict from that information, which employees are likely to leave the company 12. target knows if you're pregnant. 13.YouTube knows what videos you've been watching. 14.Amazon knows what you like to read, Netflix knows what you like to watch. Even your public library knows what kinds of media you like to consume. 15. what you ask Siri and Cortana. 16. child's Barbie doll is also telling Mattel what she and your child talk about. 17. Police departments in some major cities, including Chicago and Kansas City, know you're going to commit a crime — before you do it. 18. Your auto insurance company knows when and where you drive 19. Data brokers can help unscrupulous companies identify vulnerable consumers. 20. Facebook knows how intelligent you are, how satisfied you are with your life, and whether you are emotionally stable or not - simply based on a big data analysis of the 'likes' you have clicked. 21.Your apps may have access to a lot of your personal data Angry Birds gets access to your contact list in your phone and your physical location. Bejeweled wants to know your phone number. Some apps even access your microphone to record what's going on around you while you use them.
newspaper
A newspaper is a collection of articles about current events usually published daily. It is a great source for local information.
Asterism
A pattern of stars that is too small to be a constellation.
Week 6 Online Discussion 3 (first questions)
1.For one of the examples A-G on the previous slides, brainstorm some ways that groups with less power, or groups who are less often seen/considered/centered, might be disadvantaged or disproportionately affected by this situation. 2.Find an ethical issue that is important to your career field. Using the idea of distribution of risk, brainstorm 2-3 ways that groups that are marginalized or underrepresented in your field might have greater risks or negative results. Note that this question might also relate to your final project for this class (see syllabus). 3.Discuss how distribution of risk relates to an issue in current events OR how distribution of risk relates to an ethical issue related to an interest of yours other than your career (hobby, passion, volunteering, something you're a big fan of, etc.). Brainstorm 2-3 ways that groups that are marginalized or underrepresented might experience greater risks or negative effects. 4.#4 can be found in the following slides
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
1908 discovered that for Cepheids, the brighter variables have longer periods
Online Discussion, cont.
2. In the same D2L thread, answer: Imagine that you, as someone with knowledge in the history and epistemology of science, have been asked to weigh in on this question. Explain the recommendation you would provide and why, using 2 course materials and also something from your own experience outside of this class (such as personal experience, another class, etc.) to support your point. (This case study is based on the community science work after the Fukushima disaster) After a nuclear plant accident, members of the local community are distrustful of official government numbers about the radiation levels and safety. Many have purchased tools to do their own radiation readings at various locations. (Details continued on the next page)
star names are arabic translations of greek names
3 diff chinese constellations and their small related to every day life 4 houses that are then split up
draco the dragon hercules, perseus pegasus taurus orion's belt gemini
4 different versions of western sky astronomy
On why he considers Buck v. Bell to be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history
70,000 Americans were sterilized as a result of this decision factor in all the many people who were being segregated, who were being held in these institutions for eugenic reasons, because they were feebleminded, whose lives unfolded living in places like the colony, rather than living in freedom. Beyond the human effect though, there was something just so ugly about this decision and when [we] think about what we want the Supreme Court to be, what the founders wanted the Supreme Court to be, it was supposed to be our temple of justice, the place that people could go when all the other parts of our society, all the other parts of the government, were not treating them right.
In a January survey, the Pew Internet and American Life project asked adult Facebook users in the U.S. about the predictions that Facebook makes about their personal traits, based on data collected by the platform and its partners. For example, Facebook assigns a "multicultural affinity" category to some users, guessing how similar they are to people from different race or ethnic backgrounds. This information is used to target ads.
74 percent of people did not know about these predictions. About half said they are not comfortable with Facebook predicting information like this. For example, a 2017 study of fitness tracker users showed that people are aware that their tracker device collects their GPS location when they are exercising. But this doesn't translate into awareness that the activity tracker company can predict where they live.
How many constellations are there?
88 constellations
magazine
: A magazine is a collection of articles and images about diverse topics of popular interest and current events. Usually these articles are written by journalists or scholars and are geared toward the average adult.
"Wicked Problems"
A "wicked problem" sometimes refers to any huge, complex problem that requires multiple fields of study to work together to solve Surveillance, climate change, racism, and disinformation online might be seen as wicked problems More precisely, scholars define a "wicked problem" even more ambitiously, for example as a problem that is so complex and tricky to solve because the problem cannot even be defined precisely since it is changing so quickly To learn about how huge a problem is, and all the many fields of expertise needed to tackle this problem, can be intimidating or even overwhelming, so what are some common tactics for working on these types of problem
Exploring this first definition of tropes, it may be useful to consider some examples of tropes:
A common fairy tale trope is the princess who needs a prince to rescue her. A common action movie trope is the villain who stops in the middle of killing the hero to make a long speech revealing every detail of the evil master plan, and while this speech is happening, the hero escapes and now knows how to stop the plan. A common horror movie trope is the phone call coming from inside the house. A common science fiction trope is a character going back in time and then returning to see that they have changed the future in disastrous ways. A common soap opera trope is a person getting amnesia. A slightly common trope in mysteries is for one of the investigators to turn out to have been the criminal mastermind all along
doctors use race as a short cut
A crude but convenient proxy for important things like gene traits, enzyme levels, etc that they just don't have time to look for
Visual analysis: dioramas
A diorama is a 3-dimensional model (or digital model that tries to portray a 3-dimensional scene) In museums, dioramas are intended to be scientifically precise and portray scenes in ways that the public has an accurate perception of the objects and environments depicted Dioramas are also supposed to be engaging and help the public feel immersed, like they're getting a glimpse into being in a different time and space Why might creating an exciting fantasy space be beneficial? Why might it be tricky or even detrimental to knowledge?
Surveillance and Society
A few key definitions
Journal
A journal is a collection of articles usually written by scholars in an academic or professional field. An editorial board reviews articles to decide whether they should be accepted.
Sixty-seven percent of smartphone users rely on Google Map
A major of feature of Google Maps is its ability to predict how long different navigation routes will take. That's possible because the mobile phone of each person using Google Maps sends data about its location and speed back to Google's servers, where it is analyzed to generate new data about traffic conditions. data about a mobile phone's past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school These predictions label who you are as a person and guess what you're likely to do in the future.
Valuing knowledge
Academic knowledge is often evaluated by a combination of: -Trustworthiness -Importance How do different communities make these evaluations differently? Consider: -Different disciplines focus on different things when evaluating knowledge -How popular communications (journalism, online communities/websites/social media, movies, popular books, etc.) and educational communications (textbooks, etc.) value different kinds of knowledge?
people's willingness to pay for privacy depended on whether they perceived that their data was already protected. In one experiment, one group of people were given a free $10 Visa gift card and told their spending would be anonymous. Another group was given a $12 gift card and told their purchases would be tracked. The groups were then given an opportunity to trade gift cards. It turned out that the vast majority people with the higher-value but tracked card were not willing to give up $2 for privacy. But about half of the people who started out with the higher privacy lower value cards wanted to keep them.
Acquisti said, participants may have felt that "it was very low-risk to provide information." Instagram logo were so popular among photographers that Puno required "purchasers" to give their fingerprints, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their driver's license information. Many still agreed. "They wanted to hold it against the sky with the bridge in the background," she said.
A few months after the first Edward Snowden revelation, the National Security Agency disclosed that it had itself wiretapped King in the late 1960s. Yet what happened to King is almost entirely absent from our current conversation. And notwithstanding a few brave speeches by senators such as Patrick Leahy and Rand Paul outside of the Senate, the available Senate record suggests that in two years of actual hearings and floor debates, no one ever spoke his name
Across our history and to this day, people of color have been the disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance; Hoover was no aberration. And while racism has played its ugly part, the justification for this monitoring was the same we hear today: national security.
Common arts and humanities approaches to inquiry about science and technology, Cont.
Actively seeking out additional perspectives and frameworks on an issue, including those who have traditionally been marginalized or underrepresented in some academic discussions Ethical reasoning - ethical arguments made with nuance and precision, in ways that help one explore and/or act upon one's own values Artistic thinking - using artistic expression to understand human experiences in different ways that articles or formal essays might Imagining futures - using knowledge of philosophy, history, literature, art, etc., to push the boundaries of what kind of future we can imagine
Adaptation on steroids
Adaptation is nothing new. It's been going on for thousands of years. The idea is that course material or explanations or problem sets or tutoring is tailored to the individual needs of the student. But when we put that adaptation on steroids, we see a shift in "kind." In other words, we see something that was not present before. Today we can monitor every move students make, not just count the right and wrong answers they give to a quiz question. By analyzing facial expressions, delays in responding, and a myriad of other variables, we can tailor make and deliver a tutorial specifically suited to a student's learning problem at the moment the problem occurs.
At least officially, the sexual nature of these treatments was not realized, or at least acknowledged. While it's hard to not see this procedure as a primarily sexual process when looking back, doctors at the time feared it becoming conflated with sex. So much so that some advocated hurting the female patients, or at least causing them discomfort. It still baffles me how any doctor could purposefully and unnecessarily hurt patients, but this is just another example of the many unethical medical processes women have been subject to.
After about 1910, gynaecological massage fell into the category of alternative medicine, and while I'm sure you can still find someone practicing it today, advancements in medical knowledge (and feminist movements) have led to the understandings that the uterus is not at the heart of most medical problems, and that many of the symptoms previously attributed to hysteria truly belonged to mental illnesses, or were just normal, if unacceptable to historic societies, behaviours for females.
Internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II
After decades of denial, it was revealed just a few years ago that during World War II, the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with data from the 1940 census to identify people of Japanese ancestry, "to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war." Researchers who revealed this say that the speed with which the data was released, just seven days after it was requested, lead them to "believe this was a well-established path".
An Algorithm Determined UK Students' Grades. Chaos Ensued
Amit Katwala, WIRED UK article
Data centralization
At the moment, nearly all data in educational institutions is held in organizational silos. That means that each department or organizational unit collects, stores, and manages the data it needs for its own purposes. That is a natural result of the need for each function to get its work done. However, it is counterproductive if we wish to apply Big Data. In the future, we can expect these siloed data stores to be integrated or linked virtually. Integration means that the data will be moved to a central repository and managed by a central function - like the IT department. Virtual integration means that the functional units will remain where they are at the moment but the IT department will have read access to each of these repositories. Quite likely, we will see both options in practice for the foreseeable future.
Common Problems: Ahistorical Thinking
Ahistorical thinking is when people are unaware of, or ignore, knowledge about past time periods, even though this historical knowledge would be helpful or relevant for a more evidence-based interpretation. Common examples of ahistorical thinking include: "People in ancient Athens fought for their natural rights when they defended the value of democracy": this statement is not historically informed, because ancient Greeks did not likely have a concept of "rights" "This child character in a 16th century British play clearly is supposed to represent innocence, as all children are naturally innocent": this statement is inaccurate because the idea of childhood as a time of sweetness and innocence was not popular in Britain until the 19th century "Before the 1960s, women rarely worked outside of the home": this statement is factually untrue and more based on media portrayals "Civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were always very popular because of their unifying messages": this statement is inaccurate because Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., faced a large percentage of detractors and was often accused of being divisive, as did many other civil rights leaders of the time; this portrayal became popular years after Dr. King's death
Consequences of Ahistorical thinking
Ahistorical thinking matters because usually, when people are making claims about the past, they're doing so to make claims about the present or future - about technology and ethics, for example STS scholar Katie King is known for analysis of how we culturally construct the past in ways that aid our current side in a debate Consider, for example, the ways that racist science made claims about the past to justify particular positions
Summary
All of these issues - avoiding ahistorical thinking, sussing out underlying problems, acting with hope and knowledgeably in the face of huge probems - are helped by the key arts and humanities strategies mentioned at the start of this presentation: Contextualizing Analyzing how technology and culture/society shape each other Seeking out additional perspectives Understanding different experiences and communities Creativity Sound ethical reasoning Imagining futures in more expansive ways
Social implications: Thinking beyond
All three of these revisionist accounts of egg and sperm cannot seem to escape the hierarchical imagery of older accounts. Even though each new account gives the egg a larger and more active role, taken together they bring into play another cultural stereotype: woman as a dangerous and aggressive threat. In the Johns Hopkins lab's revised model, the egg ends up as the female aggressor who "captures and tethers" the sperm with her sticky zona, rather like a spider lying in wait in her web.59 The Schatten lab has the egg's nucleus "interrupt" the sperm's dive with a "sudden and swift" rush by which she "clasps the sperm and guides its nucleus to the center."60 Wassarman's description of the surface of the egg "covered with thousands of plasma membranebound projections, called microvilli" that reach out and clasp the sperm adds to the spiderlike imagery. These images grant the egg an active role but at the cost of appearing disturbingly aggressive. Images of woman as dangerous and aggressive, the femme fatale who victimizes men, are widespread in Western literature and culture.62 More specific is the connection of spider imagery with the idea of an engulfing, devouring mother.63 New data did not lead scientists to eliminate gender stereotypes in their descriptions of egg and sperm. Instead, scientists simply began to describe egg and sperm in different, but no less damaging, terms. Can we envision a less stereotypical view? The cybernetic model-with its feedback loops, flexible adaptation to change, coordination of the parts within a whole, evolution over time, and changing response to the environment-is common in genetics, endocrinology, and ecology and has a growing influence in medicine in general.4 This model has the potential to shift our imagery from the negative, in which the female reproductive system is castigated both for not producing eggs after birth and for producing (and thus wasting) too many eggs overall, to something more positive. The female reproductive system could be seen as responding to the environment (pregnancy or menopause), adjusting to monthly changes (menstruation), and flexibly changing from reproductivity after puberty to nonreproductivity later in life. The sperm and egg's interaction could also be described in cybernetic terms. J. F. Hartman's research in reproductive biology demonstrated fifteen years ago that if an egg is killed by being pricked with a needle, live sperm cannot get through the zona.65 Clearly, this evidence shows that the egg and sperm do interact on more mutual terms, making biology's refusal to portray them that way all the more disturbing. t cybernetic imagery is hardly neutral. In the past, cybernetic models have played an important part in the imposition of social control. These models inherently provide a way of thinking about a "field" of interacting components. Once the field can be seen, it can become the object of new forms of knowledge, which in turn can allow new forms of social control to be exerted over the components of the field. During the 1950s, for example, medicine began to recognize the psychosocial environment of the patient: the patient's family and its psychodynamics. Professions such as social work began to focus on this new environment, and the resulting knowledge became one way to further control the patient. Patients began to be seen not as isolated, individual bodies, but as psychosocial entities located in an "ecological" system: management of "the patient's psychology was a new entree to patient control." The models that biologists use to describe their data can have important social effects. During the nineteenth century, the social and natural sciences strongly influenced each other: the social ideas of Malthus about how to avoid the natural increase of the poor inspired Darwin's Origin of Species.67 Once the Origin stood as a description of the natural world, complete with competition and market struggles, it could be reimported into social science as social Darwinism, in order to justify the social order of the time. What we are seeing now is similar: the importation of cultural ideas about passive females and heroic males into the "personalities" of gametes. This amounts to the "implanting of social imagery on representations of nature so as to lay a firm basis for reimporting exactly that same imagery as natural explanations of social phenomena." Further research would show us exactly what social effects are being wrought from the biological imagery of egg and sperm. At the very least, the imagery keeps alive some of the hoariest old stereotypes about weak damsels in distress and their strong male rescuers. That these stereotypes are now being written in at the level of the cell constitutes a powerful move to make them seem so natural as to be beyond alteration. The stereotypical imagery might also encourage people to imagine that what results from the interaction of egg and sperm-a fertilized egg-is the result of deliberate "human" action at the cellular level. Whatever the intentions of the human couple, in this microscopic "culture" a cellular "bride" (or femme fatale) and a cellular "groom" (her victim) make a cellular baby. Rosalind Petchesky points out that through visual representations such as sonograms, we are given "images of younger and younger, and tinier and tinier, fetuses being 'saved.' " This leads to "the point of visibility being 'pushed back' indefinitely."69 Endowing egg and sperm with intentional action, a key aspect of personhood in our culture, lays the foundation for the point of viability being pushed back to the moment of fertilization. This will likely lead to greater acceptance of technological developments and new forms of scrutiny and manipulation, for the benefit of these inner "persons": court-ordered restrictions on a pregnant woman's activities in order to protect her fetus, fetal surgery, amniocentesis, and rescinding of abortion rights, to name but a few examples. Even if we succeed in substituting more egalitarian, interactive metaphors to describe the activities of egg and sperm, and manage to avoid the pitfalls of cybernetic models, we would still be guilty of endowing cellular entities with personhood. More crucial, then, than what kinds of personalities we bestow on cells is the very fact that we are doing it at all. This process could ultimately have the most disturbing social consequences. One clear feminist challenge is to wake up sleeping metaphors in science, particularly those involved in descriptions of the egg and the sperm. Although the literary convention is to call such metaphors "dead," they are not so much dead as sleeping, hidden within the scientific content of texts-and all the more powerful for it.71 Waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of when we are projecting cultural imagery onto what we study, will improve our ability to investigate and understand nature. Waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of their implications, will rob them of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender.
Ethical Reasoning brief review
Also don't forget that we've examined other lenses or tools to talk about ethical considerations •Distribution of risk (Week 6) •How scientific and technological work (including how this work is communicated to the public) can contribute to or resist oppression and inequity •Systems of accountability - what kinds of accountability encourage ethical practices? (See Week 5 PowerPoint on Science and Trust) •Seeking out stakeholders - who could be affected by this science/technology, or would have insight into the issue, but is not included or highly valued in the conversation? You don't need to do all of these, but keep in mind that you have a "toolkit" or set of lenses you can use if you are having trouble thinking of what to say about ethical ramifications in your online discussion or Data and Ethics Paper.
Data based decision making and planning
Although Education has enjoyed the benefit of quantitative studies for centuries, the practice of education is generally driven by the philosophical views of educators more than data or evidence based studies. In fact, this approach has been enshrined in our commitment to academic freedom at the university level and has trickled down, to some extent, to public and private K-12 schools. Big Data will enable a data-rich culture that will inform policy development and operational planning to an extent we've never seen in the past.
More than 100 test takers
Amy was a homemaker with 3 kids. She was adopted and only knew that her biological mother was supposedly german She was ashamed of this because she associated it with the Nazis and was hoping her test could help her identify with something else. Her test indicated that she might have Basque ancestry and she began to identify as such Amy defined race as " it's just like your DNA you don't really have much control over it it's just a scientific fact you're either white or etc She viewed race as something her DNA revealed John is a sales rep in his 50s he had always identified as white and Sicilian although his test showed that he had middle eastern ancestry he felt that it was irrelevant and what mattered was that he was raised and grew up in the Sicilian culture. He thinks that race isn't a scientifically valid concept after being interviewed again 2 years later and John said that it probably moved it more in the direction that I've always thought that science would back up what I believe it was ore social and economic than biological reasons for differences, kind of reinforce that with some science
Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with test sales growing exponentially.
An estimated 16 million tests have been sold — most within the last few years.
But Eduardo rejected a Celtic identity, saying: "I can pass for a Jew, there's no question about it. There's no way I could pass for a Celtic, because I'm dark, and sort of fat, short.
And because this ideal we have of the Celts, they're tall, strong, big people....So...it's just, 'Stupid Mexican, dreaming he's got Celtic blood in him.'"
years later of her second teaching round in a Melbourne high school and she was 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when a boy put his hand up and asked when she was going to "start doing her speech" she was confused because she had been talking about defamation law for a good 20 minutes
And he said you know your motivational speaking (because she was in a wheel chair)
On a 1924 immigration law, which was inspired by eugenicists, that prevented Anne Frank's family from entering the U.S.
Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, we're often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans. That's true, but to some extent Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the U.S. Congress believed that as well. Otto Frank was writing repeatedly to the State Department begging for visas for himself and his wife and his two daughters, Margot and Anne, and was turned down, and that was because there were now these quotas in place. If they had not been, it seems clear that he would've been able to get a visa for his whole family, including his daughter Anne Frank.
Common problems in discussing solutions
Another common problem with some arguments about technology and society is focusing on solutions that seem like the easiest to get done rather than solutions that address the underlying problems For example, many STS scholars suggest that big issues like surveillance can only be solved by many in a society working together (creating policies/laws, shifting cultures, creating other systems of accountability, etc.) - these scholars might suggest that it's easier to focus on making people feel guilty for having a Facebook account than to address these larger issues, but that substantive change would require a larger imagination about solutions Individual actions can make a difference - and it is important to consider the viability or pragmatic value of solutions - but STS scholars often argue for systemic solutions to systemic problems, and not exclusively focusing on individual solutions to systemic problems
What is the underlying problem?
Another tricky issue is deciding on what the underlying problem actually is For example, many people have blamed digital books for people reading fewer literary novels, but some literary scholars would point to causes like larger shifts in how society values the arts, or how a small number of corporations control most literary publishing In other words, it is not always clear what issues are caused by the technology, and what issues are caused by political, social, cultural, or economic forces STS scholars would largely suggest that each individual case is examined as an intersection of a technology with these larger forces - that it doesn't make sense to consider these separately, as context always shapes meaning
Phrenology and Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College & John van Wyhe, Affiliated Researcher, Dept. of History & Philosophy of Science, Cambridge.
Indigenous peoples have been responsible for the development of many technologies and have substantially contributed to science.
Approaches to gathering that knowledge are culturally relative. Indigenous science incorporates traditional knowledge and Indigenous perspectives, while non-Indigenous scientific approaches are commonly recognized as Western science. Together, they contribute substantially to modern science.
Status updates you almost post: Facebook can tell when you're about to write something and then think better of it, as per a 2012 research paper (though the contents of your self-censored musings aren't logged). If you're thinking of making a drunken boast or a barbed comment and then think better of it, Facebook sees your indecisiveness.
Apps you install: It's not just Facebook's privacy policy you need to worry about, but also how third-party apps are using your data—while a Facebook quiz may seem innocuous, telling the world which bands you've seen gives another data point to advertisers. Pay close attention to the permissions apps ask for and remove the ones you don't need. When you're feeling low: Facebook's other apps:
We are no longer a proletariat, argues Morone, but a procureiat - constantly creating profit for someone, somewhere
The purpose behind Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc is to make people think a little more about the mess we've got ourselves into.
Some complexities
Are indigenous communities' traditional knowledge about the natural world "part of science"? Much of this conversation focuses on the way that Western-centric scientific communities have excluded indigenous science, even where there were clear reasons not to do so. Nevertheless, addressing this legacy is more complex than simply declaring that all knowledge is science. -If "science" refers to the institutions and communities that popular discourse calls "science," then yes, because there are many indigenous and other scientists who draw on traditional knowledge, and also many ways (some problematic) that the scientific community benefits from indigenous knowledge -The examples in Kimmerer show that knowledge of the natural world may be intertwined with stories of religious or other types of significance - is it accurate to say that these stories are "part of science" when they also are doing other things too? Could calling this knowledge science be erasing these other aspects? Is it insulting to erase the difference between Western-centric "science" and other forms of knowledge, as if the differences don't matter? -Is it a compliment to call a tradition identical to or equivalent to the global scientific industry in all cases? What assumptions would be in play for it to be considered a compliment? -Talking about how indigenous knowledge traditions are valuable to many scientific communities is not the same as saying that all traditions are identical to what is stereotypically called "science" -An additional note: communications about indigenous knowledge traditions often reproduce stereotypical negative tropes that some peoples are "closer to the land or nature" - how might scholars responsibly talk about the ways that different cultures have different worldviews without falling into stereotypical tropes that suggest that being closer to nature was a sign of inferiority?
Real time quiz evaluations and corrective action
As computers and tablets become ever more pervasive in classrooms, schools at all levels will be better able to collect digital breadcrumbs about how students perform on quizzes and determine what corrective action is required. This is going to eventually become the norm. Seven Ross, a professor at the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University agrees. He said, "Most of us in research and education policy think that for today's and tomorrow's generation of kids, it's probably the only way."
New research, old imagery
As new understandings of egg and sperm emerge, textbook gender imagery is being revised. But the new research, far from escaping the stereotypical representations of egg and sperm, simply replicates elements of textbook gender imagery in a different form Ludwik Fleck termed "the self-contained" nature of scientific thought. As he described it, "the interaction between what is already known, what remains to be learned, and those who are to apprehend it, go to ensure harmony within the system. But at the same time they also preserve the harmony of illusions, which is quite secure within the confines of a given thought style." In all of the texts quoted above, sperm are described as penetrating the egg, and specific substances on a sperm's head are described as binding to the egg. Recently, this description of events was rewritten in a biophysics lab at Johns Hopkins Universitytransforming the egg from the passive to the active party.39 Prior to this research, it was thought that the zona, the inner vestments of the egg, formed an impenetrable barrier. Sperm overcame the barrier by mechanically burrowing through, thrashing their tails and slowly working their way along. Later research showed that the sperm released digestive enzymes that chemically broke down the zona; thus, scientists presumed that the sperm used mechanical and chemical means to get through to the egg. In this recent investigation, the researchers began to ask questions about the mechanical force of the sperm's tail. (The lab's goal was to develop a contraceptive that worked topically on sperm.) They discovered, to their great surprise, that the forward thrust of sperm is extremely weak, which contradicts the assumption that sperm are forceful penetrators.40 Rather than thrusting forward, the sperm's head was now seen to move mostly back and forth. The sideways motion of the sperm's tail makes the head move sideways with a force that is ten times stronger than its forward movement. So even if the overall force of the sperm were strong enough to mechanically break the zona, most of its force would be directed sideways rather than forward. In fact, its strongest tendency, by tenfold, is to escape by attempting to pry itself off the egg. Sperm, then, must be exceptionally efficient at escaping from any cell surface they contact. And the surface of the egg must be designed to trap the sperm and prevent their escape. Otherwise, few if any sperm would reach the egg. The researchers at Johns Hopkins concluded that the sperm and egg stick together because of adhesive molecules on the surfaces of each. The egg traps the sperm and adheres to it so tightly that the sperm's head is forced to lie flat against the surface of the zona mechanical force of its tail is so weak that a sperm cannot break even one chemical bond. This is where the digestive enzymes released by the sperm come in. If they start to soften the zona just at the tip of the sperm and the sides remain stuck, then the weak, flailing sperm can get oriented in the right direction and make it through the zonaprovided that its bonds to the zona dissolve as it moves in. Although this new version of the saga of the egg and the sperm broke through cultural expectations, the researchers who made the discovery continued to write papers and abstracts as if the sperm were the active party who attacks, binds, penetrates, and enters the egg. The only difference was that sperm were now seen as performing these actions weakly Not until August 1987, more than three years after the findings described above, did these researchers reconceptualize the process to give the egg a more active role. began to describe the zona as an aggressive sperm catcher, covered with adhesive molecules that can capture a sperm with a single bond and clasp it to the zona's surface.42 In the words of their published account: "The innermost vestment, the zona pellucida, is a glycoprotein shell, which captures and tethers the sperm before they penetrate it. ... The sperm is captured at the initial contact between the sperm tip and the zona .... Since the thrust [of the sperm] is much smaller than the force needed to break a single affinity bond, the first bond made upon the tip-first meeting of the sperm and zona can result in the capture of the sperm."43 Gerald Schatten and Helen Schatten set out to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the "egg is not merely a large, yolk-filled sphere into which the sperm burrows to endow new life. Schatten and Schatten's conformity to the aggressive-sperm metaphor. They describe how "the sperm and egg first touch when, from the tip of the sperm's triangular head, a long, thin filament shoots out and harpoons the egg." Then we learn that "remarkably, the harpoon is not so much fired as assembled at great speed, molecule by molecule, from a pool of protein stored in a specialized region called the acrosome. The filament may grow as much as twenty times longer than the sperm head itself before its tip reaches the egg and sticks."45 Why not call this "making a bridge" or "throwing out a line" rather than firing a harpoon? Harpoons pierce prey and injure or kill them, while this filament only sticks. And why not focus, as the Hopkins lab did, on the stickiness of the egg, rather than the stickiness of the sperm?46 "[The sperm] still has an arduous journey ahead. It must penetrate farther into the egg's huge sphere of cytoplasm and somehow locate the nucleus, so that the two cells' chromosomes can fuse. The sperm dives down into the cytoplasm, its tail beating. But it is soon interrupted by the sudden and swift migration of the egg nucleus, which rushes toward the sperm with a velocity triple that of the movement of chromosomes during cell division, crossing the entire egg in about a minute."47 Paul Wassarman conducted on the sperm and eggs of mice, focuses on identifying the specific molecules in the egg coat (the zona pellucida) that are involved in egg-sperm interaction At first glance, his descriptions seem to fit the model of an egalitarian relationship. Male and female gametes "recognize one another," and "interactions ... take place between sperm and egg."48 But the article in Scientific American in which those descriptions appear begins with a vignette that presages the dominant motif of their presentation: "It has been more than a century since Hermann Fol, a Swiss zoologist, peered into his microscope and became the first person to see a sperm penetrate an egg, fertilize it and form the first cell of a new embryo 9 This portrayal of the sperm as the active party-the one that penetrates and fertilizes the egg and produces the embryo-is not cited as an example of an earlier, now outmoded view. In fact, the author reiterates the point later in the article: "Many sperm can bind to and penetrate the zona pellucida, or outer coat, of an unfertilized mouse egg, but only one sperm will eventually fuse with the thin plasma membrane surrounding the egg proper (inner sphere), fertilizing the egg and giving rise to a new embryo."50 The imagery of sperm as aggressor is particularly startling in this case: the main discovery being reported is isolation of a particular molecule on the egg coat that plays an important role in fertilization! Wassarman's choice of language sustains the picture. He calls the molecule that has been isolated, ZP3, a "sperm receptor." "The basic process begins when many sperm first attach loosely and then bind tenaciously to receptors on the surface of the egg's thick outer coat, the zona pellucida. Each sperm, which has a large number of egg-binding proteins on its surface, binds to many sperm receptors on the egg. More specifically, a site on each of the egg-binding proteins fits a complementary site on a sperm receptor, much as a key fits a lock."51 With the sperm designated as the "key" and the egg the "lock," it is obvious which one acts and which one is acted upon. Could this imagery not be reversed, letting the sperm (the lock) wait until the egg produces the key? Or could we speak of two halves of a locket matching, and regard the matching itself as the action that initiates the fertilization?It is as if Wassarman were determined to make the egg the receiving partner. as a pocket in it rather like a lock. As the diagrams that illustrate Wassarman's article show, the molecules on the sperm are proteins and have "pockets." The small, mobile molecules that fit into these pockets are called ligands. As shown in the diagrams, ZP3 on the egg is a polymer of"keys"; many small knobs stick out. Typically, molecules on the sperm would be called receptors and molecules on the egg would be called ligands. But Wassarman chose to name ZP3 on the egg the receptor and to create a new term, "the egg-binding protein," for the molecule on the sperm that otherwise would have been called the receptor.52 Wassarman does credit the egg coat with having more functions than those of a sperm receptor. While he notes that "the zona pellucida has at times been viewed by investigators as a nuisance, a barrier to sperm and hence an impediment to fertilization," his new research reveals that the egg coat "serves as a sophisticated biological security system that screens incoming sperm, selects only those compatible with fertilization and development, prepares sperm for fusion with the egg and later protects the resulting embryo from polyspermy [a lethal condition caused by fusion of more than one sperm with a single egg]."53 Although this description gives the egg an active role, that role is drawn in stereotypically feminine terms The egg selects an appropriate mate, prepares him for fusion, and then protects the resulting offspring from harm. This is courtship and mating behavior as seen through the eyes of a sociobiologist: woman as the hard-to-get prize, who, following union with the chosen one, becomes woman as servant and mother. Wassarman does not quit there. In a review article for Science, he outlines the "chronology of fertilization."54 Near the end of the article are two subject headings. One is "Sperm Penetration," in which Wassarman describes how the chemical dissolving of the zona pellucida combines with the "substantial propulsive force generated by sperm." The next heading is "Sperm-Egg Fusion." This section details what happens inside the zona after a sperm "penetrates" it. Sperm "can make contact with, adhere to, and fuse with (that is, fertilize) an egg."55 Wassarman's word choice, again, is astonishingly skewed in favor of the sperm's activity, for in the next breath he says that sperm lose all motility upon fusion with the egg's surface. In mouse and sea urchin eggs, the sperm enters at the egg's volition, according to Wassarman's description: "Once fused with egg plasma membrane [the surface of the egg], how does a sperm enter the egg? The surface of both mouse and sea urchin eggs is covered with thousands of plasma membrane-bound projections, called microvilli [tiny "hairs"]. Evidence in sea urchins suggests that, after membrane fusion, a group of elongated microvilli cluster tightly around and interdigitate over the sperm head. As these microvilli are resorbed, the sperm is drawn into the egg. Therefore, sperm motility, which ceases at the time of fusion in both sea urchins and mice, is not required for sperm entry."5 The section called "Sperm Penetration" more logically would be followed by a section called "The Egg Envelops," rather than "SpermEgg Fusion." This would give a parallel-and more accuratesense that both the egg and the sperm initiate action. Another way that Wassarman makes less of the egg's activity is by describing components of the egg but referring to the sperm as a whole entity. Deborah Gordon has described such an approach as "atomism" ("the part is independent of and primordial to the whole") and identified it as one of the "tenacious assumptions" of Western science and medicine.57 Wassarman employs atomism to his advantage. When he refers to processes going on within sperm, he consistently returns to descriptions that remind us from whence these activities came: they are part of sperm that penetrate an egg or generate propulsive force. When he refers to processes going on within eggs, he stops there. As a result, any active role he grants them appears to be assigned to the parts of the egg, and not to the egg itself. In the quote above, it is the microvilli that actively cluster around the sperm. In another example, "the driving force for engulfment of a fused sperm comes from a region of cytoplasm just beneath an egg's plasma membrane."58
Colleges are under increasing pressure to retain their students. Federal and state officials are demanding that those who enter their public institutions— especially students from underrepresented groups— earn a degree. Over two dozen states disburse some state funding on how many students an institution graduates, rather than how many it enrolls.
As recruiting and educating students becomes increasingly expensive, colleges hope to balance the resources they use to recruit students with revenue generated when those students are retained.
Even the professionals who operate Big Data systems don't know the inner workings of the algorithms their systems develop. Interestingly, they don't even know which pieces of input are pivotal to the output and recommendations of those systems. In this context, it is reasonable that the general public sees EdTech companies as a threat to students' autonomy, liberty, freedom of thought, equality and opportunity.
Aside from the opaque nature of Big Data and Machine Learning algorithms, it is not clear - to this author at least - that EdTech companies deserve to be treated as skeptically as they are. It's quite possible that the nub of the issue is not the stated objectives and current operations of these companies, but rather the uses that this data might be put to in the future and have not been foreseen today. In other words, the way the data might be used in the future is unpredictable. The unpredictable uses of the data could lead to unintended consequences.
Predictive analytics uses student and institutional data to create change almost immediately. Many institutions may not be experienced with using data in this way, at this pace, and perhaps with such high stakes like ensuring students complete their degree in a timely manner.
Assess your school's capacity to use predictive analytics Data about students and institutional processes should not only be accurate but also comprehensive. Comprehensiveness also means considering all relevant data about the students who are being examined.
practising data minimisation is a keystone of a rights-based, responsible data approach. And sadly, it's the opposite of the approach we're seeing governments around the world take. UK Government passed what has been described by Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, as the "most extreme mass surveillance law ever passed in a democracy". The law, known officially as the Investigatory Powers Act, forces UK internet providers to store browsing histories — including domains visited — for one year, in case of police investigations. Unofficially, and in reference to its invasive powers, it has been nicknamed the Snooper's Charter.
At the same time, the new President-elect of the United States is "not ruling out" their campaign idea of gathering a 'registry' of Muslims, refusing to answer questions on how it would differ from Nazi-era Germany policies around registering Jews. There have even been multiple occasions when mass surveillance and data collection have played key roles in facilitating humanitarian crises, including genocides
wages for facebook article/project art performance piece
BY DENYING OUR FACEBOOK TIME A WAGE WHILE PROFITING DIRECTLY FROM THE DATA IT GENERATES AND TRANSFORMING IT INTO AN ACT OF FRIENDSHIP, CAPITAL HAS KILLED MANY BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. FIRST OF ALL, IT HAS GOT A HELL OF A LOT OF WORK ALMOST FOR FREE, AND IT HAS MADE SURE THAT WE, FAR FROM STRUGGLING AGAINST IT, WOULD SEEK THAT WORK AS THE BEST THING ONLINE.
Francis Bacon, cont.
Bacon described science in ways that tried to get people - particularly young wealthy men - in England to be more excited about science and its capacity to unlock the secrets of nature. Here is a quote from Bacon trying to do this: "If any man there be who, not content to rest in and use the knowledge which has already been discovered aspires to penetrate further. . . to seek demonstrable knowledge. . . . I invite all such to join, as true sons of knowledge, with me, that passing by the outer courts of nature, we may find a way into her inner chambers."
Bacon quote, cont.
Bacon describes science as giving men the ability to discover previously unknown knowledge, using these descriptions: "penetrate further. . . to seek demonstrable knowledge. . . that passing by the outer courts of nature, we may find a way into her inner chambers" Modern observers often find this language to be surprisingly sexualized or eroticized We can see that this could help Bacon appeal to his audience and help get them excited about science and simultaneously note that this language reinforces gender stereotypes and power relationships of the time
U.S., the companies and platforms you interact with own the data they collect about you. This means they can legally sell this information to data brokers.
Data brokers are companies that are in the business of buying and selling datasets from a wide range of sources, including location data from many mobile phone carriers. Data brokers combine data to create detailed profiles of individual people, which they sell to other companies.
n 2013, the Associated Press added an entry on mental illness to its Style Book to help journalists write about mental illness fairly and accurately. And in recent years, Hinshaw notes, screenwriters have made an effort to portray more humanized characterizations of individuals with mental illness - for example, Carrie Mathison on Showtime's "Homeland," who has bipolar disorder;
Bradley Cooper's character in "Silver Linings Playbook;" and John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning economist with schizophrenia in "A Beautiful Mind."
In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state's right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate. The case, known as Buck v. Bell, centered on a young woman named Carrie Buck, whom the state of Virginia had deemed to be "feebleminded."
Buck v. Bell was considered a victory for America's eugenics movement, an early 20th century school of thought that emphasized biological determinism and actively sought to "breed out" traits that were considered undesirable. "The eugenicists looked at evolution and survival of the fittest, as Darwin was describing it, and they believed 'We can help nature along, if we just plan who reproduces and who doesn't reproduce.' " as many as 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century. The victims of state-mandated sterilization included people like Buck who had been labeled "mentally deficient," as well as those who who were deaf, blind and diseased. Minorities, poor people and "promiscuous" women were often targeted.
Review: Weapons of Math Destruction In an important new book, Cathy O'Neil warns us that algorithms can and do perpetuate inequality
By Evelyn Lamb on August 31, 2016 article
The websites you visit: Your financial status
By combining data points like your online purchases and where you live, together with records provided by its marketing partners from various sources.
Predictive Analytics in Higher Education Five Guiding Practices for Ethical Use
By: Manuela Ekowo , Iris Palmer
Focus student recruitment
Colleges are now using Big Data to find those geographic areas and demographics where their promotional efforts not only generate large numbers of high caliber applicants, but also applicants who, if accepted into the college, will actually enrol.
biologists have set a minimal threshold for the amount of genetic differentiation that is required to recognize subspecies.
Combined genetic data reveal that from around one million years ago to the last tens of thousands of years, human evolution has been dominated by two evolutionary forces: (1) constant population movement and range expansion; and (2) restrictions on mating between individuals only because of distance.
Trust and knowledgee
Connecting these questions back to our investigation of trust and knowledge, we can see that: •The author values the knowledge that can come through academic scientists •The author questions if the systems of accountability, that are supposed to help knowledge be more trustworthy, can also exclude valuable knowledge and methods from non-Western cultures •The author values the way that systems of accountability shape indigenous knowledge traditions - including the way that an incorrect hypothesis can be corrected or refined through regular close interaction with sweetgrass •The author suggests that critical thinking about these questions of trust and knowledge can lead to broader sharing of trustworthy knowledge about the natural world - in other words, critiquing academic science does not mean that the knowledge produced by academic science has no value; rather the author argues that critique can enhance the work of academic science, as an additional part of its systems of accountability •This chapter does not pit trust in expertise vs. distrust in expertise; rather, it shows how different systems of expertise and accountability can offer additional research questions, observations, methods, and results - it complicates the question of trust, but does not mean that everything is trustworthy or nothing is trustworthy
Other examples
Consider one of the following. How do we construct this thing? What definitions, assumptions, attitudes, etc., do we associate with this thing? How do these perceptions of this thing shape our actions - in other words, why does it matter how we construct it? •Technology •Nature •Innovation •Authority
What does it mean that a story has politics?
Consider the portrayal of gender in these images:
Colors
Consider this image. How would you draw a border around everything that is pink? Everything that is turquoise? You would have to choose where to draw the border. Individuals might choose differently, but overall, you'd expect people who share a culture and language to have somewhat overlapping expectations. But different cultures might potentially divide up this image into different colors in different ways. In some cultures, the "orange" section would not be orange - just another part of "red," for example. In some cultures, what would be called "light blue" and "dark blue" in English speaking cultures might be considered completely different colors. In some cultures there might be no concept of"purple." This doesn't mean there is no variation in color (which is based on perception of wavelength), but rather that how these different wavelengths are categorized can depend on the culture. In this way, colors can be thought of as cultural constructions - it is not that no colors exist but rather that the way we categorize and think about them can vary a lot from culture to culture.
As a man of faith, Camper believed in monogenesis, the idea that all people share a common ancestry, even though, he thought that some groups had drifted further from the Biblical ideal than others. As a man of the Enlightenment, Camper believed that the world was ordered according to laws that could be discovered through reason and observation and then visually demonstrated. In such a world, he and others believed that an organism's "outer state"—its appearance— reflected its "inner state," its moral or intellectual worth.
Convinced that ancient Greece and Rome had come closer than other civilizations to perfection, he used Greek statues to establish standards of beauty. He ranked human faces by how closely they resembled this ideal. After measuring dozens of statues, Camper found that their "facial angle" averaged 100 degrees. (The facial angle is the angle formed by two intersecting lines— one drawn horizontally from the ears to the nose and other formed by the shape of the face from the upper lip to the forehead.) With this ideal in mind, Camper began measuring and sorting the skulls of apes and humans. He found that apes had a facial angle of 42 to 50 degrees. The average for the Europeans he measured was about 90 degrees and for Africans 70 degrees. (The intersecting lines on the drawing below indicate "facial angles.")
Privacy - There is a great deal of concern - perhaps even excessive concern - about the privacy of the information collected about each student and her family. The concern is that this data could fall into the wrong hands or be abused by those who have been given responsibility for safeguarding the information. fundamental issue is fear that the technical and management safeguards either won't work or will be abused.
Correlation vs 'cause and effect real world experience in other areas of Big Data have shown that high correlations are sufficient by themselves to make decisions that are either lucrative or achieve the objectives the players in mind. This means they have been able to realize significant benefits based on correlation without being able to argue the underlying mechanics.
Categories and Identities
Cultural construction and classification
Phrenology, cont.
Example: Different species have different skull sizes; 19th century scientists largely concluded that a larger skull meant a larger brain, which meant greater intelligence for a species. -Today, scientists believe that the average brain size of a species gives you information on intelligence ONLY when using the proportion of the brain size to the body size. So an elephant is not necessarily more intelligent than a dog. -Some question whether "intelligence" from a human perspective should be used for non-humans -Others question if "intelligence" is a concept that is defined rigorously enough to test at all, even with humans
Debates about eugenics
Currently, ethics experts, scientists, and other groups are having conversations about the dangers of eugenics in relation to topics like: -Genetic engineering -Reproductive technologies - should parents be able to choose the genetic makeup of their children? -Medical decision-making about who should get particular treatments or procedures - COVID has made brought some of these debates into the public eye, e.g.: uhttps://www.propublica.org/article/people-with-intellectual-disabilities-may-be-denied-lifesaving-care-under-these-plans-as-coronavirus-spreads uhttps://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/4/4/21204261/coronavirus-covid-19-disabled-people-disabilities-triage -Additionally, some argue that the logic of eugenics, particularly the idea that some lives are less worth preserving than others due to inherent differences in worth, could affect entirely different fields -Example of an ethical question: If a sophisticated computer program can accurately predict which children will be successful, is it ethical to devote most educational resources to those children's elementary schools? Does it matter if it's a private donor who wants to donate a huge amount of money to schools but use this method to do so? What if this donor wants to donate this money in hopes of convincing state and local governments to follow this lead and do the same with taxpayer funds? Does the ethical dimension change?
Google and the Misinformed Public
Data Discrimination, Search Bias, Social Justice, Uncategorized safiya noble article
Psychiatric hospitals cause more harm than good.
Despite sweeping reforms that occurred over the past half-century, many films and television shows continue to portray psychiatric hospitals as bereft of comfort or care - empty corridors, bare walls and intimidating wings filled with manipulative doctors whose treatments cause more harm than good. And patients are often shown as committed against their will, or psychotic and out-of-control. "In reality, a great number of people elect to go to [psychiatric wards]," says Wahl, dispelling the notion that most patients are involuntarily committed. Laws differ from state to state, but on average it's very difficult to send patients to a psychiatric ward against their will.
Note on disciplinary contributions:
Different disciplines contribute in different ways to the understanding of race as cultural construction •Sussman focuses on molecular biology, but also mentions anthropology (anthropology is the study of human beings and includes both the study of culture and the study of biological aspects of human beings) •Historians and those who study the past (art history, literary studies, etc.) have shown how different cultures have categorized identities over time, finding examples of time periods and cultures that do not use today's predominant views of races, as well evidence of how today's predominant views came about over time •Artists, musicians, authors, filmmakers, etc., have explored racial categories •Sociologists have looked at how race works in society and contributed to this understanding •Psychologists have studied how individuals form identities and what influences identity formation •Philosophers, including those who study epistemology (the study of how we know and believe things), have studied how ideas of race have come about and been maintained •Recall the video we watched on race medicine as well: https://www.ted.com/talks/dorothy_roberts_the_problem_with_race_based_medicine?language=en
Online Discussion Prompts
Do all online discussion questions below in the same post on Flipgrid. Respond to one peer on Flipgrid as well, as usual. Identify one way that the discussion in this PowerPoint could apply to an ethics or equity issue in your career field or in some other area of interest for you, and explain how. Identify one topic in this PowerPoint that you want to discuss more, and connect to a topic of your choice related to technology and society (privacy, algorithmic bias, disinformation online, effects of social media use on politics, effects of social media on mental health, genetic engineering, etc.) Mention something that you're proud of in terms of intellectual work you did related to this class. It could be an online discussion or assignment that you're proud of, it could be that you're proud of how much you learned about a particular topic, or it could be that you were able to talk about class material with friends/on social media or were able to relate a movie or TV show to something we discussed in class. Do not mention grades, but rather mention thinking that you did related to class material that you're proud of. Ask your classmates one question
The Problem with race-based Medicine
Dorothy Roberts
Turning Live Surveillance Feeds Into Unsettling Works of Art
Dries Depoorter picutre has made an art form of turning public data into works that feel provocatively intrusive.
User experience
Educators often don't know a student is having a problem until they see the student failing (or just barely passing) quizzes and tests. But, even when they recognize the problem, they don't know the reasons any given student is falling behind. Big Data will help students by recognizing the problems they have as those problems occur. Then it can offer tutorials that address those problems as they occur - not days or weeks later when it may be too late to affect the students' learning trajectories.
Inuit observations have identified several important environmental changes in the Arctic as a result of climate change, and their knowledge about bowhead whale behaviour helped researchers revise their survey methods to improve population size estimates.
Elders of the Heiltsuk First Nation in B.C. recognized two types of wolves — coastal and inland — previously undocumented by Western scientific methods. With such proven value in only a few examples, imagine how TEK can further inform science!
How is this all possible?
Every device that you use, every company you do business with, every online account you create or loyalty program you join, and even the government itself collects data about you. The kinds of data they collect include things like your name, address, age, Social Security or driver's license number, purchase transaction history, web browsing activity, voter registration information, whether you have children living with you or speak a foreign language, the photos you have posted to social media, the listing price of your home, whether you've recently had a life event like getting married, your credit score, what kind of car you drive, how much you spend on groceries, how much credit card debt you have and the location history from your mobile phone.doesn't matter if these datasets were collected separately by different sources and don't contain your name. It's still easy to match them up according to other information about you that they contain.
How do cultural perceptions of identity shape scientific storytelling?
Emily Martin's work on gender and narratives of reproduction Francis Bacon and early modern science Analyzing visuals (We'll practice analyzing language and images; we'll need these skills throughout the semester)
In other words
Epistemology and STS ask questions like: How does knowledge work? How does expertise work? How can we use this understanding of knowledge to think through complicated situations and decisions about which knowledge to act on? These questions can help us move away from: "Is it better to trust or doubt experts?" And toward: "What kinds of knowledge do we trust for what purposes? How do we know when to shift from trust to skepticism or how to combine the two in the most effective way for a particular situation?" In part, this is because STS and epistemology help us incorporate our understanding of contexts into our decisions about knowledge and trust.
What stereotypes of women are seen in 19th century attitudes toward hysteria? STS scholars interested in gender often connect these stereotypes to modern or more recent issues related to gender in the history of medicine.
Examples of how gender roles/stereotypes/inequalities shape scientific/medical knowledge: -What happens when only one gender is used as test subjects for medical treatments? -What happens when the average-sized male body is used for all crash test dummies? -How women's pain is perceived by medical professionals - are there gender-based differences? -Are heart attack symptoms the same for all genders -How much doctors know about health care for transgender patients -How much science knows about different kinds of reproductive systems -How much science knows about sexuality and desire in different bodies -How much members of the non-scientist public know about sex, desire, and health, and from whose perspectives Differences in treatment or practice are not the same as knowledge but can still relate to gender: -Is sexual dysfunction covered by insurance? For whom? -How might stereotypes of masculinity lead to hesitation to get tests/checkups/go to the hospital, etc.? -How are mental health treatments affected by the gender of the patient?
Cultural constructs change over time and across cultures, and often also varies w/in a culture
Examples: •What is a family? •What is tradition? •What should education do? •What makes a good meal? •What rooms does a house have? What should a sitting area look like? •What is okay to do in public vs. in private?
Common tactics for working on wicked problems
Find out about who else is working on the problem Who in the past has worked on this? They might have described the problem in different language but have valuable information about it Who else is working on the problem? Who is affected by the problem? Who has expertise on this type of problem? Who has personal or community experience with this problem? Who has responsibility for these types of problems in academics, government, private sectors, etc.? Find out about the smaller challenges involved in the larger challenge; find out how people have addressed similar challenges Think about what you're good at and how your own skills and perspectives, community contacts, knowledge, and experiences can contribute
The no-touch soap dispenser most likely uses some kind of light sensor to detect when a hand is beneath the contraption. Apparently, a dark-skinned hand wasn't light enough to register on the sensor. This simple problem would have been avoided if it had been tested on a variety of skin tones. That, of course, requires people working in the industry from a variety of backgrounds.
Flickr and Google were both forced to apologize when their automatic image labeling systems were tagging photos of black people with "ape" and "gorilla".
How Is the Future of Big Data in Education Likely to Unfold? These trends are instrumental in informing the schools' policy development, strategic planning, tactical operations, and resource allocation, and overcoming the Big Data challenges in Education.
Focus student recruitment Student retention and graduation Construction planning and facility upgrades Data centralization Data based decision making and planning Greater use of predictive analytics Local adoption of analytics tools User experience Real time quiz evaluations and corrective action Privacy, privacy, privacy Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining Games Flipped classrooms Adaptation on steroids Institutional evaluation
Why focus on systems of accountability?
Focusing on systems of accountability is a way to look at how knowledge is made and spread (an epistemological question) in a way that applies to many practical situations. Thinking through systems of accountability lets us move from this, which might not be based on an accurate understanding of how scientific or other knowledge develops: It's easier to trust knowledge when the knowledge is built on previous conversations about the topic, acknowledges its own limitations, and provides ways for others in the community to challenge its observations, methods, results, conclusions, and models
Roots of food and medicine
For centuries, Indigenous people's lives depended on their knowledge about the environment. Many plant species — including three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation and enjoyed across the globe — were domesticated by Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. Corn, squash, beans, potatoes and peppers are just a few examples of foods that now contribute vastly to global cuisine! knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, Indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy through conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C. active ingredient in the pain reliever Aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, was first discovered by Indigenous people who utilized the bark of the willow tree.
Ahistorical thinking, cont.
For example, many people worry that "anyone" can publish their ideas without verifying them on social media, and argue that this is unprecedented in history and caused by the Internet Actually, there are many times when publishing became more accessible, for example when paper became cheap and there was a rise of pamphlet culture in 18th century Europe - at that time, many were worried that the fact that almost anyone could publish would destroy society, but it made it possible for ideas like democracy and rights to spread If we think that it's totally new for a lot of people to be able to publish their thoughts without a publishing company mediating, then we might imagine a problem or solution in a different way Scholars like Safiya Noble (whom we read in our unit on algorithmic bias) would be aware that historians often consider these shifts - in which huge numbers of people have access to speak to publics - to be democratizing forces. This knowledge might lead some scholars to suggest that disinformation is more caused by the profit models of tech companies looking for clicks, and not be as worried about the fact that "ordinary" or non-expert people get to share their ideas or thoguhts. In other words, historical awareness might shift how the problem is understood. Watch, this short video, which offers a critique of the lack of historical accuracy in the documentary "The Social Dilemma" (you don't need to know the documentary to understand the clip - basically the newspaper clippings were added by the remix to point out how the documentary is spreading a false claim about history) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVRLzLQ1k34 People assume that backlash against technology is new, but it is not What does it tell us that society was so concerned about the bicycle? If the bicycle represented greater mobility for women, for example, what does it tell us that some believed that the bicycle would cause mental problems? (Think back to our discussion of hysteria, for comparison)
On the involuntary sterilization procedure
For men it was something like a vasectomy. For women it was a salpingectomy, where they cauterized the path that the egg takes toward fertilization. It was, in the case of women, not minor surgery and when you read about what happened, it's many, many days of recovery and it had certain dangers attached to it, and a lot of the science was still quite new. many cases the women involved were not told what was being done to them, they might be told that they were having an appendectomy, they weren't being told that the government has decided that you are unfit to reproduce and we're then going to have surgery on you, so that just compounds the horror of the situation.
At first, scientists attempted to classify human races based on variations in characteristics
Franz Boas, have divided us into anywhere between three and more than thirty different races, without any success. Most of these hypothetical "races" were developed using assumptions about genetic relationships and distributions among different human populations.
Specifically, this psychological damage was a result of removing male sexuality from females, an idea that stems from Freud's famous 'Oedipal moment of recognition' in which a young female realizes she has no penis, and has been castrated. (I don't have the time to open that particular bag of worms, but feel free to click here to read about it)
Freud believed that women experienced hysteria because they were unable to reconcile the loss of their (metaphoric) penis. With this in mind, Freud described hysteria as 'characteristically feminine', and recommended basically what every other man treating hysteria had through the years- get married and have sex. Previously this was done to allow for the ridding of sexual liquids, whereas now the idea was that a woman could regain her lost penis by marrying one, and potentially giving birth to one. If marriage wasn't an acceptable or possible treatment however, there was another technique of treatment for hysteria, prolapsed uteri and any gynecologicals problem really, rising in popularity in the late 17th century- uterine massage.
A scientific study also brought up the issue of voice recognition applications being far more effective at understanding men's voices compared to women's. That was because the software was trained using mainly male voices.
Google's own statistics reveal its tech departments are just 1 percent black, 3 percent Hispanic, 3 percent mixed-race, 39 percent Asian, and 53 percent white. Statistics on other tech giants paint a similar story
It was Jean-Martin Charcot, in 1880 France, who first took a modern scientific sense to the female-only disease of hysteria.
He lectured to his medical students, showing them photos and live subjects, on the hysteria symptoms he believed were caused by an unknown internal injury affecting the nervous system. One of these medical students was none other than Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud, working with his partner Breuer in Austria, developed Charcot's theories further, and wrote several studies on female hysteria from 1880-1915. He believed that hysteria was a result, not of a physical injury in the body, but of a 'psychological scar produced through trauma or repression'.
Indigenous knowledge
How Indigenous Knowledge Advances Science and Technology by Jesse Popp -This article provides an overview of how indigenous knowledge traditions contribute to science and technology -How does this article shed light on what Kimmerer's purpose was in writing Braiding Sweetgrass? -Would you agree or disagree with this interpretation?: Popp suggests a simple argument with ample evidence, that traditional knowledge from indigenous communities is valuable for scientists to learn about. Kimmerer provides other examples of why valuing indigenous knowledge is important, but Kimmerer also suggests that there are fundamental differences between these modes of knowledge production that should be valued. In short, Popp's approach is to emphasize the similarities between traditional indigenous ways of producing knowledge and global scientific communities, while Kimmerer investigates the differences to shed light on how these different communities value different things."
Example of classification system: Gender roles
How do cultures construct gender roles? •"Gender roles" refers to both the gender categories (not the same as sex) and the traits society associates with those gender categories (what counts as masculine, what counts as feminine, etc.) •Different cultures have different ways of constructing the categories: Binary (the idea that man and woman are the only two genders), three genders (Fa'afafine, Two-spirit, many others), gender spectrum, non-linear models
How do we tell stories about science?
How do gender, race, and other social identities shape these stories? How do popular tropes find their way into science textbooks, ads, museum exhibits, and other communications about science and technology?
In this class, STS will also help us explore:
How do we know what to trust? What is the balance between being able to critique the limits of ideas and sources without totally losing trust that ideas and sources are valuable and can be acted on? How do we talk about science and technology in ways that show knowledge of the current predominant conversation but also offer something new or different from the usual points? How do we study huge, complicated problems and recognize how tangled and layered these problems are, but still be able to make decisions and work toward solutions without being overwhelmed? In other words, STS will help us think through complicated questions about how we use the knowledge we gain in education and research. These are skills that anyone might want to have when trying to make an impact on a community, a career field, or the larger world.
Analyzing what shapes knowledge work: Audience and purpose
How does the audience of a source shape the source? You might consider how the article reflects: •What the audience is interested in and why •The level of previous knowledge on the topic the audience likely has •What the audience values (what kinds of evidence they value, their moral or political values, what they value professionally, what they personally care about, etc. - the relevant values will depend on the kind of publication) •How the author wants to intervene in or change the conversation for this audience (an article is usually trying to make some kind of intervention) •The audience's likely attitudes toward the subject matter
questions to ask when evaluating the trustworthiness of science and health information
How far away is the information from its original source? Who paid for the information?. Is there any hype? Does the source of information have an intentional bias? Is it a minority point of view? Is the story almost too good to be true? Is the source of information a TV or movie star?
Some studies of mast fruiting have suggested that the mechanism for synchrony comes not through the air, but underground. The trees in a forest are often interconnected by subterranean networks of mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. The mycorrhizal symbiosis enables the fungi to forage for mineral nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the tree in exchange for carbohydrates. The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity
How generously they shower us with food, literally giving themselves so that we can live. But in the giving their lives are also ensured. Our taking returns benefit to them in the circle of life making life, the chain of reciprocity. Living by the precepts of the Honorable Harvest—to take only what is given, to use it well, to be grateful for the gift, and to reciprocate the gift—is easy in a pecan grove. We reciprocate the gift by taking care of the grove, protecting it from harm, planting seeds so that new groves will shade the prairie and feed the squirrels
Identities and categories: ethnicity/race
How races or ethnicities are categorized •Research has now shown that the categories of European, Asian, African, and Native American reflect cultural categories and not biological differences •Geographical differences do not correlate to this categorization of race •Some time periods and culture had a concept of ethnicity or race but used very different categorizations •The division of human beings into "scientific" categories of European, Asian, African, and Native American largely came about from Europe during the time of European colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade •The term "Black" in South Africa can refer to someone of African or South Asian descent; the term "Black" in some parts of Europe can refer to people of Asian, African, or Middle Eastern descent •The term "white," at various points in US history, did NOT include groups such as German-Americans, Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Polish-Americans, or Irish-Americans Note how both science and history can shed light on the cultural constructedness of these categories.
Where do we see ahistorical thinking in conversations about technology and society?
It's very easy to focus on what is new when dealing with technology and society Often when we think of technology, the first things that come to mind are new technologies, even though chairs, glasses, roofs, etc., are all technologies (remember the objects you chose to talk about the first week of class in your Flipgrid?)
Different types of articles
How would you evaluate the fairness/bias in these different types of materials? Would you evaluate fairness or bias? How would your reasoning differ depending on the purpose of the source? •An editorial (argument) on a controversial political topic •A website with creative ideas for teaching math to middle school students •An article in a scholarly journal about physics •An article in a scholarly journal about anthropology •A blog post talking about someone's personal experiences related to a social issue •A blog post explaining a religious tradition to an audience that seems largely unfamiliar with that tradition
The Furtherfield Gallery's debut show in its new Finsbury Park home will make you question what you put online By George Nott
I am standing in the bedroom of a 19-year-old girl called Kay. Her size seven shoes are discarded on the floor, her bed's not been made and there's an unfinished mug of coffee going cold on the clothes cabinet.
This class and STS
IAH is about arts and humanities inquiry - learning how artists and humanists think through topics and ask and explore interesting questions - and applying arts and humanities inquiry to topics that connect to people's lives IAH is "integrative" arts and the humanities in the sense that it is supposed to be interdisciplinary (showing how different fields of study inform each other) and also supposed to help you integrate arts and humanities learning with your own lives or topics that affect everyone STS is an approach that will help us with these aims
IBM and the Holocaust
IBM sold calculating machines to Nazi Germany to calculate the number of Jews in Germany. "The government of our Führer and Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler is statistics-friendly," wrote Zahn in Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv (ASA), the official journal of the German Statistical Society development of punch card technology facilited automation - and thus speed - of collection of this data.
Institutionalised discrimination towards asylum seekers in Bangladesh
ID cards in Bangladesh could be blocking millions of Rohingya asylum seekers from receiving basic human rights; There are over 200,000 Rohingya asylum seekers who are not eligible for identification cards given to recognised Bengali nationals. The cards also make carrying out 'unofficial' work increasingly difficult for unregistered Rohingyas, thus diminishing their already meagre opportunities to earn money.
TO VIEW WAGES FOR FACEBOOK AS A THING RATHER THAN A PERSPECTIVE IS TO DETACH THE END RESULT OF OUR STRUGGLE FROM THE STRUGGLE ITSELF AND TO MISS ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN DEMYSTIFYING AND SUBVERTING THE ROLE TO WHICH WE HAVE BEEN CONFINED IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY.
IF WE TAKE WAGES FOR FACEBOOK AS A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE, WE CAN SEE THAT STRUGGLING FOR IT IS GOING TO PRODUCE A REVOLUTION IN OUR LIVES AND IN OUR SOCIAL POWER. NOT ONLY IS WAGES FOR FACEBOOK A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE, BUT IT IS A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE FROM A CONTEMPORARY VIEWPOINT THAT POINTS TOWARDS CLASS SOLIDARITY.
Bacon and nature
If Bacon uses the relationship between men and women as a metaphor for the relationship between Man and Nature (or Male Scientists and Nature), what does that mean? Possibly: Bacon's rhetoric places Nature in the position that women held in his society (16th-17th century England), thus portraying Nature as passive and scientists as heroic for subduing or conquering "her" How might this rhetoric reinforce common tropes that nature is there to be exploited or used or defeated rather than a more mutual sense of the relationship between human beings and other parts of the natural world?
What is science??
If science is a list of facts that can never change, then there is no way to deal with the fact that science can reflect cultural and historical contexts. It's frustrating, and it can feel like the more you know, the less certain you are. That's NOT a bad thing to recognize how much you don't know - it can spur the imagination and the desire to keep learning throughout our lives - but it's hard if that understanding of all the knowledge that is out there makes it too overwhelming to make decisions on what knowledge to act on. But: If science is viewed as a body of knowledge, a method for gaining knowledge, AND an institution or industry, then it is possible to go into a more fine-grained, historically and culturally informed process of inquiry about when it's important to trust and when it's important to be skeptical
The "naturalness" of categories
If something feels natural or universal, or is just assumed to be "the norm," then often it is, in a sense, invisible; sometimes people don't notice it unless it has been threatened in some way or things are not smoothly operating for some group of people (with at least some power to affect things). •So, for categories, many people do notice that something is a classification system, or how it affects them, unless they do not fit well into a category, or if they are in a category that decreases their power, or if the classification system causes other problems
Stella Young from sydney australia wheelchair
Im not your inspiration, thank you very much tedtalk ted talk
Martin, cont.
Images and language used in science can have a big social impact, according to the essay The essay mentions Social Darwinism, the now-discredited belief that people of lower social classes are there rightfully due to the evolutionary superiority of the upper classes (also used to support hierarchies based on race, gender). This view took the assumptions about society in their specific time and place and projected these ideas onto the human species in all times and places in ways that justified political and social beliefs about the supremacy of particular groups, often white wealthy men. Martin notes that the projection of specific and politically consequential human views onto scientific objects of study continues in many ways
Online Discussion Question 1
Imagine that in your future or current workplace, you have received a sales pitch from a data analytics consulting firm that claims that "When an algorithm makes a decision, you know it's free from human bias!" Your boss has heard that this might not be true but asks you to explain why. How might you explain why this claim (the above quote) is flawed? Use 2 specific examples from the readings today. For each example, assume that the algorithmic bias was NOT the original intent, and explain how the data set, the testing process, etc., likely contributed to this form of algorithmic bias. Choose at least 2 specific examples from 2 different readings.
Linnaeus classified humankind as a species within the animal kingdom. He divided the human species into four varieties: European, American, Asiatic, and African. In his view, the four were more alike than different. By the late 1700s, a number of thinkers were trying to improve on Linnaeus's classification of humans.
In 1795, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach came up with a new classification scheme. In his book, On the Natural Variety of Mankind, he divided humanity into five varieties. As Linnaeus did, he associated each with a particular geographic area—Negro (African), Mongolian (Asian), Malay (Southeast Asia), American Indian (American), and Caucasian (European). Blumenbach introduced the word Caucasian "to describe the variety of mankind—the Georgian—that had originated on the southern slopes of Mount Caucasus." This, to Blumenbach, was the most beautiful race, and he said it must be "considered as the primate or intermediate of these five principal races." Other races represented "a degeneration from the original type.
Bacon: historical context
In Bacon's time, marriage was not seen as between equals, but rather a wife was expected to some extent to be controlled by and led by her husband Seduction was often seen as "conquering" or "subduing" women or convincing her to reveal her "mysteries"
fter Sept. 11, the New York Police Department—with significant help from the CIA—monitored bookstores, restaurants, and nightclubs in Muslim neighborhoods and placed informants, known as "mosque crawlers," in places of worship, where they reported on sermons and recorded the license plates of innocent congregants. (The program was notoriously ineffective, and the NYPD settled two lawsuits over this conduct earlier this month.) Other reports show that the Department of Homeland Security—an agency founded to protect against terror attacks—has been tracking Black Lives Matter activists. If you name a prominent civil rights leader of the 20th or 21st centuries, chances are strong that he or she was surveilled in the name of national security.
In June 2013, the headlines were that the NSA was logging everyone's phone calls. We now know that the NSA's call records program—the single largest domestic spying program in our nation's history—was effectively beta-tested for almost a decade on American immigrants.
Ancient Greece, cont.
In ancient Greece, relationships between men and women were often described with the language that the men were "hunting" or "conquering" the young women The science (philosophy) of the time believed that men were naturally more active and more ruled by reason/mind Stories portrayed women as passive recipients of male affection; portrayals of women with agency were often of dangerous or monstrous women The scientific storytelling about reproduction had many parallels to other kinds of storytelling of the time; the cultural attitudes seems to have shaped the scientific understanding In short, some trends and tropes that scholars like Martin notice today may have very long histories behind them
skin color is related to the amount of solar radiation, and dark skin is found in Africa, India, and Australia. However, many other genetic traits in peoples of these areas are not similar. Furthermore, similar traits such as skin color are convergent; different genes can cause similar morphological and behavioral characteristics.
In biology, a species is defined as a population of individuals who are able to mate and have viable offspring; that is, offspring who are also successful in reproducing. Ultimately, over tens of thousands of years of separation, if little or no mating takes place between separate populations, genetic distinctions can become so great that individuals of the different populations could no longer mate and produce viable offspring.
Last week, hundreds of students in UK gathered in front of the Department for Education and chanted "f**k the algorithm". Within days, their protests prompted officials to reverse course and throw out test scores that an algorithm had generated for students who never sat their exams due to the pandemic.
Students will now receive grades based on their teacher's estimate of what their grade would have been, had the exams gone forward as planned.
Martin's purpose
In reading any scholarly article, it's good to look for the purpose - what is the effect that the author is trying to have on a conversation? Martin critiques the scientific inaccuracy of these fairy tale tropes and the idea of a passive egg, suggesting that being able to notice and critique these sexist tropes will make textbooks and articles more scientifically accurate - like many STS scholars, Martin thinks that this kind of analysis increases scientific rigor by allowing for a correction of these distortions Martin also at the end of the article indicates that being able to identify and critique these tropes can help society become more just and equitable
How did the algorithm discriminate?
In the absence of actual exams, Ofqual decided to estimate the A-level grades using an algorithm. Three inputs were used: 1. The historical grade distribution of schools from the three previous years (2017-2019); 2. The rank of each student within her own school for a particular subject, based on a teacher's evaluation of their likely grade had the A-levels gone forward as planned (called the "Centre Assessed Grade" or CAG for short); 3. The previous exam results for a student per subject.
The Council of Pecans
In the span of a single generation my ancestors were "removed" three times—Wisconsin to Kansas, points in between, and then to Oklahoma. much was scattered and left along that trail. Graves of half the people. Language. Knowledge. Names. My great-grandmother Sha-note, "wind blowing through," was renamed Charlotte. Names the soldiers or the missionaries could not pronounce were not permitted When they got to Kansas they must have been relieved to find groves of nut trees along the rivers—a type unknown to them, but delicious and plentiful. Without a name for this new food they just called them nuts—pigan—which became pecan in English. that's the whole point of nuts: to provide the embryo with all that is needed to start a new life.
How Mental Illness is Misrepresented in the Media article
Insidious portrayals on TV shape perceptions about real-life people with psychological disorders. By Kirstin Fawcett, Contributor April 16, 2015
Epistemic Value and Science
Intemann on Diversity and Science Kimmerer and indigenous science
After Darwin popularized the idea that humans are descended from apes, the prognathous (protruding) jaw became a sign of lower development and of a closer relationship to primitive man. .
It also became the basis of much racial stereotyping of the Irish, and racial anthropologists argued that working class people were more prognathous than their social superiors- who were- self-flatteringly described as also biologically superior
Credibility, cont.
It's not a formula - think about why you trust what the source says. In some cases, you can go to: •Author's qualifications •Reputation or nature of the publication •Reliability of the sources used in the article •Evidence and knowledge shown in the article itself •In the article, the author communicates knowledgeably about how this discussion fits into a larger conversation •Author's commitment to empowering the reader to gain knowledge/fair and accurate treatment of different ideas
A 1637 text explains that when sexual fluids are not regularly released, 'the heart and surrounding areas are enveloped in a morbid and moist exudation', and that any 'lascivious females, inclined to venery' simply had a buildup of these fluids.
It's obviously laughable to think that doctors believed everything wrong with women could be attributed to their liquid levels, but contrarily it is interesting how close doctors got to the truth, in their belief that extreme sexual desire was caused by a lack of regular orgasm.
hidden figures
Katherine Johnson- mathematician/ orbits around spacecraft/ was in charge of calculating every possible orbit with varying situations/early space programs like mercury and Appollo missions Dorothy Vaughn- very first African American supervisors computers/taught herself and others computer programming Mary Jackson- first African American female engineer for NASA in 58 left in the 80s and was essentially demoted to take over the women program to give back and inspire
Intemann: Social Justice rationale
Key questions for Intemann: -Who is included in STEM work? Who has opportunities/advancement/reward? -Who is most likely to benefit most from a particular STEM project? -Does the project affect inequity in some way? Does it exacerbate inequity? Does it address inequity? Note that this article acknowledges the possibility that technoscientific work might benefit or harm some groups more than others -Where else this semester have we seen this idea? -How does acknowledging this possibility allow for a more precise or accurate picture of how science/technology affects people's lives?
Why Diversity Matters: Understanding and Applying the Diversity Component of the National Science Foundation's Broader Impacts Criterion
Kristen Intemann
As a nation, we are beginning to follow the guidance of our elders the pecans by standing together for the benefit of all. We are remembering what they said, that all flourishing is mutual
Laurie took half of the stems in each plot, pinching them off one by one carefully at the base in some plots and yanking up a tuft and leaving a small ragged gap in the sod in others. Experiments must have controls, of course, so she left an equal number of plots alone and did not harvest them at all. Pink flagging festooned the meadows to mark her study areas. One day in the field we sat in the sun and talked about whether the method really duplicated the traditional harvest. "I know that it doesn't," she said, "because I'm not replicating the relationship. I don't speak to the plants or make an offering." She had wrestled with this but settled on excluding it: "I honor that traditional relationship, but I couldn't ever do it as part of an experiment. It wouldn't be right on any level—to add a variable that I don't understand and that science can't even attempt to measure. And besides, I'm not qualified to speak to sweetgrass." Later, she admitted that it was hard to stay neutral in her research and avoid affection for the plants; after so many days among them, learning and listening, neutrality proved impossible. Eventually she was just careful to show them all her mindful respect, making her care a constant as well, so that she would not sway the results one way or the other. The sweetgrass she harvested was counted, weighed, and given away to basket makers. Laurie's findings might have been surprising to academic ecologists but were consistent with the theory voiced by our ancestors. "If we use a plant respectfully it will stay with us and flourish. If we ignore it, it will go away."
Francis Bacon
Let's go back to one of the first "influencers" in modern science: Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is called the "father of modern science" for developing and promoting an early type of scientific method and laboratory science. His attitudes toward science and nature are thought to reflect (and encourage) widespread views of his time; the influence of these views lasted for many centuries
Scenarios
Let's look at some examples of how "distribution of risk" can be used in an analysis of technology and society. -Example A: What if social media posts might be used to deny someone health insurance coverage or raise their rates? For instance, someone's social media posts about drinking while in college are used 30 years later by a health insurance company to determine that they are a high risk for liver problems. This practice might pose a greater risk to people with serious health issues. Health outcomes and insurance coverage have also been shown to be affected by race and socioeconomic status, and so people from marginalized groups might bear a disproportionate amount of the negative effects. -Example B: Social media profiles are used to gather information about protesters in a social movement, and protesters fear that these tactics are used to make it easier to find unjust reasons to arrest them or to intimidate them. How might marginalized groups with historically contentious relationships with law enforcement be affected by this practice? -Example C: Elementary school teachers are expected to spend 2 hours a day entering data about student work to document learning, prove that they are addressing learning goals related to standardized tests, and help school districts use data analytics to better understand student learning and measure which students, classes, and schools are improving. The teachers argue that this time should be spent lesson planning to improve instruction, and that they are concerned about if corporations acquiring this data to target their advertising. Which schools and which students are likely to have the least power to resist this trend, and which schools are likely to have teachers with the least amount of extra time for class preparation? -Example D. When shoppers are in a store, the shoppers' eye movements are tracked and analyzed so that the store can send ads to the shopper to get them to buy items they look at with interest. How might people with less money be disproportionately affected? How might people who are attempting to drink less alcohol/eat healthier/buy less stuff/stop smoking/buy fewer lottery tickets/etc., be disproportionately affected? (Recall that historically, tobacco companies have targeted ads to groups with lower socioeconomic status and that some less privileged neighborhoods might not even have stores with fresh produce - how might these issues come into play?) Example E: Imagine that the major employers in the Lansing area all shifted to require online job applications. Which socioeconomic statuses might be most likely to be affected by this shift? What age groups? -Example F: Garbage dumps, including hazardous waste dumps, tend to be in places where the local neighborhood is not likely to be able to form an organized opposition - if there are environmental effects of being near these facilities, which groups are most likely to be disproportionately affected? -Example G: A government service has a hotline that uses voice recognition to answer questions and only allows someone to talk to a person after several answers suggest that there is no possible recorded information on that issue. How might this affect people who have speech-related disabilities, who speak in dialects or accents that voice recognition software is less able to 'understand,' etc.?
Money When they make decisions to invest in the hardware, software, staff, and training to exploit Big Data, they are making decisions not to hire another professor, equip a student lab, or expand an existing building.
Numbers game Some argue - perhaps rightfully so - that Big Data reduces interactions with students to a numbers game. Recommendations and assessments are based entirely on analytics. This means that compassion, personal bonding, and an understanding of the unique circumstances of every student gets lost in the mix. Others argue that Big Data is an assist to the human process. In any event, this is unquestionably a stumbling block.
Trust, cont.
Let's relate the idea of cultural construction back to our investigation of trust in science: If a scientific idea is also a cultural construction, does that mean that the scientific idea is untrustworthy? Is there a tension between trusting the conclusions of scientific communities and discussing how culture shapes science? Is culturally-influenced science always worse science? Let's think about if this tension could be productive: •A community value like "scientific rigor is good" or "faking data is unethical" is a cultural influence on knowledge •Knowing how a culture or community asks about, tests, and refines knowledge can potentially make people more inclined to trust rather than less •According to philosopher and physicist Karen Barad, the universe/natural world also has agency and "pushes back" when people try to use models that aren't robust for describing a phenomenon - the natural world helps provide that accountability by not conforming to models that aren't well-developed In short, sometimes people assume that discussing cultural construction leads to less trust in science, but this tension can actually lead to asking tough questions about how science is made and about assumptions made by scientists, which can in turn lead to a more rigorous science (see examples from previous weeks) and/or interesting inquiry into the nature of knowledge
What is science?
Like many other terms, "science" can have different meanings depending on the context. Science can refer to: The body of knowledge produced by scientists and science research institutions The process of creating knowledge that can be verified by scientific communities An institution, including the industry centered on scientific knowledge production, financial and power relationships, employers, etc. Note that for all of these, it is necessary that science changes through time. Additionally, "science" in some countries refers to all academic-based knowledge production. Technology is sometimes defined as applications of science, but we will explore all of these definitions in more depth.
How Much of Your Data Would You Trade for a Free Cookie?
Lois Beckett article
Include staff members who are knowledgeable about your institution's data and can accurately interpret predictive models derived from this information.
Make students and staff aware that their data are going to be used for predictive analytics and get consent to use highly sensitive information like health records. Be vigilant that data are well protected so that the information does not get into the hands of those who intend to misuse it
Other writers and physicians at the time blamed the retention of menstrual blood for "female problems." Either way, the obvious solution was to purge the offending fluid, so marriage (and its implied regular sexual intercourse) was the general recommendation.
Male semen was also believed to have healing properties, so sex served two purposes.
Fairy tale tropes
Many scholars of fairy tales note that many fairy tales reinforce tropes that reinforce and even romanticize stereotypes that men are naturally aggressive and fighters and women are naturally passive and in need of being rescued While fairy tales may actually have more complicated gender dynamics than this, there is wider scholarly agreement that popular representations of fairy tales such as Disney movies reinforce the gender stereotypes of the time and place they were produced
Other examples to analyze
Martin provides an example of how STS scholars can look closely at details in scientific communications to analyze how social forces are influencing these communications (this is just one STS method, not the only one) Let's look at other materials that could be analyzed in this way
Ethical reasoning
Note that in many academic and other discussions of ethics, many things are considered, including: •How likely it is that something (such as a technology or scientific work) could cause harm •How severe that harm could be to individuals •How severe that harm is to society and valued institutions (including how problems in society are helped or made worse) Note that ethical decision-making does not weigh all of these the same. For example, a product that gives 2% of consumers a mild headache might be considered fine but a product that kills 0.1% of consumers would not be - even a very small chance of very great harm can make something unethical in many ethical frameworks. As you're discussing algorithmic bias in your online discussion this week, you might try to incorporate these three considerations at some point. You might try them out to see if they will be useful to you in your Data and Ethics paper.
Example of an annotation
Martin, Emily. "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." Signs 16.3 (1991): 485-501. ProQuest. Web. 14 Sep. 2020. This article analyzes how stereotypical gender roles have affected scientific writing about human reproduction. Using numerous examples from science textbooks and other scientific communications, Martin demonstrates how the role of the egg is portrayed as passive or negative, while the role of the sperm is portrayed as active, assertive, and heroic. Martin notes that these portrayals persist even when they are not scientifically well-supported, which suggests that these gender stereotypes are detrimental to scientific understanding. Moreover, recent research has shown that "sperm and egg are mutually active partners" (Schatten and Schatten, qtd. in Martin 494). Martin, a cultural anthropologist who writes often about cultural aspects of women's health and views of women's bodies, writes to show how science has been shaped by a "fairy tale" view of gender (486). Her stated purpose is to improve science and more broadly to take power away from stereotypes, as seen in her concluding statement that "by becoming aware of when we are projecting cultural imagery onto what we study, will improve our ability to investigate and understand nature. Waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of their implications, will rob them of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender"(501). Martin published the article in the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, a peer-reviewed journal focusing on interdisciplinary feminist scholarship. Martin's professional status as a well-known anthropologist, as well as the peer-reviewed journal's reputation, suggest that this source is likely to be credible in terms of the factual information presented. The article enhances its credibility by using a large number of examples from multiple sources in order to support the argument that these gendered portrayals of egg and sperm are common and not just found in a couple of cases. The author also demonstrates credibility by drawing on a number of then-recent scientific studies to illustrate why these "fairy tale" portrayals are not accurate, and explaining each analysis thoroughly and clearly. For all of these reasons, this source is highly credible.
test consumers usually do not change their ethnic or racial identities after taking these tests.
More than 60 per cent of those my research team and I interviewed said the test results did not affect their identity.
Invented by a Swedish Army Major named Thure Brandte, and though initially used to treat conditions in soldiers like prolapsed anuses, uterine massage quickly became the norm for treating everything in women from tilted uteri to nymphomania. Brandte opened several clinics, all of which were remarkably successful. He employed 5 med students, 10 female physical therapists, and had doctors from across the globe apprenticing at his clinics, which were known to treat as many as 117 patients in 1 day.
Most recommended techniques were bimanual, meaning 1 hand was placed outside the body on the abdomen, and the other inserted into either the vagina or anus to perform massage, until a 'paroxysmal convulsion' (we now call these orgasms) was achieved. These sessions were considered 'long and physically exhausting' for doctors, for obvious reasons. This problem led to the creation of stimulation devices- namely, vibrators. (You can see some early vibrators by clicking here)
Many of our basic policies of race and racism have been developed as a way to keep these leaders and their followers in control of the way we live our modern lives.
Much of this history helped establish and maintain the Spanish Inquisition, colonial policies, slavery, Nazism, racial separatism and discrimination, and anti-immigration policies. Although policies related to racism seem to be improving over time, I hope to help clarify why this myth still exists and remains widespread in the United States and throughout Western Europe by describing the history of racism and by exploring how the anthropological concepts of culture and worldview have challenged and disproven the validity of racist views.
Common Problems in thinking about technology and society
Next, we'll talk about common problems in discussions and arguments about technology and society, and how the previous arts and humanities and STS methods can be used to address these problems
How to avoid ahistorical thinking
Nobody can know everything about history, but when you practice questioning common assumptions about the past, it keeps getting easier to have a sense of when you need to check on what you hear. Especially in conversations about technology, it is common to see claims that something is totally new, even if there have been similar situations in the past - this is something to look out for In conversations about identities, it's common to see the current situation portrayed as always having been the case, instead of portraying how the situation came about; it's also common to see the assumption that changes or movements to resist oppression just started happening recently, which is usually not true Overally, as with any topic, reviewing the academic conversations about the topic is often most helpful, but if that's not possible, then continuing to learn more history can help with knowing what assumptions seem "fishy" when you hear them
Bad example This is an example of an annotation that should be improved. What changes would you make to this example, especially in terms of sound reasoning and evidence for claims?
Nordstrom, Louise. "Viking Warrior Found in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm" https://www.thelocal.se/20170908/confirmed-viking-warrior-was-a-woman This article is about a Viking woman warrior. She was buried and scientists analyzed her remains. It is published on the website "The Local," which looks like a good publication. This article seems credible because it has many facts and uses many sources. One flaw in the credibility is that the article does not contain many statistics; the article would be much more credible if the author bothered to include more statistics to show that they are basing their ideas on hard facts and not just opinions. In terms of bias, it seems like the writer is happy to believe the scientists, so maybe they are the type that believes whatever authorities say.
How do people in STEM try to account for bias?
Now that we've examined Intemann's argument and some broader questions about how science works, let's look at other ways that scientific and related work tries to increase the trustworthiness of their work?
History and identity
Often in conversations about identities and inequities, the systems of power are treated as universal or as if they had always been around Historians, however, would be interested in inquiring how these systems of power came about and why - how might this historically informed perspective shift conversations about the nature of problems and the solutions to these problems?
Local adoption of analytics tools
Older readers will remember the days when word processing was handled by a pool of word processing typists. Over time, word processing migrated from the pool to executives' assistants and, eventually, to the desks of the executives themselves. Once word processing reached the desks of the executives and other knowledge workers, word processing shifted from being a mechanical function to being a creative one. Knowledge workers crafted their messages as they took form on their screens. The same will be true of predictive analytics. We are going to see the hands-on management of predictive analytics studies migrate from Big Data specialists to the desktops (and laptops) of executives who need to think through, propose, and defend policy statements, strategic plans, and operational or tactical initiatives.
There will be huge differences in which schools decide or are able to appeal—inevitably, better resourced private schools will be able to appeal more easily than underfunded state schools in deprived areas. "The parents will pressure them, and they'll be apoplectic if their child does not achieve the grades they expected," says Curran. In the state system, meanwhile, "some schools will fight for their kids, and others won't," and teachers are on holiday until term starts anyway.
On August 11, Gavin Williamson announced the triple lock that would allow students to pick from their teacher-assessed grade, their mock exam result, or doing a resit in the autumn if they don't agree with the grade the system gives them initially. But there are huge problems there too. "Nobody is consulting with anybody about this," says Rimfeld. "There are schools where there are no mocks, some schools do several mock exams—is it going to be the average? How is that going to work?"
Benjamin Banneker
One of the men who helped to plan Washington D.C.; Was also the first black American to write a scientific bookAfrican-American scientist who taught himself calculus and trigonometry. He also helped design the capitol in Washington D.C. owned a farm published an almonac African-American scientist who taught himself calculus and trigonometry. He also helped design the capitol in Washington D.C.
Common tactics
Other ways of working toward solutions to wicked problems: Add your voice to larger networks/collaborations working on the problem Find a way to contribute in some way in your community (for example, talking to the educational data experts is a small way to raise awareness about issues on your own campus, and helping the Planetarium tell more inclusive histories of science is another way to help, and you've done both already!) Communicate about the issue to an audience that you are good at communicating to Find a few people that you like working with who care about the same thing and find ways to take on pieces of the larger challenge
tracking the swipes of freshmen students' ID cards to predict which of them are most likely to drop out.
Over the last three years, a professor of management information systems named Sudha Ram has been analyzing data gathered from the cards about how often students enter residence halls, libraries, and student recreation centers—as well as how frequently they make purchases.
"The worst stereotypes come out in such depictions: mentally ill individuals as incompetent, dangerous, slovenly, undeserving," says Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley. "The portrayals serve to distance 'them' from the rest of 'us.'"
Over time, the media has slowly become conscious of these harmful portrayals, experts say.
Franz Boas came up with an alternate explanation for why peoples from different areas or living under certain conditions behaved differently from one another.
People have divergent life histories, different shared experiences with distinctive ways of relating to these differences. We all have a worldview, and we all share our worldview with others with similar experiences. We have culture.
Phrenology, cont
Phrenologists DID use the scientific method in ways that were considered rigorous. They used careful measurements, developed and tested hypotheses, sought out many samples. So what went wrong? -Partly, they believed that their own cultural biases against non-white people, working class and poor people, or women were facts; they did not see these attitudes as biases that would compromise the rigor of their science -There was also faulty reasoning. -Different species have different skull shapes and sizes; these differences sometimes correspond to differences in intelligence, etc. -European and US culture at the time assumed that different groups of human beings could also be categorized in a similar way as different species - they started with the assumption that there would be noticeable biological differences among different groups of people, and then they favored evidence (perhaps not consciously) that confirmed this belief ("Confirmation Bias") Note that phrenology was NOT "pseudoscience" or "fake science" the way that, for example, "Loch Ness monster studies" is a pseudoscience; phrenology WAS considered very good science at the time. This provides lessons for historians of science - how do we know what current ideas will someday be viewed as being like phrenology?
This braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story—old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth, a pharmacopoeia of healing stories that allow us to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other.
Planting Sweetgrass Sweetgrass is best planted not by seed, but by putting roots directly in the ground. Thus the plant is passed from hand to earth to hand across years and generations. Its favored habitat is sunny, well-watered meadows. It thrives along disturbed edges.
Data-gathering in the Netherlands prior to the Holocaust
Prior to Nazi occupation, in the Netherlands, a "comprehensive population registration system for administrative and statistical purposes" had already been completed. During Nazi occupation, this structure, aimed at following people "from cradle to grave" (see previous reference), was then adapted to create special registration systems covering Jewish and Roma populations within the Netherlands, and "played an important role in the[ir] apprehension". Evidence of how "effective" this method was can perhaps be seen in the statistics - at a terrible 73%, Dutch Jews had the highest death rate among all other occupied western European countries. As comparison, the death rate among the Jewish population in Belgium was 40% and in France, 25%.
What is identity?
Sociologists and psychologists often emphasize the complexity of identity. It will be useful to outline some basic info about identity that we can draw on during this class. Identity can include both how we see ourselves and what society tells us about ourselves Common identitites studied include gender/gender identity/gender expression, race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nation, disability, class/socioeconomic status, and age, but identity is even more complex than these categories - think of all the many complex, nuanced things that contribute to who you are, for example. These identities are interesting to researchers in part because they relate to larger systems of power both historically and today, according to research in history, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, and other fields Essentialism: in this class context, essentialism means the idea or assumption that different categories of people (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) have inherently different traits that define who they are, how they act/their personalities/likes and dislikes/talents and abilities/etc.
Analyzing gender
Recalling Martin's methods, we know that we can look closely at the connotations (subtle meanings) of language to observe how the attitudes of the time shape Bacon's view of science For example, Bacon uses "men" and "sons" to describe scientists "her" to describe Nature, which makes men the active parties and feminized Nature the object to be studied Where else have you seen that Nature is compared to women or the feminine?
highly-regarded teacher who is fired due to a low score on a teacher assessment tool, the college student who couldn't get a minimum wage job at a grocery store due to his answers on a personality test, the people whose credit card spending limits were lowered because they shopped at certain stores. To add insult to injury, the algorithms that judged them are completely opaque and unassailable. People often have no recourse when the algorithm makes a mistake.
Recidivism models and predictive policing algorithms—programs that send officers to patrol certain locations based on crime data—are rife with the potential for harmful feedback loops. For example, a recidivism model may ask about the person's first encounter with law enforcement. Due to racist policing practices such as stop and frisk, black people are likely to have that first encounter earlier than white people. If the model takes this measure into account, it will probably deem a black person more likely But they are harmful even beyond their potential to be racist. O'Neil writes,
People with mental illnesses can't recover
Recovery is seldom shown is the media When people [are shown seeking] therapy, when they go to psychiatric hospitals - rarely do they get better.And if they do get better, he adds, "it's enough that they're stabilized, but not enough so that ... they're integrated with the world, and have friends and jobs." The resulting message, he says, is that individuals with mental illnesses have no hope for a "normal" life. The reality is that this isn't true: Experts say not only do patients often recover from psychiatric illnesses, but they can live health lives with the help of medications, therapy and support networks.
Writing Annotated Bibliographies
Research and Analytical Thinking
Some suggest that these tests may increase essentialist beliefs — the view that racial groups have distinct abilities and skills that are determined by their genes, and which has previously contributed to racial exclusion, discrimination and eugenics
Research shows that reading media articles that depict genetic ancestry tests as able to reveal your race increases belief in essential racial differences. My research with test consumers finds that they typically believe these tests support the views they already held: Those who believed that race was determined by genes before claimed that these tests offer proof of that view.
key points about identity related to roth's article
Roth argues that the "ancestry testing" industry gains customers by encouraging people to view DNA as the same as cultural heritage and identity If so, why is it a good marketing choice to call it "ancestry testing" instead of "DNA geographical testing," which would be more accurate? Identity is not the same as DNA, and there is much scientific, historical, anthropological, and psychological work on identity and genetics that explain why; yet, this myth that DNA=identity is pervasive and these advertising campaigns solidify these perceptions, according to Roth Customers also often misunderstand that the results are not necessarily as accurate as they think Roth mentions research that indicates that these marketing campaigns can increase racial essentialism, which has real world effects In the discussion of "cherry picking identities," Roth may be implying that looking at a chart and picking the labels that sound intriguing or fun may not be a meaningful or valuable way of exploring one's history or identity One point in the article is that an identity can also be community membership The idea that "genes" determine your cultural heritage is not universal Most Native American groups tend to define cultural membership according to community ties or whether someone is officially enrolled in a tribe, for example "Identity tourism" is a term developed by scholars studying identity and culture, such as Lisa Nakamura. "Identity tourism" is a way for people, usually from the group that has more power in society, to put on another identity like a costume for pleasure or curiosity or to feel 'special' without having to deal with the actual equity issues or exclusions or larger systems of power that affect people of that identity. Why might some find it harmful if ancestry testing leads to a great deal of "identity tourism"?
Roth's article as an example of STS
Roth's article brings together many disciplines to examine the way that history, science, culture, and identities interact in this one specific example of ancestry tests Roth, like Roberts, explores how different definitions of identities may be in conflict, and the real world consequences of these conflicts Roth's work is about popular conceptions/misconceptions among non-experts, while Robert's talk is about misconceptions among actual medical experts; but both are exploring how knowledge is spread and the real world implications of this knowledge Roth explores how a seemingly small thing (i.e., something that seems like an isolated example) related to science can have much larger implications to society and can reveal much deeper questions about the interactions of science, history, and culture
Another tactic: "cyborg" approaches
STS feminist scholar Haraway wrote "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," which argues that: Oppressive social and economic forces are using technology to create an increasingly dystopian world, which is undermining a lot of the traditional structures and systems But, those old structures and systems were also oppressive to many Therefore, a good strategy in this changing world is to notice where technology is disrupting old systems and try to adapt to these shifts in ways that create new and more just and equitable ways of being - in other words, if there is a lot of chaos and disruption, even if a lot of it is harmful, it's helpful to actively look for the spots where the disruption offers opportunities for re-imagining how people can connect with larger technological-social systems
egg and sperm a scientific fairy tale period
all major scientific textbooks depict male and female reproductive organs as systems for the production of valuable substances, such as eggs and sperm. the monthly cycle is described as being designed to produce eggs and prepare a suitable place for them to be. fertilized and grown-all to the end of making babies. But the enthusiasm ends there. By extolling the female cycle as a productive enterprise, menstruation must necessarily be viewed as a failure. Medical texts describe menstruation as the "debris" of the uterine lining, the result of necrosis, or death of tissue. The descriptions imply that a system has gone awry, making products of no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap. An illustration in a widely used medical text shows menstruation as a chaotic disintegration of form, complementing the many texts that describe it as "ceasing," "dying', "losing," "denuding," "expelling."3 Male reproductive physiology is evaluated quite differently. One of the texts that sees menstruation as failed production employs a sort of breathless prose when it describes the maturation of sperm: "The mechanisms which guide the remarkable cellular transformation from spermatid to mature sperm remain uncertain .... Perhaps the most amazing characteristic of spermatogenesis is its sheer magnitude: the normal human male may manufacture several hundred million sperm per day."4 In the classic text Medical Physiology, edited by Vernon Mountcastle, the male/female, productive/destructive comparison is more explicit: "Whereas the female sheds only a single gamete each month, the seminiferous tubules produce hundreds of millions of sperm each day" (emphasis mine).5 None of these texts expresses such intense enthusiasm for any female processes One could argue that menstruation and spermatogenesis are not analogous processes and, therefore, should not be expected to elicit the same kind of response. The proper female analogy to spermatogenesis, biologically, is ovulation. Yet ovulation does not merit enthusiasm in these texts either. Textbook descriptions stress that all of the ovarian follicles containing ova are already present at birth. Far from being produced, as sperm are, they merely sit on the shelf, slowly degenerating and aging like overstocked inventory: "marked contrast" the male, who continuously produces fresh germ cells, and the female, who has stockpiled germ cells by birth and is faced with their degeneration. One scientist writes in a newspaper article that a woman's ovaries become old and worn out from ripening eggs every month, even though the woman herself is still relatively young: "When you look through a laparoscope ... at an ovary that has been through hundreds of cycles, even in a superbly healthy American female, you see a scarred, battered organ."9 To avoid the negative connotations that some people associate with the female reproductive system, scientists could begin to describe male and female processes as homologous. They might credit females with "producing" mature ova one at a time, as they're needed each month, and describe males as having to face problems of degenerating germ cells. This degeneration would occur throughout life among spermatogonia, the undifferentiated germ cells in the testes that are the long-lived, dormant precursors of sperm. But the texts have an almost dogged insistence on But the texts have an almost dogged insistence on casting female processes in a negative light. The texts celebrate sperm production because it is continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth. This makes the female seem unproductive, but some texts will also insist that it is she who is wasteful.'? In a section heading for Molecular Biology of the Cell, a best-selling text, we are told that "Oogenesis is wasteful." The text goes on to emphasize that of the seven million oogonia, or egg germ cells, in the female embryo, most degenerate in the ovary. Of those that do go on to become oocytes, or eggs, many also degenerate, so that at birth only two million eggs remain in the ovaries. Degeneration continues throughout a woman's life: by puberty 300,000 eggs remain, and only a few are present by menopause. "During the 40 or so years of a woman's reproductive life, only 400 to 500 eggs will have been released," the authors write. "All the rest will have degenerated. It is still a mystery why so many eggs are formed only to die in the ovaries."'1 The real mystery is why the male's vast production of sperm is not seen as wasteful.12 Assuming that a man "produces" 100 million (108) sperm per day (a conservative estimate) during an average reproductive life of sixty years, he would produce well over two trillion sperm in his lifetime. Assuming that a woman "ripens" one egg per lunar month, or thirteen per year, over the course of her forty-year reproductive life, she would total five hundred eggs in her lifetime. But the word "waste" implies an excess, too much produced. Assuming two or three offspring, for every baby a woman produces, she wastes only around two hundred eggs. For every baby a man produces, he wastes more than one trillion (1012) sperm. How is it that positive images are denied to the bodies of women? A look at language-in this case, scientific language-provides the first clue. Take the egg and the sperm.13 It is remarkable how "femininely" the egg behaves and how "masculinely" the sperm.'4 The egg is seen as large and passive.15 It does not move or journey, but passively "is transported," "is swept,"'6 or even "drifts"'7 along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, "streamlined," 18 and invariably active. They "deliver" their genes to the egg, "activate the developmental program of the egg,"19 and have a "velocity" that is often remarked upon.2 Their tails are "strong" and efficiently powered.21 Together with the forces of ejaculation, they can "propel the semen into the deepest recesses of the vagina."22 For this they need "energy," "fuel,"3 so that with a "whiplashlike motion and strong lurches"24 they can "burrow through the egg coat"5 and "penetrate" it.26 The egg coat, its protective barrier, is sometimes called its "vestments," a term usually reserved for sacred, religious dress. The egg is said to have a "corona,"27 a crown, and to be accompanied by "attendant cells."28 It is holy, set apart and above, the queen to the sperm's king. The egg is also passive, which means it must depend on sperm for rescue. Gerald Schatten and Helen Schatten liken the egg's role to that of Sleeping Beauty: "a dormant bride awaiting her mate's magic kiss, which instills the spirit that brings her to life."29 Sperm, by contrast, have a "mission,"30 which is to "move through the female genital tract in quest of the ovum."31 One popular account has it that the sperm carry out a "perilous journey" into the "warm darkness," where some fall away "exhausted." "Survivors" "assault" the egg, the successful candidates "surrounding the prize."32 Part of the urgency of this journey, in more scientific terms, is that "once released from the supportive environment of the ovary, an egg will die within hours unless rescued by a sperm."33 The wording stresses the fragility and dependency of the egg, even though the same text acknowledges elsewhere that sperm also live for only a few hours.34 1948 ruth female reproductive organs are seen as biologically interdependent, while male organs are viewed as autonomous, operating independently and in isolation: The sperm is no more independent of its milieu than the egg, and yet from a wish that it were, biologists have lent their support to the notion that the human female, beginning with the egg, is congenitally more dependent than the male. journal Cell has the sperm making an "existential decision" to penetrate the egg: "Sperm are cells with a limited behavioral repertoire, one that is directed toward fertilizing eggs. To execute the decision to abandon the haploid state, sperm swim to an egg and there acquire the ability to effect membrane fusion. 6 Is this a corporate manager's version of the sperm's activities-"executing decisions" while fraught with dismay over difficult options that bring with them very high risk? There is another way that sperm, despite their small size, can be made to loom in importance over the egg. In a collection of scientific papers, an electron micrograph of an enormous egg and tiny sperm is titled "A Portrait of the Sperm."37 This is a little like showing a photo of a dog and calling it a picture of the fleas. One depiction of sperm as weak and timid, instead of strong and powerful-the only such representation in western civilization, so far as I know-occurs in Woody Allen's movie Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* *But Were Afraid to Ask. Allen, playing the part of an apprehensive sperm inside a man's testicles, is scared of the man's approaching orgasm. He is reluctant to launch himself into the darkness, afraid of contraceptive devices, afraid of winding up on the ceiling if the man masturbates. While the "facts" of biology may not always be constructed in cultural terms, I would argue that in this case, they are. The degree of metaphorical content in these descriptions, the extent to which differences between egg and sperm are emphasized, and the parallels between cultural stereotypes of male and female behavior and the character of egg and sperm all point to this conclusion.
Why talk about cultural construction?
Scholar Bruno Latour, who has studied how scientific concepts go from partially formed ideas to scientific findings by studying what scientists do, notes that the reason we talk about how things are constructed is so that we can ask "how might this be constructed differently?"
Institutional evaluation
Schools have always presumed to grade their students. Until relatively recently, it was presumptuous for students to grade their teachers or their schools. Now it is becoming common practice. In fact, Big Data will play an ever-growing role in assessing the performance of individual instructors. More importantly, Big Data will rank order universities, colleges, and high schools on a wide range of variables that can be supported through empirical evidence. True, some of that evaluation will be based on "sentiment" - but much of it will be based on hard analytics that would have been too time consuming or too expensive to collect and analyze in a holistic manner.
Recap of STS: Science and Technology Studies
Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that examines cultural, philosophical, ethical, historical, and artistic questions related to science and technology. It combines arts/humanities and social science approaches STS aims to delve deeply into how science and technology relate to power, culture, and identities STS uses analysis of details to raise questions, explore those questions, and complicate those questions - like many types of arts and humanities inquiry, it looks for nuances and complexity in things that might appear simple on the surface. What is the value of this type of approach? (We'll use STS approaches often in this class)
Emily Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm"
Scientific articles and scientific communications (textbooks, e.g.) tell stories; these of course are supposed to be true stories, but they craft a compelling narrative to help audiences make sense of the information and how the information fits together; in other words, effective scientific communication engages in effective storytelling Martin analyzes the language used in describing reproductive systems, particularly the way that gender has shaped this rhetoric and storytelling
Integration across institutional boundaries ntegrating data across these organizational boundaries is going to be a major challenge. No organizational unit is going to surrender any part of its power base easily. Data is power.
Self-service analytics and data visualization going to be a genuine challenge to create a culture that requires them to do their own studies using those tools. An even greater challenge will be to create a climate that informs their decision making with the results of their own studies because they are so accustomed to making decisions intuitively.
went to school spent time with her mom at her mom's job (hair salon) spent a lot of time watching tb
She didn't do anything extraordinary at all if you took her disability out of the equation
Do these test encourage viewing races as essential and genetically different?
Since race is different genetically will people assume a race inferior to another? Could this mindset (again) lead to mistreatment, genocide etc
The Problem with race-based Medicine by Dorothy Roberts
Social justice advocate and law scholar Dorothy Roberts has a precise and powerful message: Race-based medicine is bad medicine. Even today, many doctors still use race as a medical shortcut; they make important decisions about things like pain tolerance based on a patient's skin color instead of medical observation and measurement. In this searing talk, Roberts lays out the lingering traces of race-based medicine -- and invites us to be a part of ending it. "It is more urgent than ever to finally abandon this backward legacy," she says, "and to affirm our common humanity by ending the social inequalities that truly divide us."
most media portrayals of mental illness are stereotypical, negative or flat-out wrong
Studies indicate that mass media is one of the public's primary sources of information about disorders such as bipolar, schizophrenia and depression.
Sussman, cont
Sussman uses the metaphor that "our genetic structure looks more like a complex, intermixed trellis than a simple candelabra"- in very simple terms, some people assume that different races branched off a long time ago into separate paths, like a candelabra, but molecular biology shows that this is not the case. The picture at the top left is a candelabra. The bottom left picture is NOT a model of genetics but an example of a more complex network that can be used as a more accurate metaphor than a candelabra. In other words, two people who appear to be of the same race are not necessarily more closely related, or from the same ancestral "branch," so to speak, than two people who are of different races. There aren't clear branches to the human species that divide it up into biological sub-species along the lines of race (which would be the candelabra model).
IT IS IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE THAT WHEN WE SPEAK OF FACEBOOK WE ARE NOT SPEAKING OF A JOB AS OTHER JOBS, BUT WE ARE SPEAKING OF THE MOST PERVASIVE MANIPULATION, THE MOST SUBTLE AND MYSTIFIED VIOLENCE THAT CAPITALISM HAS RECENTLY PERPETRATED AGAINST US. TRUE, UNDER CAPITALISM EVERY WORKER IS MANIPULATED AND EXPLOITED AND HIS/HER RELATION TO CAPITAL IS TOTALLY MYSTIFIED.
TO ASK FOR WAGES FOR FACEBOOK WILL BY ITSELF UNDERMINE THE EXPECTATIONS SOCIETY HAS OF US, SINCE THESE EXPECTATIONS—THE ESSENCE OF OUR SOCIALIZATION—ARE ALL FUNCTIONAL TO OUR WAGELESS CONDITION ONLINE. IN THIS SENSE, IT IS MORE APT TO COMPARE THE STRUGGLE OF WOMEN FOR WAGES THAN THE STRUGGLE OF MALE WORKERS IN THE FACTORY FOR MORE WAGES. WHEN WE STRUGGLE FOR WAGES WE STRUGGLE UNAMBIGUOUSLY AND DIRECTLY AGAINST OUR SOCIAL EXPLOITATION. WE STRUGGLE TO BREAK CAPITAL'S PLAN TO MONETIZE OUR FRIENDSHIP, FEELINGS AND FREE TIME, THROUGH WHICH IT HAS BEEN ABLE TO MAINTAIN ITS POWER.
Science and Narrative
Telling stories about the world
The EU 1995 Directive 95/46/EC is the most important EU legal instrument regarding personal data protection of individuals. Rather than discourage the use of third parties storing and processing student information, the EU prefers to regulate it. The EU recognizes that private sector companies provide a valuable service.
The Directive gives parents the option of opting out data sharing arrangements for their children. However, doing so would likely jeopardize the educational opportunities their children would enjoy otherwise. In other words, while parents have the right to opt out, it would be imprudent in practice to do so. he EU Parliament approved the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR or Regulation). This Regulation is set to go into effect in May 2018.This Regulation pays particular attention to requiring schools to communicate "in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language, in particular for any information addressed specifically to a child."
the terror
The First French Republic also had policies that contradicted the ideas of the Enlightenment. Between 1793 and 1794, a period called the "terror" occurred in France. During this time, France's fledgling government was afraid that it was going to be toppled and therefore arrested and executed as many of its perceived enemies as it could find, which resulted in the execution of thousands of people. The episode put a blight on the government and helped pave the way for the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who would eventually become emperor of France.
Flipped classrooms
The Kahn Academy has reversed the historical process of delivering course material during class time and assigning homework to be handled out of class. It their flipped classrooms, students watch streaming videos at their leisure out of class. Class time is dedicated to providing students a forum where they can work through their problem sets and ask for - and get - help as they need it. This flipped classroom is going to become far more widespread because our technologies today enable it - and it just makes a lot of sense.
Note:
The author or publication ALONE may not ensure credibility, especially if the article itself suggests a credibility problem or if the topic is widely distorted or misunderstood; absolutely you can use the author/journal/etc., as a big part of your evaluation, but also have a reason from the article itself.
On how eugenicists sought to address the "threat" to the gene pool
The eugenicists saw two threats to the national gene pool: One was the external one, which they were addressing through immigration law; the other was the internal one — what to do about the people who were already here. They had a few ideas. The first eugenics law in the United States was passed in Connecticut in 1895, and it was a law against certain kinds of marriages. They were trying to stop certain unfit people from reproducing through marriage. It wasn't really what they wanted, though, because they realized that people would just reproduce outside of marriage.
Sky woman Falling storytellers begin by calling upon those who came before who passed the stories down to us, for we are only messengers.
The geese could not hold the woman above the water for much longer, so they called a council to decide what to do. Resting on their wings, she saw them all gather: loons, otters, swans, beavers, fish of all kinds. she needed land for her home The deep divers among them had heard of mud at the bottom of the water and agreed to go find some Loon dove first, but the distance was too far and after a long while he surfaced with nothing to show for his efforts. One by one, the other animals offered to help—Otter, Beaver, Sturgeon—but the depth, the darkness, and the pressures were too great for even the strongest of swimmers. They returned gasping for air with their heads ringing. Some did not return at all. Soon only little Muskrat was left, the weakest diver of all. He volunteered to go while the others looked on doubtfully. His small legs flailed as he worked his way downward and he was gone a very long time. He had given his life to aid this helpless human. But then the others noticed that his paw was tightly clenched and, when they opened it, there was a small handful of mud. Turtle said, "Here, put it on my back and I will hold it." Moved by the extraordinary gifts of the animals, she sang in thanksgiving and then began to dance, her feet caressing the earth. The land grew and grew as she danced her thanks, from the dab of mud on Turtle's back until the whole earth was made. Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals' gifts coupled with her deep gratitude. Together they formed what we know today as Turtle Island, our home
Online Discussion
The online discussion in response to this PowerPoint will be a written discussion on D2L. Put all responses to prompts in one thread. 1.How can previous course materials be used to investigate questions of how trust in expert authority relates to critique or questioning of expert authority? Review one of the following course materials and explain how you view trust in expert authority vs. critique of expert authority in terms of the examples discussed in this source. How could you use your knowledge of this example to inform your decisions about when to trust, when to ask critical questions, and why? •Dorothy Roberts' talk on race-based medicine •A class reading on phrenology or hysteria or eugenics •Martin's The Sperm and the Egg •This week's Planetarium shows •A class reading on racist science in the Enlightenment •Discussion of the DSM in the Categories PowerPoint •This week's John Oliver video •Readings on indigenous science (not counting the one chapter in Kimmerer that was discussed in this PowerPoint)
The Rwandan genocide - During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, ID cards identifying people by their so-called "ethnic group" served, for some, as an effective death sentence.
The post-colonial Rwandan authorities decision to include "ethnic group identities" on ID cards, which had originally been introduced back in 1933 by the Belgian colonial government, not only brought the very idea of rigid racial group identities to the fore, but it also "facilitated the identification of victims" and meant that the genocide took place in a terrifyingly systematic and organised way.
Privacy, privacy, privacy
The privacy of student and family data will continue to be a hot issue. Over time, however, the benefits of sharing data with student identification data will outweigh the concerns of the general public. Sharing this data among qualified research professionals will become more socially acceptable not only as technological safeguards are put into place, but as they are accepted as being appropriate. In practice, society will discover that the student data they thought was secure, is not. Witness the data breach at Equifax that spilled confidential data about 143 million people. Do you remember the data breaches at Target and Home Depot? Again, tens of millions of people who trusted these companies with their credit card information were affected.
their next idea was what they called segregation. The idea was to get people who were deemed unfit institutionalized during their reproductive years, particularly for women, keep them there, make sure they didn't reproduce, and then women were often let go when they had passed their reproductive years because they were no longer a threat to the gene pool.
The problem was that it would be really expensive to segregate, institutionalize the number of people the eugenicists were worried about. next idea was eugenic sterilization and that allowed for a model in which they would take people in to institutions, eugenically sterilize them, and then they could let them go, because they were no longer a threat. That's why eugenic sterilization really became the main model that the eugenicists embraced and that many states enacted laws to allow.
What do ancestry tests actually tell you
The test only looks at the 0.001% since you and everyother human being is 99.99% the same In the gentic code there are some points where one peron can have a G and the other may have a T because of mutation and drift over time As humans migrated across Earth they took different genetic branches with them. Because of this different branches of migration can be identified because of this genetic variation Scientists can use genetics to track how people historically moved around the globe
It is good to remember that the original woman was herself an immigrant. She fell a long way from her home in the Skyworld, leaving behind all who knew her and who held her dear. She could never go back. Since 1492, most here are immigrants as well, perhaps arriving on Ellis Island without even knowing that Turtle Island rested beneath their feet. Some of my ancestors are Skywoman's people, and I belong to them. Some of my ancestors were the newer kind of immigrants, too: a French fur trader, an Irish carpenter, a Welsh farmer. And here we all are, on Turtle Island, trying to make a home.
Their stories, of arrivals with empty pockets and nothing but hope, resonate with Skywoman's. She came here with nothing but a handful of seeds and the slimmest of instructions to "use your gifts and dreams for good," the same instructions we all carry.
A tough question
There are many examples where it is important to trust scientific knowledge. Yet, we've seen examples where information that should be reliable or trustworthy is false, or distorted/misinterpreted, etc. We've also seen that science can be shaped by prejudice and ideologies in harmful ways, and that science and other academic fields can ignore or exclude knowledge from communities or groups with less power or status, and so on. Even aside from these examples, the history of science is full of examples of disproven theories. Often people see these complexities and find it hard to know: How do I know for sure what to trust?
Consider stripping student information of any identifying information and releasing it, along with records of other students in the same cohort, for general access for educational research. Yes, the school has taken all the required and appropriate steps to protect the students' identity. But, no, it doesn't work. That's because Big Data practitioners generally access large data sets from a wide variety of sources. Some of those other sources (viz. Facebook) make no attempt to protect the individual's identity. Those secondary sources have enough unique identifying characteristics that can be accurately correlated with the de-identified school records to re-identify those school records. The best laid plan of mice and men
There is no shortage of legislation in the US to protect student information. The most relevant legislation includes: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). This act prohibits the unauthorised disclosure of educational records. FERPA applies to any school receiving federal funds and levies financial penalties for non-compliance. The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) of 1978. This act regulates the administration of surveys soliciting specific categories of information. It imposes certain requirements regarding the collection and use of student information for marketing purposes. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). This act applies specifically to online service providers that have direct or actual knowledge of users under 13 and collect information online.
The Races of Man (1862), John Beddoe, the future president of the Anthropological Institute, emphasized the vast difference between the prognathous (protruding) and orthognathous (less prominent) jawed people of Britain.
These were terms originally The Irish, Welsh, and significantly, the lower class people, were among the prognathous, whereas all men of genius were orthognathous. (Beddoe also developed an Index of Nigressence, from which he argued that the Irish were close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races!)
pie charts showing percentages of ancestry are grossly oversimplified, revealing a probability rather than a definitive answer.
They are based on science that is meant to address questions at the population level, not about specific individuals.
This time period also saw a burgeoning interest in understanding and using science rather than religion to explain natural phenomena. Isaac Newton, Daniel Fahrenheit, Benjamin Franklin and Alessandro Volta are but a few of the scientists and inventors who flourished during the Enlightenment. Their discoveries — such as advances in understanding electricity — helped pave the way for the industrial revolution and the technologies used in the world we live in today.
There was also a greater interest in economics. Most notably, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published his work "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" in 1776. In this pivotal book, Smith examined how markets work and was critical of mercantilism — an economic system in use in much of Europe that tended to create high tariffs, therefore stifling trade between countries. Some experts consider Smith to be the founder of modern economics. More people were also becoming critical of warfare and torture. The French writer Voltaire (1694-1778) spoke out against these evils in his famous novel "Candide," which was published in 1759. The novel's protagonist, Candide, experienced love and romance early in his life, then is forced to take part in a war in which he learns firsthand about the cruelty and torture it engenders.
This means that a bright pupil in a poorly performing school may have seen their grade lowered because last year's cohort of pupils didn't do well in their exams. "Children from a certain background may find their assessment is downgraded," says Stephen Curran, a teacher and education expert. This is what happened in Scotland, where children from poorer backgrounds were twice as likely to have their results downgraded than those from richer areas.
There's injustice in the appeals process too—particularly in England, where the decision over whether or not to appeal is up to the school, not the pupil. "I think it's really scandalous that the pupils can't appeal themselves," says Rimfeld, whose own child was anxiously awaiting their results. "It's just astonishing the mess we created, and it's really sad to see."
Credibility, cont..
These are not good reasons to assume a source is credible: •This video has over a million hits •The author has a prominent job and so they must know what they're talking about/the author is a famous economist and that qualifies them to talk about any academic topic other than economics, etc. •The website is called "Knowledge Source" and it seems like an educational website so it is probably published by teachers at a school •The article is all about science and includes many graphs •The author writes in a formal tone that sounds like a textbook (consider the satirical website dhmo.org, that warns about the dangers of water)
Bacon quotes
These are some other quotes from Bacon about what science is like -Where might an analysis show that the metaphor of Science as male and Nature as female reinforces particular ideas about nature or about gender roles? "Let us establish a chaste and lawful marriage between Mind and Nature." "I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave." "We have no right to expect nature to come to us. Nature must be taken by the forelock [the forelock is the hair on the front of the head]. . . . [Any delay will] permit one to only clutch at nature, never to lay hold of her and capture her." "You have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her wanderings, and you will be able, when you like, to lead and drive her afterwards to the same place again." "Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering and penetrating into those holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his whole object -- as your majesty has shown in your own example." "Nature betrays her secrets more fully when in the grip and under the pressure of art [mechanical devices] than when in enjoyment of her natural liberty." The methods of modern science & technology "help us to think about the secrets still locked in nature's bosom. . . . They do not, like the old, merely exert a gentle guidance over nature's course; they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations."
What is bias??
These next couple of slides are review of what we've covered already in class, but I wanted to remind everyone of the context.) •Bias is not the same as having an opinion •Most communications scholars would argue that some degree of 'bias' exists in all communication •Confirmation bias, for example, in science, is something that a good experiment designer will always guard against •Unacknowledged bias, bias which the writer and/or audience may be unaware of, is most likely to skew conclusions, since if you don't know the bias is there, you can't address it or even try to compensate for it
People with mental illnesses are childish and silly.
These portrayals don't "convey the way most people with serious mental illnesses are in pain," Wahl says. In reality, he says, "they hurt. They're struggling."
Braiding Sweetgrass, cont.
These quotes from the article show how the author discusses how different communities use various methodologies to learn about the natural world: •"To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don't speak the same language, I can't ask them directly and they won't answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask. I smile when I hear my colleagues say "I discovered X." That's kind of like Columbus claiming to have discovered America. It was here all along, it's just that he didn't know it. Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings" (Kimmerer 158) •"when Lena and her daughters take 50 percent of the sweetgrass, observe the result, evaluate their findings, and then create management guidelines from them, that sounds a lot like experimental science to me. Generations of data collection and validation through time builds up to well-tested theories" (Kimmerer 159) •"Getting scientists to consider the validity of indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water. They've been so conditioned to be skeptical of even the hardest of hard data that bending their minds toward theories that are verified without the expected graphs or equations is tough. Couple that with the unblinking assumption that science has cornered the market on truth and there's not much room for discussion" (Kimmerer 160) •"We are all the product of our worldviews—even scientists who claim pure objectivity. Their predictions for sweetgrass were consistent with their Western science worldview, which sets human beings outside of 'nature' and judges their interactions with other species as largely negative. They had been schooled that the best way to protect a dwindling species was to leave it alone and keep people away. But the grassy meadows tell us that for sweetgrass, human beings are part of the system, a vital part. Laurie's findings might have been surprising to academic ecologists but were consistent with the theory voiced by our ancestors" (Kimmerer 163) •"Science and traditional knowledge may ask different questions and speak different languages, but they may converge when both truly listen to the plants" (Kimmerer 165)
However we have been taught that human racial biology is real and that certain races are biologically better than others.
These teachings have led to major injustices to Jews and non-Christians during the Spanish Inquisition; to blacks, Native Americans, and others during colonial times; to African Americans during slavery and reconstruction; to Jews and other Europeans during the reign of the Nazis in Germany; and to groups from Latin America and the Middle East, among others, during modern political times.
Those whose identities do change do not simply accept the test results as scientific fact.
They cherry-pick from the results, adopting or rejecting particular identities based on which ones they view positively or negatively and their beliefs about what others will accept.
Key Issues in the study of Technology and Society
This PowerPoint will `Review key arts and humanities methods for thinking about science and technology `Identify common problems with conversations and arguments about technology and society, and explain how STS (Science and Technology Studies) approaches can address these problems `Summarize common tactics for addressing large and complex problems `Provide the online discussion questions for this week
Case study: Posthuman, Inc.
This case study will lead to Online Discussion Question 4: Imagine that a company called Posthuman, Inc. has developed a nanotechnological implant that enhances cognitive performance in human being. They would like to put it on the market soon. The owner cares about ethical considerations and has asked your team to provide an overview of the key ethical implications of this product. -The product improves alertness and cognitive functioning, and test subjects compare it to a strong dose of caffeine but without side effects such as jitteriness or insomnia. The company's other shareholders are hoping to brand this product as an elite experience for powerful professionals and charge a high price. -The implant has shown no negative side effects in test subjects for 2 years. -The implant was tested on a large and diverse sample of healthy adults, and the sample meets all criteria for the approval of new medical devices. -It requires a doctor's approval, but research suggests that patients who ask their doctors for this device are likely to receive it. -The costs of developing this product were very high, but the cost of actually producing each implant is quite low. 4. Discuss all of the following: A.What decisions by the company are likely to have an ethical aspect? (Examples: Cost of the product? What it can be used for? Will it be regulated like prescription drugs? Will it have warnings? Will there be more testing? Who will the product be marketed to? What are the ethical considerations that the company should consider related to these or other questions?) Provide at least 2 specific ethical dilemmas or challenges. B.What are some ways that this product might be used that the company did not expect? C.List some risks or negative things that might plausibly occur due to the company's product. You can consider medical issues but also think about how the product might affect culture, society, education, workplace expectations, equal opportunity, etc. For example, if it becomes the new normal for everyone to constantly use this product in elite career fields, what are the larger impacts on society? D.List 2 ways that the company's choices might affect some groups differently from others, and/or might make inequities worse.
Based on these quotes and the rest of the chapter
This chapter in Braiding Sweetgrass asks readers to consider: •How indigenous knowledge uses methodologies that are compatible with academic institutions' scientific work in some ways •How, in other ways, indigenous knowledge traditions can offer additional knowledge and methodologies •How specific processes can exclude or diminish respect for indigenous knowledge traditions, such as graduate these proposal approvals and defenses •How histories of colonialism have shaped the relationship between academic science and indigenous knowledge •How there might be more productive conversations among plant life, Western academic science, and indigenous scientific work, and what respectful collaboration of this sort can look like
Diorama analysis - family
This diorama also appears to portray a nuclear family - father, mother, and children - as a unit Human beings at this time would have lived in larger kinship groups, not necessarily defined by these types of relationships The nuclear family largely became common after the Industrial Revolution, and then largely in Western cultures - the idea that a mother, father, and their children should all live together - but separately from other adults - is not universal and was not common at all before a couple hundred years ago Analysis of the representation of family structures in this diorama might include inquiry into how this diorama tries to present the nuclear family as universal or prehistoric or "natural," even if it is a product of a particular time and place. Analysis of the effects of this representation might inquire into how this naturalization or universalizing might reinforce social norms about nuclear families.
Diorama Example
This diorama is likely, like many museum displays, to aim to make museum visitors feel a sense of connection to or immersion in the world of these human beings from long ago A common way to forge that emotional connection is to make the audience to see themselves as similar - if this is the case with this diorama, what assumptions about the audience are being made here?
Samuel George Morton
an American anthropologist, theorized in the mid-1800s that intelligence is linked to brain size. After measuring a vast number of skulls from around the world, he concluded that whites have larger skulls than other races and are therefore "superior."
Diorama analysis, cont.
This diorama portrays gender roles in a stereotypical way; the masculine-appearing character is building a fire, while the feminine-appearing character is engaging in childcare There is much evidence that elders of any gender would have been responsible for child care in the distant past, and that parent-age individuals regardless of gender would have been busy gathering food, etc. - and so these gender roles are not necessarily scientifically accurate, but may be designed to appeal to a modern audience's sensibility, even though not all families today divide work up along these gender lines Analysis of the portrayal of gender in this diorama might also question if the feminine character is sexualized unnecessarily for a modern audience
Martin's "The Egg and the Sperm"
This essay was very influential on the study of how science and gender relate Descriptions of egg and sperm use language that portray them as fitting stereotypes of masculinity or femininity Agency: active vs. passive Value: positive vs. negative Human-ness: subject vs. object Martin frames the above gender stereotypes as reminiscent of fairy tale tropes about sleeping princesses doing nothing as active male characters are active and heroic Martin notes that there are models and language to describe this scientific phenemonon that are more scientifically accurate and less dependent on sexist tropes According to Martin, being aware of the "implications" of metaphors "will rob them of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender."
A-level exams in the UK
This example from your readings highlights a couple key points (feel free to explore these in online discussion): •As the articles mention, there may be inequity in an educational system even before an algorithm is put into place - and the algorithm largely exacerbates existing oppressions - do you think this is true for algorithmic bias more broadly, based on the examples we've read? •It's worth noting that this was not a "big data" predictive algorithm but a relatively simple formula. Do you think that this fact helped or hindered those who wanted to appeal or overturn these results? •If the results WERE considered accurate, would it have been okay to determine test scores in this way? Is it the inaccuracy of the algorithm, or is it more that an algorithm shouldn't be used to determine an individual's test score? Why are some things okay to use predictive algorithms for and not others - what is the distinction?
Gender diversity: some examples
This map shows just a few locations where there have been traditions that go beyond a strict gender binary: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/
Science and Technology Studies
This semester, we will focus on STS, which stands for "Science and Technology Studies" STS is an interdisciplinary field that asks questions about science and technology and its connections to culture, society, arts, ethics, politics, identities, and other topics STS is interdisciplinary and involves philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, disability studies, art, cultural studies, and many other fields
A prominent religious leader and community advocate is in contact with a suspected sleeper agent of foreign radicals.
This was the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Even though he's an American citizen, he's placed on a watchlist to be summarily detained in the event of a national emergency. Of all similar suspects, the head of FBI domestic intelligence thinks he's "the most dangerous," at least "from the standpoint of ... national security."
the government separating children from their families and cultures, sending them far away to school, long enough, they hoped, to make them forget who they were
Throughout Indian Territory there are records of Indian agents being paid a bounty for rounding up kids to ship to the government boarding schools. Later, in a pretense of choice, the parents had to sign papers to let their children go "legally." Parents who refused could go to jail. Some may have hoped it would give their children a better future than a dust-bowl farm. Sometimes federal rations—weevilly flour and rancid lard that were supposed to replace the buffalo—would be withheld until the children were signed over Maybe it was a low year for pecans when the Indian agent came again, looking for skinny brown kids who had no prospect of supper—maybe that was the year Grammy signed the papers.
Because of the extensive evidence for genetic interchange through population movements and recurrent gene flow going back at least hundreds of thousands of years ago, there is only one evolutionary lineage of humanity and there are no subspecies or races. . . . Human evolution and population structure has been and is characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common, long-term evolutionary fate.
Thus, given current scientific data, biological races do not exist among modern humans today, and they have never existed in the past. Given such clear scientific evidence as this and the research data of so many other biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists that demonstrate the nonexistence of biological races among humans, how can the "myth" of human races still persist?
WAGES FOR FACEBOOK, THEN, IS A REVOLUTIONARY DEMAND NOT BECAUSE BY ITSELF IT DESTROYS CAPITAL, BUT BECAUSE IT ATTACKS CAPITAL AND FORCES IT TO RESTRUCTURE SOCIAL RELATIONS IN TERMS MORE FAVORABLE TO US AND CONSEQUENTLY MORE FAVORABLE TO WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY. IN FACT, TO DEMAND WAGES FOR FACEBOOK DOES NOT MEAN TO SAY THAT IF WE ARE PAID WE WILL CONTINUE TO DO IT. IT MEANS PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE.
WE WANT TO CALL WORK WHAT IS WORK SO THAT EVENTUALLY WE MIGHT REDISCOVER WHAT FRIENDSHIP IS.
Cyborg manifesto, cont.
To Haraway, the cyborg is not a literal cyborg, but a metaphor for how human bodies and lives, technologies, and social/cultural systems are all entangled in complex and changing ways in this sense, anyone adapting to the complexities of this time period might be a "cyborg" because we are all finding new ways that our selves and our technologies might relate Haraway thinks that being intentional and strategic about how we are intertwined with technologies can make us cyborgs that are especially good at finding ways to be ethical and work for justice and equity in an increasingly dystopian world that looks more like science fiction every day In this view, thinking critically about technology is fundamental to living ethically in a world that is increasingly shaped/re-shaped by technology - but this critical thinking can be a source of hope that it is possible to find the opportunities for positive change
Technology and Ethics
To take this to a larger context, a key part of a well-rounded education is to explore your own values and the areas where you want to make a difference Not everyone will be passionate about surveillance, or algorithmic bias, for example, but these arts and humanities strategies can be useful in a wide variety of situation
good old days medical advice came from your doctor, news from your local paper or Edward R. Murrow,
Today, we're overwhelmed with sources of information
Why do people discuss surveillance?
Traditionally education provides knowledge about how to be an effective citizen in society, including how power and knowledge and influence work and change; many surveillance scholars argue that in an information society, understanding surveillance is a vital part of understanding the individual's relationship to society, what empowers or disempowers citizens, and how ordinary people are part of larger webs of connection and surveillance and how that can affect their lives. In this view, people might need to think and know about the surveillance society in which we live to: •Know how to be cautious about who has information about us and what they might use it for •Participate in a conversation about the ethics of various ways of gathering information in order to shape behavior •Understand the world we live in today •Think critically about the future
All communication involves storytelling
True stories are also stories News stories Speeches Journal articles Patient histories Textbooks Rhetorically effective communication has a beginning, middle, and end; tries to make you care; has characters (not always human) who take actions; one thing in the story seems to lead to another thing; etc. In other words, it uses storytelling to engage the audience but also to bring an order to the information and to provide a framework to interpret the information Because all communication is storytelling, including scientific communication, and because storytelling tropes and practices reflect cultural attitudes toward race and gender, it is sometimes possible find gendered and racialized tropes in scientific communications
Student retention and graduation
Universities need to do more than attract high caliber students. They need to attract students who will stay in school and graduate. Big Data coupled with Machine Learning can help identify those students. with student recruitment, the schools will increasingly use Big Data to identify at risk students at the moment they show signs of falling behind. This will enable the schools to assist the students, help ensure their success, retain them in school, and increase the chances they will graduate.
The History of Hysteria
Until 1980 hysteria was a formally studied psychological disorder that could be found in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Before its classification as a mental disorder, hysteria was considered a physical ailment, first described medically in 1880 by Jean-Martin Charcot. Even before this, hysteria was thoroughly described in ancient Egyptian and Greek societies. But what really was hysteria?
Unfortunately, this legislation is outdated and somewhat useless today. For example, it applies to schools but not to third party companies operating under contract to the schools. This legislation was enacted before the era of Big Data and doesn't address the issues that this current technology raises. Further, the acts don't include a "right of action." This means there is no way to enforce the law.
Up until September 2015, 46 states introduced 162 laws dealing with student privacy; 28 of those pieces of legislation have been enacted in 15 states. There have been ongoing initiatives at the federal level as well. Relevant pieces of federal legislation that have been introduced include: Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act (SDPPRA) Protecting Student Privacy Act (PSPA) Student Privacy Protection Act (SPPA)
History of science
Uses and misuses of science
Christine Darden
Was an African-American woman who became one of the world's leading experts on supersonic flight technical lead for a sonic boom (when you break sound barriers)group
Games
We are likely to see far more games introduced into the educational curriculum than we've ever seen before. Games are not only proven to be instrumental in the learning process, they also lend themselves to data acquisition for immediate or later analyses.
Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining
We are seeing a new professional discipline emerge. The professionals in this field will have both the professional and technical skills to sort through the masses of unstructured educational data being collected on a wholesale basis, know what questions to ask, and then drill through the data to find useful, defensible insights that make a genuine difference in the field of Education. The demand for these specialists is likely to outstrip the supply for many years to come.
We have been told that there are very specific things that relate to race, such as intelligence, sexual behavior, birth rates, infant care, work ethics and abilities, personal restraint, lifespan, law-abidingness, aggression, altruism, economic and business practices, family cohesion, and even brain size
We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. We are born into a racist society.
On how the Nazis borrowed from the U.S. eugenics sterilization program
We really were on the cutting edge. We were doing a lot of this in the 1910s and 1920s. Indiana adopted a eugenic sterilization law, America's first in 1907. We were writing the eugenics sterilization statutes that decided who should be sterilized. We also had people who were writing a lot of what might be thought of as pro-Aryan theory. So you have people like Madison Grant who wrote a very popular book called The Passing of a Great Race, which really talked about the superiority of Nordics, as he called them, and how they were endangered by all the brown people and the non-Nordics who were taking over.
Science and identity - what else does it relate to?
We will continue to talk about how to analyze visual and written materials to see how they subtly reflect larger and longer conversations about identity, society, science, nature, and other topics. We are surrounded by media images in our lives; how might we think more about the implications of how stories tend to be told? How else might the study of identity and science relate to other topics?
Looking forward
We've seen these methods at various points this semester. Note that these methods are important to Science and Technology Studies (STS), and that much of what we've covered this semester can fall under the field of STS The final project will ask you to use most of these methods to some extent, but you might also find that these methods are useful in a wide variety of situations (not always related to science and technology)
Here is an example of an ad about technology. How might you connect this image to the ideas about gender or nature found in Bacon's quotes?
What do you make of details like?: •The position of the man on the left side, as he looks down on the scene? •The portrayal of human beings' relationship with nature •Anything that relates to gender here? •The words in the ad - how is being an active subject with agency associated with having power over the natural world?
Cultural construction
What does it mean to say that something is culturally constructed? The idea that some important categories or concepts are culturally specific; different cultures and different time periods conceive of these concepts or categories in different ways. The term "cultural construction" is often misused; in this class, do your best to use it in the academically precise way. Note: people have different beliefs about what is or isn't culturally constructed, but using the definition above, it wouldn't make sense to say
used to predict what you'll want to buy in order to target ads.
can do things like connect your social media accounts and web browsing history with the route you take when you're running errands and your purchase history at your local grocery store
Kimmerer, cont.
What is the effect of using/remixing the genre of the scholarly scientific article in this chapter, "Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass." ? Which of the following interpretations would you agree, disagree, or somewhat agree with? -The chapter uses the organization of scholarly scientific article to show how traditional community knowledge does indeed use a legitimate methodology that can produce trustworthy findings -The chapter uses the organization of scholarly scientific articles to investigate similarities and differences between different communities' customary ways of producing knowledge -The chapter uses the organization of scholarly scientific articles to show the possibilities of what a scientific article can be, suggesting that future scientific articles in scientific journals could take a similar approach to this chapter
As you analyze the Dupont images, you might consider:
What is the portrayal of gender roles, including masculinity and femininity? How are male and female bodies portrayed in terms of: Agency Sexualization Relationship to others Labor/activities What is the social organization/family structure implied by this diorama? How is the relationship between humans and the land/nature portrayed?
Credibility
What makes you think you should rely on a source?
Cultural construction of gender roles, cont.
What traits or aspects of life are (stereotypically) associated with the masculine and feminine today? Are there time periods or cultures that construct the "gender" of these things differently? •Pink and blue colors (pink used to be for boys and blue for girls) •Computer programming (most programmers used to be women) •Mathematics (in some cultures, there is a sterotype that women are better at math) •Sexual agency (in many European and US cultures there is a stereotype that it's considered more common or natural for men to think about sex more often and try to act upon sexual desires more, but in much of Europe, from ancient times until the Enlightenment or later, the stereotype was that women think about sex more and are driven by sexual desire much more than men)
Reading a scholarly article - important distinctions
When reading the scholarly article, keep track of the main purpose (what is the article trying to influence?), the main argument, the key supporting arguments, and the details used to explore or support those arguments; it will be confusing to read if you don't distinguish for yourself the difference between what the main point is and what the smaller supporting details are. The following parts of the article should help you make these distinctions: •Abstract: It should give you the main point and help you understand what you are reading •Introduction •Headings: These divide the article up into sections. After you read the abstract and introduction, go through and read all of the headings, possibly glancing quickly at what is included in each section. Try to get just a quick sense of the overall purpose of the essay, and how the various sections of the essay fit with that purpose. After this short process, it should be easier to read and comprehend the article. •Conclusions: Sometimes it helps to read through these parts first, and then go back through to read the rest of the article. Don't focus equally on every detail or every sentence of the article; use the above to get a sense of the overall argument, then go through and pay most attention to the information you need.
roberts ted talk and STS
Where do we see that Roberts' discussion reflects STS types of inquiry? Provides historical contexts to shed light on medical/scientific actions; STS scholarship often draws on historical methods to understand how ideas are created and spread, and how these ideas stick around for so long Demonstrates how racial bias and assumptions can create unintentional bias in medical treatments that stay in use far longer than most would expect, which affects people's lives and health and contributes to disparities; STS often analyzes how social and cultural forces shape science Explains how medical institutions sometimes define identities in ways that are not accurate (scientifically or historically); STS often uses a specific example related to science/tech to explore the nuances and complexities of identities and inequities Suggests that cultural understanding of identities, race, and racism will lead to better medical science; STS sometimes aims to help scientists produce better scientific knowledge or engage in more informed practices Can you think of other ways?
DANGEROUS DATA: THE ROLE OF DATA COLLECTION IN GENOCIDES
Zara Rahman
Search engines: examples of solutions
Which of the following would you choose as the primary way to address algorithmic oppression? How do you think Noble or other authors from this week would shed light on which solutions would help? Which of the following would you change? •How human beings design search engine algorithms in terms of the social good or social harm done - should there be policies about algorithmic bias? Government oversight? Some kind of consumer-run oversight? Should tech companies be in charge of centering ethical considerations? •How profit models (and what kinds of profit models) drive search engine algorithms - a search engine designed to get as many clicks as possible might not be able to fully prioritize quality and trustworthiness of information, but there are also issues with thinking through who has the right to determine trustworthiness and quality •The algorithms of search engines are not up for public discussion - should everyone be able to see how Google or other search engines work, so that experts can spot and ask for fixes when the public notices problems? But if so, how would companies protect their intellectual property? Clearly, solutions have pros and cons - you'll discuss this more in online discussion, but there are complex issues at play.
Slavery
While the Enlightenment was a period in which coffee houses, scientific advancements and skepticism toward monarchs and religion burgeoned, it was also a time when the slave trade flourished. Millions of people were enslaved and forcibly transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Many of them didn't survive the journey in the cramped conditions of slave ships, and many more died in the harsh working conditions they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. Voyages of slave ships continued well into the 19th century. Even Thomas Jefferson, the former U.S. president and main author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, owned slaves, despite the fact that he was influenced by the Enlightenment and wrote that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. part of the reason why slavery flourished was because of the vast amount of money that could be made from it. Plantation owners in the southern United States, the Caribbean and South America used slave labor to rake in the profits. Those in the shipbuilding industry responsible for constructing and maintaining slave ships also benefited financially, as did the financial companies that loaned money to finance the transport of slaves.
Cheeky Vizio a poet born in DR who moved to the US
Who said that until she went to NYC she didn't know she was a Black woman. if she would've went to south Africa she would've been colored. In DR she was another name to describe her color. So the same woman with the same biologies can be put into different categories according to these norms that different societies have
Why STS?
Why are scholars (and many others) interested in exploring STS questions? To intellectually understand the nature of science, culture, society, and how they interact To make science and technology better - more rigorous, more creative, more ethical, more responsive to needs, more intellectually robust, or to open up new lines of techno-scientific inquiry To enhance arts and humanities and social science explorations in the nature of knowledge, ethics, identities, power, and society, for the sake of this knowledge itself and also to work toward justice and ethical practices In other words, interdisciplinary exploration of the connections between technology, science, arts, humanities, and social science should ideally enhance each of these fields through this process of exploring challenging and nuanced questions about how these fields inter-relate
Bacon summary
Why does this matter? Recall that Bacon has sometimes been called the "father of modern science." His words were hugely influential on how people conceptualized science, scientists, technology, and nature. He did not create the gender roles or attitudes toward nature - his words were a reflection of his time and culture -- but then the influence lasted far longer than his time period -why? Remember the ancient Greek example - tropes sometimes have very long histories
Tropes
You watched Stella Young's video that critiques tropes about inspiration and disability, arguing that even seemingly positive tropes can shape perception in ways that have a strongly negative effect on people's lives You also read about common tropes in movies/TV/etc., about people with mental illnesses This background, definition and critique of tropes will be helpful in understanding larger STS and other conversations about how popular tropes find their way into scientific communication
Sex
You watched a video on intersex categories and science: •https://www.ted.com/talks/alice_dreger_is_anatomy_destiny
video on intersex categories and science
alice dreger is anatomy destiny?
Common arts and humanities approaches to inquiry about science and technology
`Analyzing how culture and society shape technoscientific work `Analyzing how technology and science have shaped culture and society, systems of power and inequities, and/or how identities are understood `Contextualizing providing nuances or details about the cultural or historical context that help interpret an issue more astutely `Using knowledge of diverse human experiences, identities, frameworks, and communities to think through how different people or groups might be impacted
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
a German scientist, coined the term Caucasian in 1795 "to describe the variety of mankind that originated on the southern slopes of Mount Caucasus" along Europe's eastern border. He claimed it was the "original" race and therefore the most "beautiful."
Frederick Douglass,
a former slave and the most prominent nineteenth-century opponent of slavery in the United States, also argued against the idea that Africans are less human than Anglo-Saxons (the descendants of people who settled in England in the fifth century): Man is distinguished from all other animals by the possession of certain definite faculties and powers, as well as by physical organization and proportions. He is the only two-handed animal on the earth—the only one that laughs, and nearly the only one that weeps. . . . Common sense itself is scarcely needed to detect the absence of manhood in a monkey, or to recognize its presence in a Negro. . . .
many doctors in the United States still use an updated version of a diagnostic tool that was developed by a physician during the slavery era
a tool that is tightly linked to justifications for slavery
scholarly article
an article written by a researcher, professor, expert the purpose is usually to discuss the results of a study analyzing a problem in-depth or otherwise further the knowledge in a particular academic field. articles are written for an audience of scholars or professionals in a specific field not usually for the general public or for a casual reader. for this reason, scholarly articles focus on a narrow or aspect of a discipline rather than giving a broad overview of a topic since the author assumes you already have that context almost all scholarly articles have a bibliography works cited or reference list at the end to show what information sources were used when writing the article scholarly articles help you find in-depth research, analysis, statistics or data. many instructors will require you to include scholarly articles in your class assignments articles written by scholars who are professors, practitioners, or experts in the given field their credentials listed with their name articles are reviewed by other scholars or experts before they are published this ensures no major flaws in the research design and provide feedback to the author to make their argument stronger refereed or peer-reviewed scholarly articles are generally considered authoritative academic writing your professor will expect you to read and react to them in your papers if you are trying to understand a topic in your field or your major incorporate current research from scholarly articles
Petrus Camper,
an eighteenth-century Dutch professor of anatomy, believed that the ancient Greeks had come closer than other people to human perfection. He used Greek statues to establish standards of beauty and ranked human faces by how closely they resembled his ideal
Carolus Linnaeus,
an eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist, was among the first scientists to sort and categorize human beings. He regarded humanity as a species within the animal kingdom and divided the species into four varieties: European, American, Asiatic, and African.
Throughout history hysteria has been a sex-selective disorder, affecting only those of us with a uterus. uteri were often thought to be the basis of a variety of health problems.
ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed wombs capable of affecting the rest of the body's health ancient Greece specifically, it was believed that a uterus could migrate around the female body, placing pressure on other organs and causing any number of ill effects. This "roaming uteri" theory, supported by works from the philosopher Plato and the physician Aeataeus, was called 'hysterical suffocation', and the offending uterus was usually coaxed back into place by placing good smells near the vagina, bad smells near the mouth, and sneezing. philosopher and physician Galen however disagreed with the roving uterus theory, believing instead that the retention of 'female seed' within the womb was to blame for the anxiety, insomnia, depression, irritability, fainting and other symptoms women experienced. (Throughout these classical texts, pretty much any symptom could be attributed to the female sex organs, from fevers to kleptomania).
Hysteria was basically the medical explanation for 'everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women', a conclusion only supported by men's (historic and continuing) dominance over medicine,
and hysteria's continued use as a synonym for "over-emotional" or "deranged." It's also worth noting how many of the problems physicians were attempting to fix in female patients, were not problems when they presented in male patients. It doesn't seem so coincidental then that most modern treatments for hysteria involved regular (marital) sex, marriage or pregnancy and childbirth, all 'proper' activities for a 'proper' woman. All things considered, most doctors and women alike were glad to see hysteria deleted from official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.
our ideas about race and ethnicity are shaped by societies
and not just what is found in our genes.
What is a periodical?
anything that is published at regular intervals throughout the year such as a magazine, journal, or newspaper
Still needed
are more realistic portrayals of the everyday struggles associated with mental illness. And despite new scientific advances in the understanding and treatment of mental illness, recent studies indicate that media depictions of mental illness are as outdated and harmful as ever, says Dr. Otto Wahl, director of the graduate institute of professional psychology at Connecticut's University of Hartford and author of "Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness."
"F**k the algorithm"?: What the world can learn from the UK's A-level grading fiasco
article
How to Find Trustworthy Science and Health Information
article
The Top Six Big Data Challenges in Education
article
How companies are using cell phone data
article Emilee Rader, associate professor of media and information, Michigan State University, wrote this piece for The Conversation,
the color of surveilance What an infamous abuse of power teaches us about the modern spy era.
article alvaro m bedoya
melba roy mouton
assistant chief of trajectory and dynamics head mathametician
wang zhenyi
astronomer and mathemetician equinoxes and solstices she explained why we have lunar eclipse
even if these tests could tell you definitively what population's you're descended from they still wouldn't
be able to objectively tell you what your race is and that's because race is a way of dividing up and categorizing people into groups
21 Scary Things Big Data Knows About You
bernard marr article
Where you're going:
big data point Facebook gets is where you are every second of the day
the egg and the sperm how science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles
by Emily martin
lunar module csm lm Katherine Johnson calculated this
command module service module lm adapter instrument unit s-vib third stage launch vehicle spacecraft
trees are talking to one another
communicate via pheromones, hormonelike compounds that are wafted on the breeze, laden with meaning. Scientists have identified specific compounds that one tree will release when it is under the stress of insect attack—gypsy moths gorging on its leaves or bark beetles under its skin. The tree sends out a distress call: "Hey, you guys over there? I'm under attack here. You might want to raise the drawbridge and arm yourselves for what is coming your way." The downwind trees catch the drift, sensing those few molecules of alarm, the whiff of danger. This gives them time to manufacture defensive chemicals. Forewarned is forearmed. The trees warn each other and the invaders are repelled. The individual benefits, and so does the entire grove. Trees appear to be talking about mutual defense. Could they also communicate to synchronize masting? There is so much we cannot yet sense with our limited human capacity. Tree conversations are still far above our heads.
Privacy vs. Evidence Based Research
concern about student privacy s one of the top Big Data challenges that must be resolved. reasons for this concern focuses on the process of growing up itself. It's not unusual for students to participate in activist organizations in their youth that they reject later in life. Or they drank too much in university but sobered up once they had the responsibilities of jobs and families. Or a teacher may have given a student a negative evaluation that should not have survived his graduation or departure from the school. In the past, we simply forgot these things. Life moves on and we don't give a great deal of attention to what happened 25 years ago. But permanent records that can be pulled up and viewed decades later may cast shadows on job candidates that are completely unwarranted at that time. In other words, we lose the ability to forget. One way of dealing with this is to pass legislation that limits access to student information, protects the identity of individuals, and yet still makes it available to those conducting legitimate educational research. Unfortunately, this ideal is better served in rhetoric than in reality.
On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all.. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast
cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven. The Skywoman story, shared by the original peoples throughout the Great Lakes, is a constant star in the constellation of teachings we call the Original Instructions.
You Probably Don't Know All the Ways Facebook Tracks You
david nield article
On the case of Carrie Buck
poor young woman, really nothing wrong with her physically or mentally, a victim of a terrible sexual assault, and there's a little hearing, she's declared feebleminded and she gets sent off to the colony for epileptics and feebleminded
Mental illnesses are all severe - or all alike
depression is much more common than mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. "The real-world relationship is going to be that depression outnumbers the family of psychotic disorders by about 6 or 7 percent to one," Diefenbach says. Yet on TV, the most extreme cases - and the most rare disorders - tend to be disproportionately represented. "Mental illness" is used as a catch-all phrase to describe someone's condition, as opposed to specific medical terminologies such as "schizophrenia" or "anxiety disorder." And even then, little variation is shown from patient to patient; one movie portrayal of bipolar disorder tends to resemble another. mental illness shows up differently in everybody. The media does not represent the complexity of mental illness in general. There's this sense that it's just a one-name-fits-everybody, or one-title-fits-everybody."
we have been lied to about disability we have been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing
disability is not a bad thing and it doesn't make you exceptional
People with mental illness look different than others.
disheveled hair rumpled clothes wild eyes always something "different" visual signifiers to cast these characters Many homeless people - who often lack the resources or wherewithal to take care of their appearances - are mentally ill. "But there are also a huge number of people with mental illnesses who are getting up - showering every day, going to work, etc.,"
estimate glomerular filtration rate (an important indicator of kidney function
doctors interpret the glomerular filtration rate by race. in a lab test, the exact same creatinine level (concentration of the blood of the patient) automatically produces a different GFR estimate depending on whether or not the patient is African-American Why? An assumption that black people have more muscle mass then people of other races
navigation bi dipper north star stays put and is our axis of rotation we use to navigate
drinking gourd to find their way north during slavery
The FBI's violations against King were undeniably tinged by what historian David Garrow has called "an organizational culture of like-minded white men." But as Garrow and others have shown, the FBI's initial wiretap requests—and then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy's approval of them—were driven by a suspected tie between King and the Communist Party. It wasn't just King; Cesar Chavez, the labor and civil rights leader, was tracked for years as a result of vague, confidential tips about "a communist background," as were many others.
during World War II, innocent Americans of Japanese descent were surveilled and detained in internment camps. Fewer people know that in the wake of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson openly feared that black servicemen returning from Europe would become "the greatest medium in conveying Bolshevism to America." Around the same time, the Military Intelligence Division created a special "Negro Subversion" section devoted to spying on black Americans. Near the top of its list was W.E.B. DuBois, a "rank Socialist" whom they tracked in Paris for fear he would "attempt to introduce socialist tendencies at the Peace Conference."
why is it important to know the difference between popular scholar and trade articles?
each article has a different use in academic writing
often used in security questions: pet's name, mother's maiden name, place of birth, the name of your first teacher.
easy points," she said. "They didn't recognize them as security questions, or they didn't care, but that's how people 'hack' into celebrity iClouds, by guessing their security questions."
even ted talks can be misconstrued
eg dr loves 8 hugs a days oxytocin it can enhance negative and positive emotions
science runs on induction which is we learn about the world by looking at the world things have happened before and they are very likely to happen again
eg sunrise logical process at the heart of science science tells us that a day will come that the sun won't process but we use this same process for everything else you don't have to have confidence but if you're going to believe in anything at all then you might as well believe in science
University of Arizona Predicting Freshman Dropouts Using Student ID Card Data
eric skelton article
research shows that nobody reads or understands those privacy policies. And, even when companies face consequences for breaking their privacy promises, it doesn't stop them from doing it again. If a user starts to feel like their data is being used in a way that they're not actually comfortable with, they don't have room to complain, because they consented, right?
exception is Germany, Facebook must specifically ask its users for permission to combine data collected about them on Facebook with data collected from third parties. The ruling also states that if people do not give their permission for this, they should still be able to use Facebook.
"highly unscientific but delicious experiment" 380 New Yorkers gave up sensitive personal information — from fingerprints to partial Social Security numbers — for a cookie.
experiment, which she called "Please Enable Cookies," To get a cookie, people had to turn over personal data that could include their address, driver's license number, phone number and mother's maiden name. More than half of the people allowed Puno to take their photographs. Just under half — or 162 people — gave what they said were the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. And about one-third — 117 people — allowed her to take their fingerprints. She examined people's driver's licenses to verify some of the information they provided.
Karl Popper
falsification philosopher and professor barely believed that was enough
One test focuses on these points in the genetic code to identify the migration routes that a particular line of your
family took
there may be different kinds of insights that can come from different kinds of anatomies particularly when we have people thinking in groups
females on average are more inclined to be very attentive to complex social relations and to take care of people who are vulnerable
Indigenous education is essential
few Indigenous science scholars scholars with specialization in Indigenous science can provide mentorship as well as become role models for current and prospective Indigenous science students. he Canadian government incorporates TEK in assessing species at risk. The Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) restores TEK dialogue to the world's most pressing ecological issues.
Dr. Mae Jemison
first Af American female in space late 80s she was a md first and has a phd only 1 mission left nasa and started her own group focusing on service and giving back
colonel guion bluford jr
first af man in space but not first african descent
captain john herrington
first registered native american in space became ceo of a company skytellers narration
Social Model of Disability
frames disability as a problem with society, which contains environmental, social, and organizational barriers to those with disabilities we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by their bodies and diagnoses They are just using their bodies to their best capacity
astronomy in its most basic form is
going outside and looking up
what she was going to do with their information eferred them to her terms of service, a full page of legal boilerplate displayed in tiny print, which gives her the right to display the information and share it with others.
highlights what privacy experts already know: Many Americans are not sure how much their personal data is worth, and that consumer judgments about what price to put on privacy can be swayed by all kinds of factors.
the science of race
holocaust and human behavior
another type of test looks at particular genetic markers that contemporary
populations are more likely to have for example markers that West Africans are more likely to have than Europeans
Dr. Samuel Cartwright
graduated from Upenn med school and practiced in the Deep South before the Civil War and was a well known expert on "Negro Medicine" teach slaves not to run away by teaching them scripture; defined a mental illness that causes slaves to flee captivity He promoted the concept of different disease, people of different races suffer from different disease and experience common diseases differently He argued in the 1850s that slavery was beneficial for black people for medical reasons, because black people have weaker lungs then white, forced labor is beneficial for them It is the want of a sufficiency of red vital blood that chains their minds to ignorance and barbarism when in freedom He created a device to measure breathing called a spirometer to show a presumed deficiency in black people's lungs
big ideas
growing skepticism toward monarchs, particularly the idea of an absolute monarch — one who could make laws on a whim. There was also growing support for individual liberties and freedoms. "The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise," wrote Thomas Paine (1737-1809) in his pamphlet "Common Sense" (published in 1776). These ideas helped spur the French Revolution (1789-1793), during which French King Louis XVI was beheaded and a republic was founded in France. Louis XVI and his ancestors had ruled France as absolute kings from the opulent Palace of Versailles, which served as an emblem of the French monarch's power. Skepticism of the monarchy also grew in the United States, which resulted in it becoming a republic after driving out the British during the U.S. Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Early in this period people were also growing weary of religious authorities having strong political power, and the idea of religious freedom was becoming more and more popular. The Peace of Westphalia, the series of peace treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, saw a reduction in the pope's power across Europe. This reduction in religious power continued into the 18th century, particularly during the French Revolution. Additionally, when the U.S. became independent, it refused to adopt a national religion, instead stating in the constitution that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Doctors still hold up as a claim that black people as a race
have lower lung capacity than white people some even use a modern day spirometer that has a race button so the machine adjusts the measurement for the patient according to their race "correcting for race"
french polynesia known to traverse the ocean navigation
hawaiian star lines that represent different stars that connect us navy requires their people to learn star navigation
annette lee
head of sky walkers program indigenous
stalker economy
her bank statements, emails, medical records, photographs, digital content, all of it - on sale for as little as £100. "data slavery" - the willingness to submit our every moveto social media and confess our darkest secrets to the search bar, lining the pockets of big business as we do.
On deeming people "feebleminded"
idea that we were being drowned in a tide of feeblemindedness — that basically unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than the intelligent people — but it was also a very malleable term that was used to define large categories of people that again, were disliked by someone who was in the decision-making position. So, women who were thought to be overly interested in sex, licentious, were sometimes deemed feebleminded. It was a broad category and it was very hard to prove at one of these feeblemindedness hearings that you were not feebleminded.
Falsifiability
if we claim something is scientifically true, we must be able to specify what evidence it would take to prove it wrong
fathers were extremely attentive to figuring out how to protect individuals from the state
if we injected more mothers into this concept we would have more of a concept of not just how to protect but how to care for each other we need to think less about the individual body in terms of the identity and think more about those relationships
Construction planning and facility upgrades
ig Data will help planners sort through the data to identify those areas that are likely to be in highest demand and provide the greatest benefit to the students and the institutions.
chile is the astronomy capital of the world
in terms of telescope
a lot of the finding fathers were really interested in science and in the concept of a naturalistic world
in the declaration of independence they talk about nature and natures god talk about the power of nature to tell us whom we are set up the civil rights movement for the future?
Developing a vision and plan for data use will help steer the direction of a predictive analytics effort.
include key staff and stakeholders in decision making, and get their support. Including these individuals in the planning process can help ensure that you are using predictive analytics in a way that does not intentionally harm those whose data are being used and analyzed. plan should include the questions you hope to answer and the goals you aim to achieve. It should also explore the potential pitfalls of using student and institutional data for the purposes intended. plan should also include a discussion about any possible unintended consequences and steps your institution and its partners (such as third-party vendors) can take to mitigate them. plan should also lay out the measurable outcomes you hope to achieve as a result of using predictive analytics.
People with mental illnesses are criminal or violent.
individuals with mental illness less likely to commit violent crimes, they're actually more likely to be victimized. many news outlets conflate mental illness with violence. A common news account of mental illness, for instance, involves a sensationalized and violent crime in which an innocent person is killed by a mental health patient. The article is laced with graphic descriptions, emotional diction and a glaring headline. It also depicts the mentally ill person as devoid of social identity and dangerous, capricious, aggressive and irrational. TV characters who've been identified as having a mental illness are typically shown as violent characters who were identified through behavior or label as having a mental illness were 10 times more likely than other TV characters to commit a violent crime - and between 10 to 20 times more likely to commit a violent crime than someone with a mental illness would be in real life.
Technology to TEK Indigenous knowledge, also known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), is essentially the cumulative body of knowledge associated with ecological relationships, which is handed down through generations by Indigenous people.
innovations such as the canoe, kayak, toboggan or snowshoe aided in travel and transport and were quickly adapted by European settlers. has already provided insight into environmental change, wildlife population monitoring, sustainable harvesting practices, behavioural ecology, ecological relationships
calama chile indigenous pep[;e dont connect stars
instead they connect different patches of the milky way monkey frog llama if baby llama is on top of mountains
will people use these tests to claim benefits that weren't intended for them like affirmative action or
memberships in indigenous tribes? Probably not but they need to be rejected anyways if it foes happen
whether its skin color, eye color, height, partenage
is a social process
most females are androgen sensitive
met a man with a case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia had xx chromosomes he was a female internally had periods internally
studies are everywhere so many studies thrown around they are starting to contradict one another
is science bullshit?
For young or unmarried women, widows, nuns or married women unable to achieve orgasm via the strictly penetrative heterosexual sex that was common at the time,
midwives were occasionally employed to manually stimulate the genitals, and release the offending liquids.
race in genetic testing
race can shape diagnoses, treatments, medication, diseases
scientific ideas can always be saved?
issaac newton universal gravitation and 3 laws of motion now we can figure out how stuff in the solar system moved
race medicine goes beyond misdiagnosing patients
it diverts attention and resources from the social determinants that cause appalling racial gaps in health: lack of access to high-quality medical care; food deserts in poor neighborhoods; exposure to environmental toxins etc
The leaders were offered the American Dream, the right to own their own property as individuals, inviolate from the vagaries of shifting Indian policy. They'd never be forced off their lands again. There would be no more graves along a dusty road. All they had to do was agree to surrender their allegiance to land held in common and agree to private property. With heavy hearts, they sat in council all summer, struggling to decide and weighing the options, which were few. Families were divided against families. Stay in Kansas on communal land and run the risk of losing it all, or go to Indian Territory as individual landowners with a legal guarantee. This historic council met all that hot summer in a shady place that came to be known as the Pecan Grove.
it seems no one listened that summer when the Pecans counseled: Stick together, act as one. We Pecans have learned that there is strength in unity, that the lone individual can be picked off as easily as the tree that has fruited out of season. The teachings of Pecans were not heard, or heeded. Any unallocated parcels were snapped up by non-Indian settlers just as hungry squirrels snap up pecans. During the allotment era, more than two-thirds of the reservation lands were lost. Barely a generation after land was "guaranteed" through the sacrifice of common land converted to private property, most of it was gone.
How Indigenous knowledge advances modern science and technology
jesse pop
Race is a bad proxy
just a distraction and is irrelevant, blinds doctor to family illnesses, their history, their own illness
public records databases, like your name and home address, that can be matched up with GPS location data from an app on your mobile phone
link your home address with the location where you spend most of your evening and nighttime hours - presumably where you live. This means the app developer and its partners have access to your name, even if you didn't directly give it to them.
Indigenous perspectives are holistic and founded upon interconnectedness, reciprocity and the utmost respect for nature.
many examples where blending both approaches has resulted in excellent contributions to modern science.
The technology already exists. It's only the will we're lacking." "big data increases inequality and threatens democracy."
mathematical models or algorithms that claim to quantify important traits: teacher quality, recidivism risk, creditworthiness but have harmful outcomes and often reinforce inequality, keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. hree things in common: opacity, scale, and damage.
Google and Facebook Racist and sexist bias, misinformation, and profiling are frequently unnoticed byproducts of those algorithms.
misinformation can be debilitating for a democracy — and in some instances deadly for its citizens. Such was the case with the 2015 killings of nine African-American worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., who were victims of a vicious hate crime. In a manifesto, the convicted gunman, Dylann Roof, wrote that his radicalization on race began following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen, and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman. Roof typed "black on White crime" in a Google search; he says the results confirmed (a patently false notion) that black violence on white Americans is a crisis. His source? The Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "unrepentantly racist." As Roof himself writes of his race education via Google, "I have never been the same since that day."
White test takers adopt new racial or ethnic identities
more than often. They saw their initial identities as too bland or as not providing enough sense of belonging. They longed for what sociologists have called "colour capital," a connection to something more interesting or exotic than "just white." When whites adopt "exotic" new racial identities, it fosters the view that race is costless, something that can be enjoyed without real consequences. That can promote a false view that race is inconsequential today for everyone.
Human for sale: the artist who turned herself into a corporation
nell frizzell article
replication studies are rarely funded and have no rewards
no noble prize for fact checking
when she was 15 someone in her community asked her parents if they could
nominate her for a community achievement award her parents were like that's nice but she hasn't really achieved anything
anutan constellations
not a lot in the north more in the south
france cordova
nsf leadership latino astrophyscict
we can use astronomy to tell time
ojibwe people time keeping is built into winter overlaps with orion only seen in winter time
2 beings both conceived in the middle of 1979 on the exact same day
one of them mary is 3 months premie so she's born on june 1 1980 Henry is born march 1 1980 bc mary is premie she comes into rights earlier than henry does henry has to wait for that he is liable to be drafted
What Was the Enlightenment? A brief overview of the Enlightenment period of the 18th century
owen jarus
Employers use large datasets and predictive algorithms to make decisions about who to interview for jobs and predict who might quit. Police departments make lists of people who may be more likely to commit violent crimes. FICO, the same company that calculates credit scores, also calculates a "medication adherence score" that predicts who will stop taking their prescription medications
people dont realize how their data can be combined to make new predictions. That's because privacy policies typically only include vague language about how data that's collected will be used.
race is not a biological category that naturally produces these health disparities because of genetic difference
race is a social category that has staggering biological consequences, but because of the impact of social inequality on people's health
the science of phrenology, whose heyday was between 1820 and 1850,
racial anthropological physiognomy, attracted many followers
trade articles
related to a specific injury or field they might be found in a trade journal or magazine or on a professional organization's website or blog the intended audience for trade publications is people who are working in a specific field like teachers, engineers, or physical therapists they are meant to inform professionals about news from their field or give practical advice about how to do their jobs you may also find summaries of recent research or discoveries however you won't find original research or studies as you would in a scholarly article most trade articles don't have bibliographies or work cited lists either. this is an important distinction between trade and scholarly articles along with news items its common to find listings for trade shows events industry supplies or job postings trade publications are a great way to find news from a specific field or discover hot topics or trends in that field trade publications may be written by experts or practitioners in the field they are also often reviewed by the publications editorial staff not necessarily other experts they're often not in-depth enough for academic writing though they can give you a good basic understanding of a topic
It's an odd feeling being in the bedroom of someone I've never met, but there's no fear of her stepping through the door - she's no idea her room is here.
replica, installed in the Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, and painstakingly pieced together using photographs and videos uploaded on the Canadian teen's blog.
There is no such thing as race
robert wald sussman
Braiding Sweetgrasss
robin kimmerer
This powerPoint will:
•Define annotated bibliography •Explain what an annotated bibliography should include •Discuss examples of annotations •Explore how to evaluate credibility of a source •Explore how to evaluate bias, fairness, and related concepts in a source
There is clearly a potential benefit of conducting educational research using student information. There is good reason to believe that tracking students over the course of their academic years - and perhaps even into their working careers - would allow scholars to identify early indicators of eventual success or failure.
scholars are prohibited from conducting that research by placing restrictions on student identification or restrictions on the length of time data can be stored, then that sort of research could not be conducted. This could conceivably lead to a loss of value to both individual students who could benefit from counseling informed by reliable research as well as to benefits to society at large.
Vera Rubin
scientist who studied antimatter and discovered dark matter
Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez
served in the military and later became the first black astronaut in space. cuban latino
she does history of anatomy
she is also an activist patient impatient advocate and work with people with body types that challenge social norms example conjoined twins dwarfism and atypical sex intersex androgen insensitivity syndrome
egg and sperm pt 1
she is an anthropologist intrigued by the idea that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world. If this were so, we would be learning about more than the natural world in high school biology class; we would be learning about cultural beliefs and practices as if they were part of nature. I realized that the picture of egg and sperm are drawn in popular as well as scientific accounts of reproductive biology relies on stereotypes central to our cultural definitions of male and female. The stereotypes imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts but also that women are less worthy than men. my goal in writing this article is to shine a bright light on the gender stereotypes hidden within the scientific language of biology. Exposed in such a light, I hope they will lose much of their power to harm us. article were presented as the 1987 Becker Lecture, Cornell University.
she cant even count how many times she has been approached by strangers to be told that she is brave and inspirational
she says life as a disabled person is hard and they do overcome some things but they are not overcoming things that has to do with their bodies
Some people only experience disabled persons as objects of inspiration
she takes no harm, for a lot of "us" disabled people are not school teachers, doctors, manicurists, etc
quotes like above and images of disabled people beating the odds and still doing things she calls inspiration porn
she uses the term porn deliberately because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people
problem is why we maintain certain divisions?
she wants to maintain some divisions anatomically in our culture fish shouldn't have the same rights as a human challenge is figuring out which on are
not all scientific studies are equal scientists are pressured to get pressured
so they p-hack p-hacking The use of data mining to uncover patterns in data that can be presented as statistically significant, without first devising a specific hypothesis as to the underlying causality.
purpose of images to inspire you motivate you
so you can say however bad my life is it could be worse i could be that person
race is a
social construction they are social groupings with made up demarkations and law makers not biologists came made this human beings regardless of race are 99.9% the same and the 0.01% difference has nothing to do with race 200-
Test takers project different understandings of race onto them
some believe that it is biological and some find it socially
In Scotland, the government was forced to completely change tack after tens of thousands of students were downgraded by an algorithm that changed grades based on a school's previous performance and other factors. Anticipating similar scenes for today's A-level results, the government in England has introduced what it's calling a 'triple lock'—whereby, via stages of appeals, students will effectively get to choose their grade from a teacher assessment, their mock exam results, or a resit to be taken in the autumn
still have a disproportionate effect on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, with knock-on effects on their university applications and careers. Forget the triple lock, ethnic minority students from poorer backgrounds could be hit with a triple whammy. First, their teacher assessments may be lower than white students because of unconscious bias, argues Pran Patel, a former assistant head teacher and an equity activist at Decolonise the Curriculum. He points to a 2009 study into predictions and results in Key Stage 2 English which found that Pakistani pupils were 62.9 percent more likely than white pupils to be predicted a lower score than they actually achieved, for example. There's also an upwards spike in results for boys from black and Caribbean background at age 16, which Patel says corresponds to the first time in their school careers that they're assessed anonymously.
Greater use of predictive analytics
successful at predicting students' future success based on their past performance. Schools of all stripes will rely on these predictive analytics more and more in the future. This is likely to lead to two types of outcomes. On the one hand, schools will allocate more resources to those students most likely to succeed and, as a result, graduate more high-performing students who will deliver significant benefits to their communities and the world. On the other hand, predictive analytics will restrict the academic opportunities of failing students or those who show little promise - like Albert Einstein. Predictive analytics will also help institutions develop counter-intuitive insights that will challenge long cherished values and lead to better student and institutional results.
crucial that predictive models and algorithms are, at the very least, created to reduce rather than amplify bias and are tested for their accuracy.
t is crucial to address bias in predictive models, ensure the statistical significance of predictions beyond race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and forbid the use of algorithms that produce discriminatory results.
FBI statistics show that most violence against white Americans is committed by other white Americans, and that most violence against African-Americans is committed by other African-Americans
t's impossible to know the specifics of what influences the design of proprietary algorithms, other than that human beings are designing them, that profit models are driving them, and that they are not up for public discussion. alternatives — such as regulation of search engines — that uphold the public interest.
This drug sends a dangerous message:
that black people's bodies are so substandard a drug tested in them is not guaranteed to work in other patients The marketing scheme failed; black patients were understandable wary weary
the belief in human races, carrying along with it the prejudice and hatred of "racism," is so embedded in our culture and has been an integral part of our worldview for so long
that many of us assume that it just must be true.
women wanted the right to vote took their anatomical commonality point
the fact that we have a uterus and ovaries is not significant enough in terms of a difference to mean that we shouldn't have the right to vote same thing with sojourner truth aint i a woman poc appealing to a commonality on anatomy
social media has propagated this lie even further
the only disability in life is a bad attitude or your excuse is invalid before you quit, try quotes
ovotestes ovarian tissue with testicular tissue wrapped around it
the reason kids with these things have to go to surgery is because they threaten our social categories not because there health it in danger
we share 95% dna with chimpanzees
the simplistic categories we have overly simplistic
genes may tell you something about your ancestral background but
they cannot tell you about your race
she knows that when people say that she is an inspiration
they mean it as a compliment she learns from disable people all the time, not that she is luckier than them though
Algorithmic bias This Powerpoint
•Defines and describes key terms, including algorithmic bias, algorithmic oppression, machine learning, and predictive analytics - be able to use and understand these terms •Explains how algorithmic bias relates to course topics like oppression, bias, ethical aspects of technology, and technology's relationship to society •Reviews some ways of generating ideas for how to discuss the ethical ramifications of technologies
the founding fathers rejected an anatomical concept replaced it with another one that lasted 200 years
they rejected monarchy which is based on a very simplistic concept of anatomy monarchs of the old world had 0 concept of dna but concept of birthright blue blood that people who would be in political power should be in that position because of the blood being passed down their new anatomical concept was all men are created equal the anatomy that mattered was the commonality of anatomy not the difference in anatomy they were part of the enlightenment system democracy and science
scientists then discovered uranus but it wasn't moving the way it should have been moving
they should have started chipping away at newtons theory but instead there like oh it must be something else out there tugging at Uranus and so Urbain le Verrier calculated where it should be and they found Neptune so newton was right all along but there was another reason mercury also moving crazy Verrier went crazy thought another planet was lost in the sun they named it Vulcan and everything but its not clear data isn't good and Einstein said no newton was wrong gravity is different gave a theory of general relativity and it accounted
While the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th centuries was a time when science blossomed and revolutions in the United States and France occurred, it was also a time when millions of people were enslaved and transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere.
think about the Enlightenment as a series of interlocking, and sometimes warring problems and debates
xperts criticized the low accuracy of the algorithm and lack of uncertainty bounds for the resulting grades. Meanwhile, public outcry centred on the algorithm's unfair results. For instance, if no one from your school has gotten the highest grade in the past three years, it's extremely unlikely—if not impossible—for anyone from your school to attain that grade this year.
those developing algorithms will be prone to bias and intellectual lock-in. It is precisely for this reason that quality assurance guidelines don't work; we cannot grade our own work, or that of people we know really well. These are difficult questions that we need to talk about. The victory over the A-level algorithm is no happy ending. UK universities will likely struggle with increased competition, owing to the cap. And if public officials everywhere don't start to think more seriously about fostering critical audiences for algorithms , I'm afraid we'll hear, "F**k the algorithm!" far more often in the future.
The FDA has even released a race specific medication named bidil
to treat heart failure in self-identified African American patients was convenient for commercial reasons to market the drug to black patients The FDA allowed the company to only test on African American subjects which stood in that race stood in as a proxy for some unknown genetic factor that affects heart disease or response to drugs
Genetic ancestry testing and the meaning of race Wendy Roth video
twins identify as white but don't really know dad makes them get ancestry test before college and the kids find it they have a little bit of north African and native American dad was interested and happy because his sons could possibly receive financial aid he spoke to the ny times and explained the test reinforces both views, that race is biological and that race is a social construct
This PowerPoint pt 3
uProvides additional historical context for the readings uHighlights particular points in the readings uProvides additional information on the history of science uConnects the readings to the discussion of categories and cultural construction uConects the readings to larger conversations in STS about the relationship among power, knowledge, and identities
When she's at the colony, the guy who is running the colony, Dr. Albert Priddy, is on the prowl. He's looking for someone to put at the center of this test case that they want to bring, so he's looking for someone to sterilize, and he sees Carrie Buck when she comes in, he does the examination himself, and there are a lot of things about her that excite him. She is deemed to be feebleminded, she has a mother who is feebleminded, so that's good because you can show some genetics, and then they're hoping that [her] baby could be determined to be feebleminded too, then you could really show a genetic pattern of feeblemindedness. The fact that she had been pregnant out of wedlock was another strike against her. So he fixes on her and thinks Carrie Buck is going to be the perfect potential plaintiff. ...
under the Virginia law, they have to have a sterilization hearing at the colony, which they do and they give her a lawyer (who is really not a lawyer for her; it's really someone who had been the chairman of the board of the colony and was sympathetic to the colony's side) and they have a bit of a sham hearing where she is determined to be a suitable person for sterilization; they vote to sterilize her, and that is the order that then gets challenged by Carrie as the plaintiff first in the Virginia court system and then in the Supreme Court.
big dipper ursa major big bear
ursa minor little bear
This PowerPoint
•Defines and explains cultural construction •Addresses some common myths about cultural construction •Explains how culturally constructed classification systems can impact people's lives •Identifies cultural and historical contexts for how certain categories are conceptualized, including race, gender, disability, and mental illnesses. •Explains how academic inquiry about categories and identities fits into larger STS (Science and Technology Studies) conversations about the relationship between knowledge and power
Popular Article
usually refers to any article written for a general or non-specialized audience. newspapers, magazines, many blogs, or lifestyle, news or sports websites are all places where you might find popular articles don't contain technical language or complex terms (straightforward) they are read for entertainment, news, or general interest stories advertisements no bibliography or work cited list just links to other similar articles articles and images from popular publications are great for discovering the public's perception of a current topic for keeping up with the news or getting an overview of an issue written by journalists or professional writers who aren't necessarily experts on a topic doesn't mean you can't trust the information but it won't be in-depth enough for most college papers reviewed by magazines editorial staff before they're published, but the editors may not be experts on the topic either it can be great to get an overview of a topic by reading a popular article but you'll probably want to include the original research as well
Can we trust what science tells us?
video
Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
video
This Viral Video Of A Racist Soap Dispenser Reveals A Much, Much Bigger Problem
video and article
1950 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement asserting that all humans belong to the same species and that "race" is not a biological reality but a myth.
was a summary of the findings of an international panel of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists.
Ram uses the data to create networks that map out which students interacted with each other, and how often those interactions took place.here are several quantitative measures you can extract from these networks, like the size of their social circle, and we can analyze changes in these networks to see if their social circle is shrinking or growing, and if the strength of their connections is increasing or decreasing over time."
we're able to do a prediction at the end of the first 12 weeks of the semester with 85 to 90 percent recall Of all the students who would drop out at the end of the first year out of the 2,000 students we're able to identify 1,800 hope is that these students could then be paired with school advisers and receive assistance to get on track and avoid dropping out data has been anonymized, so Ram can't personally identify individual students by name. information has been used for research purposes, but Ram says she hopes her techniques will one day be used by universities to supplement the predictions that they're already making based on demographics and other data.
mlk i had a dream speach don't judge people based on the color of their skin instead on their character
what if content of character could be scanned in the near future or able to be seen with an fMRI
When she toppled from the hole in the Skyworld she had reached out to grab onto the Tree of Life that grew there. In her grasp were branches—fruits and seeds of all kinds of plants. These she scattered onto the new ground and carefully tended each one until the world turned from brown to green. Sunlight streamed through the hole from the Skyworld, allowing the seeds to flourish. Wild grasses, flowers, trees, and medicines spread everywhere. And now that the animals, too, had plenty to eat, many came to live with her on Turtle Island.
wiingaashk, or sweetgrass, was the very first to grow on the earth, its fragrance a sweet memory of Skywoman's hand. Accordingly, it is honored as one of the four sacred plants of my people. Breathe in its scent and you start to remember things you didn't know you'd forgotten. Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we "remember to remember," and so sweetgrass is a powerful ceremonial plant cherished by many indigenous nations. It is also used to make beautiful baskets. When we braid sweetgrass, we are braiding the hair of Mother Earth, showing her our loving attention, our care for her beauty and well-being, in gratitude for all she has given us.
whats the harm?
you shouldn't be able to cherry pick the parts that justify what you are going to do anyway this is what leads people to believe that climate change isn't man made and that autism causes vaccines
racial identity has nothing to do with
your genes
GIGO?
•"Garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO) is a common saying that notes how a program that receives bad data as input will not have valuable output •This sentiment is old, but Big Data has made it even more relevant •Experts in algorithmic bias, however, suggest that addressing algorithmic bias will take deeper inquiry than just improving the quality of the data that is given to the program: •What is the incentive for companies that design and maintain their search engines/other technologies? (More clicks?) •What systems (not just technological systems) are in place to identify harmful practices and make changes? •Who is included or excluded from the design, testing, and maintenance/revision? How do these practices make some biases invisible or visible? •What systems of accountability are in place?
General overview of surveillance studies
•Surveillance scholars largely argue that we do NOT have to choose between technology/ease of access and privacy; you can have both, but only if society pushes for change. There is no reason why technology and innovation HAVE to undermine privacy, in this view, but some solutions might require society-wide change or policy change, not just a change in individual choices. •Some surveillance scholars also observe that people are gradually being coached to accept increasing levels of surveillance
What are scholarly articles?
•"Scholarly" articles and book chapters are written by experts in the field, intended for an audience of their fellow experts in the field, and undergo a peer review. •A peer review for scholarly works is when a group of reviewers (or less commonly one reviewer) review the scholarly article/book before they decide to publish it in a journal or at an academic publishing company. All of these peer reviewers should also have expertise in the same field as the author and audience (this is what makes them "peers." •In this process, the reviewers: •Read the article/book and decide if it makes an original contribution to the experts' conversation about this topic •Check the quality and rigor of the scholarship to make sure it adheres to the scholarly field's methods and standards •Sometimes make suggestions for improving the article.
What does an entry in an annotated bibliography include?
•A bibliographic entry in correct MLA or APA or Chicago style or the style used in your major - but it must be an official citation style of some academic field. •A paragraph that includes: •Clear and accurate identification of the audience and purpose of the source, including whether a source is scholarly •Brief discussion of who the author is, including their area of expertise or their connection to this topic •Summary of main point, and also the most useful information in your source •An evaluation of the credibility of the source that uses sound reasoning •Any relevant comments on where the discussion is distorting or not accurately characterizing the conversation, demonstrating a bias that is affecting the inquiry in inappropriate ways, or anything else that affects the trustworthiness of the source
What is an annotated bibliography?
•A bibliography is list of sources on a particular topic, alphabetically arranged, with all the information someone would need to find the sources, as well as information about the author, the publication (journal/website), and the date published. Why might these pieces of information be useful? •An annotated bibliography is a bibliography in which each source has an annotation, which are notes made about the source, usually a summary and evaluation or analysis of each source. •When doing an annotated bibliography, put the entries in alphabetical order by the first letters of the entry (usually the author's last name). •Like all writing, an annotated bibliography has a purpose. It is often used to summarize the scholarly or wider conversation on a topic for a particular purpose and audience. It is a more formal (and sometimes more useful) way of what we would do in any situation where we need to collect multiple sources of information about a topic (Cf. bookmarks, tags, etc.).
Definitionsss
•Algorithm: A step-by-step set of rules or instructions that are followed, often by a computer; "algorithm" is sometimes used in non-technical conversations to refer to computer programs specifically •Algorithmic bias: when a computer system reflects social and cultural biases, often implicit or "unconscious" bias
Why annotated bibliographies?
•All research writing depends on finding out what a conversation is, and then with that knowledge, entering the conversation •You can refer back to an annotated bibliography when using information that you have researched •In this class, the annotated bibliography will also be used to share research with group members •(Academically, annotated bibliographies are often used to demonstrate skills at performing research, comprehending and summarizing sources, effective communication, analytical thinking and evaluation of sources of information, citation, and other areas related to the MSU learning goals for which all college graduates are expected to be proficient.)
Evaluating fairness
•An article's fairness should be critiqued if: •It dismisses or fails to adequately consider evidence that does not fit the assumptions or arguments •It distorts the arguments of others or what sources say, or gives readers misconceptions about its sources or subject matter; this disempowers rather than empowers the audience •It makes sweeping generalizations or other false claims or logical fallacies •It mischaracterizes opposing viewpoints •There appears to be a pattern of unacknowledged assumptions that affect the gathering or interpretation of information, especially related to: •Financial or career interests of the researcher/reporter •Partisan or ideological leanings, IF there is a resulting distortion of the narratives •Commonly known and widely studied societal biases, such as those related to class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, who is considered an authority, etc. •A devotion to a particular belief or idea that seems to make the researcher or journalist cherry-pick the evidence to make the idea seem more well-supported than it actually is
Categories
•Classification systems - ways of grouping into categories - are examples of cultural constructions, according to category theory experts, because there are usually multiple ways of categorizing and the specific cultural contexts shape how things are categories and what these categories are used for
Misconceptions about cultural construction
•Cultural construction does not necessarily imply relativism; it is possible to believe that there are multiple possible ways of constructing something and believe that for you, or your community/society, or most people in general, should work on the basis of one construction over another. •Example: The "scientific method" is a cultural construction, in that it was built up and solidified over time, and could be constructed differently. •It is likely a good thing that scientific communities have built up the ideas, standards, and practices that make up the scientific method •Methods vary among disciplines, though there are some key features that most disciplines would say characterize scientific methodology •One can ask if the current scientific methods could be constructed differently •Acknowledging that the scientific method is a cultural construction does NOT mean that you think that every method of gaining knowledge is equally good - if someone thinks that the methods of a field are the best methods for gaining knowledge of that subject matter, then they likely would argue that the current way of constructing the scientific method is an advantageous cultural construction
Myths about cultural construction
•Cultural construction is a concept that some scholars use to explore "How might this thing that I'm studying be constructed differently?" The approach does tend to assume that culture, in subtle or obvious ways, has a big influence on how people think about the world and therefore on how people gain knowledge about the world •Cultural construction does NOT necessarily lead to the approaches of nihilism or relativism. •"Everything is a cultural construction, therefore we can't know anything" is NOT a conclusion that must follow from analyzing cultural construction •"Everything is is a cultural construction, therefore we can't take a moral stance on anything" is also definitely not a necessary conclusion that must follow from analyzing cultural construction
Another example of categories: Constructing disability
•Disability rights movements emphasize that there is a difference between impairment and disability: •Impairment is a physical or mental condition that a person has •Disability is a lack of ability to do things that others in a society can do, which stems from access and resources and design and not simply an impairment •Disability is also an identity •Why would such communities want to make this distinction? How might this distinction allow these communities to advocate for equal access? To argue that disability rights movements are movements for civil rights and human rights? •Consider this video from Stella Young and its critique of common tropes about disability from previously in class - how might the video draw on the idea that disability and impairment are two separate things? https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much/transcript?language=en
Note some important distinctions
•Discussing how biological sex is more complicated is NOT the same as arguing that gender is culturally constructed . •Recall that "gender" refers to cultural expectations and also identities. "Sex" refers to biology, as Dreger uses it. •Dreger explains that there are many people who do not fit into the two most common biological sex categories in terms of genes and anatomy. This is an example of how when people's experiences don't meet the expectations of social categories, it can affect people's lives. •Someone could agree or disagree with the idea that gender is culturally constructed but still understand that biological sex is more complicated than XX and XY; the former is a conversation about what identity is, and the second is about how complex biological knowledge is
Analyzing what shapes knowledge work: FAIRNESS VS. Bias
•Fairness and accuracy are valuable things to consider when evaluating a source •"Bias" is a tricky term •Some people think "bias" means having an opinion, but most journal articles are supposed to make arguments; the issue is whether the argument is well-supported and if it accurately communicates about the conversation •"Fairness" and "accuracy" are usually more precise terms than "bias" •One way to evaluate fairness in a controversial debate is to see how the author portrays opposing views; are there straw man arguments? Do they insult or unfairly generalize about the opposition? When the article describes the opposing view, would someone who holds that opposing view think that the article has characterized their position accurately? •This method is not as easy for many issues where there are not clearly two sides; a literary or rhetorical analysis, for example, would not necessarily have an "opposing side" and so to evaluate fairness, you'd have to look at whether the literary examples and the scholarly works cited are characterized accurately and fairly •You do NOT have to address fairness in your annotation unless it is relevant
Are there other ways of talking about gender categories?
•For the past few decades, there have been more publicly prominent conversations in the US about other possible categories •"Non-binary" is an identity category used by some people who do not identify (completely) as men or women •Some have argued for a gender spectrum that allows for a wide set of possibilities on a scale from masculine to feminine, or for other models with greater complexity
Overview, cont.
•Historians also contribute to surveillance studies by studying the ways that surveillance systems have supported genocide and other human rights abuses through history (long before the Internet, there was surveillance - digital technology is not the cause of surveillance but it makes large-scale surveillance much easier) •Many scholars argue that U.S. slavery was a defining contributor to modern surveillance as it was designed to monitor and control actions at a time when data collection was becoming an increasing part of institutional practices. Simone Browne is the scholar most known for her expertise on this topic.
Key questions in epistemology (emphasis on STS)
•How is knowledge created or found? At a more detailed level, what processes build knowledge in a community (a society, a scientific field or other academic discipline, another type of community)? •How is knowledge disseminated? How do institutions and cultural factors shape these processes in specific ways? •How is knowledge valued? By whom? For what purposes? Why? •How do cultural, historical, and social contexts affect all of the above? How do identities affect all of the above? How do systems of power as well as oppressions affect all of the above? •If science is a body of knowledge, a process and method for creating knowledge, and an institution/industry that exists in part of society: •What counts as part of scientific knowledge? How might this change over time and why? •What actions or practices count as significant or valuable scientific work? How might this change over time and why? •How does the scientific field, as an institution, interact with other parts of society and culture? How might this change over time and why?
Productive tension
•In short, people can feel conflict between the importance of trusting expertise vs. the importance of questioning current knowledge - this can feel like a conflict in ANY field of study, since every field of knowledge is changing at all times •This seeming conflict or contradiction can be a source of feeling at a loss, OR it can be viewed as a productive tension that helps us think through the relationship between power and knowledge, which has many practical applications in life •As a metaphor, think of a stringed musical instrument - making music depends on there being some tension in the strings
Trust and knowledge
•It IS hard to know what to trust •But it's NOT hopeless! •Understanding how knowledge gets made and evaluated and shared/communicated with audiences can help with this tough question •One common worry is that learning about the ways that social/cultural factors shape science will lead everyone to just dismiss anything that comes from scientists •Yet, those who devote their careers to these STS questions are often strong defenders of the importance of trusting scientists on important issues - why? •To answer this question, let's go back to some of the key questions of epistemology
To trust or not to trust
•It would be easy to say that NOTHING should be trusted whatsoever in any way, but where would that lead? •There could be no new knowledge, no informed decisions, etc. •Things that are clearly wrong would be seen as equivalent to things that are well-evidenced •It's fine to believe that nothing is 100% certain if that is what you want, but believing that no knowledge is 100% certain does NOT mean that all knowledge is worthless and that nobody has a responsibility to make decisions based on knowledge or evidence •Some knowledge has value, even if it puts forth an imperfect but useful model of the world •Trusting in at least some knowledge is necessary for making decisions and acting thoughtfully in response to real world issues
Other details for #2
•Local community members suspect that the government is not telling the truth •Local community members are compiling their observations on a website; they know one another and are not allowing random visitors to contribute without deciding if their volunteer efforts are trustworthy first •Some scientists have pointed out that local community members' equipment is capable of producing good information, and that community members take more readings in more locations than government agencies since they have more people on the ground and they know all of the local locations well •Your task is to decide if cleanup efforts should prioritize which locations to focus on based on the data from government agencies, based on data from citizens, or something else. Make sure to explain your reasons using the course materials and your own experiences/knowledge •Note that there is NO right or wrong answer; rather, this question should demonstrate how you reason through complex questions of trust and knowledge
Before you read the scholarly article
•Look at the abstract, title, who the authors are (and their field of study), and what journal/book the essay was published in - try and predict what the article will be about and what kinds of evidence it will use •Read the first section and see if you can articulate the main argument that the article will make - you can adjust your impression later if you realize that you didn't quite understand at first
Definitions, cont.
•Machine Learning: a way to analyze data that automates certain processes, such as analyzing data, identifying patterns, drawing conclusions, making decisions, etc. In machine learning, a program might be able to develop, test, and refine models. In this way, the machine "learns." •Note that this is not generally the kind of "artificial intelligence" that we see in movies about machines having human thoughts and feelings and wanting to take over the world, be loved, etc.
Example: Money is a cultural construction
•Money is not found in nature •Money was invented •Not all cultures think about money the same way •There are different currencies •There are different kinds of wealth and assets that are understood differently in various cultures and time periods •But none of this means that money is fake or that money is all in our head; it's real •What money means has been built over time, by communities who agree on, and sometimes shift, the meaning of money •Money is actually more 'solid' or controlled than other cultural constructions because there are now many institutions shaping money (consider all the institutions that determine what a dollar means, why a dollar cannot be easily forged, etc.)
Categories, cont
•Most classifications systems are done with a purpose, and they necessarily foreground certain uses and not others •According to category theory, many classification systems dealing with people, leave out some people or their experiences, or have them caught between categories, because they or their experiences are not as visible or not considered as relevant by those with the authority to categorize •This doesn't mean that these classification systems are intended to cause harm or exclusions (though some are), but rather that categories are a key way of understanding the world and that categories are shaped by power •STS is very interested in the question of how power shapes knowledge, which is why classification and cultural construction are discussed often in STS materials
Gender and sex
•Note that much academic discourse has made the distinction that that the word "sex" refers to biological anatomy and the term "gender" refers to cultural/social expectations about the masculine and feminine •Some have critiqued this traditional definition for: •Overestimating how much we can know about what is or is not culturally influenced •Not accounting for the complexity of ways that anatomy and identities might relate or not relate
Example
•Our course materials so far have a lot of examples of how we can use this tension between trusting scholarly authority and critiquing scholarly authority to illuminate the relationship between knowledge and power •For example, the last chapter in the readings from Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, "Mishkos kenomagwen: the teachings of grass," discusses the author's experiences mentoring a project that investigated whether traditional community knowledge, including both the factual knowledge about which grass harvesting methods were optimal as well as the methodological knowledge of knowing how to "learn from grass" •The knowledge taught by Lena and her community proved to be a better management plan for sweetgrass harvests than the predominant practices of Western academic scientists
Who is contributing to developing these other models?
•People whose own lives or identities don't fit well into the dominant gender binary model, and their allies •People who view the binary model as having connections to larger systems and traditions that oppress or marginalize women and/or LGBTQ+ individuals •People who believe that individuals, not traditions, should define their own identity •People who study identity, human behavior, society, culture, or other topics to increase knowledge about human life •Others?
Definitions, cont.: Predictive analytics
•Predictive analytics: analyzing data (often large amounts) to make predictions about the future or about the consequences of potential future actions •A program can "learn" by being "trained" on a set of data. •The program then makes predictions based on this data set. •For example, if an employer has a history of discrimination against particular groups, and then they use a program to predict who is most likely to succeed in that company to help guide their hiring, the program will use that past data to conclude that people in those particular groups are not a good fit for the company, but the company's hiring managers might think that the program is completely fair. In other words, the computer program is made to imitate the usual way the company runs - and if it does that accurately, it will reproduce any biases that are present in how the company usually runs.
This PowerPointt
•Provides a very short introduction to give context for scholarly and broader conversations about surveillance and society •Provides key definitions that you will need to know for the rest of the semester •Discusses solutions that are commonly considered for issues related to surveillance privacy
Race as a cultural construction
•Race can be an identity or a social/political category •Some racial and ethnic identities are also cultures • None of these would mean that race is "not real"; rather, the categorization is not based on biology, according to current understand of genetics, but the lived experiences of identity and culture and society are still real
Accountability
•Recall that the peer review process means that scholarly publications - both before AND after publication - are subject to the scrutiny of others in that community, and that this scrutiny should focus on data and methods, not on the position or status or intelligence of the scholars •Another way of saying this is that an academic field or discipline is in many ways a community of scholars with certain values, norms, and practices (such as their definitions of intellectual or scientific rigor) that they maintain in their community •These systems of accountability make for much more trustworthy knowledge because there is a large group, all of whom have some responsibility to hold one another accountable for the knowledge, so there are many more opportunities for this knowledge to be challenged and refined in a systematic way •None of this means that knowledge can't change over time - it's not that expertise can't be questioned - it's rather that experts tend to be held accountable by their communities, and so it tends to be more trustworthy than knowledge from people or organizations that are not accountable to anyone in terms of their methods for making knowledge
Safiya Noble
•Safiya Noble is a prominent scholar of "algorithmic oppression," the ways that algorithmic bias can reflect and promote inequities in society •"It's impossible to know the specifics of what influences the design of proprietary algorithms, other than that human beings are designing them, that profit models are driving them, and that they are not up for public discussion" -Safiya Noble
What is easy about reading scholarly articles?
•Scholarly articles have distinct parts, and you can look at abstracts, introductions, and headings to get a sense of the arguments •Many scholarly articles try to be as explicit as possible about their argument, their methods, their results and interpretation, and the limits of their article, which makes it easier to comprehend and also makes it possible to challenge, reproduce, critique, or defend the findings through academic methods that are accepted by a discipline •Scholarly articles should also be clear about how their findings fit into a larger scholarly conversation. One way they do this is through citing the other articles or books that have been important to the conversation about the topic. The citations make it easy to look up more articles and find related information or ideas, as well as to get a sense or an imagined picture of how the conversation on this topic has unfolded, verify the claims, etc.
Constructed does not mean fake
•So if something is just assumed to be the way things are, how do we see that it is culturally constructed? Usually by looking at other cultures and/or other time periods. (Seeing cultures that are different is sometimes a key way to understand your own culture). •"Constructed" does not mean 'fake' or 'bad': identity, money, rights, etc., are constructed, meaning that they are built through time, gaining solidity and 'real-ness' through the acts of individuals, society, and institutions. (Houses are built, but they are real)
Are these models very new?
•Some of the language may be recent, but the binary model has never been universal in human cultures •Many cultures have different ways of categorizing gender •Also, German researchers were speaking in "modern" ways about gender by the early 20th century • Sometimes, a controversial concept may be viewed as new even if it is part of a longer history.
Possible Solutions
•Some surveillance experts believe that social media should be regulated like a public utility - cf. broadcast television, which is not allowed to spread false information, is expected to provide news as a public good (the argument is that broadcast TV has these obligations because the airwaves are publically maintained - similarly, the infrastructure that maintains the Internet is largely maintained by the government as well) •Some surveillance experts believe in other forms of regulation that would protect the privacy of individuals, including the right to have all data about a person "forgotten" after a certain number of years and limiting the way that data about people can be sold and for what purposes (continued on next slide)
Solutions, cont
•Some technological experts believe that social media should be required by law to encrypt data in communications in a way that means nobody knows the content (even those who work at the company or people buying data from the company) •One popular belief is that people should individually boycott companies that use data in ways that they disapprove of, and that this will solve problems related to surveillance -some advocacy groups believe that large boycotts would help change behavior, but some surveillance experts suggest that this is fine to do but that this alone will not address the main problems, since: •Social media companies can track your actions online even if you are not a user yourself •Some people and businesses need social media for things like jobs too urgently to quit even if they want to •It is too difficult to make individuals change their behavior when they would be individually disadvantaged by doing so; this sense of need was intentionally created by social media companies and so it would be inappropriate to reward such actions
Another example: Cultural construction
•Some view all knowledge as a cultural construction, as knowledge often depends conceptualizing a model that describes something •Some view knowledge as objective and universal, and science should be judged as how closely it gets to this ideal •Some people fall somewhere in between in this spectrum - where would you fit? There were also some questions from some of you on the survey about cultural construction, so I'll address some of the common ones here. •First, you can believe anything you want about cultural construction and still acknowledge that categories can be much more complex than many believe •You can also believe anything you want about cultural construction and still believe that history/culture can bias science
Epistemology
•Studying how knowledge works (epistemological questions) can provide a lens or toolbox to think through complicated situations involving what knowledge to trust. How?
Surveillance Studies: Gilliom and Monahan
•Surveillance scholars Gilliom and Monahan, define surveillance as "monitoring people in order to regulate or govern their behavior"; they explain that surveillance means to watch "from above." •They also argue that an information society is always a surveillance society. •People talk about technology like they want the online world to better mimic the flesh world; actually the flesh world is increasingly shaped according to the online world •Technology shapes and is shaped by habits of behavior - it is not separate from or 'outside' of human behavior from that perspective •Where do you see that STS and surveillance studies scholars have many lines of inquiry in common?
Key definitions you should know
•Surveillance, according to surveillance scholars Gilliom and Monahan, can be defined as "monitoring people in order to regulate or govern their behavior" - this is a definition common in this field of study • Big Data: A very large amount of data that can be analyzed for patterns and sometimes to make predictions •The amount of data gathered today exceeds previous levels so greatly that new types of analysis are possible •"Big Data" is sometimes used as a catchall term for how data science is changing the world •Predictive analytics: analyzing data (often large amounts) to make predictions about the future or about the consequences of potential future actions Try to use these terms correctly in online discussions.
Definitions reviewwww
•Surveillance: monitoring information to shape or control behavior •Big Data: A very large amount of data that can be analyzed for patterns and sometimes to make predictions or decisions •The amount of data gathered today exceeds previous levels so greatly that new types of analysis are possible •"Big Data" is sometimes used as a catchall term for how data science is changing the world How might the prevalence of Big Data and surveillance require us to think more about what bias is and how it can work?
Example of classification system: DSM
•The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a manual created by the American Psychiatric association. The manual is considered an authoritative source for mental health professionals in the US. •This manual classifies what is and what isn't a mental disorder, and also puts mental disorders into various categories. It shapes: •What patients are diagnosed with and therefore their treatment (the purpose of the manual) •Whether a patient is likely to receive insurance coverage for a treatment (if they have insurance or mental health coverage at all) •Whether a patient can get medical leave from work (if they have a job with sick leave) •The social stigmas associated with some mental disorders •What treatment options are allowed for the patient
Categoriess
•The idea that something is "culturally constructed" often counters the assumption that it is universal or natural, and allows us to ask how it might be constructed differently; •Therefore, to speak about how things are categorized and the real-life stakes of classifications is to think about how classifications might be constructed differently
Cultural construction, cont.
•The idea that something is "culturally constructed" often counters the assumption that it is universal or natural. •If something feels natural or universal, or is just assumed to be "the norm," then often it is, in a sense, invisible; people don't usually comment on it as something to notice unless it has been threatened in some way. For example, these are not universal: •The nuclear family •Childhood as a time of fun and sweet innocence •Three meals a day •People have rights •Romantic love as a requirement of marriage • On the other hand, if a cultural construct is changing in a controversial way, it might be the subject of great scrutiny.
Scholarly writing and disciplines, cont.
•The point of scholarly writing is for experts to have a conversation about topics that lead to new knowledge and understanding •Expertise is often gained through education and experience in a particular discipline or academic field. •Examples of humanities disciplines include philosophy, art history, literary studies, rhetoric, history, languages, linguistics, religious studies, ethnomusicology, etc. •Non-humanities disciplines include sociology, physics, business, engineering, psychology, and many other disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and other areas. •Some experts are "interdisciplinary," meaning their work is at the intersection of multiple disciplines •The study of identity is an interdisciplinary field that brings together insights and conversations from many humanities and social science disciplines
What is hard about reading scholarly sources?
•The writing is by experts and for an audience of experts, so they may assume that readers already know about previous conversations on topics that are important to their academic field •Similarly, there may be jargon - terms that are mostly known only to people in a particular area of study • To meet cultural expectations of what scholarly writing is supposed to "sound like," many scholars write in a very dry, formal, impersonal style •Scholarly articles sometimes require more time to read than other kinds of writing, because of the level of complexity, depth, detail, difficulty, or other factors. •If you're not experienced at reading scholarly articles (or even if you are), it's not always clear why scholars write and organize articles the way they do
Consider:
•These questions are important whenever you want to understand the role that someone or something plays in a larger conversation or community. •Example: If you chose someone famous on social media or youtube, and analyzed their content, what would you be able to understand about the audience of this person using the the previous questions?
Why are people interested in how concepts or categories are culturally constructed?
•To understand how history and culture shape how we think and act in our everyday lives •To be able to work toward a better society by understanding how culturally constructed categories help or harm equity or justice •To understand how people think - for purposes ranging from marketing to business to political science to psychology to education to design •To see how culture affects how we think, including how science, technology, philosophy, and other fields develop through time in ways that are influenced by culture and society •To be more precise and self-reflective when producing new knowledge, whether scientific or other kinds of knowledge
Trust and skepticism
•Traditionally, education has provided critical thinking lenses that help us be skeptical - to think about knowledge rather than trusting all knowledge that we receive - EVEN if we trust the person who shares this knowledge with us or even if our own anecdotal experience confirms this knowledge •But today, there is more information available to the typical person than ever before, but also more complexity required in navigating this information
DSM Controversies
•Until the revised Third Edition of the DSM in 1987, it classified same-sex attraction as a mental disorder. They were heavily criticized for taking so long to revise. Today, some mental health professionals debate issues re the most recent DSM: •If the DSM adequately distinguishes between moderate abuse of drug or alcohol and more extreme levels of addiction •Whether usual grief processes should be considered a mental disorder •If the vague definitions of some anxiety disorders might encourage prescribing medications to people who don't need/wouldn't benefit from the drugs •If, in general, the manual medicalizes behavior patterns that are not extreme enough to warrant medical intervention, thus loosening or making the boundaries around the disorder too fuzzy; this could make the definition meaningless, or encourage overuse of medications or other unnecessary treatments.
Online Readings: Sussman
•What does it mean to say that race is culturally constructed? •Recall our discussion of categories - cultures can determine how differences take on meaning and become different social categories. For example, earlobe shape is not used as a marker of which identity group someone belongs to, even though there is a clear genetic reason for the earlobe shape that someone has (connected earlobes, e.g.) •Modern racial categories like "Black" or "white" or "Asian" are a few hundred years old; for example, in ancient Greece, skin color was not considered to have anything to do with whether someone was Greek or not, though Greek cultures likely had people of diverse appearances, as some Greek city-states and colonies were centers of trade and migration with many parts of Africa and West Asia in addition to the Mediterranean •Sussman argues that the idea of biological races has been a harmful myth. Other historians have shown how this myth was used to promote slavery and colonialism. •Sussman provides some explanation of the science behind the conclusion that there is no such thing as biological race. If you're interested in reading more about this topic, you might try (completely optional): •https://www.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123 •AAPA Statement on Race and Racism https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/
Analyzing audience and Purpose
•What is the main purpose of the source? •Who is the audience of the source? •Is it a scholarly source? A popular media source such as a magazine website? A personal website with a following that revolves around a particular issue? •What is the publication? If there is no publication or website, what can you tell about the audience's interest from the text or visuals? Why is the audience accessing this site? •Do not just say that the audience is anyone who is interested in the topic; figure something out about the audience. Are they experts? If not, is the magazine or website dedicated to particular topics and so you can conclude things about what the audience knows about and values? •It's fine to talk about the main audience and the secondary audiences or overhearers, if you think there are multiple audiences. (continued on next slide)
Reading a scholarly article, cont.
•While you are reading: At the end of each section, look back and try to summarize what that section contributed to the overall argument of the essay (observe this to yourself or, better yet, in your notes so you can refer back to your notes later) •Try and notice when the author is talking about things that are only of interest to other experts (such as methodology in some cases), and when the author is talking about things important to anyone wanting to understand the overall argument. •This process can be used with all scholarly articles for this class and elsewhere; it can also be used for any type of specialized reading that you are not used to. It doesn't work well for literary works like poems or novels (where all the details are important, and the emotional and personal reaction to a work are important sources of knowledge), but it can work for scholarly writing.
