Greyhound vs Via Rail

Interesting experience I had this week. So, I needed to book a last minute trip from Ottawa to Kingston. Stupidly I listened to advice and booked on Greyhound as opposed to Via Rail, as I normally do. So, I book a ticket for a particular day and time on Greyhound from Ottawa to Kingston. The price was negligibly lower than Via's would have been. Bizarrely on their website Greyhound tells you that just because you have a ticket for a particular service does not mean you will actually get on that service. It's first come first served. In other words, they might sell the 100 seats on a particular bus 20,000 times and leave 19,900 people in the lurch, they'd find out at the bus station, and Greyhound would try to put them on a 'later service'. Suffice it to say, there was no later service on the day that I planned to travel.

Well, I decided to take my chances. Expecting disastrous service at that stage I wasn't too surprised that the ticket did not actually print when I clicked the relevant weblink (the link was 'broken'). I tried on and off throughout the day, it never worked. Eventually I called Greyound's call centre where some smartie pants told me that I must print off the ticket. I asked him to try himself. He tried (me patiently waiting on my mobile phone), and eventually advised that they had a 'technical problem' (sounds like Air Canada, doesn't it?).

Incredibly, he then told me that he had to cancel my booking. I asked what that meant and he enlightened me me by telling me that he would cancel the ticket and I would get my credit card reimbursed during the next 7-14 days (!!!!), and that I would have to go to the bus station and purchase a new ticket. I asked whether that would mean a higher price, he confirmed that that likely would be the case.

So, everything here is Greyhound's fault. Their technical fault, their ticket cancellation, their requirement to purchase a more expensive ticket while having to wait 7-14 days to get the money back for the ticket they never issued. Does that strike you as possibly a fraudulent business practice? You sell on-line tickets you don't actually have, you eventually cancel them last minute and force customers to purchase a higher-priced ticket. Herewith added to my 'no go' list: Greyhound.

Compare this to Via Rail. I called them and asked whether I could use my Via points (Preference) to book a complimentary ticket for the next train available from Ottawa to Kingston. A pleasant person picked up the phone next to instantly (not the useless 'pick 1 for', 'pick 2 for', 'pick 3 for' that Greyhound keeps you occupied with), confirmed my details, booked my ticket, voila I had a valid booking, all in less than 5 minutes. No hassles, delightfully competent service. Another excellent experience with Via Rail. Love these people!

CMAJ Impact Factor and Impact on Authors

I got an interesting email from the Canadian Medical Association Journal today. The CMAJ informs me that its Impact Factor has increased from 7.3 to 9. So, in the average a paper gets cited 9 times per year during a two year window period right after publication. Congratulations to my colleagues at the CMAJ editing that paper. The journal I edit jointly with Ruth Chadwick, Bioethics, improved its Impact Factor sufficiently to jump into second places among journals publishing primarily bioethics content. We're currently standing at 1.64. This gives us about twice the impact of reportedly more 'prestigious' journals such for instance Ethics which languishes in the vicinity of 0.8 if I am not mistaken. Philosophers, no doubt, will point to the amazing 'quality' of what Ethics publishes, suffice it to say that that quality doesn't seem to result into a great deal of citations (ie use). Now, if a journal does great quality publishing but there's not much evidence of interest in that quality in terms of academics actually using it in their own published research,  how do those claiming 'quality' demonstrate quality? I'm not suggesting that impact equates quality either by the way, but at least impact points to utility, peer reviewed content is demonstrably being used by academics in their peer reviewed outputs. It's a reasonable start toward measuring a journal's relevance as an academic outlet.


Anyhow, I digress, I meant to write about the CMAJ email. Its marketing spiel (marked as 'this is not spam') is aimed at attracting authors to the journal based on its improved impact. Here's the offending line from said email: 'This is good news for authors who publish in CMAJ and hope to have their work cited.' This seems nonsense to me, to be honest. An improved Impact Factor as such is neither here nor there for authors who hope to see their work cited. Here is the reason: Most academics searching for research papers relevant to their own work will not look for particular journals. They will key in keywords in specialist databases (as well as google scholar possibly). Once they find relevant content they will download it via their library's on-line services. Nobody will go any longer into the library to browse a particular journal issue in the hope of finding relevant content there. It would be highly inefficient to do something like that. What determines whether someone cites your work, in this day and age, is whether the journal is widely available on-line, and whether the content of the journal is indexed widely in the relevant data-bases, whether you got the right title, keywords and abstract as well as the right content The Impact Factor as such has no impact on these crucial features that determine whether your paper will be cited. What it does tell us is that the editors of the journal made prudent choices aimed at increasing citations with regard to the papers they accepted, no more, no less. As any investment guru will tell you, current performance is no guarantee of future performance, so as an author you are on your own on this. There's no way you could ride (ie 'benefit') on the coat tails of the journal's improved Impact Factor. It's as simple as that. Let that not stop you at all from submitting relevant content to the CMAJ, just keep in mind that whether or not a paper they accept will be cited or not is up to factors other than their current (or future) Impact Factor. 

International Day Against Stoning

The barbaric Islamic Republic of Iran, among a few other medieval dictatorships, continues to practice the stoning to death of people. A number of brave activists in Europe, among them Mina Ahadi, Patty Debonitas, and Maryam Namazie  have started some time ago a campaign against this practice. I urge you to check out their website and support the campaign for the abolition of stoning as a form of punishment.

More confusion on plagiarism: The case of Johann Hari

If you were to read the right-wing papers in the UK you'd think Johann Hari (a high-profile left-wing columnist at the Independent newspaper who has also published for Slate and other outlets) had committed a terrible terrible crime. Not unexpectedly his enemies, of which there are surprisingly many, want to see his head (well, they want to see him fired). The plagiarism charge is currently being leveled against Hari all over the place.

What makes this an interesting case is the nature of his transgression. Hari admitted essentially to using content as part of interviews that was not part of the actual interview in question. Say, he interviewed Hugo Chavez. Hari would include in the interview quotes from sources other than what was said during the interview (but the quotes were nonetheless verbatim quote from the person he interviewed, it's just that the stuff wasn't actually said during the interview but was published elsewhere by someone else).

What is interesting here is that by standard definitions of plagiarism he has not actually plagiarised anything. After all, he didn't pass someone else's content off as his own. The people he quoted during the interview really said the things he quoted, but they did not say it during he interview. It would have been correct and arguably required to give the other interviewer credit (ie the person who got the quote he eventually quoted as if it had been said during his own interview).

What Hari did is no doubt a bit dodgy, but does it really constitute plagiarism? Clearly not, because the intellectual content was corrected ascribed to whoever was quoted. However, he should have given credit to the person who managed to get the quote in question from the subject of the interview.

Did Hari commit a capital crime here? I don't think so. One understands the campaign run by the right-wing media against an unloved left-wing commentator and competitor, but to my mind it's time to move on. Hari admitted his errors, promised to change his ways. That should be the end of it. Plagiarism  he did clearly not commit.

News from BIOETHICS and DEVELOPING WORLD BIOETHICS

The journals
We got our annual report from our publisher a few days ago. Much of the stuff there is confidential, of course (and would likely bore you, too). However, there's bits and pieces of statistics that you might find interesting. In case you don't know the journals, or don't know them well, Bioethics is now in its 25th year of existence. It publishes 9 issues per calendar year. Developing World Bioethics is now in its 11th year of existence. It publishes 3 issues per calendar year. The journals come in a package, so what it boils down to is a monthly publication schedule. Bioethics is also the official publication of the International Association of Bioethics. This essentially entails us publishing every two years a special issue with the best contents form the IAB Congress, as well as us offering deeply discounted subscriptions to paid-up members of the IAB. We continue to sponsor events held during the IAB Congress every two years. Recently we have also provided sponsorship to a postgraduate bioethics conference held in the UK.

Our reach and academic success
We have been able to increase the reach of both journals quite significantly in 2010. The journals are available in about 3,500 university libraries by regular subscriptions. A further 6,000 libraries in developing countries have access to the journal at this point in time. I should like to add that this - to my mind - puts to rest claims about the unavailability of our academic content in the developing world due to high subscription fees. A further 5,200 libraries worldwide are able to access our content a year after it has been published.  So, in total, slightly less than 15,000 libraries across the globe provide access to our content.

This wide availability has also resulted in another significant boost to article downloads from our journals. In total about 250,000 articles from both journals were downloaded in 2010.

The European Science Foundation has given Bioethics the highest ranking available in the philosophy category.

Our upcoming content
Ruth Chadwick, Bioethics' other Editor, and I have lined up a whole range of interesting special issues over the next few years, covering topics all the way from synthetic organisms to ageing.  In case you're one of our readers, give us a shout with suggestions for special issue topics. We are always keen to hear from you!

Publication ethics
On the publication ethics fronts, we have introduced extensive regulations on authorship and conflict of interest matters that we hope will keep us out of the firing line on these issues for the foreseeable future.

Editorial board, bias and peer review
Last but not least, following our most recent review, invitations will be going out to a few academics to join our Editorial Board. Funny enough, that should also put to rest any suspicions that you might have with regard to editorial bias. Of the new members on the Editorial Board of the journal two are colleagues with whom I had quite serious professional conflict in the distant and in the very recent past, respectively. None of that made any difference to our decision to appoint to our Editorial Board. What matters crucially are competence and reliability. Reliability of reviewers is becoming sadly an ever bigger challenge. You would expect that academics who themselves publish academic contents in academic journals would be willing to review colleagues' academic content (the golden rule and all that jazz). The truth is though that that is becoming ever more difficult. All too often the most experienced peer reviewers decline and editors have to move lower down the list of experienced and knowledgable academics. The same authors, in other words, who would be all too keen to have their paper reviewed by a top academic like themselves are all too often not prepared to provide a similar courtesy in return when they are being asked to review academic content. This is quite disappointing, but equally, until university administrations and research funders give credit to academics for providing such services to the academic community, it is understandable that individual academics vote for working on their own paper rather than reviewing someone else's paper. All I can say is that some academics are paradigms of how a professional should act in this context and others are paradigms of the how-not-to. The former probably do not know how grateful we really are to them, as journal editors, for their services.

Beware of Priceline's unethical business practices

Eish, the last few weeks have been an ongoing travel nightmare. I'm glad it's over for a while. 2 days ago I had to quickly book a hotel for a night in Toronto (while on the train on my way back from another journey). Like so many people I went to check out Hotwire and Priceline prices. For better or worse Priceline seemed (sic!) to offer a better deal on this occasion. That is, until I saw my booking. Let's leave for a moment their 20% taxes and charges. A very serious transgression is their underhanded selling of add-on products one does not want. Most of these sites when you think you've finally sorted out your booking prevent you from simply paying by forcing you to go through one or two pages of travel related goods and services that you usually neither need nor want to look at. That in its own right is bad enough but you can discount it as bad marketing efforts (as they annoy customers).

Princeline, however, has gone to unethical length here. They sneak default add-on purchases into your booking. So, when you finally see your confirmed booking (that they cleverly prohibit you from changing in any respect), you will see that they sneaked a travel insurance into your booking. It is a booking that you never pro-actively made and that almost certainly you did not want. They know that, of course, so among their other offers (where you have to click in order to book/buy), on the insurance occasion you have to un-click. It's easy to miss (they literally bank on this), and cleverly you only see the charge when your complete booking has been made and can't be changed.

The danger, in terms of permitting Priceline to get away with this is, of course that nothing would in the future prevent them from selling you other crap (unless you unclick purchases you have not even made!), After all, why not sell you a sex worker for the night (oops, you forgot to unclick, well tough...), or a bunch of roses delivered to your hotel room, toothpaste and the list truly is infinite.

So, my advice to anyone reading this is to stop doing business with Priceline until they revert to a policy where you proactively choose what you want to purchase as opposed to underhanded selling tactics designed to confuse you into purchasing stuff you never needed and certainly did not want to purchase. At this point in time this once reputable company operates like a bunch of crooks.

Self-Plagiarism - a misnomer if there ever was one

If you browse documents on academic misconduct you'll bump sooner or later into the term 'self-plagiarism'. Students in many universities are threatened with sanctions if they submit plagiarized as well as self-plagiarized content in seminar papers.

I take issue with this. There is no such thing as self-plagiarism. It's a misnomer. Plagiarism's defining feature is that it involves the theft of someone else's intellectual content and the attempt to pass off this intellectual content as one's own. So, I steal someone else's content and claim it is my own intellectual, creative contribution in a paper or some other medium.

What goes for self-plagiarism is nothing of that sort. I use my own content and recycle it in another paper I produce. This might involve using text blocks from an older paper in the new paper without referencing the text as such. Or it might involve the rewriting of text from an older paper in a new manuscript.


Now, because there is no theft of intellectual property involved, calling this plagiarism seems wrong to me. It also seems to me as if such behavior is not necessarily wrong. Let me give you a couple of examples. Say I invent a new method in genetics research and I re-use it time and again. Is it really wrong to copy-paste the description of my method in the method section of paper I produce? I doubt it. Equally, thinking about my own field. Say I got famous for having said something remarkable about the ethics of human enhancement. Obviously, I will be invited by textbook authors, journal editors, encyclopedia producers and whatnot to write my argument afresh for them. Is acceding to those requests really wrong? I doubt it. I might also be asked to reproduce my argument/analysis for a different audience (say a different language journal or a different audience comprised of readers of a specialist journal etc). Would it really be wrong to re-use content from an older paper I wrote without diligently referencing every single line of my own analysis? I doubt it. I also think that if you believe you have a really good idea, you'd aim to promote it, instead of burying it in one paper that might be missed by the community you hope to reach with your analysis.

Where what is called mistakenly self-plagiarism is wrong is:
1) when students are required to write an original piece for a seminar and it is made explicit by the teacher that they must not use content they produced earlier. The 'crime' here would lie in the violation of the rule though, and not in the renewed use of one's own intellectual material.
2) when the same argument is published in different journals with similar target audiences.  Doing this gives the mistaken impression that there's a deluge of interest in your particular analysis, while other content is prevented from getting published. Current guidelines tend to see this as a breach of etiquette rather than a capital crime (in publishing ethics terms).
3) more difficult is it when people re-use their content in multiple papers and then add it to their CVs. This is so, because these CVs are used to attract research funding (ie impress review committees), get promotions and stuff like that. I see this as more difficult, because more often than not, only bits and pieces of content are recycled. It's rarely the whole shebang published earlier. My view would be that the onus should be on the reviewers to ascertain the originality or lack thereof of papers listed on CVs. Alternatively, academics could be required to state per paper/book listed on their CVs to what extent the individual publications constitute original contributions. In any case, the violation here is not related to the integrity of the academic content but to do with other matters altogether.

My view would be that we should do away with the general term of 'self-plagiarism', because it is a misnomer, and that instead we should describe more carefully under what circumstances the recycling of one's own intellectual content is ethically problematic.  I hope to have shown that what is called today self-plagiarism is not at all always wrong, but that it can be wrong under certain circumstances.

I should stress what is true for everything posted on this blog, this is my personal view on this matter, no more, no less. 

Any comments?

Bioethics ranked top philosophy journal

Interesting, the European Science Foundation in the most recent incarnation of its European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) has given Bioethics top billing in the Philosophy category. It is now INT1. INT1 stands for 'INT1 Sub-Category: international publications with high visibility and influence among researchers in the various research domains in different countries, regularly cited all over the world.'


Now we know. It's tempting to say that the hard work Ruth Chadwick and I have put into developing the journal over the last decade or so is paying off, but truth be told, these ranking remain pretty arbitrary at best. Either way, a great deal of thanks to our authors, Editorial Board members, peer reviewers and certainly our colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell are due!

News Corporation is at it again - this time attacking our libraries

Ebooks are a great idea. They permit you to conveniently download books from the comfort of your home, read them on trains and planes without having to slog much more than a kindle or its equivalent around. Importantly, they permit libraries to stock more content because they're not physically limited by shelf space.

Enter HarperCollins owner News Corporation (the owner of Faux News, as well as the Simpsons, the Times in Britain, the Australian on Down Under and any number of other mass media outlets from India to the USA).

Harper Collins decided to limit the number of users who can borrow its ebooks from libraries to 26 per book. After 26 check-outs the ebooks self-destruct. The argument is that books that are read by a lot of people will also eventually be destroyed and replaced by new copies. The trouble is, of course, that any book that falls apart after 26 people read it, is likely of pretty low production quality (ie News Corporation type quality). The magic number also assumes that all 26 readers read the book really thoroughly, turn every page and so on and so forth, when in the real world someone might just xerox a chapter for personal use, or read bits and pieces in different chapters. There are bound to be very many books that exist happily ever after even if 26 people borrowed them at one point or other.

As with so much of the digital-only stuff, the books the libraries purchase cease to be theirs. This publisher can delete them by remote at any point in time (here the magic number being 26 check-outs).

Here is a letter you'd write to the big-shots at HarperCollins, protesting their policy and threatening to boycott their products.

brian.murray@harpercollins.com

Mr. Brian Murray
HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022

Dear Mr. Murray:

I am writing to express my concern about a recent announcement by HarperCollins. I understand that you intend to place a limit on how many times libraries can lend HarperCollins ebooks. If you go through with this policy, library ebooks will self-destruct after they have been loaned out 26 times.

I urge you to reconsider this policy. Like many people, I respect and rely on libraries. The increasing popularity of ebooks is giving libraries a chance to reach people in new ways, continuing to spread literacy and engender a love of reading. Your proposed policy will hurt libraries and, more importantly, it will limit the options available for millions of current and potential readers across the nation. For that reason, I cannot see myself purchasing books or ebooks from HarperCollins or any of its imprints until you stop your policy of causing library materials to self-destruct.

Libraries do not abuse their relationship with publishers. I hope HarperCollins will soon return to treating libraries and library users with the respect we deserve.
Sincerely,

Oh well, democracy first-past-the-post style

Canada's progressive parties (ie the Greens, Liberals and the NDP) owe the progressive majority in Canada a very big apology. They (together with the country's electoral system) are primarily to blame for the fact that a 39% share of the vote translated into a majority conservative government. It's a silly system where such a minority of the vote (a significant minority of the vote against a 58% share on the progressive side of things) can attain majority power. I for one hope that the NDP and Liberals will stop slaughtering each other, get their heads together and create a social-liberal party along European lines to stand against the conservative minority in the country that otherwise will keep on running this place in perpetuity.

Part of the Liberal Party of Canada's problem is that it is not so clear any longer what it is that it stands for, ideologically. The liberal matters (privacy, abortion, gay rights, name it) have by and large been decided in Canada in support of liberal core values. It's not clear what else the party would have to offer to its electorate unless the conservatives decide to undermine those rights. Incidentally, how little the party has left in terms of ideological conviction is best displayed by the election of its Kingston and the Islands candidate, Ted Hsu. Hsu, a self-proclaimed pro-lifer, ran on a platform that was decidedly incoherent. He droned on about liking the Cuban health care system yet wanted to contract out government services. His campaign within the Liberal Party's for selection for the local candidacy for parliament was - in my judgment - decidedly homophobic in its implicit attacks on the only openly gay candidate who was also competing in that race. All of this - these days - is fair game in the so-called Liberal Party of Canada. You might want to study Hsu's supporters attacks on me on this blog. They truly speak volumes. It is no big surprise then, to my mind, that the Liberal Party of Canada has been reduced to what it is today. Political liberalism would show itself to be decidedly intolerant toward such behaviours and views. Hsu, by the way, won the local race. His main competitor on the conservative side of things was a candidate whose main claim to fame was that she doesn't like paying taxes. The choices the local ridings were given by the two mainstream parties (well, as far as the Liberals are concerned, formerly mainstream) were painful to watch in action.

One of the few bright sights in this election was that of the Green Party leader Elisabeth May getting elected to a seat - incidentally unseating a conservative government minister. Having been a Green politician in another life I am naturally thrilled that she made it, alas even the Green contribution to the vote splitting will undoubtedly have helped the conservatives attaining majority power.

Well, there we go, alea iacta est...

... and a Korean translation of 50 Voices of Disbelief

Great news! The anthology 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists that Russell Blackford and I put together for Wiley-Blackwell, is now also being tranlated into Korean! Korea, here we come :).

Why mention countries or regions when that serves no purpose

I got an interesting letter the other day, from academics in Turkey. For reasons that will become apparent sooner rather than later, I will likely be criticized for mentioning the country where the plagiarism occurred. The letter writers essentially are annoyed that in reports about plagiarism country affiliations of researchers feature prominently. So, the headline could say 'Harvard Hoititoiti Lab Researchers Caught Plagiarizing', but instead it says that ' US Americans Caught Plagiarizing'. The authors of said letter criticize that Western media and Western academics (the target of their scorn is an article in Nature) go out of their way to point fingers at countries rather than individual academics, just as if individual academics in a particular country plagiarizing something implicate many or most other academic researchers in the same country with wrongdoing. In this particular instance, under a big heading mentioning Turkey, in a kind of block in the centre of the Nature article, an Italy based academic is mentioned as saying that in certain cultures plagiarism is not considered deplorable. Anyone merely browsing the pages of Nature could be forgiven for taking home the message that plagiarism is not considered deplorable in Turkey, when really in this particular instance Turkish universities withdrew papers they considered plagiarized. That does not exactly suggest that they considered plagiarism anything but deplorable. So, what purpose did it serve for Nature to mention that the transgressions occurred in Turkey, and for designing the article in such a way as to suggest to the superficial reader that plagiarism in Turkey is not considered deplorable, when the opposite is actually true.

Interesting point that is being made by these academics. This nearly falls into the same category as racist talk (aka Black people are this, White people are that), but not quite so, given that it is superficially linked to a particular case at least. Still, it makes me wonder whether we should take country mentions out of paper headings unless they are relevant to the case. That's not to say that we mustn't add this kind of information within articles or in reference sections.

Webmedcentral - an early 1st April joke?

A few days ago I received an invitation from a computer to review a manuscript. The computer's name is Webmedcentral, it seems, and it's the latest incarnation of Open Access file uploading. At the moment you can publish (ie upload a file to said computer) free of charge, but that's gonna change by January 2012. None of the computer's content is indexed in any databases at all, except tragically by google scholar. 


The paper I was asked to review consisted of 427 words and 2 references. The computer explained to me that the paper had been published already, and that the review would take place after publication of the article in question. Authors could then publish revised versions of their article in response to the reviews received, or ignore the reviews altogether. Either way, said computer (hardwarewise not that different from other Open Access 'journals' - and neither quality wise in all too many instances) explains on its website that it has 'have full faith in the honesty and integrity of the scientific community and firmly believe[s] that most researchers and authors who have something to contribute should have an opportunity to do so.' Despite strong evidence of widespread cheating in academia trust is what drives this computer.  


How does this thing work then? 'We have introduced a novel method of post publication peer review, which is author driven. It is the authors' responsibility to actively solicit at least three reviews on their article. During the submission stage the authors are asked to provide details of three reviewers who are contacted by the WebmedCentral team when the article is published. Authors can seek more reviews, if they so wish. We discourage authors from choosing their reviewers selectively.'


'Our peer review process is author driven. With our innovative method of publishing, peer review takes place after publication. It is authors' responsibility to organise at least three reviews for their articles. We aim to generate an open debate on the article after its publication. WebmedCentral reserves the right to invite additional reviews as and when necessary.


All pretty clear: any crook can pick his or her best mates to 'review' content they have already 'published'. They're strongly encouraged not to be crooks, of course. That should just do the trick.


The computer mentions in passing  that it has neither an Editor nor an Editorial Board: 'With our model of publishing, we do not need an editor or editorial board for our journal. Authors are completely in charge of the entire publication process including soliciting reviews and submitting revised versions of the manuscripts if needed.' It's kinda unclear how a journal without Editor or Editorial Board is going to solicit  further reviews, 'if needed', but hey, minor detail in the big swing of the Webmedcentral universe.


There is a bit of confusion, too (well, I remained confused about the modus operandi). It seems as if you'd upload your papers free of charge to the computer, then have the article send to your three best mates whose compliments will also be 'published'. If they review more than three other files they can send more of their own non-reviewed drivel for publication purposes to the Webmedcentral server. Basic maths would suggest that soon review co-operatives identifiable by one's three best mates will monopolize much of Webmedcentral's file uploading activities. According to Webmedcentral the comments are also considered publications. It goes without saying that in this uploading orgy minor details such as doi identifiers are missing, but hey, it's a minor detail while you 'publish' a paper per hour to beef up your publications record. 


It's all pretty random and no doubt databases controlled by people as opposed to algorithms will not index stuff emanating from webmedcentral. Google scholar at least is happily indexing the contents on the Webmedcentral server. The price you pay for letting machines do the job humans arguably should be doing. 


The only nice thing is that webmedcentral could easily be confused with biomedcentral. It couldn't hit a nicer 'publisher' :-). 


Oh, the list of shame, aka academics prepared to be associated with this charade, is here. What people confuse with academic publishing here is academics publishing anything they feel like. No different to my blog really... feel free to comment (aka 'review' in Webmedcentral lingo).

Freshco and friends, why are you doing this to us?

I'm sure you also get those flyers during the weekend where supermarkets and other retail outfits try to persuade you to do your shopping with them. Invariably they've also sorts of special offers for us, usually involving buying more than we need of something (you know 5000 for the price of 1). Hence our ever growing mountains of rubbish.

Anyhow, so Freshco (a Canadian outfit) today sent me the flyer  that I am displaying to the left. You see the cheaper price guarantee. If I find the same product in some other store or some other flyer they will not just give the product to me at the same price, no, better even, they will 'beat' it. - The usual conditions apply. 

So, here are just a few of Freshco's conditions. They are both hilarious as well as offensive. They are unsurprisingly also more difficult to display, because they're longer than the original, seemingly straightforward deal. At least there's some information as to what 'beat it' means. And I quote: '... and we will sell you that item for 1c less'. Prior to getting that 1c discount on their best competitor you have to take the flyer to their store (yes, drive there for the 1c discount instead of buying it where it's cheaper to begin with, without the haggling). 

Anyhow, you might still think that it's worth it (for reasons unbeknownst to me), so to make things ever so slightly more complicated,here are a few minor additional conditions: 'Our major supermarket competitors', 'geographical trade areas' and 'comparable items' are determined solely by us and are based on a number of factors that can change from time to time.' So, you'd well head to Freshco, competitors' flyers in hand, to get your 1c discount per product, only to discover that, according to the store manager that you start haggling with, the flyer ain't from Freshco's 'major supermarket competitor' (ie your flyer doesn't count), or that the competitor is in the wrong part of town (ie 'geographical trade areas') etc etc. Random excuses are possible (you really would be bothered subjecting yourself to this sort of nonsense for 1c???).

Tesco in the UK was a tad bit more certain that its products really are the cheapest, so it offered to refund double the difference (as opposed to the ludicrous 1c Fresho is offering its price conscious customers). Well, that certainly flopped. They had to abandon the offer quickly because they could not afford paying out all those claims. No doubt Fresho ain't serious about its price guarantee otherwise it would not qualify the amusingly low-brow 1c deal on no less than 4 lines of smallest print. Really...

My view on offers like Fresho's is to always purchase from the retailer who offers you a decent deal straightaway as opposed to doing business with someone who first tries to charge you more and then offers you 1c (after haggling, and with said conditions applying) so that you do business with them anyway. I must also say that this sort of offer would annoy me sufficiently to stop doing business with Fresho altogether, simply because its marketing people tried to fool me with its 'beat it' promise. 

Let the buyer beware, true then, true now :).

50 Voices of Disbelief in Polish

coming in September, apparently.

Supporting the powers that are - Queen's Rector vs Queen's Principal

This likely is a first for me, at least on this blog. I agree with the powers that are (avid readers of this blog will know that I tend to enjoy being a thorn in their side).

It's a story about Israel (you might be tempted to say 'spare me the details'). I came across it because of Facebook. Facebook friends contacted me and asked me to sign a petition supporting the Queen's University Rector against demands that he step down. There is a lot of talk about academic freedom in that petition, please read it yourself. Now, our Rector is an elected student representative.  He wrote in his capacity as Rector to the leader of the federal opposition, Mr Ignatieff, defending Israel Apartheid week against criticism of that event, uttered by the Liberal politician. Israel Apartheid Week likens the state of Israel to - you guessed it - apartheid South Africa. I won't tell you what I think about Israel Apartheid Week, because that is not what this blog entry is all about. You are welcome to agree or disagree with the main proposition of Israel Apartheid Week, and yet you should be able to agree with me regardless.

The Queen's Rector was called in to the University Principal's office. Principal Woolf essentially told the Rector, Nick Day, that it was inappropriate for Rector Day to use his title as Rector to make the statement that he made. After all, the student body of Queen's University has taken no stance on Israel Apartheid Week (let alone Mr Ignatieff's statement), and so Mr Day had no reason at all to pretend he was representing Queen's University's student body when he wrote to Mr Ignatieff. Woolf here is showing himself to be way more sophisticated than his predecessor who did not hesitate to declare a few years ago that Queen's University would never support academic boycotts of Israel for reasons of academic freedom and whatnot, when (of course) Queen's University's governing bodies had taken no stance on this matter. Woolf, on his blog, makes quite rightly clear, that one could hold legitimately differing views on Israel Apartheid Week. At issue is that Mr Day chose to use his Rector moniker to impress Mr Ignatieff, instead of writing to Mr Ignatieff as Mr Day.

If the relevant student governing bodies at Queen's had taken a stance on Israel Apartheid week then Mr Day would have been entitled to write to Mr Ignatieff, especially if these bodies had tasked him to do so.

What's a bit puzzling is said petition claiming 'academic freedom' for the undergraduate student Rector. This strikes me as a rather bizarre complaint. Mr Day could have written to Mr Ignatieff and express his views as Mr Day (even as Mr Day, undergraduate student at Queen's University). Nothing would have stopped him. Asking that he refrain from using his title as Rector when he is not entitled to speak as Rector is not an infringement of academic freedom (if we assume there is such a thing for undergraduate students). I wonder what the same petitioners would have said if Mr Day had chosen to write as Rector in support of the establishment of a 'Keep Asian students out of Queen's Week'? Academic freedom? Really? Nonsense.


The question remains whether Rector Day should remain Rector Day or whether he should resign and become Mr Day again. If past experience is precedent setting, one could argue that given that the past Queen's Principal who confused her personal views on academic boycotts with those of the University was not forced to resign (over this matter), perhaps the Rector should not be treated differently. At the end of the day, this is a political decision the students need to make. I have no strong views on this one way or another.

Scientific misconduct

The news on research misconduct is coming in hard and fast. A Bradford University professor was reportedly caught having published content that he plagiarized from Indian academics.  Germany had its fair share of significant scandals fairly recently. Retraction Watch reported on Professor Joachim Boldt who had some 90 or so papers retracted because they involved academic misconduct of some kind or other. The country defense minister was forced to resign (mostly because of outrage among the conservative middle classes and widespread anger among academics) because his doctoral thesis basically was a patchwork of stuff he copied elsewhere. Der Spiegel weekly magazine reports that the head of sport medicine at Freiburg University is currently under investigation by university authorities for having plagiarized parts of his habilitation (a German kinda second doctorate that you need if you wish to go for professorial jobs - a waste of time by any stretch of the imagination, but that's a story for another day). As yet unsubstantiated rumors have it that he delayed his PhD student's thesis defence so that he'd be able to publish his habilitation first. The university also investigates claims that said professor's wife, in order to speed up her doctoral thesis defense misappropriated content from doctoral theses her husband supervised for her own thesis.

At Bioethics, a journal that I am associated with as an Editor, we had to face - in this year alone - two plagiarism cases, each time involving stuff we published being plagiarized elsewhere. One paper has since been retracted by BMC Medical Ethics, an Open Access electronic publication operated by Springer Publishing. The retraction did not occur until significant pressure was exerted on the reluctant publisher. In case of doubt, strangely, publishers and editors seem quite happy to cover their authors' tracks and opt for Errata as opposed to retractions, the dreadful word 'plagiarism' is avoided at nearly all cost by publishers and editors. It's unclear to me whether that is due to legal reasons as opposed to lack of insight on the relevant editors' part. The other plagiarism claim is still investigated. When you realize that we publish only between 55 and 65 manuscripts in any given year, that's quite a bad start into 2011.

In Britain the conservative paper The Telegraph reports the results of a nationwide survey suggesting that some institutions had to face down hundreds of cheating students in just one year. You'll be pleased to know that the supposedly best universities in the country, Oxford and Cambridge (where likely the pressure to perform is highest) reported in 2009/2010 12 and 1 instances respectively of cheating amongst their students. I guess, the good news is that once you've been admitted there you don't have to worry too much about getting caught while you engage in academic misconduct. Their  enforcement of academic standards is likely to be pretty lax indeed. Cambridge having caught one student cheating in said academic year seems to be the perfect place to study these days. I recommend the league table to you in case you consider enrolling in places where you stand a fair chance at getting away with cheating because nobody seems to bother checking too carefully. Go for those universities that report close to no students cheating, and you likely are on to a winner. To my academic colleagues asking for evidence I have to say that I do think students everywhere cheat in significant numbers. It's simply the case that some institutions care more so than others about catching cheats. A low number of caught cheats in my reality is not evidence of fewer cheats, rather it is evidence of lax enforcement and monitoring.

In unrelated news, the BBC reports that Germany is today the world's most popular country, closely followed by Britain...

End the Tsunami of Executions in Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran is the execution capital of the world. Already in 2011, it has executed at least 86 people after unfair trials and forced confessions under torture - three times last year's rate. It is the worst rise in executions since the regime's massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

 

There has been one execution every 8 hours and at least 8 of those executed have been political prisoners. Some of those killed by the state include: Zahra Bahrami, 45 year old Dutch/Iranian national who was arrested during protests last year, Ali Ghorabat for apostasy and Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaie for enmity against god. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani still faces execution.

 

We, the undersigned, demand an immediate end to this state-sponsored murder that aims to intimidate the protest movement in Iran and call on the United Nations and governments to exert pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran for an immediate and unconditional halt to executions. A regime that slaughters its citizens must face diplomatic isolation.

 

Signed by: Shahla Abghari, University Professor, Human Rights and Women Rights Activist, USA; Nazanin Afshin-Jam, President & Co Founder of Stop Child Executions, Canada; Mina Ahadi, Spokesperson, International Committee against Stoning & Execution, Germany; Sayeed Ahmad, Coordinator, Ain o Salish Kendra, Bangladesh; Association Fenomena Kraljevo, Serbia; Russell Blackford, Writer and Philosopher, Australia; Caroline Brancher, UFAL, France; Helle Merete Brix, Journalist, Denmark; Roy W Brown, International Representative, International Humanist and Ethical Union; Richard Dawkins, Scientist, UK; Patty Debonitas, Spokesperson, Iran Solidarity, UK; Sanal Edamaruku, President, Rationalist International, India; Sonja Eggerickx, President, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Belgium; Caroline Fourest, Writer and Columnist, France; A. C. Grayling, Writer and Philosopher, UK; Rahila Gupta, Activist and Writer, UK; Maria Hagberg, Chairperson, Network Against Honour-Related Violence, Sweden; Trefor Jenkins, Professor Emeritus / Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, South Africa; Hope Knutsson, President, Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association, Iceland; Nevena Kostic, Women for Peace, Serbia; Hartmut Krauss, Social Scientist, Germany; Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, USA; Terry Liddle, Freethought History Research Group, UK; Anne-Marie Lizin, Honorary Speaker of the Belgian Senate, Belgium; Marieme Helie Lucas, Founder, Secularism Is A Women's Issue, France; Ed McArthur, Freethought History Research Group, UK; Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson, One Law For All Campaign, Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, UK; Salman Rushdie, Writer, USA; Daniel Salvatore Schiffer, Philosopher and Writer, Belgium; Terry Sanderson, President, National Secular Society, London, UK; Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Spokesperson of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, Germany; Udo Schuklenk, Professor of Philosophy and Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics, Canada; Siba Shakib, Filmmaker and Writer, USA; Joan Smith, Writer and Activist, London, UK; Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director, American Humanist Association, USA; Annie Sugier, President, Ligue du Droit International des Femmes, France; Peter Tatchell, Human Rights Campaigner, UK; Giti Thadani, Writer and Filmmaker, India; Michele Vianes, President, Regards de Femmes, France; Eli Vieira, President, Secular Humanist League of Brazil, Brazil; and Women in Black, Belgrade, Serbia.

 

2. Join us at a the International Conference on Women’s Rights, Sharia Law and Secularism, which will be held at the University of London Union, The Venue, Malet Street, London WC1E, on 12 March from 1000-1900 (Registration begins at 10am for a 1030am start). For information and to register go to: http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/12-march-2010-international-conference-on-women%e2%80%99s-rights-sharia-law-and-secularism-london/

 

3. Please support our work! We welcome in kind and financial donations. You can donate at

http://iransolidarity.org.uk/donate_to_iran_solidarity.html.

 

4. Get in touch and join us! Contact Patty Debonitas, iransolidaritynow@gmail.com, Tel: +44 (0) 7507978745

Or visit http://iransolidarity.org.uk where you will also find contact details of our international branches. Patty Debonitas has taken over the role of Spokesperson from founder and previous Spokesperson Maryam Namazie.

HIV/AIDS in Jamaica

One is tempted to feel sorry for Jamaica’s Health Minister, the Honourable Rudyard Spencer. There he is, trying his best to do his job, and, among other urgent health matters, reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS in his nation. Unfortunately, on his own account, this is proving to be next to impossible lest Jamaicans change their cultural attitudes to – you guessed it – sex. The Jamaican Ministry of Health website quotes him with these eminently sensible concerns about specific attitudes: ‘These include a widely held belief that sex with a virgin can cure HIV/AIDS, the high level of sexual relations between older men and young girls and a persistently hostile anti-gay environment which all contribute to the stigmatization and discrimination of infected and affected persons. A strong religious culture also inhibits open discussion on matters of sexuality.  … We to [sic!] need begin the process of unlearning those beliefs that endanger the health lives of others and rethinking the tendency to be obscene and degrading in rejecting values that conflict with our own.”[1]

A bit of background on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica:  2008 study commissioned by the Ministry of Health concluded that about 31.8% of men who have sex with other men (MSM) are HIV infected in the island state.[2] There is a strong correlation between men being HIV infected and them belonging to lower socioeconomic groups, and them having been victims of antigay violence. Thankfully the number of AIDS deaths per year is decreasing because the country has begun the rollout of antiretroviral medicines.

The Jamaican Health Minister and others tasked with improving public health have their work cut out for them. The country has the second-highest HIV-prevalence rate among MSM in the world, right after another notorious violator of the human rights of gay people, Kenya. Homosexual men in Jamaica rarely ever live in monogamous relationships because of the security risks involved in living with a member of the same sex over longer periods in the same household. This is partly a result of colonial legislation prohibiting same sexual activities among men. I decided to actually read-up on the relevant legislation. The flowery prose under the heading ‘Unnatural Offences’ is sufficiently antiquated that I should like to share it with you:

76. Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for a term not exceeding ten years.

77. Whosoever shall attempt to commit the said abominable crime, or shall be guilty of any assault with intent to commit the same, or of any indecent assault upon any male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding seven years, with or without hard labour.

Up to 10 years of labour camp for a mature-age man who has voluntarily sex with another consenting adult male is a fairly draconian penalty for a self-regarding act. One justification for this law is hidden under that well-known Christian natural law moniker of ‘unnatural’. Unfortunately, for Jamaican law makers, there is no such a thing as unnatural conduct. If something is physically possible it is very much within the laws of nature, and therefore by necessity it is natural. Normatively nothing follows from this. The phraseology of the ‘unnatural’ explains and justifies nothing. Many natural things are not desirable, natural conduct can be unethical, even criminal. However, as is well known to legal philosophers, not all unethical behaviours ought to be illegal.[3] Declaring homosexual conduct unnatural, as this law does, is arguably unintelligible and it begs the question of why the law exists to begin with.

The Jamaican law is not making a case for why sexual conduct between consenting adults is unethical, and if it is unethical, why it should be legislated against. For good measure ‘abominable’ has been added to this ‘crime’. This does not add anything either by way of justification. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary enlightens us that the 14^th century originated word ‘abominable’ means that something is variously disagreeable or unpleasant or worthy of causing disgust or hatred. Finding something disagreeable or unpleasant is not a good reason to make it illegal, and frankly, whether I am disgusted by something you do is not a good yard stick either by which to determine whether an act ought to be criminal. Well, and what about that hatred criterion? No doubt plenty of Jamaicans hate gay people, but how does that provide a justification in terms of outlawing same sex sexual conduct among consenting adults? One does not have to be an old-fashioned liberal in the tradition of John Stuart Mill to realize that the criminal law has no right to interfere with the self-regarding actions of consenting adults.

Jamaica today finds itself in a difficult situation. Sectarian religious mores has been enshrined in law by its former colonial master, and has since been duly maintained as the gospel by generations of Jamaican politicians. Indeed, to give Jamaican legislators credit where credit is due, they have managed to uphold unreasonable religious dictates decades after the British have discarded them. There is little by way of actual enforcement in current-day, but as is well-known, legal norms are capable of creating as well as reinforcing extra-legal norms.

The official Jamaican government report on HIV/AIDS to the United Nations General Assembly (2010) acknowledges the problems this legislation is causing: ‘The political framework towards HIV has not changed. With outdated laws that present obstacles for adolescents, SW, MSM and prison inmates, prevention and treatment efforts to these populations are not able to be fully maximized. The existing political framework has also been implicated in contributing to the stigma and discrimination faced by MSM. Several efforts have been made in this area however, through the review of laws that stand as obstacles to prevention, but to date no major achievements are noted in this aspect of political support.’[4]

The US based human rights organization Human Rights Watchhas published a report a few years ago highlighting the pervasive nature of oftentimes violent homophobia in Jamaica.[5] The price MSM are paying in Jamaica for this situation is very significant indeed, as can be demonstrated by the extraordinarily high prevalence of HIV/AIDS among this group of Jamaicans. Research has shown that gay Jamaicans are reluctant to present with health problems that could disclose their sexual orientation to health care providers out of fear for reprisals by health care professionals and others. It goes without saying that such health care professionals acting in such a manner would be violating international codes of health care professional conduct such as the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva, requiring, as it does, that doctors ‘WILL NOT PERMIT [sic!] considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient.’[6] However, many Jamaican MSM patients reluctance to consult health care professionals is indicative of the climate in the country. It might be coincidental, but I do wonder why the Medical Association of Jamaica, unlike so many other national medical association, is seemingly not a member association of the World Medical Association.

Enlightened politicians such as Jamaica’s Health Minister, the Honourable Rudyard Spencer and his staff find themselves in an unenviable situation. They are representing or working for a government that continues to support legislation that contributes significantly to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS among MSM. Unlike in South Africa where church leaders have come together to support efforts aimed at reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS, in Jamaica church leaders are busy trying to preserve the homophobic climate and legislative framework that assisted in giving rise to the public health problems the country faces today.[7]

It will be interesting to monitor how the situation will evolve in Jamaica. Many ethical questions arise not only with regard to the country’s unjust discrimination against its gay citizens, but also from a public health ethics perspective. The ethical challenge for Jamaica is far from unique, and it is this: is it ethical to uphold particular cultural values regardless of the human cost involved? 

Udo Schuklenk

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[1] Ministry of Health Jamaica. (2010) Culture Shift Needed to Help in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS. http://www.moh.gov.jm/general/latestnews/1-latest-news/346-culture-shift-needed-to-help-in-the-fight-against-hivaids- [Accessed 13 February 2011]

[2] Kaiser Health News. (2009) Continued Discrimination Against Jamaican HIV-Positive MSM Hinders Their Efforts To Seek Health Care, Advocates Say  http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/daily-reports/2009/march/12/dr00057435.aspx?referrer=search [Accessed 13 February 2011]

[3] Joel Feinberg. (1988) The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (Vol. 4): Harmless Wrongdoing. Clarendon Press: Oxford.

[4] Ministry of Health. (2010) UNGASS Country Progress Report 2010 Reporting: Jamaica National HIV/STI Program. Jamaica, March 31, 2010: p. 32.

[5] Human Rights Watch. (2004) Hated to Death. Human Rights Watch 16(6B): 1-79.

[6] World Medical Association. (2006) Declaration of Geneva. WMA: Geneva. http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/g1/index.html [Accessed 13 February 2011]

[7] Thaddeus M. Baklinski. (2008) Jamaican Church Leaders Say Homosexuality Will Not Be Accepted As Normal. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2008/feb/08021804 [Accessed 13 February 2011]

Mass murderer