1,721,016 research outputs found
Studying Trial Communities: Anthropological and Historical Inquiries into Ethos, Politics and Economy of Medical Research in Africa.
Get PDF‘We are not paid – they just give us’: Liberalisation and the longing for biopolitical discipline around an African HIV prevention trial
Get PDF‘Transport - to where?’ – Reflections on the problem of value and time a propos an awkward practice in medical research
Get PDFBased upon Kenyan ethnography, this article examines the gap between the bioethics aversion to value transfers in clinical trials, and research participants' and researchers' expectations of these. This article focuses upon so-called 'transport reimbursement' (TR): monetary payments to participants that are framed as mere refund of transport expenses, but which are of considerable value to recipients. The interest in this case lies not so much in the unsurprising gap between regulatory norms and poor study subjects' lives, but in the way in which this discrepancy between bioethical discourse and materialities of survival is silenced. In spite of the general awareness that TR indeed is about the material value of research, about value calculation, and expectations of return, it is not publicly discussed as such - unless ironically, in jest, or in private. This double-blindness around 'reimbursement' has provoked discussions among ethicists and anthropologists, some of which propose that the work that generates scientific value should be recognised as labour and participants, accordingly, paid. Here, this paper argues that such a re-vision of trial participation as work rather than as a gift for the public good, risks abrogating the possibility of 'the public' that is not only a precondition of public medical science, but also its potential product. The supposedly radical solution of tearing away the veils of misrecognition that 'free' gifting ideology lays upon the realities of free labour, though analytically plausible, fails to recognise the utopian openings within clinical trial transactions that point beyond the present - towards larger forms of social association, and towards future alignments of scientific possibilities and human lives
Community engagement & ethical practice in vaccine research
Get PDFCommunity Engagement (CE) is often presented by bio-ethicists and scientists as a
straightforward and unequivocal good which can help to minimize the risks of exploitation,
ensure a fair distribution of research benefits and improve the quality of informed consent
in the conduct of health research in developing countries. The main objective of my thesis is
to critically analyse the relationship between CE and ethical practice in vaccine research. I
do this by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2007 and 2009. In my
fieldwork I explored how CE is understood, talked about and enacted in two paediatric
vaccine trials conducted by a collaborative partnership between the Kenyan Medical
Research Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control (KEMRI/CDC) in Western Kenya.
The first 3 chapters of my thesis contain introductory material. Chapter 1 describes the
geographic and institutional context of my fieldwork and provides a summary of the
paediatric vaccine trials. It also documents my conceptual framework with reference to
relevant literature. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the history of immunization and
related research in Sub-Saharan African, with a particular focus on East Africa. In chapter 3
describe my ethnographic research design and provide a detailed account of my fieldwork,
methods and data analysis. 122 people from the following groups consented to participate
in this study: 1) KEMRI/CDC Staff Members (n=18), 2) Community Representatives (e. g.
Village Reporters (VRs), Community Advisory Board (CAB), Government & Political
Gatekeepers) (n=71), 3) Parents/Guardians of Vaccine Trial Participants (n=20), and 4) Other
Community Members (n=7). With the support of 3 Kenyan research assistants I observed CE
related activities, compiled field notes and conducted 83 semi-structured interviews and 7
focus group discussions.
The 8 findings chapters are grouped as follows: 1) 'The Historical Emergence & Framing of
Community Engagement' (Ch. 4-5); 2) 'The Social Construction of Community Engagement'
(Ch. 6-9); and 3) 'Responses and Negotiations in Community Engagement' (Ch. 10-11).
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1) Between the years of 1979-2009 the KEMRI/CDC research programme grew from
involvement in community-led health projects into a global enterprise. This
inevitably resulted in changes in the control and direction of interactions between
researchers and community members. The contemporary framing of CE relies
heavily on researchers teaching laypeople about science.
2) The concept of 'positioning' is critical to the contemporary social construction of CE.
KEMRI/CDC's primary goal is to convey accurate messages, present a positive image
and demonstrate 'attachment' to the local community. VRs' (paid volunteers)
smooth the passage of research but find it difficult to balance allegiances, and
respond to local expectations for material assistance. CAB members function as
KEMRI/CDC patron-clients rather than community advocates, and Gatekeepers argue
that a research agenda cannot be applied without accounting for inadequate district
health services.
3) Increasing interactions between KEMRI/CDC and the community have helped
address inherent cultural suspicions about research, thereby diverting attention to
the benefits of trial participation. Hence questions of exclusion rather than inclusion
have started to dominate discussions during CE activities. When it comes to
engagements in public health facilities attention is focussed on how to balance
differences between two paradigms of care-giving; namely 1) 'research' and
'general' care.
In chapter 12 I synthesize my findings and argue that far from being an unproblematic good
CE offers a lens into new and pre-existing inequalities which affect the implementation of
research in resource-limited settings. CE emerges from my data as highly complex and
challenging work, which requires continuous efforts and cannot be limited simply to
information exchange. In order to address the tensions and contradictions which arise in CE
it is essential to discuss questions of social justice and to engage materially, through a
broader distribution of resources, with the community where research takes place
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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