Week 5/5: outline and abstract

Struggles in Scientific Storytelling

Outline:

1)    The kairotic struggle of English Second Language biomedical researchers

2)    Kairos

a)    The origins of kairos

b)    The modern resurrection of kairos

3)    Modern applications of kairos in science and medicine

a)    Kairos in scientific publications

b)    Impact of inequalities

4)    Strategies to eliminate non-scientific barriers

a)    Developing individualized workaround strategies

b)    Editing assistance

c)    Training

d)    Reference books

e)    Discourse community socialization

5)    Gatekeepers: academic journals editors and peer-reviewers

a)    Journal editors

b)    Constructing constructive comments – improving peer-review

6)    In closing

Abstract

Biomedicine is a global discipline – where researches collaborate and compete to further scientific discovery and to develop cures for disease regardless of their country of origin or current place of residency. English is the universal language used by biomedical researchers - placing English Second Language (ESL) researchers at a distinct disadvantage is this global community. Knowing and being able to communicate the right message at the proper time – kairos – is not a trivial task for native English speakers, and it can be a significant hurdle of ESL researchers. Examining the evolution of the meaning and usage of kairos over time provides a lens to evaluate the hurdles that ESL authors face and provides a foundation to develop strategies to overcome inequities.

Week 3/10: What relevance does Aristotle have today? What are some articles that use Aristotle for contemporary thinking and practice?

I searched the biomedical literature for articles that applied Aristotle’s metaphysics principles, when preparing for my metaphysics class discussion. I found that his principle was most often applied in bioethics – specifically surrounding the use and destruction of embryos and stem cells.

• ·      Morgan, L. M. (2013). The potentiality principle from Aristotle to abortion. Current Anthropology, 54(S7), S15-S25.
• ·      Mosteller, T. (2005). Aristotle and headless clones. Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 26(4), 339-350.
• ·      Watt, H. (2007). Embryos and pseudoembryos: parthenotes, reprogrammed oocytes and headless clones. Journal of medical ethics, 33(9), 554-556.

Another example of the application of the metaphysical principle in biomedicine was causation.

• ·      Sunday, J., Eyles, J., & Upshur, R. (2001). Applying Aristotle's doctrine of causation to Aboriginal and biomedical understandings of diabetes. Culture, medicine and psychiatry, 25(1), 63-85.
• ·      Wildner, M. (2000). Aristotle and the human genome project. The Lancet, 356(9238), 1360.

The Sunday article on causation is very interesting to me and I didn’t have the chance to elaborate in class so I’ll do that here. 

Issues of health and obesity are of particular interest to me because I lost 100 pounds a few years ago. It was striking to me that in support group for post operative bariatric patients that many currently or formerly morbidly obese people did not claim ultimate responsibility for their weight. This was absurd to me - as the only person ultimately responsible for one's weight is the personal themselves. While a variety of factors in and out the the person's control can influence their mental and physical state - obesity is generally caused by a positive caloric balance, which is very much in the control of the person, unlike many other health conditions. Obesity, is causal factor for diabetes and therefore this article was both intellectually enlightening and personally applicable. 

The article examines diabetes from 2 lenses: 1) personal responsibility and 2) genetic predisposition. The literature on health perceptions demonstrates there is a vast difference between lay and professional understandings of health influences and outcomes.

 The health care providers (biomedical community) emphasized the role of lifestyle factors, such as the impact of obesity, in causation. Because lifestyle factors (read choices) were the cause of diabetes the Aboriginal diabetics are morally deficient.  

In contrasts the Aboriginal people emphasize the role of genetics in causation, which releases them from complete responsibility for their health status.

Sunday notes that Aristotle’s doctrine on causation identifies four distinct types of cause: formal, efficient, material, and final. Science is said to have differentiated itself from philosophy by concentrating solely on efficient causes. Sunday examines how Aristotle’s doctrines applied to narratives of causation provide in the Aboriginal framework for health venture beyond the ‘efficient’ cause of biomedicine.  

Week 4/28: Please blog on some question you may have with your essay for the course.

Prompted by your encouragement to look forward to identify applications of class knowledge to future career endeavors made me acknowledge the siloed nature of academic knowledge. Silos of knowledge occur in every field of expertise, as this is the conventional structure of knowledge making and peer-reviewed publishing. While communications scholars to published in a limited fashion in the biomedical space, widespread awareness of communication best practices would certainly benefit both physicians and patients. In my opinion, one of the first steps to increasing visibility and to creating community buy-in will be to increasingly publish the results and best practices of applied communications studies in journals read by biomedical practitioners. As data generated by biomedical studies is traditionally quantitative and conclusions are driven by statistically significant results the key concepts of communications will have to be introduced and explained to ensure widespread adoption. Professional associations such as the American Medical Writers Association and the Society for Technical Communicators may be able to implement programing and initiatives that provides a bridge between the technical communications and biomedical communities.

Week 4/21: Please blog on some question you may have with your essay for the course. Also, please answer some Quintilian questions from DavidR's blog in his blog.

David summary of Quintillian focused heavily on goodness. Clearly goodness back then is not synonymous with goodness today.  David notes that Quintilian “believes that audiences will believe virtuous people more readily and more fully than others, particularly when there is great uncertainty re: a topic or when opinions are divided.” I find this to be true. Credibility is a hug factor in believability – credibility can be divided between expert knowledge and unbiased. Being unbiased is basically being good – in so much as that you let the facts speak for themselves and you aren’t driving a personally profitable agenda.

One of David’s questions asked “Do you believe that someone who uses language eloquently and effectively (eloquentia perfecta) is a good person?” He basically goes on to provide an excellent example in his second question citing Hitler.

I also think that using language eloquently and effectively is completely uncoupled from goodness. This directly relates to Angela’s discussion of Cicero’s De Oratore – where he asks us to separate the content from the style. This is very interesting to me for a variety of reasons. In class I remember we mentioned content <the words> and how they can be visually manipulated via cascading style sheets for websites, or marked up with XML for electronic publishing. This also bleeds into the topic on my final paper on English Second Language authors. They are undoubtedly content matter experts – but how they style language is often less than optimal for native speakers. So are ESL authors less good? They are certainly less skilled at persuading in English – but this does not correlate at all with them conducting inferior science. So does Quintilian’s goodness theory apply in this context?  I personally believe the theory is situationally relevant to that time and place – but is not timeless or universally applicable.

Week 4/14: Please blog on some question you may have with your essay for the course.

One of the concepts that I address in my paper is the role of the academic journal as a gatekeeper. The academic journal is not a single person, but a conglomeration of roles.

There are as many types of gatekeepers as there are writers and editors, but there are two broad categories that can help tailor a document. However, it is important to note that, like any broad reductive classification, these categories are not all-inclusive.

Generally speaking, gatekeepers can either be collaborative or adversarial. These categories imply little about the intent of the gatekeepers and more about the nature of the gatekeeper’s job.

In this case, a collaborative gatekeeper is one that will work with you to present the document. A common type of collaborative gatekeeper is a supervisor that reviews your work: the supervisor’s goals align with your own because you both represent the same interests and the same client. Conversely, an adversarial gatekeeper’s interests are not always aligned with yours or your client’s. Adversarial gatekeepers are often tasked with rejecting documents or narrowing a large pool of documents for an overwhelmed audience. A classic example of this type of gatekeeper is a grant program manager. The program manager’s goal is to only select the grant applications most closely aligned with the grant program’s stated goals, and thus grant program managers must reject applications that do not meet their goals and standards.

This is not to say that adversarial gatekeepers are combative. Many adversarial gatekeepers are very open about their standards and requirements, and it can be useful to contact them and ask about these standards. They can often steer you in the right direction and save you time and effort if your document does not match their needs. Furthermore, many adversarial gatekeepers can make suggestions for more appropriate submission targets if your document doesn’t match their specific needs.

Although they are not the target audience, it is important to consider any gatekeepers when creating or editing a document. Collaborative gatekeepers work with you to enhance your work until it meets their standards, whereas adversarial gatekeepers are responsible for assessing your work and rejecting it if it does not meet their standards. Some documents may only have one type of gatekeeper, but many have both, and one of the most productive ways to enhance your document’s chances for acceptance or publication is to identify any gatekeepers, the nature of their role, and their goals and standards. In many cases in medical writing, this can be as simple as calling or emailing a managing editor or review officer and directly asking them about their goals and standards.

While gatekeepers may inherently have collaborative or adversarial roles – they should all keep in mind the broad goal on the academic community – to share knowledge. In the case of the biomedical community, knowledge from a diverse international author pool will add strength to any publication and in turn the scientific discipline at large.