Invitation to Speak at a Conference: The Tempting Technique Adopted by Predatory Conferences’ Organizers

Science and Engineering Ethics - In recent years, predatory journals, conferences, and publishers have turned to an inevitable threat in scientific publishing. Researchers, regardless of their...     

Culture,salience, and psychiatric diagnosis: exploring the concept of cultural congruence & its practical application

Introduction

Cultural congruence is the idea that to the extent a belief or experience is culturally shared it is not to feature in a diagnostic judgement, irrespective of its resemblance to psychiatric pathology. This rests on the argument that since deviation from norms is central to diagnosis, and since what counts as deviation is relative to context, assessing the degree of fit between mental states and cultural norms is crucial. Various problems beset the cultural congruence construct including impoverished definitions of culture as religious, national or ethnic group and of congruence as validation by that group. This article attempts to address these shortcomings to arrive at a cogent construct.

Results

The article distinguishes symbolic from phenomenological conceptions of culture, the latter expanded upon through two sources: Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of background intentionality and neuropsychological literature on salience. It is argued that culture is not limited to symbolic presuppositions and shapes subjects’ experiential dispositions. This conception is deployed to re-examine the meaning of (in)congruence. The main argument is that a significant, since foundational, deviation from culture is not from a value or belief but from culturally-instilled experiential dispositions, in what is salient to an individual in a particular context.

Conclusion

Applying the concept of cultural congruence must not be limited to assessing violations of the symbolic order and must consider alignment with or deviations from culturally-instilled experiential dispositions. By virtue of being foundational to a shared experience of the world, such dispositions are more accurate indicators of potential vulnerability. Notwithstanding problems of access and expertise, clinical practice should aim to accommodate this richer meaning of cultural congruence.

     

The genetic and environmental architecture to the stability of IQ: Results from two independent samples of kinship pairs

Existing research has revealed that IQ remains relatively stable over the life course, though questions remain about how stable IQ is and whether the stability of IQ varies across different developmental periods of the life course. Despite this stability, there are also questions surrounding the factors that might explain the stability of IQ. Against this backdrop, we conduct bivariate genetic models to estimate genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences on the stability of IQ. To do so, we analyze kinship pairs drawn from two separate longitudinal samples: The National Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Across both samples, IQ was found to be relatively stable. Moreover, the genetic analyses revealed that between 66% and 83% of the stability in IQ was due to genetic factors and between 43% and 69% of the change in IQ was due to genetic factors. The remainder of the stability and change in IQ was the result of a combination of shared and nonshared environmental influences. Importantly, some substantive race differences emerged in respect to genetic and environmental influences on the stability of IQ. We conclude with a discussion of the limitations of the study and avenues for future research.     

Effectiveness of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy on Psychological Well-Being of People with Late Blindness

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) on improving the psychological wellbeing of people with late blindness. The design of this study was organized into pre-test, post-test and follow-up with two groups; experimental and control. After choosing qualified individuals, they were replaced into experimental and control groups at random (30 clients in each group). Pre-test was conducted for both groups. Thereafter, the experimental group received REBT training. Both groups, took part in post-test at the end of the training course. After 1 month, follow-up test was taken. Tools such as demographic particulars, IBT questionnaire, depression, anxiety and stress 21 inventory, Eysenck questionnaire were used for gathering information of the study. All the analytical process has been done by SPSS18 program. The scores of both groups (experimental and control groups) were not different significantly in pre-test. The scores gained by the experimental group in post-test showed a significant increase compared with the pre-test result. It proved the effectiveness of REBT with experimental group. And also, in comparing post-test with follow-up experimental group no significant difference were yield. So, as a result the effectiveness interference through group training of REBT with experimental group can be evaluated as constant. In control group there were no significant difference among the scores gained in pre-test, post-test and follow up. The findings of this research indicate the effectiveness of group coaching of REBT with enhancing the indices of psychological well being of people with late blindness.     

Using the Structure of Evaluative Components as a basis for comparing the oral narratives of schizophrenics and healthy individuals

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - In this study, evaluative language in narratives of 15 healthy and 15 schizophrenic females was compared using the Structure of Evaluative Components. The two...     

Sanitary Worker’s Death Unnerves Pakistan’s Health Care Ethics to the Core

Health care ethics is a sensitive domain, which if ignored, can lead to patient dissatisfaction, weakened doctor–patient interaction and episodes of violence. Little importance has been paid to medical ethics within undergraduate medical education in developing countries such as Pakistan. Three doctors in Pakistan are currently facing an official police complaint and arrest charges, following the death of a sanitary worker, who fell unconscious while cleaning a drain and was allegedly refused treatment as he was covered in sewage filth. The medical license of the doctors in question should be cancelled, if found guilty following a thorough investigation into the case. The ‘right to life’ has been universally assured by all moral, cultural and legal codes and no society can ever argue against the sacredness of a human life. It is quite clear that the aforesaid doctors’ actions are not only against the core principles of the physicians’ code, but also go against the doctrine of human rights. If serious efforts on an urgent basis are not made by the regulatory and governing bodies, one can definitely expect similar incidents for at least a few more decades before any noticeable change is seen.     

In Their Own Words: Research Misconduct from the Perspective of Researchers in Malaysian Universities

Published data and studies on research misconduct, which focuses on researchers in Malaysia, is still lacking, therefore, we decided that this was an area for investigation. This study provides qualitative results for the examined issues through series of in-depth interviews with 21 researchers and lecturers in various universities in Malaysia. The aims of this study were to investigate the researchers’ opinions and perceptions regarding what they considered to be research misconduct, their experience with such misconduct, and the factors that contribute to research misconduct. Our findings suggest that the most common research misconducts that are currently being witnessed in Malaysian universities are plagiarism and authorship disputes, however, researchers seldom report incidents of research misconduct because it takes too much time, effort and work to report them, and some are just afraid of repercussions when they do report it. This suggests possible loopholes in the monitoring system, which may allow some researchers to bypass it and engage in misconduct. This study also highlights the structural and individual factors as the most influential factors when it comes to research misconduct besides organizational, situational and cultural factors. Finally, this study highlights the concerns of all participants regarding the ‘publish or perish’ pressure that they believe would lead to a hostile working environment, thus enhancing research misconduct, as researchers tend to think about their own performance rather than that of whole team or faculty. Consequently this weakens the interpersonal relationships among researchers, which may compromise the teaching and supervision of junior researchers and research students.