False Premises Research Articles

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States

Reviewed by: The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States Daynali Flores-Rodriguez (bio) Jiménez Román, Miriam, and Juan Flores, eds. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Published a year before the United Nations declared 2011 the International Year for People of African Descent, The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, takes a deeper look into the complex world of ethnic and race relations in America. Miriam Jiménez Román, the executive director of Afro-Latino Forum, a research and resource center for Black Latinos in the US, and Juan Flores, Director of Latino Studies at NYU, engage Afro-Latin@s as a population that “bridge various communities even as they constitute a community in their own right” (xiii). Similar to Henry Louis Gates’s Black in Latin America (2011) a four-part documentary series shown earlier this year on PBS that explores the influence of African descent in Latin America, The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses “on the strategically important but still largely understudied United States context of Afro-Latin@ experience” (3). Both are proof of an emerging interest in transnational relations of race as a way to challenge the homogenizing effects of national and regional constructs of identity. The complex history of ethnic and racial movements in the United States is traditionally framed within a socially-progressive agenda intended to reveal and denounce hidden histories of racialization, colonization, exploitation and social mobilization still experienced by many. In their zeal to be acknowledged and recognized as equals in mainstream society, ethnic and racial groups often articulate identity in terms that foster the same practices of cultural disenfranchisement these groups were denouncing in the first place. Likewise, in Latin America, the myth of racial democracy based on “mestizaje” or mixed race, is still touted as one of the most defining traits of a pan-ethnic cultural identity. Since slavery was a systematic practice brought upon Latin America by European [End Page 548] colonizers and later adopted and asserted by the United States (considered the ideological and practical heir of Europe), racial discrimination and prejudice is considered a foreign problem that attests to the immorality of imperialist and colonial practices and a strategic attempt to distract and divide Latin Americans from their common goal to resist these advances. Indigenous and black identities are accepted (in that order) as long as they do not compromise the traditional discourse of racial harmony that makes Latin Americans stand strong against the neocolonial threat, represented by the United States. The editors of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States make a compelling effort to reveal the subtle and complex negotiations of social identity that take place when these two paradigms clash. While oral narratives and testimonies are a common point of departure for historians and social scientists alike, the material included in the collection demonstrates an innovative approach that encourages readers to keep reflecting on the contributions made by Afro-Latin@s, far beyond the strict academic setting that so strongly divides experience from theory. Voices of the past acquire a new meaning for our own times. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg’s plea for the establishment of a Chair of Negro History in 1913 demonstrates his relevance as a pioneer for Black Studies and resonates stronger nowadays, where ethnic studies (specifically Latin@ and Chican@ studies) are threatened amidst accusations of reverse racism and/or the false premises of a post-racial America heightened by Barack Obama’s election in 2008. The essays by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof and Evelyne Laurent-Perrault not only describe the world of tense racial coalitions and segregation Schomburg inhabited but how his legacy is kept alive and still facilitates the conversation about what it means to be an Afro-Latin@. The strength of this collection is the diverse array of materials suitable for those reflecting comparatively on issues of race, ethnicity, and identity, whether for the first time or for the hundredth. The Afro-Latin@ Reader uses academic essays, memoirs, poetry, literature, interviews, Census statistics, short stories, music, film, and popular culture to establish a much needed conversation on the...

Undercover Education: Mice, Mimesis, and Parasites in the Teaching Machine

What happens to education when the potential it helps realizing in the individual works against the formal purposes of the curriculum? What happens when education becomes a vehicle for its own subversion? As a subject-forming state apparatus working on ideological speciesism, formal education is engaged in both human and animal stratification in service of the capitalist knowledge economy. This seemingly stable condition is however insecured by the animal rights activist as undercover learner and—worker, who enters education and research laboratories under false premises in order to extract the knowledge necessary to dismantle the logic of animal utility on which the scientific-educational apparatus rests. The present article is based on a semi-structured interview with an undercover worker. It draws on a synthesis of critical education and posthumanist theories to configure knowledge creation and subjectification processes in the “negative spaces” of education. The techne of undercover work includes mnemotechnical and prosthetic devices, calculation of risk, and mimetic labor. The article argues that the agenda of the undercover worker generates a multi-strained mimetic complex that composes a parasitic educational subject-assemblage redirecting scientific knowledge away from the animal stratification logic of the knowledge economy into different viral circuits; different lines of flight. It invites a rearticulation of the formal education state apparatus in more indeterminate directions, provoking scientific-educational knowledge-practices to become a catalytic impulse for their own disintegration.

Knowledge, lost in translation

The pursuit of knowledge is no longer enough for clinicians. We have to absorb it, communicate it and, most importantly, translate it. Typically, like other core skills that clinicians have never been taught properly, knowledge translation is something of a mystery. For a start, the definition of knowledge translation is problematic – is it even a worthwhile concept? A second dilemma is working out how long a knowledge translation process takes? Such inscrutable questions are predicated on an understanding of how to acquire the knowledge that requires to be translated. Clinical textbooks were once the knowledge resource of choice, synthesising the essentials and the minutiae of every specialty. But a textbook doesn't move at the speed of the Internet, where knowledge is formed and reframed in moments. Clinicians list online resources as important sources for updating knowledge in their specialties. Google is the first and most loyal friend of a clinician searching for a clinical answer. The Internet offers helpful solutions but poses challenges, foremost of which is how much we trust the information we are reading? A failing of medical journals is that an answer to any particular clinical question rarely resides within our rainforests of peer-reviewed pages and clouds of web archives. Clinicians therefore look elsewhere, at Wikipedia for example; we might distrust the web but in a moment of need we will give it the benefit of doubt. Is Wikipedia the most important knowledge resource in the world? Seventeen million articles in 262 languages, sixty-five million visitors each month to the English version, make a compelling case. A survey of junior physicians estimated use of Wikipedia at 70%. Yet anybody can edit Wikipedia, why would we trust it? The evidence is less damning than perception. Wikipedia is no less reliable than other encyclopaedias. A researcher deliberately introduced small errors into biographical articles on Wikipedia and 50% of these errors had been corrected by other people within 48 hours. As a result, David Metcalfe and John Powell encourage medical professionals to be actively involved with Wikipedia and help develop it (JRSM 2011;104:488–489). Wikipedia might help us with facts but facts are only one dimension of knowledge argue Trisha Greenhalgh and Sietse Wieringa (JRSM 2011;104:501–509). Aristotle described knowledge as being composed of facts (episteme), skill (techne), and practical wisdom (phronesis). Facts need to be placed in context – which requires tacit awareness – interpreted, and linked to further questions. With this broader definition of knowledge, medicine is neither a science nor an art. It is an uncertain, paradox-laden, judgement-dependent, science-using, technology-supported practice. Consequently, our current concept of knowledge translation is over-simplified, based on a false premise of a know–do gap that defines knowledge and practice as distinct entities. This is unsustainable conclude Greenhalgh and Wieringa. Knowledge translation as a precise term has outlived its usefulness – and presumably the clumsy concept of a know–do gap can go with it? But before JRSM considers a total ban on knowledge translation, a second review in this issue examines time lags in translation research. How long before original research is implemented? How long from drug discovery to commercialisation? Curiously, a frequent answer to such questions is 17 years (JRSM 2011;104:510–520). We will reap what we sow but we might wait two decades which helps explain why it takes over 30 years for doctors to be recognized by the British honours system. Bear this in mind as you impatiently wait for the publication of this year's honours list. If you fail you might wish to consider a New Year's resolution to transfer your expertise to one of the top 10 specialties for honours (JRSM 2011;104:521–524)?

Basing drug scheduling decisions on scientific ranking of harmfulness: false promise from false premises

In recent years a number of studies have attempted to rank drugs by a single measure of harmfulness as the basis for decisions about scheduling and classification. These efforts are fundamentally flawed, both conceptually and methodologically. The effort to provide a single measure masks the variety of non-comparable dimensions that are relevant, the fact that benefits are ignored for most, but not all, drugs and that the harms of a drug are not invariant to the policy regime chosen. Methodologically, the most prominent recent effort ignores drug interactions and mixes aggregate and individual harms inappropriately. Instead we suggest that multiple dimensions of harm need to be displayed to inform human judgments of what drugs should be scheduled. Harm is not usefully reducible to a single dimension, and even perfect rankings would not constitute a 'sufficient statistic' for determining scheduling decisions.

Has the Bubble Finally Burst? A Comparative Examination of the Failure of Privatization of Water Services Delivery in Atlanta (USA) and Hamilton (Canada)

The last few years have witnessed significant attempts by a number of municipalities across the globe to reverse private sector involvement in water services delivery to citizens, with examples across North America, Europe, as well as in some developing countries. What makes this reversal of private sector participation in water services delivery baffle many is that, in the not too distance past, private sector involvement in water delivery was touted as a better service delivery option for municipalities. It was seen as a panacea for the perceived inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and unaccountable nature of the public sector. Why are municipalities de-privatizing their water services delivery? Did the promises of privatization fail? This article argues that the privatization of water services delivery was based on the (false) premise of the market being more efficient and effective, which would enable governments to save costs and lead to the emergence of a competitive environment in a monopolistic industry. It seems, therefore, that the private sector failed in no uncertain terms with respect to its promises to deliver. This argument will be supported using two cases drawn from Canada and the United States.

Oh Yes, I Remember it Well: Why the Inherent Unreliability of Human Memory Makes Neuroimaging Technology a Poor Measure of Truth-Telling in the Courtroom

We all know that human memory is unreliable. But we consider less often is how difficult it is evaluate our own memories for accuracy. The song referenced in the title of this article concerns a conversation about two lovers describing their first meeting - in all good faith both remember it quite differently. Yet the quest to know the thoughts of others as well as identify when we are being deliberately deceived has encouraged the application of newly developed technologies to the task of reading minds. From witch dunking to phrenology to polygraphs, science’s promise to access thought has been met with first great enthusiasm and then even greater disappointment. Today, companies like NoLie MRI are advertising the latest version of this promise in the form of software which, it claims, can use brain imaging technology to “by-pass” conscious thought and identify deliberate deception. This article takes a new approach to considering the prospect of mind reading technology in that it reviews the claims made by those selling access to thoughts in light of the current cognitive understanding about human memory which requires us to retire the heuristic of the brain as a camera. It then links the current understanding of memory with the strong criticisms made by the Innocence Project and others seeking to overturn wrongful convictions about the misuse and over-reliance on eye-witness testimony which also is based on a misunderstanding of the inherent unreliability of memory. It argues that both information from neuroimaging and direct eye-witness testimony must meet rigorous standards for admitting forensic scientific evidence before being offered to juries to assist in fact-finding. Although much has been written about neuroimaging as a method of truth detection, this article takes a new approach by identifying the information which comes from neuroimaging as “memory” and then by analyzing it in the context of contemporary cognitive science. It also addresses the tenacity of the claim that there is such a thing as direct access to past events whether through eye-witness testimony or neuroimaging. Any law student who has taken Evidence has read about, or better experienced, an experiment in which a man bursts into a crowded classroom, runs through shouting and then leaves. When questioned directly after the event there is strong disagreement among the witnesses as to what the man was saying, what he was wearing and whether or not he had a gun. Based on the work of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, now on the faculty of the University of California at Irvine Law School, this experience, more than any dry article about cognitive science, demonstrates the inherent unreliability of human memory and the conviction of eye-witnesses about what they have seen. Lawyers involved in the Innocence Project which is seeking to challenge wrongful convictions based on eye-witness testimony by examining conflicting DNA evidence have further brought these findings to public attention. Yet despite what has become common knowledge about the malleability of human memory, the idea that it’s possible to access the brain directly to find out whether a witness is telling the truth is being put forward by companies which seek to profit from research that suggests that new imaging technology can detect when a human is telling a lie. These companies are advertising this technology as a tool for law enforcement and promoting its use in U.S. trials as a way of helping juries to assess the credibility of witnesses. This article explores these claims that neuroimaging scans can be used to detect lies, which far exceed those made by responsible scientists, and also puts them in the context of a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases which have dramatically changed how scientific (forensic) evidence can be presented to the jury in criminal trials. In this article I argue that promises of lie detection are not only based on false premises, but they are harmful to the integrity of the legal system because they seek to substitute a technology, which is not just undeveloped and inadequately tested but inherently flawed, for the judgment of the fact-finder, judge or jury, in a criminal trial. I conclude that even if there was neuroimaging technology which could provide direct access to human thought, the result would share the inaccuracies and subjectivity that we already know is an inherent feature of human memory. Moreover, because this technology promises to do something that jurors know they cannot - determine when a person is lying - there is a substantial risk that it will prejudice defendants because jurors will substitute the results of the technology for their own collective judgment.

Much ado about nothing: Nowak et al.’s charge against inclusive fitness theory

In a recent article, Nowak et al. claim that the mathematical basis of inclusive fitness theory does not stand to scrunity and to have found an alternative explanation for eusociality. We show that these claims are based on false premises, many of which have been exposed more than 25 years ago, such as misrepresentations of the basic components of inclusive fitness and fallacious distinctions between individual fitness and inclusive fitness. Moreover, some limitations ascribed to inclusive fitness are actually limitations of current evolutionary theory, for which Nowak et al. propose no new solution. Likewise, their assertedly 'common sense' empirical alternative to estimating inclusive fitness is not applicable in cases of interest. Finally, their eusociality model merely confirms the importance of all the components of inclusive fitness. We conclude by discussing how rhetorical devices and editorial practices can impede scientific endeavours.

Christianity and globalisation: An alternative ethical response

This article critically evaluated the role of Christian Ethics in response to globalisation. It showed that ethical critiques of globalisation inevitably fall short when Christianity’s historical contributions to processes of globalisation are neglected or de-emphasised. A Christian Ethics that attempts completely to wash its hands of and disavow globalisation is therefore indicated to be perched on a false premise. In this regard, the author specifically discussed the divergent stances of Max Stackhouse and Rebecca Todd Peters and opted for the former as the more helpful when considered from an interdisciplinary approach. In the final analysis, the author argued that the problem of globalisation might fruitfully be addressed with an ethics that is not averse to bring the various insights of missiology, church history and practical theology to the table, focusing particularly on rituals of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Conditional Reasoning With False Premises Facilitates the Transition Between Familiar and Abstract Reasoning

Abstract reasoning is critical for science and mathematics, but is very difficult. In 3 studies, the hypothesis that alternatives generation required for conditional reasoning with false premises facilitates abstract reasoning is examined. Study 1 (n = 372) found that reasoning with false premises improved abstract reasoning in 12- to 15-year-olds. Study 2 (n = 366) found a positive effect of simply generating alternatives, but only in 19-year-olds. Study 3 (n = 92) found that 9- to 11-year-olds were able to respond logically with false premises, whereas no such ability was observed in 6- to 7-year-olds. Reasoning with false premises was found to improve reasoning with semiabstract premises in the older children. These results support the idea that alternatives generation with false premises facilitates abstract reasoning.

Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: A Scholarly Vendetta and its Consequences

Between 1895 and 1921, the early history of Burma rested on a false premise: that the three oldest inscriptions found in Burma were genuine. Who forged these inscriptions? Why did they do so? By whom were the forgeries exposed? The answers to these questions prompt troubling thoughts about how state power impinged on the autonomous pursuit of knowledge during the high noon of the British Empire.

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.

Harmonisation of Chalk and Cheese

This is a response to Towards Harmonisation of the Construction Industry Security of Payment Legislation: A consideration of the success afforded by the East and West Coast Models in Australia by Jeremy Coggins, Robert Fenwick Elliott and Matthew Bell. Towards Harmonisation is based upon the false premise that the objectives of the East Coast and West Coast models are the same. They are chalk and cheese. Each serves a valuable purpose. Each jurisdiction needs both models. A model for a dual process incorporating both the East Coast and the West Coast models will be found in Davenport (2007).

Urinary kidney injury biomarkers and urine creatinine normalization: a false premise or not?

Substantial research has focused on the discovery of urinary biomarkers to detect acute kidney injury (AKI) before a rise in serum creatinine. As in chronic kidney diseases, the concentrations of urinary AKI biomarkers have been normalized to urine creatinine concentration to account for creatinine clearance and urine flow. Waikar et al. challenge the assumption that normalization to creatinine clearance in a chronic disease state can be extrapolated to an acute state, in which creatinine clearance is, by definition, changing acutely.

Sievers‘ Law in Gothic: A Response to Pierce

Gothic scribes divided words at the ends of lines following basic principles of syllabification except in the case of glide-final clusters, where the division appeared immediately before the glide (-C/G-). Pierce (2006) accepts this practice as evidence that such sequences were heterosyllabified, -C.G-. He rejects arguments that such breaks occur because morpheme boundaries (#) normally precede the glides, -VC0C/#GV-, and that hence these clusters were actually tauto-syllabified: -VC0.C#GV-. Pierce counters that (a) the Law of Initials forbids such tautosyllabification; (b) morphology cannot account for similar division in forms evincing Verschärfung or /-ngw-/, where there are no morpheme boundaries; (c) his opponents are inconsistent because they ignore the role of morphology in the division of stop + liquid clusters; (d) evidence from the other Germanic dialects cor-roborates his position; (e) if -VC0CGV- were truly tautosyllabified, one would expect occasionally to find erroneous divisions exhibiting this, -VC0/.C#GV-. In this rejoinder, I argue that Pierce's arguments rest on false premises.

Plasma processes in pulsar magnetospheres

AbstractIt is pointed out that the standard model for pulsar electrodynamics is based on a false premise, related to neglecting the displacement current, and the associated need for current screening. Wave dispersion in the standard model is reviewed, and its relation to the interpretation of pulsar radio emission and its polarization is discussed. Inclusion of the displacement current results in large-amplitude oscillations; some of the implications of these oscillations on the interpretation of the radio emission are discussed.

A Defense of the Principle of Indifference

The principle of indifference (hereafter ‘Poi’) says that if one has no more reason to believe A than B (and vice versa), then one ought not to believe A more than B (nor vice versa). Many think it’s demonstrably false despite its intuitive plausibility, because of a particular style of thought experiment that generates counterexamples. Roger White (2008) defends Poi by arguing that its antecedent is false in these thought experiments. Like White I believe Poi, but I find his defense unsatisfactory for two reasons: it appeals to false premises, and it saves Poi only at the expense of something that Poi’s believers likely find just as important. So in this essay I defend Poi by arguing that its antecedent does hold in the relevant thought experiments, and that the further propositions needed to reject Poi are false. I play only defense in this essay; I don’t argue that Poi is true (even though I think it is), but rather that one popular refutation is faulty. In showing this, I also note something that has to my knowledge gone unnoticed: given some innocuous-looking assumptions the denial of Poi is equivalent to a version of epistemic permissivism, and Poi itself is equivalent to a version of epistemic uniqueness.

The “Acute coronary syndromes: consensus recommendations for translating knowledge into action” position statement is based on a false premise

Recent National Heart Foundation of Australia (NHFA) guidelines for management of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) recommend increasing the rates of early invasive management of ACS and providing equal access for all Australians to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) facilities. For patients with ACS managed in regional hospitals without PCI facilities, review of the evidence does not show unequivocal benefit of early routine PCI over selective PCI for patients with non-ST-segment-elevation ACS or ST-elevation myocardial infarction. The current pattern of transfer based on the NHFA guidelines is expensive and disruptive of patient care, as well as undermining regional health care services. Further increase in transfer rates and increases in PCI facilities would divert resources away from supporting the regional infrastructure needed to provide evidence-based therapies, without any evidence that lives would be saved.

Ethics Committee Membership Selection: A Moral Preference Tool

How the diversity of membership of research ethics committees is arrived at has, to date, largely been fairly arbitrary. However, a tool to help determine one's moral preference is now available and it is introduced here as, arguably, having the potential to assist with ensuring a more meaningful diversity amongst an ethics committee's membership. The tool is seen to be easily applied – but, it is argued, may be conceived on at least two false premises. Firstly, despite different theories of ethics, none can be proved to give the ‘right’ answer other than in its own terms. Secondly, if there is an ethical hierarchy, as the model suggests, then ethical diversity must become redundant for the possibility of achieving ethical excellence.

The invasive approach to acute coronary syndrome: true promise or false premise?

The invasive approach to acute coronary syndrome: true promise or false premise?

Proportionality: An assault on human rights?: A reply

In a recent article in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Stavros Tsakyrakis presents a passionate critique of the proportionality test. Tsakyrakis regards proportionality as an illusory attempt at infusing objectivity in rights adjudication. Moreover, he posits that it necessitates weighing public interests against individual rights. Proportionality has emerged globally as the leading framework for evaluating rights violations. It serves as the uniform standard of rights review in jurisdictions as diverse as Israel, Germany, Canada, and South Africa. Remarkably, recent opinions by Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court indicate that the approach is gaining currency within American’s constitutional jurisprudence. Considering proportionality’s significance, Tsakyrakis’ critique is of considerable moment and merits careful study. In this Essay I argue that while Tsakyrakis is right to consider certain types of balancing objectionable, he is wrong to conclude that proportionality necessitates them. Rather than focusing on important philosophical questions regarding the commensurability of values, this response is limited to providing clarity on proportionality’s methodology and observing the false premises that underline Tsakyrakis’ arguments. Examining the cases and hypothetical that Tsakyrakis relies upon, I demonstrate how they fail to articulate any defect in the proportionality test. Notwithstanding this, Tsakyrakis’ analysis provides a useful insight into the dangers of treating proportionality subtests as farcical.