Public Misunderstanding Research Articles

Nurses are Key Members of the Abortion Care Team: Why aren’t Schools of Nursing Teaching Abortion Care?

Abortion is a common and safe procedure in Canada, with the Canadian Institute for Health Information reporting approximately 100,000 procedures per year. Yet access remains problematic. As abortion is unrestricted by criminal law in Canada, access is limited by geographic barriers and by a shortage of providers. We present a feminist critical lens to describe how the marginalization of nursing and nurses in abortion care contributes to social stigma and public misunderstanding about abortion access. The roles of registered nurses and nurse practitioners in abortion advocacy, service navigation, counselling, education, support, physiological care and follow up are underutilized and under-researched. In 2015, decades after its availability elsewhere in the world, Health Canada approved mifepristone (a pill for medical abortion). In 2017, provincial regulators began to authorize nurse practitioners to independently provide medical abortion care, as appropriate given the inclusion in nurse practitioner scope of practice to order diagnostic tests, make diagnoses, and treat health conditions. Ensuring nurse practitioners are able to practice medical abortion has the potential to significantly increase abortion access for rural, remote and other marginalized populations. There is also an opportunity to optimize the registered nurse role in abortion care. However, achieving these improvements is challenging as abortion is not routinely taught in Canadian Schools of Nursing. We argue that to destigmatize abortion and improve access, undergraduate nursing and nurse practitioner programs across the country must begin to include abortion and family planning competencies.

Counseling Women Who Have Terminated a Pregnancy Due to Fetal Anomaly (TOPFA): The ACCEPT Model

Women who have terminated a pregnancy due to fetal anomaly (TOPFA) may experience disenfranchised grief, societal stigmatization, and lack of support. A history of legislative attempts to criminalize TOPFA providers, public misunderstanding, and poor healthcare experiences may create reluctance in women to seek face-to-face counseling. While recent publications have assessed the grief reactions and help-seeking of women who TOPFA, few have provided an informed approach to therapeutic intervention for clinical social workers. This article attempts to provide a practice model through a composite case study utilizing the proposed ACCEPT model. The ACCEPT model incorporates elements of modern grief theory and consists of acknowledging disenfranchised grief, connecting emotions to the loss, continuing bonds, exploring distortions, practicing new skills, and telling the story. Implications and recommendations for social work engagement, awareness, and therapeutic support of this population are also provided.

‘We Want Experts’: Fracking and the Case of Expert Excess

Abstract The assumption that the democratisation of environmental law is central to ensuring the legitimacy of decisions permeates the literature. Using an empirically grounded counter narrative, this article confronts and contests that assumption. It argues that in the context of shale gas/fracking, public understanding positions expertise not as an obstacle to legitimacy, but rather as a foundational factor. This involves a role in which experts fulfil a publicly delegated role, the delineation of which warrants a form of participation that repositions its purpose and value. However, this conceptualisation of an expert’s role, and the type of participation required, demonstrates a fundamental public misunderstanding about what experts can deliver: ‘expert excess’. This article argues that we, as scholars, need to reflect upon: (1) the weight given to empirical perceptions of legitimacy and participation when developing theoretical models; (2) why there is such a misconception around what experts can deliver in decision-making.

Hen housing system information effects on U.S. egg demand

The U.S. egg industry has been moving rapidly towards “cage-free” aviary housing as an alternative to conventional cages for hens. A choice experiment was used to evaluate the U.S. public’s willingness to pay (WTP) for egg attributes including housing system, color, size, and certifying agency. A significant difference in WTP for hen housing systems was found using video information treatments describing hen housing systems. When respondents were shown videos of egg production systems, they were indifferent between cage-free aviary and the alternative enriched colony hen housing system whereas with no video information the respondents clearly preferred the cage-free system. Results point towards potential public misunderstanding of the costs and benefits associated with the “cage-free” egg label designation and highlight potential discrepancies between industry commitments and informed consumer preferences.

#MeToo: A Case Study in Re-Embodying Information

This article examines the feminist hashtag #MeToo. Like other feminist hashtags, #MeToo responds to public misunderstanding, disbelief, or complacency surrounding violence against women. This problem, I argue, is in part a byproduct of digital information sharing that separates bodies from the information that represents them, and cultural understandings of sexual assault and harassment that support rape culture. I draw on a new materialist approach, infused with feminist information studies, to examine the ways in which #MeToo acts as a rhetorical census that re-embodies information and resists rape culture.

California's Glyphosate Judgement – Emotion, Bad Science and Greed Win the Day

Jurors in California have awarded $289 million to a man who claimed that his cancer was due to Monsanto's herbicide glyphosate, even though that is biologically impossible. Even the judge acknowledged that there was no evidence of harm. Yet, trial lawyers manipulated a jury's emotions and the public's misunderstanding of science to score another jackpot verdict. The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, claims that glyphosate gave him non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that occurs when the immune system goes awry. There are three major problems with this claim. First, as stated above, glyphosate does not cause cancer because it does not harm humans. It is an herbicide, so it is only toxic to plants. There is no known biological mechanism by which glyphosate could cause cancer, therefore its carcinogenicity is not even theoretically possible. That is why there is not a single reputable public health agency that believes glyphosate causes cancer. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, and the European Food Safety Authority all reject claims of any link. The only organization of note that rejects this scientific consensus is a group within the World Health Organization called the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Contrary to all evidence, the group insists that glyphosate causes cancer – along with bacon and hot water. The truth is that IARC is a fringe outlier, staunchly ideological rather than scientific, and rife with financial conflicts of interest. Christopher Portier, a special adviser to the IARC working group that examined glyphosate, was also working for the activist organization the Environmental Defense Fund and received $160,000 from trial lawyers who stood to profit handsomely if IARC declared glyphosate a carcinogen because they could file suits in lawsuit-happy California. IARC's credibility has been so thoroughly shattered that Congress recently pulled its funding. Secondly, although the root cause of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is unknown, that does not mean its etiology is completely open to speculation. Lymphomas originate from white blood cells, so scientists believe that autoimmune disease or chronic infections play a role. Just because the plaintiff's attorneys can fool a jury into believing that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma does not mean there is any scientific evidence – and there is not. Thirdly, glyphosate has been off-patent for 18 years, and about 40% of the world's glyphosate is made in China. So, why pick on Monsanto when several different companies could have supplied the glyphosate the plaintiff used?

Moral injury in relation to public debates: The role of societal misrecognition in moral conflict-colored trauma among soldiers

The last decade has witnessed fast-growing scholarly interest in the concept of moral injury, which addresses the link between the ethics of military intervention and deployment-related suffering. However, current research on moral injury, predominantly psychological in nature, tends to approach the phenomenon as an internally contained disorder. Consequently, it medicalizes moral injury and de-contextualizes it from the people who send soldiers to conflict zones and ‘welcome’ them back. This article addresses the ways in which the experience of moral injury is embedded in and shaped by public debates on military intervention, drawing on relevant literature from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and social sciences, and on in-depth qualitative interviews collected in 2016 and 2017 with 80 Dutch veterans. The article examines the explicit public condemnation experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Bosnia as peacekeepers, and the more subtle public misunderstanding experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Afghanistan as combat soldiers. It demonstrates that public criticism and admiration may both be experienced as misrecognition, and, in turn, societal misrecognition may directly or indirectly contribute to moral injury. Moreover, not only soldiers and veterans may struggle with the moral significance of military intervention, but society as well.

«Зелена» економіка на шляху творення постринкової економічної системи

Розглянуто суть «зеленої економіки» та її значення для подолання глобальних екологічних загроз, що зумовлені деструктивною антропогенною діяльністю і призвели до порушення планетарних меж. «Зелену» економіку розглядають як інструмент на шляху творення постринкової економічної системи. Основні вимоги до «зеленої» економіки такі: збаланcування викидів антропогенних і природних парникових газів з можливостями їх поглинання екологічними системами з метою стабілізації клімату на Землі; розвиток «зеленої» економіки повинен передбачати підвищення глобальної біологічної продуктивності та вуглецепоглинальної спроможності лісових та інших екосистем Землі; використання лише природовідновлюваних екологічно доступних природних ресурсів; збереження біологічного та генетичного різноманіття; екологізація суспільного розвитку, яка повинна охопити економічну, екологічну, соціальну і духовну сфери земної цивілізації; усунення екологічних загроз на глобальному, національному, регіональному та локальному рівнях; оптимізація економічної діяльності за екологічними критеріями; використання безвідходних технологій виробництва і споживання; поглинання ключових ідей «синьої» економіки.

Using social media to strengthen public awareness of wildlife conservation

While heightening public awareness through social media can enhance wildlife conservation and management efforts, the influence of media content and quality in relation to these efforts is poorly understood. In this study, online news and related public comments on the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis), one of China's flagship species, was collected and evaluated to determine the performance of media news releases in strengthening public awareness. Media releases on the incidents of dolphins straying into freshwater systems at Dongping, Beijiang, and Baisha Rivers, in the Pearl River Delta of China were examined. WeChat, the largest social networking platform in China, was used as the data source. Generalized linear model (GLM) was used to test the news popularity by publisher type, title tone, picture counts, and word counts. Content analysis (CA) was used for mining wildlife conservation information in articles and identifying public opinions. GLM results showed that three publishers (traditional, governmental and private) as well as articles with more pictures attracted greater online readerships. CA results showed that articles were unable to popularize wildlife conservation knowledge, and the public was highly doubtful about conservation efforts by the government and experts. The finding here suggests that greater attention is needed for depicting and delivering conservation knowledge (e.g., rescue methods, biological features), negative impact on wildlife by diverse human behavior, and detailed proper descriptions to promote public awareness on wildlife conservation using multi-faceted thinking so as to reduce public misunderstanding of policymakers and experts. A suggested concerted framework could help strengthen wildlife management through social media.

«LOSERS, GOOD GUYS, COOL KIDS» THE EVERYDAY LIVES OF EARLY SCHOOL LEAVERS

The article describes an empirical study concerned with the NEET generation in Hungary. The NEET generation (Not in Education, Employment or Training) is represented by those young persons who do not work or study anywhere due to a number of social, economic and political reasons. The authors present the results of qualitative interviews revealing some of the problems of secondary school graduates. The findings point to deep public misunderstanding of the situation of the NEET generation and help the authors to draw up several proposals on the modernization of youth policies.

Psychology and its publics

This paper introduces the special issue dedicated to ‘Psychology and its Publics’. The question of the relationship between psychologists and the wider public has been a central matter of concern to the historiography of psychology. Where critical historians tend to assume a pliant audience, eager to adopt psychological categories, psychologists themselves often complain about the public misunderstanding of them. Ironically, both accounts share a flattened understanding of the public. We turn to research on the public understanding of science (PUS), the public engagement with science (PES) and communications studies to develop a rich account of the circuitry that ties together psychological experts and their subjects.

Refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide historical and legal definitions for categories of immigrants while helping educators use facts to address their students’ misperceptions about the terms “migrants,” “undocumented immigrants,” “refugees,” “asylum seekers,” and “internally displaced persons.” The 1951 Convention related to the status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol provided a clear definition for refugees, also used to create the 1980 Refugee Act. However, recent political and media rhetoric have increased public misunderstanding of immigration terms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses over 30 news reports to demonstrate recent perceptions of refugees and other migrants. Other citations provide historical accounts, international documents, and legislation to explain ways in which the USA and other countries have defined refugees.FindingsFindings suggest ways in which leadership have ignored research by denouncing resettlement in spite of statistics indicating that refugees are not a threat to the American people.Research limitations/implicationsThe author’s perspective is as a researcher who has conducted research with resettled refugees for over 15 years. The author’s findings have created a pro-refugee stance.Practical implicationsThis paper suggests the importance of exploring multiple perspectives and not settling for the claims of popular media. It also provides information for teachers to provide educational materials about refugees and other immigrants.Social implicationsReaders are called to look beyond popular opinion to consider accurate information about refugees and immigrants. Refugees and asylum seekers flee from terrorism; they are not terrorists.Originality/valueThis paper confronts contentious popular media reporting on refugees and migration. This is especially valuable in the current time, as negative misconceptions about such people abound.

Public awareness and misunderstanding about DrinkWise Australia: a cross‐sectional survey of Australian adults

Objective:DrinkWise Australia is an alcohol industry Social Aspects/Public Relations Organisation (SAPRO). We assessed the Australian public's awareness of DrinkWise, beliefs about its funding source, and associations between funding beliefs and perceptions of DrinkWise. Methods:A total of 467 adult weekly drinkers completed an online cross‐sectional survey in February 2016. Results:Half the sample had heard of DrinkWise (48.6%); of these, the proportion aware that DrinkWise is industry funded (37.0%) was much smaller than the proportion believing it receives government funding (84.1%). Respondents who incorrectly believed DrinkWise receives government funding were more likely to hold a favourable perception of the organisation's credibility, trustworthiness and respectability than those who did not believe it receives government funding (75.9% vs. 58.3%; p=0.032). Conclusions:The drinking population is vulnerable to believing that alcohol industry public relations organisations such as DrinkWise are government funded, which in turn is associated with more favourable perceptions of the organisation's credibility, trustworthiness, and respectability. Implications for public health:Favourable perceptions of DrinkWise may enhance the industry's ability to delay or dilute potentially effective alcohol control policies. Future research should investigate whether educating the public about DrinkWise's alcohol industry funding alters the public's perception of how credible, trustworthy and respectable the organisation is.

Contrasting academic and lay press print coverage of the 2013-2016 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.

Under a traditional paradigm, only those with the expected background knowledge consume academic literature. The lay press, as well as government and non-government agencies, play a complementary role of extracting findings of high interest or importance and translating them for general viewing. The need for accurate reporting and public advising is paramount when attempting to tackle epidemic outbreaks through behavior change. Yet, public trust in media outlets is at a historic low. The Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model for media reporting on public health emergencies was established in 2005 and has subsequently been used to analyze media reporting on outbreaks of influenza and measles as well as smoking habits and medication compliance. However, no media analysis had yet been performed on the 2013–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak. This study compared the EVD information relayed by lay press sources with general review articles in the academic literature through a mixed-methods analysis. These findings suggest that comprehensive review articles could not serve as a source to clarify and contextualize the uncertainties around the EVD outbreak, perhaps due to adherence to technical accuracy at the expense of clarity within the context of outbreak conditions. This finding does not imply inferiority of the academic literature, nor does it draw direct causation between confusion in review articles and public misunderstanding. Given the erosion of the barriers siloing academia, combined with the demands of today’s fast-paced media environment, contemporary researchers should realize that no study is outside the public forum and to therefore consider shifting the paradigm to take personal responsibility in the process of accurately translating their scientific words into public policy actions to best serve as a source of clarity.

Police UAV use: institutional realities and public perceptions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional realities and public perceptions of police use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Canada in relation to each other, drawing attention to areas of public misunderstanding and concern. Design/methodology/approach Public perceptions data are drawn from a national survey (n=3,045) of UAV use. Institutional realities data are drawn from content analyses of all Special Flight Operation Certificates issued by Transport Canada from 2007 to 2012 and flight logs of a regional service kept from 2011 to 2013. Officer interviews (n=2) also provide qualitative insights on institutional realities from this same regional service. Findings The data reveal disparities between institutional realities and public perceptions. Although federal, provincial and regional services currently use UAVs, awareness of police use of UAVs relative to traditionally piloted aircraft was low. Further, support for police use of UAVs was significantly lower than traditionally piloted craft; but, support also varied considerably across UAV applications, with the greatest opposition tied to tasks for which police do not report using UAVs and the greatest support tied to tasks for which police report using UAVs. Originality/value This research provides previously unknown descriptive data on the institutional realities of police use of UAVs in Canada, positioning that knowledge in relation to public perceptions of police use of the technology. The findings raise concerns over how UAVs may negatively shape police/civilian relations based on procedural justice literature which demonstrates that a lack of public support for the technology may affect the police more broadly.

Public Misunderstanding of Genetically Modified Organisms: How Science and Society are Interconnected

Artificial selection, a method by which evolution occurs, is a process in which an organism is modified to fulfill a specific purpose. For instance, the evolution of corn dates back about 10,000 years ago. Farmers in Mexico recognized that not all plants were identical and that some were locally more adapted. Through unconscious selection and open pollination, the first landraces developed. Further progresses allowed for conscious selection. However, farmers and companies quickly realized that crossing parent plants to create hybrids was too time-consuming to be economically viable. Backcrossing reduced the time required to obtain an organism with the desired trait. Further technological developments made organic food possible through the utilization of atomic gardening. Recent progress in genetics has enabled creation of so-called GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. All of the developed methods (open pollination, mutation breeding, atomic farming, CRISPR/Cas) have a common goal: to adjust the organism to express a specific trait. Nevertheless, some of the methods are seen as potentially dangerous. Furthermore, the scientists' and public opinion on GMOs are different which raise concerns about scientific and critical literacy regarding GMOs. The present article investigates the misconception that distinguish genetically modified organisms based on the method by which they have been created and relates this misconception to literacy (scientific/critical) and critical thinking. A new term, “Adjusted Organism,” is proposed to enable a fresh, unbiased view for future discussions. Key-wordsGenetically Modified Organisms, Critical literacy, Scientific literacy, Bioethics, Gene editing, GM food, Governance of science and technology -------------------------------------------------IJLSSR----------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION Unconscious and conscious selections have both been important in genetically modifying the ancestors of our present-day vegetables. For example, Brassica oleracea varieties have been selected for bigger stems, leading to kohlrabi. Mutations in the leaves led to kale, selection of stem and flowers brought broccoli, selecting terminal buds allowed cabbage to be grown, and selection of flower clusters led to cauliflower . Access this article online Quick Response Code:

Public Misunderstanding of Science? Reframing the Problem of Vaccine Hesitancy

Public resistance towards scientific claims regarding vaccine safety is widely thought to stem from public misunderstanding (or ignorance) of science. Repeated failures to alleviate this ignorance make the problem of vaccine hesitancy seem intractable. I challenge this presumption of knowledge deficit and reinterpret vaccine hesitancy to be a problem of public mistrust of scientific experts and institutions. This finding invites new corrective measures: self-scrutiny by our scientific and governmental bodies regarding their own credibility as well as investment in dialogical rather than didactic communicative outreach to vaccine hesitant members of the public. Without the oppositional framing of the problem as a conflict of science versus ignorance, there is more room for conciliation of public health agendas with the concerns of the lay public.

The psychological power of nuclear weapons

ABSTRACTNuclear weapons and nuclear energy have historically been associated with both apocalyptic fear and salvational hope. Do we fear nuclear technologies too much or too little? The author makes the case that nuclear fear is a double-edged sword: It can be mobilized to reduce risks, but it can also warp risk perceptions. There are countless examples of humans, even experts, miscalculating risks – and any approach that relies on simply “telling people the facts” can lead to public misunderstanding, mistrust, and backlash. On the other hand, gut instinct and human imagination can also lead to poor decisions. Finding new ways to help the public become informed on the relevant issues, without overreliance on imagery of either apocalypse or salvation, should be a major focus of experts with regard to nuclear technology.

The Important Role of Migration for an Ageing Nation

The British Referendum of June 23rd 2016 is set to be a defining moment in British history. Whether to be reconsidered or not, whether to result in a stronger or diminished UK and EU, analysts pouring over the voting data have identified key trends in the UK around generation, locality, income and education. But in particular there appears a complete public misunderstanding of the net contribution made by migrants to the UK. As Fukyama’s (1992, 2014) insightful analysis has long pointed out the transition from place based industrial work to mobile service work would threaten democratic regimes. The educated population required to capitalise on technological advances, would use their education to question current systems of governance. In addition, lower transportation and communications costs would enable hundreds of millions of low skilled workers to enter the global labour market, driving down the wages and potential living standards of those workers in developed countries. While the place based working class might be organised as a political force, in particular through workers organisation such as trade unions, the mobile workforce – increasingly in the informal sector – were hard to politicise. In addition is the destruction of local community. In a capitalist globalised world, traditional communities based on locality are threatened by the growing numbers of educated mobile people who live in communities where they did not grow up or where their families lived before them. This thesis is clear to see here in UK 2016. A country in transition still retaining large numbers of place based individuals in towns and rural areas – generally less well educated and travelled due to the constraints of age and socio-economic background. With a growing section of the English population who had acquired the skills and education to live and compete economically in the more affluent southern parts of the country. These highly educated, overseas travelled UK citizens were more likely to vote to remain, those without further education, and not holding a passport, were more likely to vote to leave. Most strikingly, the 2016 UK post-referendum data found that of Population Ageing (2016) 9:183–189 DOI 10.1007/s12062-016-9152-4

Human Parasites: Bed Bugs

Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World . By Brooke Borel. 2015. University of Chicago Press (ISBN 978-0226041933). 224 pages. Hardcover, $26. This is a delightful read (for the non-entomophobe) about one woman's journey to discover all she can about the biology, history, sociology, and resurgence of the bed bug, Cimex lectularius . The interest of the author to embark on writing this small treatise – part travelogue, part science journalism, and part nonfiction mystery – arose from her long-undiagnosed bites that originated within her New York City apartment in 2004. After discovering what the bites were, the author obsessively learned all she could about these nighttime mini-vampires. Clearly, the bed bugs chose the wrong woman to bite – a skilled science writer. Ms. Borel may, through her journalism, help change public misunderstanding of bed bugs. She has been privileged to hob-nob with the …