On academic freedom, politics and economics

A recent Irish Times article by Professor Emeritus William Reville brought up the topic of academic freedom. It provoked a negative reaction from some. His examples of political threats to academic freedom are rather cherrypicked, focusing on totalitarian governments of the more left-wing variety when discussing historical examples of political interference in academics' work, as well as the more recent trend of "no-platforming" speakers on campus.

Notwithstanding the rather biased overview of some potential threats to academic freedom, he cites the following rather more generic/objective material from the Irish Universities Act about what Irish law protects as academic freedom:

"A member of the academic staff of a university shall have the freedom, within the law (my emphasis), in his or her teaching, research and any other activities either in or outside the university, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions and shall not be disadvantaged, or subject to less favourable treatment by the university, for the exercise of that freedom."

Although I rather get the vibe some people outside the "ivory tower" may think otherwise (or have a more absolutist view of what citizens' freedom of speech constitutes than it actually does), my understanding is that academic freedom does not place you above the law, and so it doesn't grant you some special right to speech acts that are otherwise denied to the average citizen. It's not a licence to racially abuse a student, make lewd remarks to a colleague, send a general email inviting people to beat up protesters as a violent counter protest, flog a product that doesn't work, flout a confidentiality agreement, etc. etc. Hate speech is not an area I'm authoritative on, but if certain speech acts are banned by the government as hate speech, then academic freedom does not cover this either.

Although left-right political divides can become very heated and divisive (and thus make better copy), I think a more prevalent threat to academic freedom (which Reville also discusses later in his article) is the need for research to be applied rapidly. Although the taxpayer funds a certain amount of research in universities with little obvious economic gain, at least in the short-medium run, funding bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) place a large emphasis on industry collaboration. The resultant increase in the number of collaborations between industry and universities has led to great success in terms of economic metrics (€5 for every €1 invested in research in the university sector, says SFI). However, this raises hard questions about the independence of such research, its broader intellectual contribution, and its benefit to broader society if the benefits are privatised.

The statement from the Irish Universities Act above tellingly refers to less favourable treatment by the university when it comes to choice of research question. With so much matched funding being provided to those who engage more with industry, researchers who focus on more "blue skies" research questions may have concerns about being treated equally by the university sector with regard to outcomes such as career advancement. University researchers are thus likely to feel constrained in their choice of research question if there is no clear short- to medium-run economic gain.

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Writing workshop: "Fundamentals of Fiction"

I recently attended Fundamentals of fiction, a course run by William Ryan at the Irish Writers Centre. I saw it as a chance to workshop some pieces from my current work in progress, a meta-fictional novel about how narrative can contribute to mental health stigma.

The course was run over Zoom. Each week began with a lecture-style presentation from Ryan, covering different aspects of fiction (e.g. dialogue, characters, writing scenes etc.) These covered the basics in some detail - the slides can act as handy checklists when re-drafting.

Furthermore, each week we submitted a 1,000-word extract from fiction we were working on (these could be short, stand-alone pieces or excerpts from a novel). During each class, we reviewed three writers' work in depth. I had an extract reviewed in the first week; opinion was divided over my decision to write in the first-person plural for the scene (although this technique is more popular than you might think). The feedback was particularly useful in finding out what aspects people might like to be developed more.

I previously did a beta-read exchange with someone I met on a different course at the Irish Writers Centre. The other person's book was historical fiction, and quite different in many ways from my own work. The Fundamentals of Fiction was a good opportunity to do something similar; although the participants were generally writing for an adult audience, there was enough variation in genre and setting to keep things interesting. A difficult aspect compared to beta-reading was that when working with extracts from longer works (as opposed to stand-alone pieces) one can't always get the full context of the pieces chosen for the workshop process

This was an enjoyable way to explore writing with other. The atmosphere was friendly, and critique was very constructive. As the title of the course suggests, highly seasoned writers may not get that much out of the four weeks, but for enthusiastic amateurs trying to up their game this is well worth considering. 

Places are still available for the next workshop, starting 16th June.

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Researcher Profile: Andrew Allen

This profile originally appeared on the website of the Dementia Research Network Ireland, who gave me the opportunity to talk about my new research role at the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability.

(Re-printed with permission).

This month's researcher in focus is Dr Andrew P. Allen, who works with the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability at Trinity College Dublin.

What is your area of research?

I have recently started working with Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability. For over a decade, they have been running the Intellectual Disability Supplement to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (IDS-TILDA: idstilda.tcd.ie). This is generating a fantastic dataset from a nationally representative cohort of people with intellectual disability (ID) aged 40+.

I am particularly interested in dementia in people with ID. This population have a higher prevalence of dementia, and the onset happens at a younger age, but detection of dementia in this cohort is quite different from the general population, and this can be challenging for clinicians. Appropriate end-of-life care for people with ID, another issue that is central to dementia, remains a challenge; I’m also currently working with my colleagues on book chapters that aim to provide a better understanding of the topic.

Right now, with the current COVID-19 crisis, we are developing resources for people with ID, their families and support staff (e.g. easy read materials, webinars for support staff). To find out more, see the following link: https://www.tcd.ie/tcaid/about/covid19.php

What sparked your interest in this area?

I have been interested in cognition for ages, but I’ve become increasingly involved in the whole area of ageing and cognition in the last few years. I have always believed that ageing is an intrinsically interesting topic, but I think the research zeitgeist has also generated a lot of energy around exploring the lives of older adults. So, when the opportunity arose with IDS-TILDA to get involved with research in an underexplored older population, I jumped at it. 

What stage are you at in your career and are there any achievements you are particularly proud of?

I have worked in various research roles since finishing my PhD about seven years ago. I’m approaching what a lot of funding agencies would call “mid-career” - time can creep up on you.

In terms of recent output, I was happy to see a paper being published about research on family dementia caregivers at University College Cork and St. Finbarr’s Hospital. The findings draw attention to the importance of safety issues as a cause of burden for family caregivers of people with dementia. This was a very satisfying collaboration with the clinical team at the memory clinic and old age psychiatry clinic as well (https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article-abstract/49/1/52/5637595).

What impact would you like your research to have?

I think that most researchers involved in ageing are hoping to maintain or improve people’s quality of life as they get older. But not everyone ages in the same way and, as researchers, we have a role to play in creating a better understanding of the diversity that exists in our older populations so that policy and practice can adapt accordingly.

Who has helped or inspired you in your area of research?

In my experience, the teams that I’ve worked with are very collegial, and many team-mates have helped me in some way (I hope I’ve helped them too). I’ve taken a strong interest in psychology since the age of fourteen, so there have been a lot of people who have inspired me. In the last couple of years, Richard Roche has been a particular inspiration with his ability to pull together collaborators from a wealth of disciplines. More recently, I think the scale and the staying power of IDS-TILDA is really impressive, especially how they manage to retain so many participants with very little drop-out. And with such a great dataset, every day raises new questions.

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How does the trick work?

In one of my favourite books of the last decade, Daniel Dennett describes "the tuned deck", based on an account from John Northern Hilliard's 1938 book "Card Magic". This nifty scheme by a certain Ralph Hull confounded professional magicians. Hull would perform one of the simplest tricks in the book. He would ask someone to pick a card from a standard deck of playing cards and place it back in the deck without showing him. Then Hull would produce the correct card that they had picked.

What frustrated his rivals, most of whom could no doubt do this kind of trick in their sleep, is they couldn't work out how he did it. A key aspect of this scheme was that Hull would perform the tuned deck multiple times in front of the same audience, which is generally a no-no for an audience of lay people, let alone other magicians. As far as Hull could make out, no one else ever worked out how to perform the tuned deck.

So how did he do it? The "pick a card, put it back in the deck and I find it" trick is very simple in terms of input and output, but there are multiple mechanisms through which the magician achieves it. The fact that Hull did multiple performances in front of an audience of skeptics was actually key to performing the tuned deck. He would perform the trick one way-(for example, a classic method is glimpsing the card that goes on top of the unseen, chosen card). The other magician would reckon that Hull had used the glimpse, and so when Hull performed the tuned deck again, Hull's rival(s) would act in such a way as to spot or frustrate this method. But this time, they would not be able to catch Hull at glimpsing, because instead of using the glimpse, he would use another method- say, a sleight of hand method for tracking the chosen card by touch. "The tuned deck" was only ever "one" trick in the sense of the input and the outcome, not the mechanism for how it was achieved.

I love this story. Before I could articulate it, I could sense how this could be an analogy for so many blind alleys we lead ourselves down. Dennett uses the tuned deck as an analogy for our understanding of consciousness; the various "easy" problems of consciousness (how do we pay attention, how we remember) are the tuned deck of making up the overall subjective experience of consciousness, thereby explaining the "hard" problem of consciousness, i.e. how we have a general, "unified" stream of consciousness - see work by David Chalmers. (Dennett is not a great fan of Chalmers, as parodied in this enjoyable Philosophy Comic).

Another example we could take is that of major depression and psychotherapy. This is kind of the psychological equivalent of "pick a card, any card". The input and output are relatively simple - person feels down, goes to talk to a professional, hopefully feels better. But there are various schools of therapy - psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural, narrative therapy etc. Many people have pointed out that there are commonalities to most talking therapies (e.g. articulating what's bothering you to an experienced listener), and so the specifics of the particular talking therapy may not be the key mechanism. Furthermore, even a given school of therapy may have a different means of improving mood within different individuals. Maybe it improves self-esteem, maybe it changes your view of the world around you as being fundamentally dangerous, maybe it helps you to view difficult life circumstances in a more positive light.

I can't help but wonder how often those who seek to explain how therapy works fall for the tuned deck.

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Conferences and carbon

With much of the world in lockdown, many of us have more time on our hands for reflection. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have indicated that carbon emissions must peak this year. No doubt many countries are inadvertently going to have emissions well below last year's, but will they come back heavier than ever once relative normality returns? (Albeit with a likely economic recession if not depression).

I've recently been trying to make a bid for a US conference to come to Dublin for its once-every-five-years jaunt to Europe. International conferences conferences are a great opportunity for junior and more established researchers and clinicians to build new collaborations. But such events are also wont to chomp up a lot of carbon, with delegates flying the oceans to present their posters, give their talks, and watch the grand dons give their TED talks. Is it really worth the earth?

However, carbon neutral conferences are not only possible, but should be the norm. The article at the link (and cited below) gives a number of clear steps towards reducing emissions. We are all getting more used to virtual meetings, so the number of delegates who travel the world can be reduced, and those who do travel can offset their emissions with carbon credits (less face it, we need carbon capture if we're ever going to beat climate change). Teams should have low-emission options as the default, where people have to "opt-in" to less environmentally friendly choices (carnivore option, anyone?) The supplementary materials in the article also give an estimate of CO2 emissions per activity at a 2018 carbon-neutral conference the authors organised.

Zotova, O., Pétrin-Desrosiers, C., Gopfert, A., & Van Hove, M. (2020). Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(2), e48-e50.

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