Different Use of DNA Testings in Different Countries

After we talked about how ancestry DNA testing is so popular in the US whereas iit's not in other Asian countries, I got more curious about it so I googled different DNA testings and which DNA testings are popular in which countries and I found some interesting results.

When I googled DNA testings in China and other Asian countries like Korea and Japan, there were many articles and news about how some Asian people use DNA testing to identify genetic gifts in young children. For example, CNN reported China's DNA testing to identify a child's IQ, emotional control, memory and other abilities (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/03/china.dna.children.ability/).
This is not just about China, but about other Asian countries as well. I saw some articles about attempts to predict the future of a child by identifying his/her genetic codes in Korea.
Also I found one Korean site having some articles about ancestry DNA testing in the US. The connotations of the articles show that this kind of testing is something that happens outside of Korea, something that Korean people wouldn't do. After all this, I wondered if there is some information about American people trying to identify DNA of their children but I rarely found any.

I think this also shows the cultural differences. Most East Asian parents have a relatively excessive zeal in educating their children and wanting them to excel in academic areas and other. They invest relatively more money in children education even when they don't have enough money saved for their retirement. They think how their kids do in school and after they graduate is really important and contributes to the images of themselves. But as we discussed in class, the people from the West are more concerned about where their origins lie when it comes to DNA testing.

It's just so interesting to me how we can see cultural differences in the fields of science!

Recasting Suffering

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Bio-power, as introduced in Foucault’s (1978) book chapter, has emerged in a society where “political power has assigned itself the task of administering life”(p 139), and involves what he calls 1) regulation—the biopolitics of a population and 2) the anatomo-politics of the human body. 

In a very superficial way, the term “hierarchy of suffering” that Petryna (2002) uses to discuss the Chernobyl victims’ classification for the rights to compensation reminds me of our own system of disability compensation here in the US. 

Dmytro’s story in chapter two stood out.  His effort to bargain for a higher level of compensation is described as involving a self-advocacy including knowing the amount of chromosomal abberations and “calculat[ing] his lost work capacity and amassed diagnoses” (p35).  Dmytro’s way of casting his own suffering in these terms reflects what Rose and Novas (2003) discuss regarding biological citizenship, where increasingly populations describe their own state of being in biomedical terms.  In Foucault’s anatomo-politics of the human body, the body is cast as machine-like, in terms of what it can do for the society or for the economy.  The fact of Dmytro’s calculation of working capacity as related to his entitlement for compensation reflects this dynamic.

Likewise, applying for disability in the US involves a process of self-advocacy in which the sufferer has to make the case that they are sick or hurt enough to warrant governmental support.  I have helped a handful of people trying to work through the disability system.  Likewise, they learned to cast their own suffering into specific symptoms, and to be sure to exhibit or provide documentation for these symptoms, increasingly identifying with their affliction in the process.  This, not to fake their pain and suffering, but to receive recognition and support for legitimate issues in very narrowly defined parameters and in competition against others in equally bad predicaments.

Yet I imagine, it might also be possible to draw some remote bureaucratic parallels as well. I wonder if, under such conditions as Foucault mentions, where the structures of power serve in the administration of life, it happens that the classification and regulation of health may produce this phenomenon—the struggle to have ones’ suffering legitimized?

Funding Education in Unconventional Ways

My roommate recently brought to my attention an article on how [female] college students are increasingly turning to sugar daddies and egg donation to fund their college educations.

The video associated with the article discusses how fertility clinics are targeting college students as potential candidates for egg donation. On one hand, this allows fertile women to provide infertile couples with the opportunity to start or expand their family. However, what are the ethics associated with donation of eggs? Although rare, the donor can potentially become infertile herself. Additionally, why is it acceptable to sell an egg that will create an entirely new human being containing one half of your DNA, but it is not legal to sell an organ such as a kidney? In both cases there is a bit of “shopping” in choosing someone who has desired qualities such as good health in both cases and more specific favorable traits like intelligence in the case of egg donation. It would seem that a market in which people select the traits given to their children by buying the best eggs available would be just as unethical as organ donation, if not more.

Now, turning to the issue of sugar daddies.

The Internet serves as a medium through which people can solicit potential “babies,” “daddies,” or “mommas.” Websites such as sugardaddie.com, the self-proclaimed website that started it all, serve as forums where “the classy, attractive, and affluent meet.” Sugardaddie.com is free of charge, but gives users the option to ‘upgrade’ their account for a fee. Another website seekingarrangement.com claims to offer mutually beneficial relationships and is free of charge to babies only. Thus, the appeal of sites like these to financially strapped college students is not surprising—they provide a free, easy way to meet people willing to pay them an agreed upon “allowance.” However, the problem arises in just what the relationship between a baby and daddy entails. If sexual favors are expected, are these websites not just forums for prostitution? Or is there a difference between dating and engaging in sexual relations with someone for money as opposed to just engaging in sexual relations for pay? If sexual relations are not expected, why is use of sugar daddies not a more socially acceptable means of earning a living?

It will be interesting to see how technology continues to influence the way people fund education as tuitions prices continue to rise. 

Using Uncertaintly about Science to Enact Social Change

I learned about Rachel Carson for the first time when studying for the AP US History exam in 11th grade. She didn't come up in class, but she was an important enough figure to warrant being part of the study guide for the AP. Rachel Carson published the book "Silent Spring" in 1962, which was famous for "progressively amplif[ying] what was unclear about the human impacts of DDT and other synthetic compounds on humans and wildlife." This article, which reminds us that Carson's book was published 50 years ago, also highlights the idea that she used science to make a social change in a different way than is conventional today. In the quote I pulled from the article, it specifically notes that she did not write about the dangers of using pesticides, and she did not cite case studies by testing hypotheses. Instead, her case studies exposed the world to the ambiguity about the issue. She made the issue that stemmed from her research into a debate. She created public discourse about scientific chemicals. And perhaps most importantly, she consequently became one of the "founders" of the environmental movement.

In a few classes over the past few weeks, we have brought up the question of what the role of scientists should be. Are they doing their jobs to gain knowledge? Should they be trying to make society better? Safer? Scientists nowadays seem not to be using Carson's method of bringing ambiguity to the forefront in order to enact social change. Maybe we live in a world where people are so quick to find solutions that they overlook asking the right questions. I'd be curious to see more people adopt Carson's methodology.

Good news everyone!

I uploaded the notes from 9/26. You can get them here.

Scientist Motivation, Essay 1 Thoughts #1

For my essay, I interviewed Dr. Scott Hawley, an investigator at the Stowers Institute For Medical Research in Kansas City and the dean of The Graduate School of the Stowers Institute. This is a man who I have known for many years, as the father of one of my best friends growing up, and I know him to be a very well established meiosis researcher. Yet I admit that I came into the interview with the idea that what motivated him as a scientist was foremost the idea of helping people with science, and I was pleasantly reminded that that reason is secondary to the truly foremost reason, that scientists do science for the sheer thrill of learning.

One quote in particular that struck me was the following

"Well you know I think the thing is is that science is fun, you know, and to me that's the most important things is that I have a lot of friends who are doctors and lawyers and stuff like that, and what they tell me is that they are in their fifties too and they've reached a point where they're really good at their career. But what they do now is what they were doing 10 years ago, it's what they were doing 20 years ago. And for me, what I'm doing now doesn't have anything to do with what I was doing 2 years ago."

As a scientist and educator, he believes from experience that the people who drop out of graduate studies in the sciences do so not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of wanting to be in a lab and actually do science. He described at length many of the latest technological advances that have allowed their labs to do extraordinary things compared to even a few years ago and ask questions that they thought they could never ask before. There was a genuine sense of excitement for science and a sense of marvel for the latest and greatest scientific apparatuses and techniques. He also struck as a man who was well aware of the greater social and political fabric in which his work is embedded in, which I hypothesize is necessary to promote an ethics in science. Yet he did not describe his motivations as particularly societal, but purely for a somewhat romantic notion of the thrill of doing science and the power of knowledge.

Personally, it pains me that politicians are so scientifically illiterate, like how Todd Akin of all people sits on the Congressional Science Committee. I once tried to find articles on why more scientists don't run for politics and try to change it from within. One reason was that it was suicidal to one's scientific career. I think I am coming to understand an incubated philosophy among scientists that further explain's why, that a true scientist would rather be doing science, and that a true scientist believes in the power of knowledge production itself in transforming society, though transforming society is itself not the most important thing (which I believe to be contrary to what the public and governments want science to be).

I believe these points can be seen in some of the articles we read about lab cultures. Graduate physics students who failed were the ones who did not have the determination to seek out their own curiosities and work on their own problems. The nuclear weapons scientists expressed a genuine curiosity for their science and the social context in which they were wrapped up in, and were not motivated merely by selfless reasons.

Srebrenica, Sarah Wagner

1. Chapter 1

It is somewhat embarrassing to admit that I knew nearly nothing about the Srebrenica genocide before reading this book. It was not something that we covered in high school and I do not believe it to be well known in the US, at least as far as I know. It is strange to think that something so horrible developed and culminated within my lifetime, and so recently in the past. I feel that part of the reason it is not more well known is because it does paint the west and the international community in a certain negative light.

Srebrenica became essentially a refuge for Bosniaks under a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Bosnian Serb forces, and was described as a hellish place. I was struck particularly by the description of people having to use battery acid to disinfect wounds, because they had no alcohol, and of course by the death and starvation described. It was both curious and sad how the UN peacekeepers were described to have failed the refugees, particularly the delays for close air support, delayed far beyond usefulness. I was struck by the image of men, young and old, being stripped in every essence of their identity, by having their possessions discarded, and burned and buried en masse, and again in secondary graves. I almost felt that such happenings had to be incredible, and yet I knew rationally that these events were once current events in my life.

In particular, the exchange between father and son about their contrary optimism and pessimism for UN intervention highlighted the remarkable gap between the technological military superiority of the west and their failure to prevent ethnic conflict that has roots that stretch back hundreds of years. Technoscientific superiority does not in itself solve the complex problems of society and politics that plague the human race.


2. Chapter 2 described the current day atmosphere of Srebrenica and of the Bosniaks who have returned, mostly middle-aged women, with very few men or young people. A theme of motherhood and loss and identity is highlighted, most notably in the association Women of Srebrenica. Their remembrance pillows and mounted pictures of the missing and victims highlight the need for these women with shared suffering to share their stories and preserve the identities of the missing, and thus shape their acceptance or not of DNA identification. Part of the non-acceptance is rooted in mistrust, both ethnic and of the international community which they remember to have failed them.

Identifying the Dead: The Moral Janus of Science and Technology

     Sarah Wagner's ethnography To Know Where He Lies is as thought provoking and horrific as any book I have ever read.  Her work examines the DNA technology developed to identify the remains of the estimated 8000 men and boys killed in the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  In reading her book, I found three points particularly interesting, if not disturbing.

    First, Wagner discusses the merits of Western governments becoming involved in the humanitarian effort to reclaim the identities of the dead.  Wagner discusses how the identification of missing persons through DNA testing provided a means to attempt social repair in postwar Bosnia.  Wagner states that their incentive to develop the scientific technology that would enable such a feat was twofold.  First, it would be a case in which science could be used to serve "truth," transcending politics and religion.  Second, it was a task that seemed truly humanitarian.

   When reading this, I could not help but see these efforts as an attempt to assuage guilt stemming from the West's lack of response to the massacre when it was actually occurring.  In the preceding pages, Wagner discusses the US and their use of satellites to witness, but not intervene to stop, the atrocities committed.  Here, DNA technology is created and science furthered sfor the good of humanity, but only because of moral failing in the past.  It seems that the forced realization that crimes did occur forced action on the part of the West just as much as the identification of victims forced the realization of their absence in Bosnia (page 92).

   A second interesting point, though small, is Wagner's inclusion of a quote from Dr. Servatius at the War Crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann:

"The moment, one of the few great moments in the whole trial, occurred during the short oral plaidoyer of the defense, after which the court withdrew for four months to write its judgement.  Servatius declared the accused innocent of charges bearing on his responsibility for "the collection of skeletons, sterilizations,  killings by gas, and similar medical matters," whereupon Judge Halevi interrupted him: 'Dr. Servetius, I assume you made a slip of the tongue when you said that the killing by gas was a medical matter.'  To which Servetius replied: 'It was indeed a medical matter, since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and killing, too, is medical.'  (page 85; originally Arendt 1994:69)"
    
   Of course, to attempt to justify the atrocities of the Holocaust is unthinkable.  Even more perverse is to use medicine as a cover for cruelty and murder.  But what I find to be truly terrifying about Dr. Servetius' statement is the cold logic that it embodies.  Sterilizations are medical procedures and the Nazis use of gas to kill innocents was indeed very procedural and scientific.  However, is the cold and methodological nature of such deeds enough to make them a science? (I would say yes, for the ending of life is often the topic of technology and scientific study, an example being any one of the thousands of innovations arising from war).  Is the fact that they had input from physicians enough to make them medicine?  I would say no, considering the purpose of medicine is to do no harm.  Medicine is clearly both a technical and empirical practice, but a great component of medicine that distinguishes it from biology or chemistry or physics is medicine's humanity.  But it is easy to see that the argument can be made from a clinical perspective that the ending of life is as medically based the to protection of it (consider the current debates on medical euthanasia; for more on the detached nature of the physician, see several of this class' earlier posts).  What is terrifying, enough to cause a judge to double-take and any reader of the quoted passage to recoil in horror, is that at some level the argument can be made and can be persuasive (enough to allow the Nazis to recruit doctors, the British to plan an eugenics program, and the United States to take cranial measurements on non-white, i.e. non-anglo saxon protestants, immigrants skulls).  Such logic, though flawed, adds an element of danger to science.  This example illustrates how science without morality can be a powerful force for evil.

    Wagner places this disgusting justification of the Nazis' war crimes within the broader context of the Bosnian Serb forces' use of bulldozers and relatively "primitive" machinery to create a new force of innovation and "technology" in dehumanizing victims.  The army used large machinery to remove corpses of the massacred from primary mass graves and move these to secondary mass graves, often leaving victims' remains scattered throughout several areas.  This method was an attempt to cover up the killings by creating confusion   No doubt the idea that the loss of identity of victims would serve as a means of forgetting that they even existed, let alone were murdered.  What is special about this technique is that it served to truely dehumanize the victims.  Furthermore, similar to Servetius' use of scientific logic to justify crimes, the use of a new "technology" further detached the killers from their actions and set the victims apart, even in the aftermath, as mere objects.  New DNA technology was later used to restore the identity stolen from the dead by the armies technology and sadistic methods.

     Finally, the last point I found compelling and would briefly like to comment on was Wagner's statement that she was struck by how she and others working to identify victims from their remains knew more about the deads' current conditions than the people to whom it mattered to the most, their loved ones (page 149).  This simple sentiment truly shows the power of the scientist, and, more specifically, the humanitarian-scientist.  The differences in levels of knowledge between scientists and non-scientists can be profound.  It can also serve as a great burden (again, see previous posting on this matter).  It is easy to imagine how such harsh kinds of knowledge serve to isolate those who possess it.  Yet, at the same time, these same individuals do a great and very much necessary service for humanity.  The identification of the victims was morally just and necessary, yet it required certain individuals to take the weight of knowing on their shoulders.  Such a burden is only second to the weight of not knowing carried by the victims families.

                                                   

Identity and Technology

            Wagner’s To Know Where He Lies discusses technology in a much different light than the other pieces we have read this semester. One interesting aspect of Wagner’s book is the juxtaposition of how technology can both remove identity and return it. Weapons technology played a significant role in the actual genocide, and it can be argued that the UN did not adequately provision their technological resources to protect Srebrenica. Furthermore, without guns and means of the transport, it is highly unlikely that the death toll could have reached the numbers that it did. The Bosnian Serbs relied on this technology to sequester the Bosniaks and execute them without much resistance.

            Nevertheless, without DNA technology the missing would have remained just that in the minds of their loved ones and their remains would be unidentifiable amongst the thousands of others in the mass graves. Yet, even this type of technology has its shortcomings in terms of returning humanity to victims and their families. The people examining the bodies had to emotionally separate themselves from their work and see the remains as specimens of DNA rather than as people whose lives ended tragically soon. Perhaps this distance between the scientists and the remains is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it still sheds light on the way technology molds identity. It seems that even technology aimed at identifying must morph the subject in some way. In terms of the larger themes in the course, it will be interesting to look at technology from this lens, that is how the identity of the scientist shapes technology and how technology changes the scientist’s identity. 

Forensics in the Guatemalan Massacre

A few years ago I took a class in forensic anthropology where we discussed its uses in victim identification after mass killings.  One case study that I looked at was its uses in Guatemala after massive civil conflicts.  One of the major differences between forensics in Guatemala and Srebrenica was the available technology.  In the case of Guatemala, while technologies for genetic testing were available within industrialized countries, local populations (and the organizations that sought to help in identification efforts) in the small communities within Guatemala were unable to afford these technologies.  Therefore, identification was solely grounded in the field of forensic anthropology.  A second difference was that in Srebrenica, there were a variety of organizations (both local and international) involved in the identification process that competed with each other and had various goals and motivations for their work.  This slowed the process of human recovery and was fueled with political tensions.  In Guatemala, there was one predominant group responsible for recovering the remains of victims of the massacre (the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology).  While it was a lot of work for one group, they did not have to deal with competing organizations.  This may have helped the efficiency of the group and reduced tensions between locals and the scientists involved in recovery efforts.
However, a similarity is found in the uses of science to identify victims of these massacres: families and communities need identifications of loved ones to provide a sense of closure.  While Wagner focused more on the idea of having an identification to resolve the idea of a ‘missing’ person (one who families still may desperately cling to the hope that their relative is still alive), the general sense I got from my readings about the Guatemalan massacre was that people wanted to identify loved ones to then given them a proper burial.  Culturally, the idea of a proper burial was necessary bring peace to the deceased and to allow all to move on.

Hierarchy of Sufferers

                To be honest, I did not expect how vivid and powerful Wagner’s piece would be.  Most of our readings up to this point were very… scientific, I suppose.  Of course, this is to be expected considering the title of the course, and although To Know Where He Lies does bring about very interesting ties between technology and anthropology, I found that the most interesting pieces of the memoir we those based around the reflections of the survivors. 

One thing that struck me in particular was the concept of a “hierarchy of sufferers,” which refers to the placement of mothers who have lost their sons (and especially so for those who have lost more than one) in a special status above other survivors.  One reflection that was made by Nura was that she had “only lost her brother and was not in the same category as many of the others…Nothing could compare to losing a child” (66).  I would be very interested to know how this cultural view affected the process of identification by various outsider groups.  Did ICMP pay special consideration to these individuals at the top of the hierarchy?  Did they recognize their status as they tested their blood and DNA?

                It was truly amazing to read about the role of technology in recovering the identities of the victims.  Although DNA technology offers a method to narrow down the scope of the search for the missing person, I was surprised that most of the procedures were heavily reliant on items found near the body like articles of clothing or personal possessions.  In the interview with Esefa, so many things were indiscernible to her, but only after close examination of a jacket reminded her of something lost so long ago (147).  In her story, she was able to travel and view the objects first hand, but not everyone is fortunate enough to have this luxury. 

Without physical evidence and first hand confirmations, it is hard for DNA technology alone to provide closure to some.  Jasmina’s interaction with a woman who lost her three sons and husband is an example of how even though DNA technology “proves” the identity of a human, it does not necessarily translate to meaningful knowledge.  I am kind of reminded of the social construction of knowledge…How does the data we scrape up from the remains, whether it’s remnants of  belongings or DNA links, turn into something that can be used to help survivors?  How is it that the fact of “knowing” so meaningful to some, yet meaningless to others?  What else can we do to ease suffering?

Concurrent Themes in To Know Where He Lies and the Mini Ethnography

I wanted to highlight two points that arose both in To Know Where He Lies, and in my interview with a scientist in training for our class ethnography.  The first, was the idea of an instrument versus a machine.  While this lingo may be common amongst those who work in scientific fields, as a student of anthropology I had never considered there to be a difference in the meanings of a ‘machine’ versus an ‘instrument’. However, according to the scientist I interviewed, her interpretation of the difference was that “machines do things for you, whereas instruments help you accomplish things”.  It simply re-emphasized the point that scientists do have their own culture which includes carefully selected terms that are ingrained in the minds young scientists from their earliest laboratory endeavors. Therefore, when I saw the word ‘instruments’ used in Wagner’s novel, it immediately brought this idea to mind and continued to challenge my initial close minded view of a ‘culture-less’ scientific world.  Not only does the scientific world have a strong culture, but it transcends laboratory and national boundaries.
The second point was simply that producing results in science takes time.  In the opening of the third chapter of To Know Where He Lies, Wagner discusses the slow process of identifying the missing persons- likely to due a lack of infrastructure and slow moving technologies.  In order to eventually be successful, the scientists involved dedicated countless long hours and remarkable patience to the project.  This theme also came up in my ethnographic interview.  As a chemist in training, my subject touched upon how slow moving the scientific process can be, particularly when dealing with slow moving reactions.  Psychologically, this was extremely challenging for other scientists she encountered, whose careers and reputations depended on breakthroughs.  She noted it taking emotional tolls on people.  I can only imagine the added stress of a scientist working on the identification of genocide victims in Srebrenica who has a huge task at hand, and whose results will have profound emotional effects on the families of those killed.  However, the other common theme was that this slow moving process just made that moment of discovery and success even more rewarding for both the chemists and forensic scientists.

What are humans?

I have a mild obsession with Pantone. For those of you who have not heard of this marvelous creation, the Pantone Matching System takes pigments of color and labels the swatch with a number-letter identification system. Standardizing all of the colors makes it easy for manufacturers all around the world to produce identical colors. Pantone's popularity grew quickly, spreading across the design and fashion industries. Its tradition of naming a "Color of the Year" is highly regarded by fashion designers and other consumer-oriented companies.

My interest in Pantone started after coming across how design bloggers would highlight the Pantone colors in certain fashion designs, paintings, buildings, etc. It was a fun way to waste time seeing which colors I found appealing. While entertaining, I thought that Pantone only had a very material influence on the world until I stumbled onto Angelica Dass's "humanae" project. Through her project, Dass hopes to show that skin color cannot be simply defined and is not as clear cut as people make it. Her ultimate goal is to "record and catalog all possible skin tones." She takes portraits of people from all around the world and dyes the background of the portrait to be the exact Pantone tone that she extracted from "a sample of 11x11 pixels of the portrayed's face." 

As I first looked over the portraits, I agreed with Dass's message. However, as I continued down the page, the classifications stood out the most. Is it even weirder to look at people and see them as a standardized color than to say, "Oh, she's white."?  If you would like to check out the ongoing project, here's the site.

Culture Versus Science and Technology

Some of the ideas in the third chapter of To Know Where He Lies really reminded me of what I discussed in my blog post about DNA testing last week. Separate from the idea of possible inaccuracy in DNA testing, is the idea that even concrete, correct results, may not offer the closure people are looking for. While it is indeed amazing that the technology to identify the thousands of bodies that were unceremoniously and inhumanely buried, is now available, the grief that these egregious doings caused, cannot be abated by this technology.

           

            This idea was approached from two angles, one being that the cultural beliefs of the Bosnian Muslim people, conflict with the type of genetic testing that was done.  Since the testing done was primarily based on mitochondrial DNA, and thus of the female lineage, this “may have seemed incongruous with Bosnian Muslims' kinship reckoning, which is primarily agnatic," or based on a male governed lineage (p. 117). Not uncommon to medical anthropological ethnographies is the struggle to reconcile cultural beliefs about medicine with scientific medical knowledge; I have seen countless examples of this especially in studies about maternity and childbirth. Women in severe obstructed labour will go to their village shaman instead of traveling to a hospital to get a required C-section. Thankfully the conflict of belief here is not potentially life threatening, but the emotional trauma that could persist if a mother does not believe she has found her dead son’s body is nonetheless scarring.

Another reason the author discusses as to why a family might not accept the genetic identification of a loved one’s remains is rooted in the emotional trauma of the situation. Regardless of the fact that these tests may offer the most concrete, most reliable, scientifically accessible confirmation, this may not be congruent with emotional acceptance on the part of the family. The horror of the genocide and of its repercussions shook me in this particular quote describing a mother signing paperwork acknowledging her son’s identification: “She accepted officially what emotionally and rationally she denied: her son's death…For her, all the sophistication and precision of DNA analysis could not make sense of her loss of reorder of her life. In that moment the technology offered few consolations, despite its impressive statistics,” (p. 118). Too often we think that science and technology can solve all of our problems and provide all of the answers. The truth is that while they may be able to outline the facts and tell us what is true and what is false, they offer little condolence relative to the hardships these facts may bring.

NYT - Gender Bias in Science

An article published in the New York Times yesterday describes a study which found that science professors at American Universities show bias against women when deciding whether to offer a job to a potential candidate and while making a decision of how much the candidate should be paid.
"All of the professors received the same one-page summary, which portrayed the applicant as promising but not stellar. But in half of the descriptions, the mythical applicant was named John and in half the applicant was named Jennifer." On a scale of 1 to 7 (with 7 being highest), John was given an average rating of 4 for confidence, while Jennifer received an average rating of 3.3. John was offered an average starting salary of $30,328, while the average starting salary for Jennifer was $26,508.
When the senior author of the article was discussing previous studies that had demonstrated similar results of bias in other occupations with her colleagues, "many responded that scientists would rise above it because they were trained to analyze objective data rationally".  I found this to be an  interesting sentiment that may shed insight on our anthropological understanding of scientists in this class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html?_r=1

Who are "you"?

                Wagner covers a broad range of topics in chapters 3 through 5 in To Know Where He Lies, but I want to focus on her discussion of the issue that arose among the ICMP case workers regarding whether or not to notify family members in the case of incomplete remains. Should families be notified of their missing relative's status the moment a single bone is found, even if the rest of the body has not been recovered and may not even be found in the same secondary mass grave? Or should the ICMP wait until a full body has been recovered, at the risk of prolonging the family's suffering over the uncertainty of their loved one's fate? The ICMP eventually settled on a seemingly arbitrary value of 70% of bones as constituting a "complete" body, but they revised their protocol after family representatives voted for the discovery of even a single bone as sufficient grounds for notification. Even this was unsatisfactory to some families notified in accordance to this process - why was the ICMP notifying them when they had only found their relative's collarbone or femur? Why weren't they waiting to notify them after they had found the relative himself?

              

                 I was especially interested in this bit because it brings up important anthropological and philosophical issues regarding what constitutes a “person”. How much of someone can be taken away before they cease to be themselves? Does the loss of an arm or leg result in a loss of identity? Probably not, but what about decapitation? Is the bottom half "their" body, or is the top half "their" head? Ancient Egyptians viewed the heart as the seat of the soul, but the brain seems to have taken up that role in more recent times.

              

                 But is the person even rooted in any sort of physical remains at all? Wagner noticed that relatives of the genocide victims oftentimes responded more strongly to recovered personal possessions than they did to actual remains. The stark disparity between their last memories of the relatives they lost, still very alive at the time, and the sterile remains lying on the table often proved to be irreconcilable and  a major obstacle towards acceptance of the identification. A watch, a cigar box, or any other personal keepsake - in the same or similar state as it was in all those years ago - did a much better job at bridging that gap between the past and the now. People are defined by others in the context of their actions and their influences on other people. When someone dies, when their body stops acting as father a brother or a son, where has the person gone?

Wagner, Sarah E. To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing. Berkeley: University of California, 2008. Print. pp145-185

Interesting Insight into the Mind of a Genius

Caltech has recently announced the release of a new volume of Einstein's papers.  These cover about fifteen months of his life, including unpublished letters.  Some of his writings indicate a desire for "a normal life."  Einstein's writings are dated just after the announcement of his Nobel Prize nomination.  Understandably, they seem to convey feelings of fear and weariness at his new found celebrity.  More amazingly, they suggest that he was fearful for his safety at the time.  The papers give an interesting insight into the emotions felt by such a genius away from the public sphere.

Imagine if Einstein had decided to leave academics at this point.

http://www.futurity.org/society-culture/new-einstein-papers-he-feared-for-his-safety/

What else should be considered?

 
Even though I read the selected chapters from the book (so I might not be able to fully comprehend the whole thing), the book was very thought-provoking to me. It made me think about really a lot of things, especailly about science in terms of its impacts on one's life or on a society.

After reading the book, I came to have mixed feelings about DNA technology use in the Bosnia case that the author Wagner deals with in the book. It seems that it's certainly beneficial to help the surviving families of missing persons of Srebrenica. ICMP has promoted the use of DNA technology and tried to identify the reamins of the thousands of people killed in the Srebrenica massacre. It must have been really hard for the surviving families not to have any clues about where the bodies of their beloved ones lied. So ICMP and the Bosnian government helped them to find and identify the people killed and reburied them again.

But I couldn't remove the feelings that ICMP and the govenrment manipulated science for their own benefit or political purposes to some point. I know that my feelings and assumptions may have risen from emotional bias. My assumptions can be wrong. But what I want to point out here is not whether they have taken advantages of DNA technology or not, for I think even though you want to do something "for a good cause," or "for good intentions," it's useless and equal to, or worse than doing nothing if you don't do it right in the right way.

This book reminds me of my experiences in Sri Lanka. In the second semester of my sophomore year, I took a semester off, went to Sri Lanka, and stayed there for 5 months with my 4 other team members though an International Volunteer Program, like Peace Corps. Through the trainings and my actual experiences there, I learned that good intentions are not always translated into good actions. This is the utmost important thing that I learned out of my 5-month stay in a country that people call third world. There I have witnessed so many bad things that have been done in the name of good intentions, help, and humanitarian motives. They gave things the poor Sri Lankan people needed, they supplied fresh water, they built toilets, and houses. But most of them, they didn't think about HOW they had done their service. But surprisingly, when you actually listen to the local people's opinions and what they actually think, most of the things that NGOs and volunteers do for them are not their priorities. We give something that "we think" they need, but a lot of times, what they think they need is different.

I am not saying that these are all applied to this case that we are discussing now. I want to clarify that this case can be and is different at many levels and in many aspects. What I want to say is that how you do it is more important than why, once you decide to do something. When it comes to the use of DNA technology to identify the remains of the killed Bosnian men, I understand that it can be a good thing on the surface, but some of the processes done were not desirable, at least to my opinion. How they kept trying to find the remains to figure out the DNA made me think that they somehow treated those who got killed less than human and merely as an object of science.

Specifically, for example, on page 89, it says that "two aspects of the technology made it an especially appleaing form of intervention. First, cas science in the service of "truth,".......... Second, it was manefiestly humanitarian." I don't think this is good enough. If I a little bit generalize and look at the connotations here, are they saying that "OK, we are doing a good thing and science can help it, so we can do everything"?

If they really care to help the surviving families, I hope they did something else too along with the identification of the dead. Did they do any follow-up care to help the families to be psychologically stable and to overcome their trauma? or was it more like the mindset of "let's-get-this-done-quickly"?

I have to admit that my responses tend to too much focus on non-biological factors sometimes, but we have to admit that non-biological factors play pivotal roles in case like this too.

Technology in the Media

When I was reading the first chapter of To Know Where He Lies last week, it prompted me to think a lot about how technology informs us cross culturally - ie how technological innovations in the media have allowed us to be more globally aware of the goings on of other countries, societies, and cultures. Interestingly, though we can get copious amounts of information about an event less than an hour after it occurs, there are also situations when our informedness can be hindered or even biased by the information we receive.

Satellite radio and television, the internet, and even web-chatting have all been successfully integrated into new reporting and provide more immediate and direct access to a larger pool of information. The way news companies choose to portray such information to the public is still at their discretion. However, with such a quantity of information, there should be little trouble, and in fact an emphasis should be placed on, reporting on events so that either every single faction's bias and opinions are presented or none are included at all. Regardless of which the media chooses to do, their informants will be able to form their own opinions on said events. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement that was heavily featured in news around the globe last year serves as an excellent example of the opportunity to objectively report on an event that centered largely on different people's opinions. Most new companies chose to present all of the hard facts on the phenomenon, in addition to interviewing both  protestors and members of the corporations and lifestyles they were protesting. Naturally, individuals frequently sided with one side of the debate, but the media did not construct their opinions by presenting their news in a one-sided manner.


Unfortunately, despite technical advances in the media, there are still situations in which access to information about events is limited, and in these cases, their presentation frequently leads the public to an uninformed or biased opinion. For example, governments' monopoly on information distribution can seriously hamper other countries' knowledge of their goings on. The student protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989 shows just how limited information can seriously polarize the public's opinion on an event. Though this event was undoubtably as dramatic as we all imagine it to have been, there is obviously more to the story than the notorious photograph of a student in front of a giant tank. However with limited access to news, and in the interest of time, this photograph is what was hotwired overseas and presented to the public.

As almost nothing but that photograph leaked through the Chinese media embargo at that time, it makes sense that it was distributed. News and media are largely relevant because they present current events. Thus presenting knowledge in a timely manner is crucial and takes precedence over presenting completely objective accounts. While many Americans may have interpreted the nature of the Tiananmen Square incident to be more extreme than it actually was, at least these people were informed that this incident even occurred. Unlike "Occupy Wall Street," which was an ongoing event that could be reported on for several weeks with no limitations to information aquiration, Tiananmen Square was a definitive event, and in this case, technology could not accomodate all perspectives.

Innovative DNA Unfortunately Makes the Deceased Less Human

“DNA technology played a significant role…[but] [i]n attempting to recognize those remains, the technology developed by ICMP equated the body with the person, relying upon an invisible, intangible synecdoche of sixteen dual digits to stand in for a human being” (119). In Sarah Wagner’s To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing, she describes the process in which the thousands of deceased individuals from the Srebrenica massacre can be identified.

While this innovative technological advancement helps families discover their dead relatives, the procedure itself removes the remaining human qualities from the person. Although Wagner states, “Matching genetic profiles promised to reattach personhood (signposted by a name) to physical remains and, thereby, to reconstitute the identified person as a social – and political – subject” (119), she remains skeptical. I do as well because by converting a human into numbers, the DNA technology is taking away all of the spiritual connections the person had with his or her family. Wagner explains further, “While the synecdoche of DNA enables computer software to recognize a set of mortal remains by translating and distilling them into a digital genetic code, that same series of numbers lacks the humanism inherent in surviving families’ memories and the knowledge of the identification experts” (120).

However, the families do have the chance to partake in the identification process because they need to supply their DNA to be matched to their relative or relatives. Therefore, I am in full support of using the DNA technology because it can help those who were grief-stricken by their loss during the events in Srebrenica. Wagner informs the reader further, “The identification process for the Srebrenica victims demonstrates the difficulty of trying to draw lines between the fields of science and humanism” (120). As someone who is very distant from the suffering in Bosnia, I cannot easily decide what would be best for the surviving victims of the Srebrenica massacre. I just know it is important that the DNA technology allows the ICMP to identify those who died, so it should be used when necessary.

Keeping Score

When I was three years old, my father brought me to my first sporting event, a baseball game at Fenway Park. Since then, I have considered the 100-year-old stadium a home away from home. I always enter with my scorebook in hand as one of the 37,000 eager fans ready for an entertaining day of baseball. When I began to start reading and writing, my dad showed me how to “keep score” of baseball games. The art of keeping score is something that is done by the most diehard baseball fans, those who are interested in every single play of each game.

As seen in the picture below, I kept score of the September 19^th game between the Houston Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. The image is of the statistics regarding the Cardinals pitching and Astros hitting. In addition, the names of pitchers who won (“WP”), lost (“LP”) and saved (“SV”) the game are found in the top right. Below the pitching summary, there is some more general information: the time, attendance and weather. In this mid-September evening game, the Cardinals stifled the Astros batters. Houston could only muster five hits as a team and had just eight baserunners in total. Since the Astros hitting was so weak that night, their side of the scorecard is fairly clean. They only had one substitution that game when backup catcher Jason Castro pinch-hit in the eighth inning. This side of the scorecard gives many indications that Houston struggled to hit in this game. The line score at the top of the page can quickly provide their inning-by-inning scoring as well their overall team runs (“R”), hits (“H”), errors (“E”) and men left on base (“LOB”). However, I prefer the inning-by-inning summary at the bottom of the page that displays the runs, hits, errors and men left on base for each inning because it allows the reader to understand how the team performed in each frame.

I just explained the gist of keeping score, but there are many intricacies, symbols and abbreviations that are involved in scoring a baseball game. I continue to try to keep score at every game that I attend because it is so enjoyable. This is my second scorebook and I anticipate getting a third soon since the current one is almost all filled with fantastic baseball memories.