Online news portals get credibility boost from trusted sources
January 31, 2012
People who read news on the web tend to trust the gate even if there is no gatekeeper, according to Penn State researchers.
When readers access a story from a credible news source they trust through an online portal, they also tend to trust the portal, said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. Most of these portals use computers, not people, to automatically sort and post stories.
Sundar said this transfer of credibility provides online news portals — Yahoo News and Google News — with most of the benefits, but with little of the costs associated with online publishing.
“A news portal that uses stories from a credible source gets a boost in credibility and might even make money through advertising,” said Sundar. “However, if there is a lawsuit for spreading false information, for example, it’s unlikely that the portal will be named in the suit.”
Sundar said the flow of credibility did not go both ways. He said that reading a low-credibility story on a high-credibility portal did not make the original source more trustworthy.
The researchers, who reported their findings in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, asked a group of 231 students to read online news stories. After reading the stories, the students rated the credibility of the original source and the portal.
The researchers placed banners from Google News, which served as a high credibility portal, and the Drudge Report, which served as a low-credibility portal, on the pages. They also added banners to identify the New York Times — the high-credibility source — and the National Enquirer — the low-credibility source.
The students were significantly more likely to consider a portal credible if the source of the story was trustworthy. The credibility of the portal suffered if the source lacked trustworthiness.
Sundar said that attention to sources depended on the involvement of the reader. When readers were particularly interested in the story, they tended to more thoroughly evaluate all the sources involved in the production and distribution of that news. People who are not interested in the story base their judgments on the credibility of the portal, which is the most immediately visible source.
Sundar, who worked with Hyunjin Kang and Keunmin Bae, both doctoral students in communications, and Shaoke Zhang, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, said that the way credibility is transferred from site to site shows the complexity of the relationship between online news readers and sources.
Evaluating credibility is difficult on the web because there are often chains of news sources for a story, Sundar said. For example, a person may find a story on an online news portal, forward the information to another friend through email, who then posts it on a social network. The identity of the original source may or may not be carried along this chain to the final reader.
“With traditional media it’s fairly clear who the source is,” Sundar said. “But in online media, it gets very murky because there are so many sources.”
The Korea Science and Engineering Foundation of South Korea supported this work.
Contact: Matt Swayne
mls29@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State
‘Your password is invalid’: Improving website password practices
January 31, 2012
Internet users are increasingly asked to register with a user name and password before being able to access the content of many sites. In their upcoming Ergonomics in Design article, “A Passport to UX – Design of Password Practices,” human factors/ergonomics researchers Soolmaz Moshfeghian and Young Sam Ryu identify impediments to efficient password creation and provide design strategies for enhancing the user experience.
Because there is no standard method for setting up passwords, each Web site employs its own set of requirements and restrictions. After investigating the pros and cons of design-related features of the requirement and restriction practices of 90 popular Web sites, the authors found that more than half the sites failed to display password guidance prior to the first attempt. Users may receive multiple error messages if their chosen passwords do not line up with system requirements, which can lead to confusion and frustration for the user and increased operating expenses for system administrators.
The authors offer a number of recommendations for Web designers seeking to improve the user experience: Provide users with password requirements prior to their first attempt; use clear and concise language to communicate the password requirements; present, at a minimum, length and character requirements; and avoid placing password requirements in the entry box.
“This study helps us gain more insight into the current state of password practices and helps create more intuitive and empathic interactions,” said Moshfeghian. “Intuitive password practices lead to increased user trust and thus user sustainability. In short, the optimal goal is to humanize interfaces, make them as intuitive as possible, and bridge the gap between users and interfaces.”
Enhancing user experience through effective password practices can have many benefits. A more user-friendly registration process may produce a larger number of successfully registered accounts, which can translate into increased sales and a more recognizable brand. Fewer failed registration attempts can result in reduced system maintenance, security, and password recovery costs.
For more information on this article, contact HFES Communications Director Lois Smith (lois@hfes.org; 310/394-1811).
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is the world’s largest nonprofit individual-member, multidisciplinary scientific association for human factors/ergonomics professionals, with more than 4,500 members globally. HFES members include psychologists and other scientists, designers, and engineers, all of whom have a common interest in designing systems and equipment to be safe and effective for the people who operate and maintain them. Watch science news stories about other HF/E topics at the HFES Web site. “Human Factors and Ergonomics: People-Friendly Design Through Science and Engineering”
Plan to attend the HFES 56th Annual Meeting, October 22-26: http://www.hfes.org/web/HFESMeetings/2012annualmeeting.html
Contact: Lois Smith
lois@hfes.org
310-394-1811
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Republicans and democrats less divided than commonly thought
January 29, 2012
Republicans and Democrats are less divided in their attitudes than popularly believed, according to new research. It is exactly those perceptions of polarization, however, that help drive political engagement, researchers say.
“American polarization is largely exaggerated,” says Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder, especially by people who adopt strong political stances. And when people perceive a large gap between political parties, they may be more motivated to vote. That message emerges from analyses of 40 years’ worth of voter data and could help predict voting behavior for the 2012 presidential election, according to social psychologists presenting their work today at a conference in San Diego, CA.
Polarization and political engagement
Much of the data comes from the American National Election Studies, a large survey of American’s political attitudes and voting behaviors from 1948 to 2008 funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and from a nationally representative sample of American adults from 2008. Using a subset of 26,000 respondents from this data, John Chambers of the University of Florida and colleagues studied the degree to which people estimate differences between Republicans’ and Democrats’ attitudes. They found that the actual gap between the parties’ political attitudes has not increased substantially over time and that members of both parties have consistently overestimated the size of that gap.
Moreover, Chambers’ team found that those who perceived the greatest political polarization were more politically engaged – for example, more likely to have voted in the last election, tried to influence the vote of other voters, attended political rallies, or donated money to a party or candidate. “These findings may have important implications for election outcomes,” Chambers says. “Particularly in close or hotly-contested elections, the balance may be tipped in favor of the party whose members perceive more polarization between the two parties.”
Indeed, in the 2008 Presidential election, people who strongly supported either Obama or McCain perceived Americans as more polarized than did people whose support for either of the two candidates was more moderate, according to work by Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder. His NSF-funded study likewise found that people who perceived Americans as more polarized were more inclined to vote in the presidential election compared with people who perceived less polarization – independent how strongly they supported Obama or McCain.
Morality drives people to the polls
In another analysis from the 2008 election, moral conviction also significantly predicted the likelihood to vote, even when statistically controlling for people’s ideology, says G. Scott Morgan of Drew University. His research team surveyed 827 US residents about their political orientation, intentions to vote, and degrees of moral conviction on several issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage, tax cuts, and healthcare reform. They found that no party holds a monopoly on moral conviction.
The study counters the notion that conservatives’ political views and behaviors might be more greatly shaped by morality than those of liberals, Morgan says. Indeed, during the 2012 political campaign, he says “liberals and conservatives seem similarly likely to feel moral conviction about the issues that are important to them.”
Moral convictions change factual beliefs
Other researchers are investigating how people view morally controversial political issues. They are finding that people’s moral sensibilities shape their perceptions of facts.
Brittany Liu and Peter Ditto of the University of California, Irvine, tested how people’s perceptions of the costs and benefits of capital punishment changed when they read essays advocating either its inherent morality or immorality. The essays changed not only participants’ perceptions of the inherent morality of capital punishment but also beliefs about whether capital punishment deterred future crime or led to miscarriages of justice. “Changing participants’ moral beliefs led to corresponding changes in factual beliefs,” Liu says.
Related survey work found a similar pattern of results across many different issues, including forceful interrogations, stem cell research, abstinence-only sexual education, and global warming. The results help explain some of the major impediments to bipartisan cooperation, Liu says. “For both liberals and conservatives, there is no clean separation between moral intuitions and factual beliefs,” she says. “This affects how politicians and partisans interpret scientific and economic data, making compromise difficult as both sides hold drastically different beliefs about the relevant facts and data.”
A press conference on this research “Political Ideology: Red v. Blue in a Presidential Election Year” takes place on Jan. 27, 2012, at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). More than 3,000 scientists are in attendance at the meeting in San Diego from Jan. 26-28 (http://www.spspmeeting.org).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. With more than 7,000 members, the Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world (http://www.spsp.org).
Contacts:
Lisa M.P. Munoz, SPSP Public Information Officer
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
John Chambers, University of Florida
jrchamb@ufl.edu
352-273-2162
Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado
vanboven@colorado.edu
720-771-2261
G. Scott Morgan, Drew University
smorgan@drew.edu
973-408-3970
Peter Ditto
phditto@uci.edu
949-824-8168
Prejudices? Quite normal!
January 27, 2012
Girls are not as good at playing football as boys, and they do not have a clue about cars. Instead they know better how to dance and do not get into mischief as often as boys. Prejudices like these are cultivated from early childhood onwards by everyone. “Approximately at the age of three to four years children start to prefer children of the same sex, and later the same ethnic group or nationality,” Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) states. This is part of an entirely normal personality development, the director of the Institute for Psychology explains. “It only gets problematic when the more positive evaluation of the own social group, which is adopted automatically in the course of identity formation, at some point reverts into bias and discrimination against others,” Beelmann continues.
To prevent this, the Jena psychologist and his team have been working on a prevention programme for children. It is designed to reduce prejudice and to encourage tolerance for others. But when is the right time to start? Jena psychologists Dr. Tobias Raabe and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann systematically summarise scientific studies on that topic and published the results of their research in the science journal Child Development (DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.).
According to this, the development of prejudice increases steadily at pre-school age and reaches its highest level between five and seven years of age. With increasing age this development is reversed and the prejudices decline. “This reflects normal cognitive development of children,” Prof. Beelmann explains. “At first they adopt the social categories from their social environment, mainly the parents. Then they start to build up their own social identity according to social groups, before they finally learn to differentiate and individual evaluations of others will prevail over stereotypes.” Therefore the psychologists reckon this age is the ideal time to start well-designed prevention programmes against prejudice. “Prevention starting at that age supports the normal course of development,” Beelmann says. As the new study and the experience of the Jena psychologists with their prevention programme so far show, the prejudices are strongly diminished at primary school age, when children get in touch with members of so-called social out groups like, for instance children of a different nationality or skin colour. “This also works when they don’t even get in touch with real people but learn it instead via books or told stories.”
But at the same time the primary school age is a critical time for prejudices to consolidate. “If there is no or only a few contact to members of social out groups, there is no personal experience to be made and generalising negative evaluations stick longer.” In this, scientists see an explanation for the particularly strong xenophobia in regions with a very low percentage of foreigners or migrants.
Moreover the Jena psychologists noticed that social ideas and prejudices are formed differently in children of social minorities. They do not have a negative attitude towards the majority to start with, more often it is even a positive one. The reason is the higher social status of the majority, which is being regarded as a role model. Only later, after having experienced discrimination, they develop prejudices, that then sticks with them much more persistently than with other children. “In this case prevention has to start earlier so it doesn’t even get that far,” Beelmann is convinced.
Generally, the psychologist of the Jena University stresses, the results of the new study don’t imply that the children’s and youths attitudes towards different social groups can’t be changed at a later age. But this would then less depend on the individual development and very much more on the social environment like for instance changing social norms in our society. Tolerance on the other hand could be encouraged at any age. The psychologists’ “prescription”: As many diverse contacts to individuals belonging to different social groups as possible. “People who can identify with many groups will be less inclined to make sweeping generalisations in the evaluation of individuals belonging to different social groups or even to discriminate against them,” Prof. Beelmann says.
Original Publication: Raabe T, Beelmann A.: Development of ethnic, racial, and national prejudice in childhood and adolescence: A multinational meta-analysis of age differences. Child Development. 2011; 82(6):1715-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann
Institute for Psychology
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Humboldtstraße 26, D-07743 Jena
Germany
Phone: ++49 3641 / 945901
Email: Andreas.Beelmann@uni-jena.de
President Obama calls for sustained investment in research
January 26, 2012
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama presented the nation with a new economic blueprint which includes maintaining our commitment to funding research and development that can improve our quality of life. Noting that “innovation also demands basic research,” the President urged Congress not to gut investments in the nation’s research budgets. He also pointed out that students come from all over the world to train at American research institutions. “Don’t let other countries win the race for the future. Support the same kind of research and innovation that led to the computer chip and the internet,” he stated.
Joseph C. LaManna, PhD, President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) responded, “We enthusiastically support the President’s emphasis on innovation and join him in urging Congress to maintain the federal commitment to research. It is abundantly clear that research-based innovation has dramatically improved the quality of life for Americans and people around the world. Sustainable budgets allow scientists to pursue new ideas and address scientific challenges with increased sophistication. Our best hope for future progress remains a strong commitment to science and technology.”
LaManna also praised the President for acknowledging that public research dollars have helped develop advanced technologies. “Basic research funded by the federal government is at the heart of medical progress, but it is the kind of investment that no individual or private business could afford to undertake. If we do not have public support for the investigation of fundamental scientific principles, this work would not be done,” stated LaManna.
FASEB sincerely appreciates President Obama’s commitment to maintaining the nation’s research enterprise and will soon launch a new campaign to encourage biomedical scientists and engineers to become more involved in advocacy for science.
FASEB is composed of 26 societies with more than 100,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. Celebrating 100 Years of Advancing the Life Sciences in 2012, FASEB is rededicating its efforts to advance health and well-being by promoting progress and education in biological and biomedical sciences through service to our member societies and collaborative advocacy.
Contact: Lawrence Green
lgreen@faseb.org
301-634-7335
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Does antimatter weigh more, less or the same as matter?
January 26, 2012
Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate.
In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of “positronium” – a bound state between a positron and an electron. The positron is the antimatter version of the electron. It has identical mass to the electron, but a positive charge. If a positron and electron encounter each other, they annihilate to produce two gamma rays.
Physicists David Cassidy and Allen Mills first separated the positron from the electron in positronium so that this unstable system would resist annihilation long enough for the physicists to measure the effect of gravity on it.
“Using lasers we excited positronium to what is called a Rydberg state, which renders the atom very weakly bound, with the electron and positron being far away from each other,” said Cassidy, an assistant project scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who works in Mills’s lab. “This stops them from destroying each other for a while, which means you can do experiments with them.”
Rydberg atoms are highly excited atoms. They are interesting to physicists because many of the atoms’ properties become exaggerated.
In the case of positronium, Cassidy and Mills, a professor of physics and astronomy, were interested in achieving a long lifetime for the atom in their experiment. At the Rydberg level, positronium’s lifetime increases by a factor of 10 to 100.
“But that’s not enough for what we’re trying to do,” Cassidy said. “In the near future we will use a technique that imparts a high angular momentum to Rydberg atoms,” Cassidy said. “This makes it more difficult for the atoms to decay, and they might live for up to 10 milliseconds – an increase by a factor of 10,000 – and offer themselves up for closer study.”
Cassidy and Mills already have made Rydberg positronium in large numbers in the lab. Next, they will excite them further to achieve lifetimes of a few milliseconds. They will then make a beam of these super-excited atoms to study its deflection due to gravity.
“We will look at the deflection of the beam as a function of flight time to see if gravity is bending it,” Cassidy explained. “If we find that antimatter and matter don’t behave in the same way, it would be very shocking to the physics world. Currently there is an assumption that matter and antimatter are exactly the same – other than a few properties like charge. This assumption leads to the expectation that they should both have been created in equal amounts in the Big Bang. But we do not see much antimatter in the universe, so physicists are searching for differences between matter and antimatter to explain this.”
Study results appear in the Jan. 27 issue of Physical Review Letters.
Cassidy and Mills expect to attempt the next step in their gravity experiments this summer.
They were joined in the research by Harry Tom, a professor of physics and astronomy, and Tomu H. Hisakado, a graduate student in Mills’s lab.
The research is being supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force Research Office.
The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California’s diverse culture, UCR’s enrollment has exceeded 20,500 students. The campus will open a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.
Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala
iqbal@ucr.edu
951-827-6050
University of California – Riverside
Are religious people better adjusted psychologically?
January 22, 2012
Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is only true in countries that put a high value on religion.
The researchers got their data from eDarling, a European dating site that is affiliated with eHarmony. Like eHarmony, eDarling uses a long questionnaire to match clients with potential dates. It includes a question about how important your personal religious beliefs are and questions that get at social self-esteem and how psychologically well-adjusted people are. Jochen Gebauer of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton, and Wiebke Neberich of Affinitas GmbH in Berlin, the company behind eDarling, used 187,957 people’s answers to do their analyses.
As in other studies, the researchers found that more religious people had higher social self-esteem and where psychologically better adjusted. But they suspected that the reason for this was that religious people are better in living up to their societal values in religious societies, which in turn should lead to higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment. The people in the study lived in 11 different European countries, ranging from Sweden, the least religious country on the planet, to devoutly Catholic Poland. They used people’s answers to figure out how religious the different countries were and then compared the countries.
On average, believers only got the psychological benefits of being religious if they lived in a country that values religiosity. In countries where most people aren’t religious, religious people didn’t have higher self-esteem. “We think you only pat yourself on the back for being religious if you live in a social system that values religiosity,” Gebauer says. So a very religious person might have high social self esteem in religious Poland, but not in non-religious Sweden.
In this study, the researchers made comparisons between different countries, but another study found a similar effect within one country, between students at religious and non-religious universities. “The same might be true when you compare different states in the U.S. or different cities,” Gebauer says. “Probably you could mimic the same result in Germany, if you compare Bavaria where many people are religious and Berlin where very few people are religious.”
For more information about this study, please contact: Jochen E. Gebauer at mail@JochenGebauer.info.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article “Religiosity, Social Self-Esteem, and Psychological Adjustment: On the Cross- Cultural Specificity of the Psychological Benefits of Religiosity” and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.
Contact: Divya Menon
dmenon@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Mysterious monkey re-discovered in Borneo
January 22, 2012
Simon Fraser University PhD student Brent Loken was hoping to capture images of the elusive Bornean clouded leopard when he set up a camera trap in the rainforest. Instead, he made the re-discovery of a lifetime.
Reviewing time-lapse photos taken at a mineral lick in the Wehea Forest of East Kalimantan last June, he and his fellow researchers were stunned to see an animal they didn’t recognize. The pictures showed Miller’s grizzled langur, one of the rarest and least-known primates on the island of Borneo, and also a species many suggested was extinct or on the verge of extinction.
“It was a challenge to confirm our finding as there are so few pictures of this monkey available for study,” says Loken, who is in SFU’s resource and environmental management program. “The only description of Miller’s grizzled langur came from museum specimens. Our photographs from Wehea are some of the only pictures that we have of this monkey.”
Loken’s work is featured in a paper being published online this week in the American Journal of Primatology (print version, March 2012).
A former secondary-school principal and science teacher, Loken holds both Trudeau and Vanier scholarships. He spends up to six months each year in Borneo where he runs Ethical Expeditions, a non-profit organization he co-founded to help the indigenous Wehea Dayak people fight back against deforestation. The island has lost 65 per cent of its rainforest, largely due to palm oil plantations and coal mines.
“Finding Miller’s grizzled langur in a forest outside of its known geographic range highlights how much we don’t know about even the basic ecology of this monkey,” says Loken. “We need more scientists doing research in Borneo to help us learn about understudied species such as Miller’s grizzled langur and clouded leopards. The rapid degradation of Borneo’s forests makes it difficult to learn about and adopt conservation strategies in time to protect species.”
Loken’s camera traps were part of a larger biodiversity study he organized in collaboration with the local Wehea Dayak community to investigate the diversity and abundance of animals that were living in this remote forest.
T-rays technology could help develop Star Trek-style hand-held medical scanners
January 22, 2012
Scientists have developed a new way to create electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays – the technology behind full-body security scanners. The researchers behind the study, published recently in the journal Nature Photonics, say their new stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the ‘tricorder’ scanner used in Star Trek.
In the study, researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, and Imperial College London in the UK have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam than was previously thought possible, and have done so at room-temperature conditions. This is a breakthrough that should allow future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper than current devices.
The scientists say that the T-ray scanner and detector could provide part of the functionality of a Star Trek-like medical ‘tricorder’ – a portable sensing, computing and data communications device – since the waves are capable of detecting biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths. Future scanners could also perform fast wireless data communication to transfer a high volume of information on the measurements it makes.
T-rays are waves in the far infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum that have a wavelength hundreds of times longer than those that make up visible light. Such waves are already in use in airport security scanners, prototype medical scanning devices and in spectroscopy systems for materials analysis. T-rays can sense molecules such as those present in cancerous tumours and living DNA, since every molecule has its unique signature in the THz range. They can also be used to detect explosives or drugs, for gas pollution monitoring or non-destructive testing of semiconductor integrated circuit chips.
Current T-ray imaging devices are very expensive and operate at only a low output power, since creating the waves consumes large amounts of energy and needs to take place at very low temperatures.
In the new technique, the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to produce a strong beam of T-rays by shining light of differing wavelengths on a pair of electrodes – two pointed strips of metal separated by a 100 nanometre gap on top of a semiconductor wafer. The structure of the tip-to-tip nano-sized gap electrode greatly enhances the THz field and acts like a nano-antenna to amplify the wave generated. In this method, THz waves are produced by an interaction between the electromagnetic waves of the light pulses and a powerful current passing between the semiconductor electrodes. The scientists are able to tune the wavelength of the T-rays to create a beam that is useable in the scanning technology.
Lead author Dr Jing Hua Teng, from A*STAR’s IMRE, said: “The secret behind the innovation lies in the new nano-antenna that we had developed and integrated into the semiconductor chip.” Arrays of these nano-antennas create much stronger THz fields that generate a power output that is 100 times higher than the power output of commonly used THz sources that have conventional interdigitated antenna structures. A stronger T-ray source renders the T-ray imaging devices more power and higher resolution.
Research co-author Stefan Maier, a visiting scientist at A*STAR’s IMRE and Professor in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, said: “T-rays promise to revolutionise medical scanning to make it faster and more convenient, potentially relieving patients from the inconvenience of complicated diagnostic procedures and the stress of waiting for accurate results. Thanks to modern nanotechnology and nanofabrication, we have made a real breakthrough in the generation of T-rays that takes us a step closer to these new scanning devices. With the introduction of a gap of only 0.1 micrometers into the electrodes, we have been able to make amplified waves at the key wavelength of 1000 micrometers that can be used in such real world applications.”
The research was led by scientists from A*STAR’s IMRE and Imperial College London, and involved partners from A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) and the National University of Singapore. The research is funded under A*STAR’s Metamaterials Programme and the THz Programme, as well as the Leverhume Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK.
Contact: Simon Levey
s.levey@imperial.ac.uk
44-020-759-46702
Imperial College London
Balancing scientific freedom and national security
January 19, 2012
The U.S. government’s request that the journals Science and Nature withhold scientific information related to the genetically modified H5N1 virus because of biosecurity concerns does not violate the First Amendment, say two Georgetown University professors. They caution, however, that a fair, transparent process undertaken by research organizations is preferable to governmental constraints on disseminating scientific information.
Writing in Science, John D. Kraemer, JD, MPH, assistant professor of health systems administration at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies, and Lawrence O. Gostin, the Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law and faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, explore the balance of scientific freedom and national security in their opinion piece published online today entitled, “The Limits of Government Regulation of Science.”
In 2011, two research teams genetically modified the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Their work, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), demonstrates the ability to alter a virus in such a way that it could possibly spread rapidly among humans – killing more than half who contract it (the research was conducted in an animal model believed to represent human behavior of the virus). The research prompted the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which advises the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to recommend that Science and Nature redact key information prior to publication. Both NSABB and HHS expressed concerns that published details about the papers’ methodology and results could become a blueprint for bioterrorism.
“The NSABB process seems to have worked well in this instance,” says Kraemer. “It raised legitimate security concerns while avoiding censorship of the scientific press. But there remains a need to strengthen precautions around this type of research before it occurs.”
To date, Science and Nature have not yet announced their intentions regarding the government’s request.
In their commentary, Kraemer and Gostin write “HHS’ request reveals a troubled relationship between security and science.” However, the authors point out, “Given the absence of legal force or undue inducements or penalties, the government’s request to withhold information does not violate the First Amendment.”
Kraemer and Gostin say the First Amendment, “affords considerable protection to political artistic and scientific expression, triggering ‘strict scrutiny’ by the Supreme Court.” They point out that had the government compelled either the researchers or the journals to withhold publication, that act would have violated the First Amendment.
In their opinion piece, the authors explore various court cases that challenge and support the government’s rights to go further with such an issue. They say the federal government has the power to prevent dissemination of sensitive life science research, but warn, “ there are good reasons to exercise that power sparingly.”
Looking beyond the current dilemma, Kraemer and Gostin ask: “Can the review process for high-risk biologic research be improved further?”
The origins of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity can be traced to the National Research Council’s Fink Report issued in 2004. The Fink Report endorsed, among other things, expanded self-governance by researchers toward issues of biosecurity, as well as the formation of a national advisory board to help guide both the government and research community in addressing issues involving dual-use research.
However, Kraemer and Gostin point out that vital recommendations in the Fink Report have not yet been implemented, including the need to employ an institutional review process for biological “experiments of concern” patterned on the Institutional Biosafety Committees (IBC) required for recombinant DNA research.
Kraemer and Gostin make the following recommendations to improve the review process:
HHS, in partnership with institutions, will have to ensure that the IBC model works effectively: (1) institutions must develop the requisite expertise to review dual use research; (2) HHS must specify the categories of research requiring institutional review – minimally including the 7 types of high-risk experiments; and (3) HHS must set clear and consistent standards for institutional review. If IBCs are formally designated to conduct the institutional review function, HHS will have to clarify whether NSABB will guide and oversee the process.
Kraemer and Gostin suggest that such a process can ensure a, “sound balance between scientific freedom and national security. A fair, transparent process undertaken by research institutions, with a balanced approach to scientific benefits and public safety, together with HHS guidance and oversight of high-risk research, is preferable to government constraints on scientific information by force of law.”
About Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world’s premier law schools. It is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law, and the faculty is among the largest in the nation. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.
About Georgetown University Medical Center
Georgetown University Medical Center is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through MedStar Health). GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis — or “care of the whole person.” The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing & Health Studies, both nationally ranked; Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute; and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO), which accounts for the majority of externally funded research at GUMC including a Clinical Translation and Science Award from the National Institutes of Health. In fiscal year 2010-11, GUMC accounted for 85 percent of the university’s sponsored research funding.
Contact: Karen Mallet
km463@georgetown.edu
Georgetown University Medical Center