On misogyny and the translation of swearing

Some years ago I helped my Polish flatmate a little to prepare for one of her English exams. In doing this I came across a marvellous worksheet detailing the usage of the word “fuck”. Until one sees this presented to someone trying to learn the language, one never quite realises the variety and complexity of this superficially simple word’s usage. Those four letters can have good meanings, bad meanings, erotic meanings, violent meanings, no meaning beyond quasi-punctuation (if you are from Glasgow anyway), mean excitement, mean fear...the list goes on. Then, at the end of the worksheet was the sage advice – “If you are not entirely certain that you usage of the word is correct, do not use it.”

This worksheet was brought to mind today as I read an article that has within it the use of the word “cunt”. In the article the author highlights her being called this as an obvious example of misogyny. Now, in the particular case that she describes it may well be, but this assertion that any calling of a woman a cunt is proof positive of the insulter’s hatred of women interested me as this word has been something of an issue for me following my moving to the other side of the Atlantic.

In Glasgow (at least amongst my contemporaries – my Gran wouldn’t have fitted into the following generalisation, for instance) the word “cunt” has similarly varied usage as the word “fuck”. It is not uncommon to hear it used in a friendly greeting (“alright, what yoose cunts up’tae?”), is quite often used in the course of the telling of a humorous story (“so there I was wi all these cunts looking at me wi just ma pants on”), and has made the transition to verb (to cunt something up). Importantly, the word, as I have experienced it, is essentially gender neutral. If anything I would say that it is used far more in reference to males (or mixed groups) than to females – I can’t really think of many times where I have heard it used in an angry context towards a woman. If someone is described as a cunt then one knows that they are an unpleasant individual, but my assumption would be likely to be that they were male.

Shifting to North America I discovered that, just as my flatmate had a learning curve to mount with “fuck”, so too did I with the now seemingly foreign “cunt”. Carrying on speaking as I would with friends at home, my use of “fuck” as a punctuation mark raised a few metaphorical murmurs, but my laissez faire use of “cunt” produced actual overt reactions from people. I quickly learned that there are none of the sophistications in usage over here, none of the contextual subtleties – it’s a bad word that is used to be bad, and, importantly, is used with far more specificity towards females. 

All well and good – I’ve tried to not use it and get far fewer dirty looks as a result (for that sin anyway). What really interested me though was my reaction when I first heard someone use it in anger towards a woman with the specific meaning that they were female and bad. Never in my life can I remember being shocked by language, but when I heard this there was indeed an element of the shocking to it – what was a perfectly normal word to me in the contexts that I experienced its usage had become extremely ugly in the context that it is used over here. 

Going back to the article, the author refers to an occasion where she is referred to as a cunt. She interprets this as an obvious example of misogyny – the person has called her a cunt therefore they hate women. In my Glasgow context I could never have understood how she could even begin to reach that conclusion (remembering that cunt is a widely used and essentially gender neutral term there). Having now understood the North American context a little better, the leap that she makes is somewhat less baffling – the word really is used to insult women specifically here. What could be described as my contextual empathy helped me see where she was coming from a little more (if not agree with her). 

Reading the comments on the article, though, I saw a need for some contextual empathy in the opposite direction. The necessary connection with using the word cunt and the user’s hatred of women was argued for strongly and seemed to be the default position of many of those commenting. From my Glasgow perspective, however, that assertion is simply nonsensical. The word has many meanings and many uses. One of these will no doubt be by a woman-hater to abuse a woman, but more far more likely is that it will be someone greeting their friends or telling a story in a pub. 

The groundbreaking conclusion, then, is that context is everything. Language is not rigid and words cannot be used as some sort of essentialist discriminator for people. Similarly, words in and of themselves are not ontologically simple – they cannot just be categorised as good or bad, hating or loving. The person calling someone a cunt may in fact be being affectionate towards them – their usage of the word does not define them as one thing or another (other than as either somewhat foul-mouthed or Glaswegian, perhaps). Similarly, they may indeed be insulting someone, but there is no necessary link between them using the term and their insults being motivated by that person’s ovaries. And then there are, sadly, those pathetic individuals who are using the word against women because they are women. Sorting these out from each other requires this contextual empathy, just as understanding a North American feminist’s reaction to the word does for me. 

Hawtin and Proust

The shuffle button today provided my ears with a Ritchie Hawtin set recorded at the Arches in Glasgow some years ago - a night at which I was at. 

Hearing the music took me straight back to those sweaty catacombs. Memories came to mind of the feeling of the speaker-maddened air moving my insides; of the combined sensations of light and sound as the anticipated drop hit; of the feeling of rightness of being there with exactly the people I was with and at exactly that time. 

All very invigorating for a journey on a grey Hong Kong bus, but probably all completely fabricated. Thinking rationally about it I can't pick out that night from all the others; that one dose of bass or that one drop from the many that I enjoyed around that time of my life. Much more likely that I have been doing a bit of confabulation based on my recognition that I was there and so should have such memories. 

Does that matter? Not really, I don't think. The feeling and recognition was a genuine one of my general experiences around that time. That my brain chose to attach some specific, although imagined, link between those states and the night a recording of which I happened to be listening to doesn't seem to detract from the specialness of my true but more generalised memories. 

Nor does it take away from the train of thought that the memories initiated - all the people that came to mind that are linked with that time, some of whom I have spoken to recently, some not since then, and some that we will sadly never get to speak to again.

Now if only there were any decent clubs in this city...

Love, Straw Men and Neuromania

Love – that wonder of the gods, those arrows of that knavish lad, Cupid – would seem too ineffable a concept for one to study it scientifically. Indeed, to put someone in a scanner and see what happens in ‘love’ would seem to miss the point of it and its influence on our culture completely.

There are neuroimaging studies of love, however, where scientists have done just that. Is this proof positive, then, of an overreaching reductionism in science and in our culture in general? A prime example of the ‘neuromania’ that is said to be sweeping our shores?

Firstly let’s take a brief look at these studies. A search of the Pubmed database for the terms “love” and “fMRI” returns around ten studies that involve neuroimaging and love-related topics, spread out over the last decade. These topics include romantic love, maternal love, and the grief involved in losing a loved one.

Taking “The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love” (Bartels, 2004) as an example, a group of 20 mothers were passively shown passport style pictures of either their own child or a number of control pictures (a child other than their own whom they had know for as long as their own child, their best friend, and another acquaintance). This approach is similar to that adopted by the same authors in their previous study of romantic love, where pictures of the person’s lover were used instead of those of the child (Bartels, 2000), and a comparison of the two is included in the present study.

By contrasting the activity evoked by the viewing of their child to that evoked by the viewing of the control pictures, the authors identify those regions of the brain that show a greater level activity during that condition.

Bartels, 2004. Fig. 3

As can be seen, a similar network of regions was found to display greater activity during the viewing of both one’s child and one’s lover. These regions included the ever-present anterior cingulate and anterior insula pairing, along with what is generally referred to as the ‘reward’ system (that phrase and its inaccuracy is perhaps the subject of a future post).

Whilst the study suffers from the usual problem of ‘so what’ that befalls most of these purely anatomical-region based neuroimaging studies, perhaps the most interesting finding is that there is some involvement of the periaqueductal grey (PAG) when a mother views a picture of her child but not when an individual views a picture of their lover. Such a finding can be seen in the context of the excellent work investigating maternal bonding processes that has been undertaken in non-human animals, and can potentially be usefully extended out into psychological ideas of attachment.

So the study doesn’t tell us much, but nor do its authors claim that it does (“These results have thus brought us a little, but not much, closer to understanding the neural basis of one of the most formidable instruments of evolution” Bartels, 2004, p1164). So what of the idea that studies of its kind represent an example of how scientists, and in particular neuroscientists, are seeking to explain away the world, as proponents of such an idea, such as Raymond Tallis, would claim?

Such criticism would seem to hold that such studies seek to reduce humanity to the chemicals and processes that make up the individual and that in doing so they either must necessarily fail in the task that they are said to be attempting, or that if they were to be accepted as succeeding then we would lose something integral to our humanity.

One problem with such a line of reasoning is that it appears to conflate two different entities. The argument is that science is seeking to explain away the wonderful variations and achievements of humanity. But, if we look at, for example, the studies of love, what is being studied is the human, not humanity. These two concepts are not identical; indeed that point is one of the core tenants of, for example, Prof. Tallis’ view.

Take as an analogy an anthill – we can study and understand the physiology of an individual ant, but that will not necessarily give us a complete understanding of the organisational system of the anthill as a whole. The person studying the individual ant would not seek to claim that it did, however. What they can provide are the individual-specific factors that shape and limit the higher-order organisation that arises within the anthill as a whole for someone else who’s focus lies with this higher-order question to go on and use.

What these studies are seeking to do is not to explain the functioning of the whole metaphorical anthill. Instead all they aim to do is to see what happens within the individual in a particular set of circumstances. The authors express no desire to make Shakespeare’s sonnets redundant, no quest to replace Barry White with brain scans; nor do they make any claims about the ultimate meaning of their findings beyond tentative suggestions about neural and psychological processes.

The critic of such studies could also point out that such simplistic studies can never capture or explain the varieties of experience involved in being in love. That is obviously true, but is only an objection if one is committed to an ontology in which there is just one monolithic entity ‘being in love’. Such an ontological position seems unsustainable, however. Much more realistic, and the one that is more in line with the critic’s overall worldview, is one that proposes a range of experiences that can be subsumed under the class ‘being in love’.

Within this class will be the jump in your stomach when you see your loved one, the way that your loved one looks better than anyone else to you, the willingness to do anything for another, and so on. Each of these things will be interconnected and interdependent, but there is still scope to study what is involved in each of them, studies that can proceed at different levels of explanation. What are the specific transmitters that cause the ‘jump’? What are the brain processes that alter one’s perception of the objective physical characteristics of another? What are the social factors that influence the norms of commitment between people? All interesting questions, and none of them reductive (as far as I can see).

Ten studies over a decade in a field that produces thousands of papers a year is not very many at all. Having actually looked at them, to hold up a small set of studies that look at a fascinating aspect of human experience in just one of many the ways open to us as representing an example of the overreach of science in its supposed quest to reduce the world to physics would seem odd, if not disingenuous.

It may ultimately only be possible to conclude from the studies that a certain set of brain regions display more activity when one looks at one type of pictures when compared to another set, but surely finding out even that limited piece of information, motivated by nothing but curiosity, is a pretty admirable thing to be doing?

Bartels, A., & Zeki, S. (2004). The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love NeuroImage, 21 (3), 1155-1166 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.11.003


Bartels, A., & Zeki, S. (2000). The neural basis of romantic love NeuroReport, 11 (17), 3829-3834 DOI: 10.1097/00001756-200011270-00046

On "Start the Week", Neuromania, and dull ethics

The BBC’s Start theWeek was interesting as ever on Sunday, with Raymond Tallis, Aubrey de Grey, and a lady I had not previously heard of called Barbara Sahakian. A few issues arose in the discussion that I thought worth of comment. Whether the comments are worthy of expression or not is a different matter of course.

Firstly, Raymond Tallis was talking about his new book, titled  Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Its thesis, as I interpreted it from the program, is that the nature of humanity cannot be reduced to our organic properties, and more specifically that it cannot be reduced to the properties of our brain. This is a point that is, I think, hard to deny. However, the arguments and examples put forward by Prof. Tallis were against a scientific programme to understand the workings of the human, not humanity. This distinction between human and humanity is an important one I think.

Take as an analogy an anthill – we can study and understand the physiology of an individual ant, but that will not necessarily give us a complete understanding of the organisational system of the anthill as a whole. The person studying the individual ant would not seek to claim that it did, however. What they can provide are the individual-specific factors that shape and limit the higher-order organisation that arises within the anthill as a whole for someone else who’s focus lies with this higher-order question to go on and use.

The idea that neuroscience seeks to explain humanity just doesn’t mesh with reality to me. I’m not aware of any half decent scientist that thinks that is what they are trying to do. Understanding the human organism and its individual actions, certainly, but to suggest that this means that we think we are explaining everything about humanity is just silly. ‘Neuromania’ is not a condition that science in general can really be said to suffer from; humanity as a whole, and especially that part of it known as journalists, may be a different matter however.

In this context, there may have been something of an irony in Prof. Tallis bringing up the question of category errors during the discussion.

Andrew Marr introduced the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, which Barbara Sahakian had co-edited, as being one case where the prefix ‘neuro’ was justified. Sadly, from Prof. Sahakian’s discussion of it, that statement was entirely wrong.

Aubrey de Grey skewered the issue perfectly when he pointed out that whenever he looks at any of the issues that Prof. Sahakian had put forward as examples of neuroethics in detail, when he begins to understand the medicine and the science, he ends up in a place where it is not immediately clear where the question of ethics comes into things. Andrew Marr was correct to say that even at that point there are ethical considerations, but the key point there is that the considerations are not new ‘neuroethical’ ones – they are exactly the same old ethical issues that we have always been facing.

It must be said that Prof. Sahakian didn’t help her case by coming across as being quite remarkably dull. In all her list of situations that might qualify as this thing neuroethics, which was trotted out a couple of times, there was no glimpse of insight, nor even an idea that there was anything going on in her thought beyond the observation that new things were happening and that someone really should think about them. Of course, that may just be a disciplinary thing – it’s the impression I get whenever I read or listen to professional ethicists.

That the word neuroethics has been appropriated by the same old ethics paradigm to be slapped on to any issue that involves some neurons in order, to be perhaps overly cynical about things, to help people shift some books and carve out an area to apply for funding for is sad. There is interesting work to be done with genuine neuroethics – dealing with problems that are actually arising from our developing understanding of how the brain works and how its limitations shape our behaviours. Prof. Northoff’s work on informed consent that is guided by novel insights into how our brain reacts to such situations springs to mind.

Finally, Aubrey de Grey talked about working to defeat aging. I didn’t have much of a reaction to that beyond having the impression that he seemed like quite a pleasant and interesting man.

Women's football and the subconscious (with a spot of homoeroticism)

Football does not arouse my interest to any great degree. I can appreciate a good match, and will happily watch one, but I have none of the religious attachment to club and game that is so common amongst my peers. I will watch a Scotland game, and even manage to get close to caring on occasion, but I have no need to.

All the above refers to men’s football though. When it comes to woman’s football my interest is even less, tending towards the non-existent. The same could be said for women’s rugby, a sport that I have, in general, a much greater interest in to begin with. I realised this today when seeing the Germany-Canada score in the Women’s World Cup. The result was there, and I was uninterested to the degree that it actually stood out to me.

Why is this? I know that women’s football is a skilful as men’s, possibly even more so. I know that the players are as committed and hard-working, again possibly even more so (no multi-million pound salaries for them).

Similarly, I know that women’s tennis is arguably better to watch due to there being fewer players who can just blast their way to victory, but that doesn’t stop me finding it vaguely uninteresting beyond the often edifying physical spectacle. At a rational level, I disagree utterly with any sexist framing of women’s tennis as just a chance to ogle some highly toned flesh, but when it’s on that is exactly where my mind goes.

Thinking about it, part of the answer may lie in the role of fantasy in the psyche. The rational part of me knows what I should be experiencing when watching women’s sport, but that is exactly where my emotions don’t go. This suggests that we are looking for an answer that lies with the irrational, a possible first clue towards the role of fantasy.

Looking a little deeper, it seems to me that men’s sport is appealing to me to a degree that women’s is not because I cannot use the female player as a substitute for myself. At some level I can see me in Maradona’s boots as he weaves his way through the English team (a piece of football that should be appreciated by everyone, fan or not, for its sheer beauty of motion), but I can’t begin to do the same with whomever would be the female equivalent. A female player cannot allow me to vicariously live their skill and potency, and so there is something missing in the response I have to them that is present with male players.

Rugby would seem to be open to a similar explanation – I have lived those actions, and at some level, however subconscious, may wish that it was me that was playing the roles that I can see on screen. The similarity between me and the player may allow me to mirror their action internally to a far more satisfying degree than is allowed by even the seemingly slight difference that exists between me and a woman.

Rugby is open to the fantasy explanation at other levels too. The players are amongst the finest physical specimens that one will come across, and, shallow as it may be, I think that there is a vicarious pleasure in seeing the body perfected in that way; one that cannot be had with a female player as that cannot be my body that is taken towards perfection in the way seen. There are obviously homoerotic undertones to that, which I would quite happily admit to, and which just serves to add another layer of fantasy.

Finally, with women’s tennis fantasy is playing a strong role, but it is pushing in the other direction. I cannot engage in sympathetic fantasy with those players as it can never be me out there facing up to one of the Williams sisters (whilst there is scope for a sympathetic fantasy in the case of the person facing Roger Federer). Instead the subconscious elements that are activated are those that mesh with the most immediate fantasies provoked by the female players, namely the basic sexual ones. Because these are the scripts that are put in motion, rather than ones that are focussed on the player as player, the rational side that knows that the skill level here is higher, the technique better to watch, has much more of a job to do to raise this aspect of the scene into primary place.

Speculation certainly, but I think it might go some way to begin explaining why I’m left so cold by women’s sport. Of course, they might just be rubbish (or I might just be a bit of a twat). 

Ketamine bladder

Ketamine is a popular recreational drug in many countries; its popularity stemming in part from its low cost, and in part from its reputation for having a low addicition risk and few side-effects (and because of its interesting psychadelic effects, of course). However, it is becoming increasingly clear that at least the latter of these suppositions is not entirely accurate.

Some years ago, doctors in several countries started to notice that otherwise healthy people were presenting with damaged bladders and urinary tracts. Such urinary system damage has now been described over a hundred times in the literature [1]. In some cases the damage has been so severe that it has necessitated the complete removal of the damaged organs.

Within the ketamine-using community in the UK, the cause of such ‘ketamine bladder’ is often attributed to the drug crystallising in the bladder and causing damage. This explanation is understandable in the context of kidney stones – a condition that most people are aware of – but is not correct.

When a sufferer’s bladder is investigated, its wall is generally seen to have become thicker, markedly reducing the capacity of the bladder. This leads to some of the symptoms of ‘ketamine bladder’, such as the need to urinate often and pain when the bladder fills. Indeed, due to this pain some patients are not able to fill their bladder sufficiently for some relevant medical tests to be carried out. In addition to this change in the bladder wall, the mucosal layer of the bladder is enlarged, an indicator of long-term inflammatory change [2].

Indicators of inflammation have also been observed in mice that have been exposed to ketamine for several months. In such mice, special cells known as monocytes can be found within the kidney and in the wall of the bladder [3]. The role of these cells in the body is to move to areas of infection and inflammation, where they will then form part of the body’s immune response.

What, though, is prompting this immune response? It is extremely unlikely that the response is to ketamine itself, and so we must look a little deeper in order to find a cause.

In addition to its effects in the brain, ketamine has peripheral effects on particular neurotransmitters that are found in smooth muscle, called adrenoceptors [4]. As the bladder and urethra are formed in a large part by smooth muscle, this effect is likely to be highly relevant in these regions; a supposition potentially borne out by the observation that ketamine reduces the amount that rat bladder smooth muscle contracts [5], and the observation that mice exposed to ketamine have alterations to the innervations of the muscle in their bladders [3].

With these changes to the functioning of the muscles in the urinary system, it is possible that the muscle cells themselves are becoming damaged over time. Such damage may release cell components into the tissues, in turn prompting the body to mount an inflammatory response. It may be this inflammatory response in conjunction with the changes in muscle function that are causing ‘ketamine bladder’, although this remains a personal speculation at present.

Unfortunately there is no single treatment for the condition at present. The most important factor is a cessation of ketamine use, which can then be coupled with a variety of management strategies on a case-by-case basis. 


References


1. Middela S, & Pearce I (2011). Ketamine-induced vesicopathy: a literature review. International journal of clinical practice, 65 (1), 27-30 PMID: 21155941


2. Mason K, Cottrell AM, Corrigan AG, Gillatt DA, & Mitchelmore AE (2010). Ketamine-associated lower urinary tract destruction: a new radiological challenge. Clinical radiology, 65 (10), 795-800 PMID: 20797465


3. Yeung, L., Rudd, J., Lam, W., Mak, Y., & Yew, D. (2009). Mice are prone to kidney pathology after prolonged ketamine addiction Toxicology Letters, 191 (2-3), 275-278 DOI: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2009.09.006


4. Bevan RK, Rose MA, & Duggan KA (1997). Evidence for direct interaction of ketamine with alpha 1- and beta 2-adrenoceptors. Clinical and experimental pharmacology & physiology, 24 (12), 923-6 PMID: 9406657  


5. Ceran C, Pampal A, Goktas O, Pampal HK, & Olmez E (2010). Commonly used intravenous anesthetics decrease bladder contractility: An in vitro study of the effects of propofol, ketamine, and midazolam on the rat bladder. Indian journal of urology : IJU : journal of the Urological Society of India, 26 (3), 364-8 PMID: 21116355  

An extremely amateur take on the arrest of Prof. Chris Knight

Should a person be arrested for planning a politically motivated public performance that includes the mock beheading of a living individual (with specific reference to the arrest of Prof. Chris Knight on the 29th of April)?

To answer this question we must establish two things: 1) whether the planning of the specific act is in itself a crime, and 2) whether, independent of this, the political nature of the act would make it one that should not be prevented by the state.

Let us first apprise ourselves of the available facts:

People
Professor Chris Knight is an anthropologist and a Marxist campaigner. He has been involved in the anti-capitalist movement for many years, participating in street theatre groups and protests at events such as the G20 summit in London in 2009. The suggestion that he might quite like attention would probably not be unfair. His partner and friend were also arrested.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, is fourth in line to the throne and currently serves as an international trade envoy for the United Kingdom. He has close links to Jeffrey Epstein (billionaire and convicted child abuser), Timur Kulibayev (billionaire under investigation for money laundering, and son and probable successor of Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan and torturer) and the Saudi regime (billionaire supporters of international terrorism and enemies of wrist-watch salesmen everywhere). He is not known to have marched to the top of any hills, but does enjoy golf and selling weapons to despots.

The act
Prof. Knight had planned to carry out a mock execution using a theatrical guillotine and an effigy of Prince Andrew. This performance was to be part of a wider set of broadly republican or otherwise “alternative” political events that were to take place in Soho square, central London, on the day of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The parties were arrested on the day prior to the wedding and prior to them travelling to central London (although in the midst of preparing to transport themselves and their props to the City).

The planned act would not seem to constitute a particularly clever piece of theatre, and indeed would seem to be rather tacky. The artistic (and political) merit of the act is, however, fundamentally irrelevant to the question of its legality, and even more irrelevant to the second question of whether it should have been allowed or not, independent of its legality. The office of Examiner of Plays was abolished for a reason.

The law
Prof. Knight and his associates were, according to media reports (with a television crew by chance having been present at the arrest), arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and breach of the peace. The offence of causing a public nuisance covers cases where the community as a whole suffers injury, loss or damage. Breach of the peace is an offence that covers the disturbance of public space through actions such as the making of loud noise, or by the use of offensive words that are likely to incite violence. Conspiracy in English law is an agreement between persons to commit an offence at some point in the future.

Was it a crime?
Let us now ask whether the act that was planned would constitute an instance of either of the offences for which the individuals were arrested for. If it does do so then the conspiracy charge follows without too many prima facie objections.

In the case of committing a public nuisance offence, it could be argued that by seeking to enact the mock execution of a member of the royal family on a day when many people were coming together to celebrate the wedding of another member of the family, the arrested parties were seeking to cause an injury to the community. This line of argument would hold that the planned act would be so unreasonably offensive that it would constitute a harm to the other people gathered in London for the wedding. Thus, the act would be acceptable on any other day; it would just be the particular circumstances of the day in question that would elevate it to the status of being harmful. However, this line of argument must be unsuccessful due to the fact that the act was planned as part of a wider street party in the centre of London that was specifically aimed at those who sought to distance themselves from the monarchist sentiments of other street parties going on throughout Britain. The act would thus be in keeping with the mood of the majority of those who would witness it, and so could not reasonably be described as injurious to them.

An alternative argument for the act constituting an injury to the community would be to say that the expression of the republican views it sought to represent would be unacceptable – that the undermining of the monarchy that might result would be dangerous to the fabric of the community itself. This argument is not sound on two levels. Firstly, it is unreasonable to suggest that a fairly unimaginative piece of street theatre could represent a threat to the well-being of the community as a whole. Secondly, contained within the argument is the premise that it is unacceptable, and indeed dangerous, for an individual to express opposition to the system of government in place in the society in which they lived. This premise should obviously be resisted in the strongest manner possible.

It is thus not clear in what way the planned act could constitute a public nuisance.

Turning to breach of the peace, there can be no argument that the act per se would constitute a breach of the peace from a noise or nuisance point of view – it seems to have been planned to be a fairly self contained piece of theatre and would have taken placed amongst the extensive street parties already happening in London that day.

There may be an argument that the planned act involved the mock execution of an identifiable living person and so would potentially constitute a breach of the peace through being an incitement to violence. This argument fails, however, on the nature of incitement in law. The violence in question would assumedly be any assault against Prince Andrew, but in order for incitement to have taken place it is necessary for the accused to intend that other parties carry out the relevant act of violence. Prof. Knight explicitly stated in the days before his arrest that the mock execution should not be construed as a desire for actual executions, and there can be no wider suggestion that he (as with other republicans) actually wishes the death of members of the royal family. Thus, with no mens rea there is no crime. It should also be noted that Prof. Knight was not arrested for something like conspiracy to incite murder, suggesting that the police did not believe that this was an offence that he would be committing.

On the above analysis we can conclude that the planned act did not constitute an instance of either breach of the peace or public nuisance. The accusation of conspiracy to commit either of these offences is thus most likely to be spurious.

Was it justified?
Having established that the act itself would be unlikely to constitute a crime we can switch to our second question – irrespective of the legality of the act, should it have been allowed as a political statement?

There can be no argument that political protest should be limited by the state. This principal can even extend to (some) acts of protest that are illegal; as maintained, for example, in the ruling of Judge Caddick in the Kingsnorth power station case. Thus the argument that the act planned by Prof. Knight should not have been allowed relies on it being shown that it was not in fact a suitably political protest to justify the content that the proponent of this view would presumably object to.

The first line of argument that could be made is that a mock execution is not an acceptable form of political protest (glossing over the issues inherent in the judgement of ‘acceptability’). The response to this arguably lies in the method of execution being represented. Britain was a republic for a time in the 17th century, this status being brought about through the beheading of Charles I. That other great symbol of republicanism and the power of the people, the French revolution, also involved a transition from monarchy to republic that necessitated the beheading of a king. The beheading of a monarch, and in particular the guillotine, is thus a potent and extremely recognisable symbol of the possibility of change being brought about by the people. Of course, this symbolism does not lead one to the conclusion that the monarch should actually be beheaded, and it would be nonsensical to suggest that a person employing it would desire such a thing.

As such, the act planned by Prof. Knight would seem to be an explicitly political one, using a symbol of the potential for the people to overcome a royalist political system in order to protest against this status quo.
 
One could next question the need to use a recognisable member of the royal family in the act, rather than a generic figure in a crown; a potential argument being that doing so switches the act from being an acceptable political comment to being an unacceptable personal attack. The answer to this is twofold.

Firstly we must briefly consider the nature of the British monarchy. Since the demise of the divine rights theorist, James VI & I’s son, the constitutional power of the British monarchy is justified, one could argue, on tradition (the rights and wrongs of this are irrelevant to the current argument – that it is tradition rather than divine right makes the argument a little simpler as it takes the deity out of the equation). The monarchy is the Sovereign described in the theories of thinkers such as Hobbes and Rousseau, and forms the theoretical fulcrum of the constitutional setup of the nation (the Sovereign being a concept that can be instantiated in a variety of guises, from despots to democracies). As such, the members of the monarchy have a dual existence – in one sense they are people; but in the other, more important, sense they are the physical embodiment of the Sovereign. The particular individuals who temporarily instantiate this role are essentially irrelevant to it, as the role itself is timeless whilst the people are mortal. Thus, whilst royal families have come and gone, the Sovereign has persisted unaltered (this being fundamental to many of the grounds of justification for the system). It could thus be argued that the Prince Andrew effigy represented him not in his role as a person, but instead in his role as a physical embodiment of the Sovereign. In this way the act would not be one that attacked a person (which would be of dubious merit), but rather one that attacked a political system, with his visage as a mere symbol of it and so individually irrelevant.

The second line of argument lies with the particular member that was chosen, namely Prince Andrew. A part of the argument that republicans in Britain make is that the monarchy is a bed of corruption and unfettered privilege, as well as it being an embarrassment to the country. Here the individual involved does become relevant, as it is not necessarily the corrupt nature of the institution itself that is being bemoaned, it instead being the corruption of the individuals and the role that their status as royalty plays in allowing this corruption. As detailed above, Prince Andrew is linked in many ways to corrupt individuals and corrupt practices. He is thus perhaps the most appropriate member of the royal family to be personally protested against in this context. Similarly, on the charge of the monarchy being an embarrassment, the boorish (cf. Wikileaks) and allegedly corrupt Prince Andrew is a prime example of this. It is hard to argue that protest about either of these issues would not be political in nature.

Conclusion
To conclude, we have established that the act planned by Prof. Knight and his associates was unlikely to represent an instance of either of the offences that he was accused of conspiring to commit. We have also established that the performance that he was planning was of a political nature and so any suppression of it by the state represents an extremely worrying occurrence.

It is made all the more worrying in the context of the other arrests that were made before and on the day of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. These arrests included those of an activist who planned to make some republican and anti-capitalist statements through a loudhailer, some people a mile and half away from Westminster who were dressed as zombies, and a man getting off a train in London who had a banner that read “Democracy not monarchy”. It will be interesting to see if any of those arrested will ever be charged with anything.
  
All of those arrested were quite likely rather irritating individuals with less than sensible political positions. That is irrelevant however – we are all irritating to someone at some time and all have some less than sensible positions. Allowing the state to act against these traits is thus ultimately a threat to us all.

Some questions about alcohol and cancer (Schutze et al, 2011)

A recent paper by Schutze et al has received quite wide attention in the press. Out of interest I went and had a quick look at the paper itself, a look that left me rather puzzled on a few fronts. I'm putting these items of puzzlement up here in the hope that someone might be able to enlighten me.

1) The abstract (and the text) contains the phrase "[i]f we assume causality". This is not something that I could (or would) ever write in my own papers - is it common in the medical literature for people to do this?

2) The abstract concludes that "[t]hese data support current political efforts to reduce or to abstain from alcohol consumption to reduce the incidence of cancer." I was genuinely shocked to read this. To me it is utterly contrary to the scientific method to make statements like this in an actual scientific paper. Write an editorial or opinion piece to accompany the paper, certainly, but making political claims in one's discussion just seems plain wrong to me. Again, is this common in the medical literature? 

3) Table 2 seems to suggest that giving up alcohol is more hazardous than continuing to drink (a hazard risk ratio for alcohol related cancers in men of 1.1 in continuous drinkers compared to 3.72 in former drinkers). Am I just being a bit daft here and misinterpreting the statistics? Risk calculations aren't my thing, so that is quite likely. 

Overall I find the paper a bit heavy on fancy stats methods, which I'm always a little suspicious of; but I'm sure that is just the reaction of someone who doesn't particularly enjoy their time with Matlab. 

So, it would be great if somebody who is directly involved in medical research could say whether the things that I was puzzled by are indeed puzzling, or whether I'm just succumbing to some cross-disciplinary confusion. 



Schütze M, Boeing H, Pischon T, Rehm J, Kehoe T, Gmel G, Olsen A, Tjønneland AM, Dahm CC, Overvad K, Clavel-Chapelon F, Boutron-Ruault MC, Trichopoulou A, Benetou V, Zylis D, Kaaks R, Rohrmann S, Palli D, Berrino F, Tumino R, Vineis P, Rodríguez L, Agudo A, Sánchez MJ, Dorronsoro M, Chirlaque MD, Barricarte A, Peeters PH, van Gils CH, Khaw KT, Wareham N, Allen NE, Key TJ, Boffetta P, Slimani N, Jenab M, Romaguera D, Wark PA, Riboli E, & Bergmann MM (2011). Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 342 PMID: 21474525

Alcohol, bad science, and sophistry

In an article in the Guardian today, Professor Nutt made a series of statements about alcohol that are deeply depressing, and not for the reasons one might perhaps think. They were as follows, with the reasons for despair after each:

"Alcohol is a toxin that kills cells such as microorganisms, which is why we use it to preserve food and sterilise skin, needles etc. Alcohol kills humans too. A dose only four times as high as the amount that would make blood levels exceed drink-driving limits in the UK can kill. The toxicity of alcohol is worsened because in order for it to be cleared from the body it has to be metabolised to acetaldehyde, an even more toxic substance. Any food or drink contaminated with the amount of acetaldehyde that a unit of alcohol produces would be immediately banned as having an unacceptable health risk."

Where to begin with the tawdry idiocy of this? Perhaps simply replacing 'alcohol' with sodium chloride (or table salt as the less pretentious apparently refer to it) is as good a place as any, giving us - "Sodium chloride is a toxin that kills cells such as microorganisms, which is why we use it to preserve food and steralise skin, needles etc [not so much the second, but salt water is a good, if nippy, way to steralise a wound]. Sodium chloride kills humans too." But only if you give them it in doses that are vastly higher than that which one would normally consume in or with one's food. Alcohol is a toxin and acetaldehyde is nasty, but at the doses that one normally consumes alcohol our body is quite clearly able to process them. What Prof. Nutt has done here is analogous to the famous case in which people were convinced to try and ban dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) because of the dangers it posed. That he is trying to pass off the equivalent of such a prank as serious comment is tragically disingenuous. 

Like all the best lies, each sentence has an element of truth to them (or, rather, they are all true, but do not apply to the context that he is putting them forward in) - if one was not slightly educated in science then one would probably read them and accept them as entirely reasonable. Somebody who has been given the gift of an intellect and education that has taken them to the top of academia should not be abusing the ignorance (used in an entirely non-pejorative sense) of others in this way.

"Although most people do not become addicted to alcohol on their first drink, a small proportion do. As a clinical psychiatrist who has worked with alcoholics for more than 30 years, I have seen many people who have experienced a strong liking of alcohol from their very first exposure and then gone on to become addicted to it. We cannot at present predict who these people will be, so any exposure to alcohol runs the risk of producing addiction in some users."

A supposed scientist putting forward an anecdote as evidence, putting him in the esteemed company of creationists, militant anti-abortionists, homeopaths, et al. Not only that, but his anecdote and surrounding statements are what can only be described as bullshit (cf. Frankfurt, 1986). 

Firstly, nobody and nothing (with the usual caveats about freak outliers) has become addicted to anything upon their first exposure. They may have become dependent upon their first exposure, but they did not become addicted. Again, most people may not know the difference, but as a pharmacologist Prof. Nutt most certainly does. Glossing over that, yes, a great many of people who liked alcohol the first time they tried it went on to become addicted. But a great many that liked it didn't go on to be addicted. And a great many who hated it the first time will have gone on to be addicted, and some who liked it a little, although perhaps it could have done with a little more ice, will have gone on to be addicted (and some not). None of this is relevant to anything, other than to a description of all the possible combinations of liking something the first time (or not) and getting addicted to it (or not). It is rhetoric, nothing more.

Does any of this matter though if the outcome for the individual is the same? Well, yes. Politicians and journalists may bend and abuse words to fit their needs and blind people into doing what they want them to be doing, but we should - nay, must - be able to expect better from a member of the academy. Being a scientist and an academic is to a small part of a great cooperative entity striving towards truth. When one member of this effort sullies this enterprise by resorting to lies and half-truths in this way it belittles all the other members and moves us all as a species that little bit further back into the darkness.  

"The supposed cardiovascular benefits of a low level of alcohol intake in some middle-aged men cannot be taken as proof that alcohol is beneficial. To do that one would need a randomised trial where part of this group drink no alcohol, others drink in small amounts and others more heavily. Until this experiment has been done we don't have proof that alcohol has health benefits. A recent example of where an epidemiological association was found not to be true when tested properly was hormone replacement therapy. Population observations suggested that HRT was beneficial for post-menopausal women, but when controlled trials were conducted it was found to cause more harm than good."

More misrepresentation here. The study that I assume that he is referring to here (Rossouw, 2002) did find an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary embolism in subjects who were more than five years post-menopausal; but it also found a reduced risk of colon cancer and hip fracture in this group, as well as a reduced risk of heart disease for those subjects who were less then five years post-menopausal. So, as with most science, the results were complicated and do not in their entirety support the claim that he makes. If one is to go around cherry-picking results that suit then one could equally just chose the results from this trial that refer to heart disease in women that are less than five years post-menopausal and say that HRT definitely does more good than harm. 

Almost as depressing is his willful misrepresentation of the scientific method (I can't bring myself to believe that he might genuinely understand it). Certainly it is true that a (double-blind) randomised controlled trial would be the best method of establishing whether alcohol has health benefits or not, but to claim that we have no proof prior to this is just silly. The trials that have been done so far tell us something - not everything, but something - within what will have been carefully delineated set of limitations. They do not give us proof (in a strong sense of the word), but nor would the randomised trial that he says is necessary before we can say anything. All of which brings us into the domain of questions about truth and science, an area that I suspect he is not seeking to take his argument into (especially given that many if not all of the trials that he will say show that dangers of alcohol will not meet the artificial standards of proof that he has set out here).  

Finally, implying that there is only evidence for health benefits for alcohol intake in middle aged men and in the context of cardiovascular disease is unashamedly dishonest. The conditions for which alcohol has been suggested to have a protective effect range from stroke (to the common cold (Takkouche, 2002). This is not to say that these results are not complex and controversial, nor that alcohol consumption does not cause serious health problems - both of these things are obviously true, it is just that the implicit claim that Prof. Nutt makes quite obviously is not. 

For all other diseases associated with alcohol there is no evidence of any benefit of low alcohol intake – the risks of accidents, cancer, ulcers etc rise inexorably with intake.

A final weaselly sentence. No, there is no evidence that low doses of alcohol are of benefit in liver cirrhosis - but no-one in their right mind would suggest that there was (although that doesn't prove anything - has an experiment been done?). It takes a fairly close reading of the sentence to see what he is doing here though. By definition diseases associated with alcohol are not helped by alcohol consumption, but that says nothing about those diseases that are not associated with alcohol. As to the accidents etc, a whole series of questions arise if one stops to think about what he is trying to say. Does that risk of accidents increase with intake in an acute sense or accumulitively over ones life? The first is quite obvious, and isn't saying much at all, whilst the latter is patently absurd. What does he mean by ulcers? Duodenal? But as every biology undergrad knows, such ulcers are to an extremely high degree caused by H. pylori and not diet. Again this is writing that one would expect from a politician or a tabloid journalist - half truths, obfuscation, and the exploitation of lay ignorance.

This article, then, is both sad and dangerous. It is sad because it is evidence of somebody who should know better sullying the whole enterprise of science for measly rhetorical advantage. It is dangerous for this reason too. People are not stupid, and some at least will see through the deceptions. When they do, and when they see Prof. Nutt producing them from his position as an expert, they will grow further distrustful of all those who make any claims from a position of expertise. In doing so we move further towards a world where learning and work are utterly devalued, and where people are entirely unwilling to accept guidance from those who have knowledge, relying instead on instinct or the word of those who can talk the loudest or the smoothest. Such a world would drive one to drink.


References
Frankfurt, H. On Bullshit. Raritan Quarterly Review 1986; 6(2)

Rossouw JE, et al. Risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women: principal results From the Women's Health Initiative randomized controlled trial., JAMA. 2002; 288(3):321-33.

Emberson, JR.; Bennett, DA. Effect of alcohol on risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: causality, bias, or a bit of both?. Vasc Health Risk Manag. 2006; 2(3): 239–49 

Takkouche B, et al. Intake of Wine, Beer, and Spirits and the Risk of Clinical Common Cold. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2002; 155(9): 853-858 

Eccentric does not equal being a dick

Much is made in an article in Wired about the 'eccentricity' of Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville scientist who shot and killed three of her colleagues. Reading about her behaviour, however, makes one rather wonder about the definition of eccentric that is being used. 

Academia is, on the whole, tolerant to those that deviate somewhat from the norm, and a good thing too (although it is, by all accounts, far less tolerant than it once was, and getting worse). With its entire purpose being the advancement of knowledge, discriminating against those who are not content to accept that which is currently held as normal would be fatal. Thus I had an anatomy lecturer who would flit through the streets of Glasgow, academic's cloak streaming behind him; or the astronomy lecturer who could not countenance the use of the phrase "the naked eye", it being in his opinion "too rude". Different, certainly, but also two of the best teachers that I had. 

The manner in which Amy Bishop is described as habitually acting in could not be further from that of these benign and brilliant characters. Rather than having innocent quirks that, if anything, improved their teaching, she is described as being arrogant and abusive to a degree that interfered with her ability to do her job. 

Being obnoxious most definitely does not equal being eccentric, nor would anyone in academia ever be inclined to confuse the two and tolerate the abuse. This is reflected in the fact that she was not kept on in a number of positions, and was not awarded tenure in Alabama. 

What is more telling from the point of view of why she was tolerated and not flagged up as a potential risk  is the description given in the article of the response of the Ipswich community to her behaviour (not that I particularly believe that we should be going around flagging people who aren't very nice as being in some way a risk). By the other residents' accounts, she treated them in an equally obnoxious manner as she did her academic colleagues and students, yet they too tolerated this behaviour for five years. They may have held a spontaneous party upon the departure of the Bishop family, but there seems to be little evidence of them coming together to confront the bully in the midst of their suburban harmony. (Bringing to mind the points made about suburban living made by, for example, Eric Fromm  and Richard Sennett.)


Thus, this sad case does not represent an example of academia tolerating an eccentric, and should in no way be seen in that light. Instead what it represents is an apparent society-wide tolerance of bullies and bullying, or at least an unwillingness of society to work together to confront and ameliorate such individuals - either being a far more disturbing and telling conclusion than those being drawn by the majority of commentators.

Hypocrisy, faith and state

Islam is often held up by Western commentators as a particulary pernicious religion from the perspective of the possibility of political secularism. The lack of differentiation between the religious and the political in Islam is said to be uniquely dangerous, leading to the sort of situations such as exist in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where the primacy and privilege of religion has played a major role in causing great injustice and suffering.

The dangers of an institutionalised conflation of faith and politics is undeniable, but that this is a unique issue for Islam would seem debatable.

Historically, of course, there has always been an intertwining of religion and politics in the West. The Pope is, and always has been, a head of state (no matter how dubious that position now is). Similarly, the clergy have always been a powerful section of the ruling class, with, for example, Anglican bishops sitting in the House of Lords in the UK.

The changes in the West since the Enlightenment are widely held as having fundamentally altered all that, however, ostensibly leaving us in a healthily secular environment - the very sort of environment that Islam is held up as being such a threat to.

However, the recent paedophile scandal within the Catholic Church casts some doubt upon this idea. A fundamental feature of this scandal is evidence for the same belief in the primacy and privilege of religion within the Western systems it has occured in as is bemoaned in Islamic ones. Throughout the scandal the tacit assumption has been that the problem of child-rape that involves clergy is in some way different from secular child-rape. The Church has attempted - and, on the whole, been allowed - to keep investigations and punishments (rare as they are) internal to its organisation. For example, a bishop (of Bruges) has admitted publically to the rape of several boys with no repercussions at all.

Here then is clear evidence of a privileged situation for religion in the Western political/legal system. Western commentators could thus afford to be less smug about their perceived superiority to their Muslim targets and to bear in mind the closeness in underlying attitudes to religion and society that, in many contexts, exist.