Corpus 2

[TokyoBouncyBall]

A summary would be good and I might do one later but Aston, data scraping, astonishing lack of contrition…

wowzers

I think that what @Boiledbeetle said has absolutely happened. Aston looked at the lawsuit and rethought their strategy at some speed.

Oh no! Are Aston discovering that behaving like spoiled toddlers doesn't work on mums?

Does this include Eden's research? If so, good, but I hope she can find a suitable replacement. She might have acted foolishly but her supervisor and others in senior positions at Aston have failed her.

Agree. Aston should fund they/them for an extra year so they/them can start over on a completely new project.

The MN PhD proposal should never have been accepted by supervisors nor passed the ethics committee so multiple Aston staff members shoulder blame.

Excellent news about Aston's policy, but yes, I do feel for the PhD student - only a little bit - in the way they were badly advised & encouraged in their bigotry.

A good supervisor would have insisted on, and indeed, overseen & edited any ethics application (I have to do this for my PhD students - they're learning how to do it, and I monitor their ethics applications closely).

A good supervisor should also have asked the tough questions about the student's bias & potential bigotry.

Given the specific field- forensic linguistics - is ostensibly all about ethics and language use, it's particularly shite that Aston have taken this long to click to the issues and only cave under legal pressure. Who watches the watchmen, really.

I feel sorry for her only in the sense that she wasn't properly supervised - or supervised at all, really - because she set out to prove something bigoted and pretty ugly about MN/MNetters.

And as I've said earlier in this or one of the other threads, anyone in academia/science knows that if you're setting out to prove a hypothesis, your aim is to disprove it. Which rules out any bias you may have in your theories.

It doesn't speak well of Aston or any other HE institute and the staff involved in Eden's education that she go to PhD level without learning that.

As a mother of 3 near uni-age kids and auntie of 3 more I deffo will be advising all 6 to give Aston a wide swerve.

If the VC had acted in a swifter, more appropriate manner and the ethics FOI hadn’t exposed such jaw droppingly unrigorous oversight it might’ve been possible for Aston to pretend that it’s a localised problem in the linguistics department.
As is they can ALL eat a big piece of the ‘We’re Shit’ pie.

I’m yet to unflabber my ghast at the gall of the VC in that first phone meeting with Justine.

What about ‘The infiltration and hyperbolic use of the word ‘suicide’ across social media as coercive control of discourse on gender dysphoria’.

The researcher could look where that stemmed from, its rise across platforms, the catchphrases used etc. That actually would be an incredibly useful piece of research to help those with gender dysphoria and clinicians. In fact I think it’s really essential someone looks at this and it is an ideal time to start with the announcement from the government adviser in the last few days. The constant chant of ‘suicide’ was disgraceful. It went against all guidance and was repeated by far too many people who should know better. The pressure parents were put under to do something that instinctively they knew was wrong under that threat. And worse, the pressure on vulnerable children.

I don’t think I could stomach doing that research though. You would need to carefully run it by ethics committees as it would be emotionally challenging.

Given the specific field- forensic linguistics - is ostensibly all about ethics and language use, it's particularly shite that Aston have taken this long to click to the issues and only cave under legal pressure. Who watches the watchmen, really.

In one of their videos they were boasting to speech forensic linguists (which is much more regulated) that they had much more freedom.

We don't keep the rules; only the little people keep the rules

Who indeed?

Now that’s an excellent question.

One ex colleague, years ago, studied the young men hired to watch the cctv screen monitors for retail stores and on the street etc. It might be different now, but then they were predominantly (all) young white men. The research found that these young men would direct the cctv cameras on two subjects. I’m sure you will all guess it was either pretty young women or young men of colour….

In Aston’s case we do know that their ethics committee doesn’t read the papers cited to support the ethics of a research proposal. Like others, i believe this lapse is absolutely on the student’s supervision and departmental and university policy.

Okay, so I had a search of Aston’s research ethics guidance webpages last night, and while I don’t see anything explicitly forbidding using social media data, I did find a section in the FAQs which I am fairly sure was not there before. I did read through their ethics guidance looking for what they said on social media research at the time the ethics review was released and could not find anything.

I posted a while back about the implications of the PhD ignoring MN’s terms and conditions for consent and indeed the legality of using it. The last paragraph of this FAQ seems to now acknowledge this issue, whereas the ethics application and the committee’s review of the PhD did not. I do suggest that, as well as taking legal advice as they are no doubt doing, they also read Jai McKenzie’s work on social media use for a more up to date primer and consult whoever supervised her when she was at Aston. (The ethics application and the review was quite shoddy).

I also suggest, only slightly tongue in cheek, that they refer also to my post upthread about how the PhD can be reframed and use less problematic sources, providing an additional year’s funding and maintenance for the student to do so.

In short, Aston just need to acknowledge they have stuffed up and sort the problem for their student, as well as addressing their ethics policy and procedures (the latter they seem to be doing).
Edited to add: some compensation for MN for their costs to be paid also!

Sorry, I am spamming the thread, but this will impact researchers who are doing perfectly ethical research and gaining consent properly. It’s a knee jerk reaction and to me it shows that they are not on top of the issues.
I will stop multiple posting now and get on with the day.

And an apology from tricky Nicci to Mumsnet users, to be published on this site.

Just because data is 'out there' does not automatically mean you can use it in your research

is hilarious

it also reads as though it's been said more than once, accompanied by increasingly wearied sighs, by whatever poor unfortunate has been charged with introducing Aston's finest to the obligations and responsibilities of real life.

@Talulahalula Not spamming at all, very relevant. So much so that I have reported it to MN to make sure they see it.

My understanding of the post on the other thread is that this is a temporary ban on usage, while they get legal advice. And yes, this is going to mess up lots of people's research but as you say, it does not seem as though they are competent.

Pretty sure that’s new!

Evening, all. Resurrecting this because it seems that Aston University have woken up and realised that the situation needed some adults involved. Was sent message below from an insider, and I cannot think what prompted these developments...

"New guidance has arrived. It's 7 pages long, and is in addition to existing research ethics guidance. Covers legal issues, copyright, & the risk of identifying individuals (eg by quoting posts) amongst other things. There's a lot of "if in doubt, ASK".

Special arrangements are also in place for anyone wishing to present research at conferences, where there might be a risk if identifying information being shared. It looks fairly robust, & would, I suspect, make the project that started all of this untenable in its original form."

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Thanks for the update.

I think I have missed a bit, what happened with that person's presentation?

... and their PhD?