Thread 3: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia]

In which we continue to discuss the Aston scrapists.

• The Site Stuff thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/sitestuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus
• FWR thread #1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5057460-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet
• FWR thread #2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5060410-thread-2-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet

Arguably, EP has a strong argument that the university erred. There are ways around this such that EP won't end up paying more over time if a private payer (which I doubt). Aston may even consider that they have a duty to do something because of the multiple failings missteps here: Nicci McLeod, Tim Grant and whomever passed through through the ethics review.

I suspect Aston may need to come to an arrangement about funding with whichever research council is funding EP's studentship and research.

Having fucked up the 1st year of your PhD is not the end of the world though, particularly if a chunk of it has been spent familiarising yourself with the general principle of the research methods you're going to be using, so you don't need to do that all over again. It just means you have to be much more efficient in the use of your remaining time, and resign yourself to the likelihood of the write-up over-running. A guy I went to university with was doing a plant related PhD, and missed the window for taking samples of the buds on the trees he was studying because they developed several weeks earlier than expected that year, so he had to wait a whole year before he could get any results.

Just placemarking with my Aston related username change.

They'll never connect me to my usual username!!

And...

I work in a university (STEM department) and it's highly unusual for a PhD student to present at a conference in their first year of study; they simply don't have data yet for anything "meaty" enough for a paying audience. Our students have an early stage assessment at 9 months which checks that the research is broadly proceeding as planned; this is the point at which the direction might be tweaked. For us this is often industrial sponsors not providing test samples/facilities as planned. It's not uncommon for the thesis title to change over the course of study, often becoming more specific.

I hope the Aston student can continue the PhD in some form, with proper guidance on research ethics, and a less ridiculously aggressive title.

No, actually I don't think it was. It's definitely Judith Butler's intention though.

I put this on the Corpus Site Stuff thread but thought it might be worth flagging here too. Tbh, I'm not sure what to post where now if it's about the more serious stuff. The fun things are easy.

I'm not sure that this has been mentioned before, apologies if I missed it, but the 'P Murray' who sent the FoI request to Aston about the 'understanding the black box' conference talk, later submitted two others on 3/5/24.

To Manchester University about 'Ethics and data protection for the acquisition of the source material for the "Tracking the structure and sentiment of vaccination discussions on Mumsnet" journal article',
and
to Newcastle University about 'Ethics and data protection for the acquisition of the source material for the "Scoping the Priorities and Concerns of Parents: Infodemiology Study of Posts on Mumsnet and Reddit" journal article'.

Thanks again to P Murray.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/p_murray

I assume that one set of data has received such a mauling that there is nothing further to extract, whilst the other has yet to explored fully, hence Aston's reticence to delete our data. Not their data, our data.

As for EP, I am surprised that someone has reached a PhD level of education whilst appearing to lack the necessary skills in critical thinking.

Thing is, it's not just the FWR posters/board, but MNetters who have posted on the fertility and dieting boards, if I understood that Aston video correctly.

It's all MNers for any research purpose a future researcher might choose as they've scraped the entire site. So could be Relationships etc.

Thanks - this was the one I was trying to find, but intrigued by the other one posted up thread.

Interesting that Eden has still got a slot.

I wonder if they are waiting to see outcome of MNHQ questions as to whether or not she goes ahead as originally intended.

This thread and earlier threads, and related threads some how need an index or time line or something.

ie actual events, and then revelations as they happened.

This one
https://www.aston.ac.uk/research/forensic-linguistics/iafll-regional-conference

They are trying to create a tool which identifies who wrote what and they used MN posts to train their LLM to do so.

This is exactly what Aston is doing. There is big money to be made for a such a tool and it is more likely to be used against society than for society (kind of like gain of function research that resulted in Covid). The academics involved know this. The excuse justification that it will be helpful to women who are victims of domestic violence or root out transphobia or whatever is just a smoke screen. Those paying for this research, those conducting it and those that stole the data for the sandbox are all complicit. Had the tool been available centuries ago, it would have been deployed against witches.

Idealistic people like ED are like gullible mugs in a multi level marketing scheme, recruited by self interested professors to stay at university far longer than their abilities would otherwise dictate.

MN’s data analysis will be / would’ve been in interesting company being part of that conference. Deviant behaviour. Fake news. Murder trials. Suicide notes. Child sexual abuse. False emergency reporting. Pick up artists.

We are/were to be included along with a session on tackling online offensive and hateful language. Good to know where a forum for mothers and threads by women seeking to protect women’s rights and safeguard children’s stands in the eyes of Aston’s FL institute. Slow handclap to NM.

Further to @DrBlackbird 's comment, this is something I have been meaning to do for a while: a list of all the other collections on the Aston Database (FoLD). It's, um, quite enlightening

Actually I might not do them all, but here are the first few...

Perverted Justice Chatlogs - Full archive of chatlogs from now defunct site perverted-justice.com depicting online instant messaging interactions between convicted child sex offenders and adults posing as minors.
Closing arguments in US rape trials
Corpus of German Suicide Notes
Meredith Kercher case file library - from murder case
Transcritpions from Kurdish and Arabic questionnaires
Emergency call transcripts of innocent and guilty callers - A collection of plain-text transcriptions of 60 emergency calls. 30 were placed by innocent callers (i.e. witnesses) and 30 by deceptive callers (i.e. the perpetrator pretending to be innocent).
Romance Fraud Messages
Transcripts of Laughter used in Police Interviews
Deceptive Opinion Spam Corpus v1.4 - odd Tripadvisor reviews
Complete collection of the Unabomber writings
Transcript of oral proceedings in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) brought by the ’Stansted 15’ (Thacker et al), November 2020
The Italian Red Brigades statements during the kidnapping of Aldo Moro
Racist tweets and countermessages by Stop Hate UK
Corpus of Contemporary English Legal Decisions, 1950–2021
Catalogue of abusive language training data
The Shipman Inquiry
Pledges to Harm
Threat letters transcribed data from the FBI
Michelle Carter/Conrad Roy text messages - from a manslaughter trial
Operation Heron corpus - The dataset is a subset of the abusive letters sent by Margaret Walkers to individuals in the public eye between 2007 and 2009

That's the first page. The next page includes cyber-hate, trolling and child sexual abuse. So I don't know about you, but it feels a bit crime-adjacent to me.

https://134.151.36.51/recent-submissions?offset=0

Sidenote, this url has been set up to be difficult to acccess... It was not like that a few weeks ago.

So I don't know about you, but it feels a bit crime-adjacent to me.

Isn't that what 'forensic' means? "Relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime".

I've reported your posts, @GrimbutGerbil and @DrBlackbird , just to make sure that @JustineMumsnet and the legals are aware.

The company we keep, eh? 😜

Did the people filling in Arabic and Kurdish questionnaires know where their data was heading? What was their crime?

Not sure if this has been shared already, but this is an article about FoLD, the repository where the MN dataset was stored. https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/43719/3/Aston_Forensic_Linguistic_Databank_FOLD_001_petykoetal.pdf

Worth remembering that the MN corpus was a controlled dataset, if I remember correctly.

I mean, FFS.
What kind of logic goes - I know, we want to look at despicable crime against children, we will use a corpus of discussion about infertility and adoption to test our model?!?

And then - okay, this might have not been the best idea, but we still want to hold onto the FWR threads (where women have expressed concerns which have been upheld by the Cass review) and sit them alongside the despicable crimes?

Not sure if this has been shared already, but this is an article about FoLD

Yes, it was discussed thread 1 on the Friday night before the event was shut down, but just incidentally, looking back at that discussion on 20 April, there are quite a few deleted posts now!

It would be really good to create a summary of what happened with relevant screenshots etc, and I keep meaning to do this but don't have any time.

The sort of job that might suit a PhD student with some unexpected time on their hands, for example. Anyone know someone like this?

looking back at that discussion on 20 April, there are quite a few deleted posts now!

??

Have posters asked for posts to be removed, or is MNHQ "cleaning house" in relation to challengins Aston.

I've looked back through the threads and can't see any deleted posts. I thought that,if you asked for a post to be deleted, MN leaves a notice saying that they've deleted it at the request of the user. Am I looking in the wrong place or have MN deleted evidence of a post existing at all rendering it completely invisible? Can someone post a link to a relevant page? Thanks.

Thread 1 there are plenty of deleted posts.