Expert Judgment and High Level Nuclear Waste Management

Prominent figures believe that expert judgment must play a decisive role in implementing the NWPAA. A critical, philosophical examination of this method is provided. Resolution of difficulties inherent to expert judgment reveals the adoption of equally problematic epistemological assumptions. A fresh approach which rejects the dichotomies bred by the controversy over the status of expert judgment is offered.     

Les liaisons dangereuses: Relations between police commissioners and their political masters

This article reflects on the difficult and ambiguous relationship between Australian Police Commissioners and their political masters. The article looks at South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales and examines the nature of the conflict arising in these jurisdictions from the ambiguous nature of the roles Police Commissioners and Ministers are expected to play. In exploring the uncertainties and expectations that surround the Police Commissioner–Minister relationship, the article considers what lessons can be drawn from such examples. The article reflects on the political and social ramifications of such altercations and considers ways of managing future conflict.     

Gender Differences in the Association between Maternal Depressed Mood and Child Depressive Phenomena from Grade 3 through Grade 10

This study reports on relationships among gender, maternal depressed mood, and children’s trajectories of depressive phenomena across middle childhood and early adolescence. It tested the hypothesis that, compared to boys, girls become increasingly vulnerable to maternal depression as they enter adolescence. The study sample consisted of 834 families from 10 Pacific Northwest schools that participated in the Raising Healthy Children project. Maternal depressed mood and children’s depressive phenomena were assessed annually during an 8-year period that spanned Grade 3 through Grade 10 for the children. Mean scores for girls’ depressive phenomena increased relative to those for boys as children matured. Maternal depressed mood was significantly and positively associated with children’s level of depressive phenomena. An interaction effect of gender and maternal depressed mood on acceleration in children’s depressive phenomena indicated that girls’ trajectories of depressive phenomena were sustained in the presence of maternal depression while those of boys declined in the presence of maternal depression.

Social orientation and the social self-esteem of gifted and talented female adolescents

Carlson's developmental theory of self-concept provides a theoretical explanation for equivalent levels of self-esteem among both sexes, despite sex differences in self-concept. The present study tests the applicability of Carlson's theory for a sample of gifted and talented female adolescents by examining three dimensions of possible self-esteem antecedents: actual talent ratings, self-perceptions of talent, and personality attributes. According to Carlson, talent ratings, self-perceptions, and personality attributes consistent with the feminine gender-role stereotype and a social orientation should emerge as positive predictors of the female adolescent's social self-esteem. Results of the regression analyses indicate that the best prediction of the social self-esteem of gifted and talented female adolescents is obtained from a combination of stereotypic feminine socially oriented and stereotypic masculine personally oriented predictor variables. For this sample, constructs such as androgyny appear to be more relevant to the understanding of social self-esteem than dichotomies such as personal-social orientation.This research was supported in part by a grant from the Women's Educational Equity Act, U.S. Office of Education Grant OE G00760497.Received Ph.D. in educational psychology from Case Western Reserve University. Research interest is the career development of the gifted and talented.Received Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Research interests include individual differences, the gifted and talented, and creativity.     

A marriage of inconvenience: Miriam Makeba’s relationship with Stokely Carmichael and her music career in the United States

This article analyzes the career of famed South African singer, Miriam Makeba, in the United States. After finding success throughout much of the 1960s, Makeba’s career and public image shifted after her 1968 marriage to Stokely Carmichael, a noted Civil Rights activist and proponent of the Black Power movement. Once Makeba became associated with Carmichael and his reputation as an extremist, the American public, media, and music industry changed their approach to Makeba as an individual and as an artist throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, this union caused American audiences to turn on her and her music, and this essay explores how and why this shift occurred.     

“Sexual Assault” and Other Buzz Phrases that Need to Die

Academics nowadays have invented many phrases for which they demand widespread acceptance that do not accurately represent reality, or which make no sense when we consider them closely. Prime among these is the concept of “sexual assault,” which has made its way into state laws and the UCMJ since its coinage in the 1960s and 1970s and is now a mainstay of training on college campuses. This concept is flawed because it includes all sexual actions under the rubric of the noun “assault,” as if we spoke of “driving aggression” rather than “aggressive driving,” to color all driving with the possibility of aggression. It is simply not true that sexuality is nothing but one more form aggression, and that all sex is potentially aggression if it is perceived by one partner as such. Another false coinage we are asked to accept is the notion that men “objectivize” women. In fact few men want to sleep with or get an erotic charge from objects; if anything the issue seems to be focus on physical details. Then there is the widely repeated assertion that “gender is assigned at birth.” Rather than debating whether or not this is so we should ask whether the concept itself makes sense. Assigned? By what entity? Just at birth? These are examples of linguistic over-reach, the attempt to change the world with words rather than letting a change in the way we see the world (Kuhn’s paradigm shift) produce corresponding words in a more gradual way that most of us can accept. Just because we hear these phrases all the time from professional wordsmith academics with axes to grind, we need not feel constrained to accept them if they are not accurate representations of the world.     

No-Fly Zones: A New Model for Male Sexuality

The predominant paradigm nowadays for understanding male sexuality is derived from Kinsey's assumption that men can be classified as individuals with specific scores on a scale, scores that predict whether future partners will be male or female. Each man is defined by an essence, homo- or heterosexual or somewhere in between. However this is an incorrect view of male sexuality, because it makes us unable to say why a man is attracted to or has sex with a specific person: the same person can be attractive or unattrative depending on circumstances, and he can act or not act on his inclination depending on circumstances. The more correct view of male sexuality is thus of “fly” and “no-fly” zones, which understands male sexuality as defined by variable situations, not a score of the individual in all situations. This conception allows us to avoid the theoretical mistakes of the current assault on “sexual assault.”     

The governance of human genetic research databases in mental health research

The field of mental health offers a valuable context in which to examine new challenges presented by human genetic research databases to the legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks for human genetic research. Longitudinal prospective genetic research of psychiatric disorders often involves access to human genetic research databases and to stored tissue for future uses that cannot be specified at the time the patient consents to their collection. The potential of such research to contribute to an improved understanding and treatment of complex genetic diseases such as schizophrenia presupposes sound ethical, legal and regulatory frameworks to ensure public trust and preparedness to participate in such research. This article provides a brief overview of some of the ethical and legal challenges posed by human genetic research databases and their implications for how genetic research should be conducted in the field of mental health.