Quickies
Quickies: Stock photos, epigenetic birth control, and PLOS data access
- I took a look at 2500 Lean In stock photos so you don’t have to – “If we’re to believe the “Lean In Collection,” photographs of empowered women look a bit like Lean In’s vernacular sounds: Something in between inspirational affirmations and MBA-speak.”
- Use the power of your mind for birth control! – Because epigenetics! And quantum physics! From MarkisWelby.
- PLOS journals now require data to be released immediately at publication – “In an effort to increase access to this data, we are now revising our data-sharing policy for all PLOS journals: authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article.”
- Managing privilege – A handy comic guide.
It’s about time. I’ve seen a lot of articles in PLOS Medicine which were…iffy. I mean, I like the idea of PLOS, I do, but sometimes it seems like a print-anything journal. (In fact, their stance has traditionally been that the reader can separate good articles from bad, so they publish and THEN review. While I do hold that science is easier than people make it, and in fact its greatest strength is that anyone can do it, I also know there are so many articles published in PLOS that get into the MSM before anyone can review it.)
On epigenetics and raw food, wouldn’t amenorrhea be a sign of poor health? (It can also be a side effect of some birth control pills.) Also, I love how they decided both epigenetics and quantum physics mean “You get to choose which, completely opposite, effect this woo does.” I also love the obligatory appropriation of Indian and Tibetan ideas like karma and tantra. Doesn’t ‘chakra’ sound so much more spiritual than ‘wheel’? Anyway, I posted some comments on the comments section.
I really like the comic. It is a useful resource for myself, and could be well used as a link in many on-line arguments to help those who are repelled by the mention of privilege understand better what it means and does not mean. Not that it will be immediately effective, but it may help plant a seed.
The article about the stock photography skims part of the problem with this sort of thing. By nature, stock photos are meant to be content without context, so that they can be plugged into as broad a range of articles as possible. Unfortunately, when you live in a society with so much built-in baggage as ours, you can’t escape context–instead, you end up defaulting to the status quo narratives. A woman by herself is going to be seen by most readers as cis- and heterosexual, unless she’s actually dropped into an article about transgender or lesbian women. Show a woman of color in a business setting, and most Westerners will assume she’s American or European–you can’t convey “woman in India” unless you show her in a stereotyped Indian motif. At best ,this sort of thing is going to be a case of “Two steps forward, one step back”.
“A period is just your body cleansing itself…and when there is nothing to clean, there’s no need to have one.”
Oh, Myyyyyyy….. lol.
Do people fall for this stuff?