Researchers overestimate their own honesty

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

GUSTAV TINGHÖG, PROFESSOR IN ECONOMICS AT THE DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT AND ENGINEERING AT LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN.

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CREDIT: JONAS ROSLUND

The average researcher thinks they are better than their colleagues at following good research practice. They also think that their own research field is better than other research fields at following good research practice. This is shown in a new study by researchers at Linköping University, Sweden. The results point to a risk of becoming blind to one’s own shortcomings, according to the Linköping researchers.

“The starting point for the project is that there’s a bit of a crisis in the research world. Research misconduct or difficulties to replicate research results have been discovered in many studies. Credibility has been called into question,” says Gustav Tinghög, professor in economics at the Department of Management and Engineering.

Together with postdoc Lina Koppel and doctoral student Amanda Lindkvist, he sent a questionnaire to more than 33,000 Swedish researchers. The questions were based on the Swedish Research Council's rules for what constitutes good research practice. For example, researchers should always tell the truth about their research and always openly present the premises, methods and results of a study. 

Participants were asked to answer two questions: How well do you think you follow good research practice compared to colleagues in the same research field? And how well do you think that your particular research field follows good research practice compared to other research fields? 
The survey was sent to all researchers and doctoral students employed at Swedish universities. More than 11,000 responses were received. The answers were to be given on a seven-point scale where a four was equal to “the same as the average”. The results of the study have now been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“It turns out that almost all researchers consider themselves as good as or better than average, which is a statistical impossibility,” notes Gustav Tinghög. “If everyone could look at themselves objectively, an even distribution around the middle would be expected.”

Most – 55 percent – stated that they were as good as most others at following good research practice. 44 percent thought they were better. Only 1 percent thought they were worse. On the question of practices in their own research field, 63 percent said that they were as good as most others, 29 percent that they were better and 8 percent that they were worse.

All research fields showed a similar overestimation of their own honesty, although the effect was greatest for researchers in medicine. 

According to the Linköping researchers, the results show that researchers as a group often overestimate their own ethical behaviour. And this overestimation also extends to their own research field in general. The inaccuracies are very rarely of a scandalous nature, but more concern everyday procedures, how results are shared and data is reported.

“Small missteps can increase in number and perhaps become worse missteps,” says Amanda Lindkvist.

In addition to the risk of becoming blind to one’s own ethical shortcomings, the conviction that one’s own research field is better at research ethics compared to others can also contribute to polarisation in the research world. This complicates interdisciplinary collaboration between research fields, according to the Linköping researchers.

Of course, it cannot completely be ruled out that mostly highly ethical researchers responded, but it is less likely that this would affect the outcome of how the researchers view their own field of research, according to the researchers. Fundamentally, the study shows that researchers are not immune to psychological processes that affect all people, that is, our tendency to believe the best about ourselves and explain away what goes against our self-image.

“Every day, researchers face the dilemma: should I do what benefits me or should I do what benefits science. In such a world, it’s important to constantly look at yourself in the mirror and calibrate your research-ethical compass,” says Gustav Tinghög.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-53450-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Bounded research ethicality: researchers rate themselves and their field as better than others at following good research practice

 

May I have a quick word? Study shows talking faster is linked to better brain health as we age

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BAYCREST CENTRE FOR GERIATRIC CARE

As we get older, we may start to notice it takes us longer to find the right words. This can lead to concerns about cognitive decline and dementia.

However, a new study by Baycrest and the University of Toronto suggests that talking speed is a more important indicator of brain health than difficulty finding words, which appears to be a normal part of aging. This is one of the first studies to look at both differences in natural speech and brain health among healthy adults.

“Our results indicate that changes in general talking speed may reflect changes in the brain,” says Dr. Jed Meltzer, Baycrest’s Canada Research Chair in Interventional Cognitive Neuroscience and the lead author on this study. “This suggests that talking speed should be tested as part of standard cognitive assessments to help clinicians detect cognitive decline faster and help older adults support their brain health as they age.”

In this study, 125 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 90 completed three different assessments. The first was a picture-naming game, in which they had to answer questions about pictures while ignoring distracting words they heard through headphones. For example, when looking at a picture of a mop, they might be asked, “Does it end in ‘p’?” while hearing the word “broom” as a distraction. In this way, the researchers were able to test the participants’ ability to recognize what the picture was and to recall its name.

Next, participants were recorded as they described two complex pictures for 60 seconds each. Their language performance was then analyzed using Artificial Intelligence-based software, in partnership with Winterlight Labs. Among other things, researchers examined how fast each participant spoke and how much they paused.

Finally, the research participants completed standard tests to assess mental abilities that tend to decline with age and are linked to dementia risk – namely, executive function, which is the ability to manage conflicting information, stay focused and avoid distractions.

As expected, many abilities declined with age, including word finding speed. Surprisingly, although the ability to recognize a picture and recall its name both worsened with age, this was not associated with a decline in other mental abilities. The number and length of pauses participants took to find words was not linked to brain health. Instead, how fast participants were able to name pictures predicted how fast they spoke in general, and both were linked to executive function. In other words, it wasn’t pausing to find words that showed the strongest link to brain health, but the speed of speech surrounding pauses.

Although many older adults are concerned about their need to pause to search for words, these results suggest this is a normal part of aging. On the other hand, slowing down of normal speech, regardless of pausing, may be a more important indicator of changes to brain health.

In future studies, the research team could conduct the same tests with a group of participants over several years, to examine whether speed speech is truly predictive of brain health for individuals as they age. In turn, these results could support the development of tools to detect cognitive decline as early as possible, allowing clinicians to prescribe interventions to help patients maintain or even improve their brain health as they age.

This research was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), an Internship Grant from the Mitacs Accelerate Program and a Connaught Innovation Award.

About Baycrest
Baycrest is a global leader in aging and brain health with a vision of a world where, with your help, we can all Fear No AgeTM.  Baycrest provides everyone the tools they need to make their later years the best years of their lives. Through our work in research, innovation, care and education, we are working to defeat dementia and create a world where every older adult enjoys a life of purpose, inspiration and fulfilment. For more information about Baycrest, visit baycrest.org.
 
About Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute
The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest is a preeminent international centre for the study of aging and human brain function. Through generous support from private donors and funding agencies, the RRI advances our understanding of human brain structure and function in critical areas of clinical, cognitive, and computational neuroscience, including perception, memory, language, attention and decision making. With a primary focus on aging and brain health, including Alzheimer’s and related dementias, research at the RRI and across the Baycrest campus promotes effective care and improved quality of life for older adults through research into age- and disease-related behavioural and neural changes.

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Media Contact
Natasha Nacevski-Laird
NNacevskiLaird@baycrest.org
Media Relations Specialist, Corporate Marketing and Communications
T 416-785-2500, ext. 5011 | C 647-684-6036

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JOURNAL

Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition

DOI

10.1080/13825585.2024.2315774 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Cognitive components of aging-related increase in word-finding difficulty

 

Tattoo inks don’t match the ingredients listed on the bottle

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

 

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NEW RESEARCH FROM BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK REVEALS THAT THE CHEMICALS LISTED ON TATTOO INK LABELS OFTEN DON'T MATCH WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN THE BOTTLE.

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CREDIT: "MY ROSE TATTOO - ALL BRUISED!" BY OHSARAHROSE IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 2.0.

When you get a tattoo, do you know what you’re putting under your skin? According to new Binghamton University research, the ingredient labels on tattoo ink don’t match the actual substances in the bottle.

Produced by the lab of Binghamton Univerity Assistant Professor of Chemistry John Swierk, “What’s in my ink: An analysis of commercial tattoo ink on the U.S. market” was recently published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Swierk’s lab explores the potential impact of light on tattoos and their chemical breakdown. Early on, doctoral student Kelli Moseman — the article’s lead author, along with Ahshabibi Ahmed and Alexander Ruhren — noticed that the tattoo inks they were researching contained substances that weren’t on the label. Were they breakdown products from the interaction with light or something in the ink from the start? What’s actually in a bottle of tattoo ink?

The researchers analyzed tattoo inks from nine manufacturers in the United States and compared their actual contents with the label. The manufacturers ran the gamut from major, global companies to smaller producers; the inks in question came in six colors.

Of the 54 inks, 45 of them — 90% — had major discrepancies with the labeled contents, such as different pigments than the ones listed or unlisted additives.

More than half contained unlisted polyethylene glycol, which can cause organ damage through repeated exposure, while 15 contained propylene glycol, a potential allergen. Other contaminates included an antibiotic commonly used to treat urinary tract infections and 2-phenoxyethanol, which poses potential health risks to nursing infants.

Their research cannot identify whether unlisted ingredients were added intentionally or if the manufacturer was provided with incorrectly labeled or contaminated materials.

“We’re hoping the manufacturers take this as an opportunity to reevaluate their processes, and that artists and clients take this as an opportunity to push for better labeling and manufacturing,” Swierk said.

Swierk noted that the research on the safety implications of tattoos is still out. Allergic reactions are the most common negative outcome, and they can be persistent, painful and even disfiguring, he said. Red pigments are a particular problem, although science hasn’t yet determined why.

Regulatory concerns

Potential risks associated with tattooing usually focus on skin cancer and the pigments themselves, but additives can also cause risks — including some beyond the skin. If a client begins to develop issues related to the tattoo weeks or even years later, unlisted ingredients can make it difficult to figure out what reaction is happening and why.

Regulation of tattoo inks on the American market is very recent. At the end of 2022, Congress passed the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), which allowed the federal Food and Drug Administration to regulate tattoo inks for the first time, including accurate labeling practices; prior to that, tattoo inks were considered cosmetic in nature and not subject to regulation.

“The FDA is still figuring out what that is going to look like and we think this study will influence the discussions around MoCRA,” Swierk said. “This is also the first study to explicitly look at inks sold in the United States and is probably the most comprehensive because it looks at the pigments, which nominally stay in the skin, and the carrier package, which is what the pigment is suspended in.

Their study focused only on substances at 2,000 parts per million (ppm) or more, considered high concentrations. European regulations, however, consider substances in the 2 ppm range. In other words, there could be even more substances in the inks than the ones the lab found.

The tattoo inks available in the American and European markets differ because the latter is subject to stricter regulations, overseen by the European Chemicals Agency.

In the future, the lab will investigate pigments banned in Europe and see if those components are present in tattoo inks sold there, Moseman said. She is currently working on a study focused on blue and green inks sold in Europe, which have been particularly affected by chemical regulations.

“Our goal in a lot of this research is to empower artists and their clients. Tattoo artists are serious professionals who have dedicated their lives to this craft and they want the best possible outcomes for their clients,” Swierk said. “We’re trying to highlight that there are some deficiencies in manufacturing and labeling.”

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JOURNAL

Analytical Chemistry

DOI

10.1021/acs.analchem.3c05687 

ARTICLE TITLE

What’s in My Ink: An Analysis of Commercial Tattoo Ink on the US Market

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Feb-2024

 

Fighting the flu: The surprising power of a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

As Canada’s flu season collides with record strep A cases and ongoing COVID-19 concerns, a new study is shedding light on our understanding of respiratory immune responses. Scholars from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have discovered a surprising facet about a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis, Bacillus Calmette Guérin (BCG). The study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that extends the vaccine’s shield to combat influenza A virus—the most prevalent flu strain.

“The immune interactions involved here can ‘train’ the lungs, which are frequently exposed to infectious agents in the environment. If we can map out the protective immune pathways involved in the lungs, this will revolutionize our conceptual and clinical approaches in developing vaccines against infections, including emergent respiratory viruses,” explains lead author Maziar Divangahi, a pulmonary immunologist, a senior scientist at the RI-MUHC, and a Professor of Medicine at McGill University. The discovery paves the way for future studies to assess whether BCG could be used to prevent other emergent viruses. Notably, research on the vaccine’s protection against COVID-19 has had promising results.

About the study

“BCG immunization induces CX3CR1hi effector memory T cells to provide cross-protection via IFN-γ-mediated trained immunity” by Kim Tran et al. was published in Nature Immunology.

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JOURNAL

Nature Immunology

DOI

10.1038/s41590-023-01739-z 

ARTICLE TITLE

BCG immunization induces CX3CR1hi effector memory T cells to provide cross-protection via IFN-γ-mediated trained immunity

 

Can hunger be eradicated by 2030?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

World hunger is growing at an alarming rate, with prolonged conflicts, climate change, and COVID-19 exacerbating the problem. In 2022, the World Food Programme helped a record 158 million people. On this trajectory, the United Nations’ goal to eradicate hunger by 2030 appears increasingly unattainable. New research at McGill University shines the spotlight on a significant piece of the puzzle: international food assistance.

With no global treaty in place, food aid is guided by a patchwork of international agreements and institutions. Using the concept of a “regime complex,” a study published in the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy examines those rules and the systems that shape them. Rather than create a new entity to solve the problem, the findings point to paradigm shift in the existing systems. Rethinking the dominant discourse among institutions is crucial to work towards zero hunger, posits author Clarisse Delaville, a second-year doctoral student at McGill’s Faculty of Law. 

“There are two main regimes that govern global food assistance—the trade regime and the food security regime. I encourage a stronger commitment from both regimes to implement a human-rights based approach, in order to question the prominent discourse on food trade regimes, which paints food assistance as a distortion in trade that ought to be minimized,” says Delaville.

About the study

“A regime complex for food assistance: international law regulating international food assistance” by Clarisse Delaville was published in the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy.

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JOURNAL

Journal of International Trade Law and Policy

DOI

10.1108/JITLP-06-2023-0032 

ARTICLE TITLE

A regime complex for food assistance: international law regulating international food assistance

 

The Enablers of Trump’s Rise to Power

by Clement Kleinstreuer / February 24th, 2024

Presently it is very likely that Donald Trump will be the nominee of the Republican Party. Joe Biden will represent the Democrats as the DNC had refused to groom over the last four years or so a much more appealing candidate. This blunder is just one in a series of even more significant failures of past democratic presidents and their powerful associates to avoid the rise of Mr. Trump and his cultish appointees.

While it is very easy, based on documents, to declare Mr. Trump to be a neo-fascist and/or a criminal, historical events indicate that the Democratic Party failed over the last five decades to protect and support, and then expand, the middle class. DP presidents accomplished occasionally some improvements that benefitted workers; however, only token changes were attempted in key areas. Overall, the goals were and are to look good in the public eye without upsetting the elites in the economic and financial sectors.

As a result, large blocks of blue-collar white workers and disenfranchised low-income employees were and are voting for Mr. Trump. Quite surprisingly, Mr. Trump managed to attract evangelists and college-educated conservatives as well.

How did such abysmal changes happen? One has to recall the Lewis Powell Memo of 1971 that had triggered a major shift by large corporations from producing affordable and useful goods towards policies of excessive market control and profit maximization. The other major change was the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 legalizing political bribery. Effectively right-wing billionaires could block anything most Americans wanted to see implemented, eg, basic health care, public education, living wages, job security, and affordable housing. Clearly, enormous money accumulation begets power which yields influence. Practically, the new money-power-influence (MPI) class became very active in banishing unions, buying off politicians and judges, manipulating the media, and using their endowments to direct policies at think tanks and universities. New laws and policies were introduced with the assistance of lobbyists to achieve deregulation and major tax cuts. Audit firms failed to prevent every major financial crisis of the last 40 years and the IRS was underfunded to avert collecting huge revenues from the very rich. Other money-generators were private equity firms and hedge funds. Under the disguise of improving ailing companies, they acquired such companies and managed to accumulate real wealth for a few by dismissing workers, cutting services, and reducing product quality. The new era of neo-economics had descended.

A wide public acceptance of the new MPI class and their actions was attained via propaganda emanating from think tanks and manipulated media. Instead of fighting the new class of MPIs and the drawbacks of globalization and neo-capitalism, top Democrats embraced the rich and famous to be part of the elite, to attract donations, and to collect kudos. As a result, the establishment of the Democratic Party stopped serving the common good, leaving room for investment firms and companies to privatize key sections of the public domain for profit, ranging from military weapons production/distribution, health care, the housing market, the prison system, and education. In order to gain high monetary returns from such privatized entities, the work force had to be reduced, services cut, and enrollments increased. New corporate-favored laws and deregulations as well as immunity of large corporations in case of their meltdowns solidified the new developments.

For example, the military-industrial-congressional complex, under the umbrella of “national security” is annually close to a one-trillion-dollar enterprise. Such amazing multi-departmental expenditures are justified by propagating fear of foreign aggressions and the necessity to maintain or regain the global Number One status in all economic, military and public categories. As a result, major arms contractors greatly influence foreign policies; constantly pushing for wars and conflicts. Expenditures for the broader health care system comes in second for two main reasons. The obvious one is the refusal to introduce universal health care. The second one is the lack of payback to the public from pharmaceutical (and high-tech) companies which sell costly drugs (and devices) that were initially invented and developed with taxpayers money at universities and departments of the U.S. government. At the end, taxpayers and consumers foot the bills generated by those who game the system and hence contribute to the wacky income inequality between CEO and the average of wages workers of their company.

So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that those suffering from economic hardships and miserable working conditions voted in 2016 for an entertaining celebrity who had promised to return the country back to greater times. While President Trump’s four years in office proved that he is a con-artist when dealing with domestic issues and an embarrassment on the international stage, he still has a chance to beat Biden this November. Why? Because none of the fundamental goals of the working class, eg, universal health care, affordable housing, free education, living wages and job security, have been addressed  —  let alone reached.

And why are college-educated conservatives potential voters for Mr. Trump? They feel that the Democrats are mishandling cultural issues, foreign affairs, and immigration. They still worry about an ever-increasing national debt and possible taxation of the wealthy. In order to justify the support of a dubious character like Mr. Trump, they have to dismiss all criminal charges as being unfair or not worse than misdeeds of predecessors. And those evangelists who support Mr. Trump? They should take time out and reread Christian scripture on what is right and what is wrong.

Will there be by November 2024 an alert and knowledgeable citizenry who will save us from new disasters?

Clement Kleinstreuer is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. Read other articles by Clement.

 

Defund UN and Give Cash to Israel – US Lawmaker

Republican congressman Matt Gaetz has called for requiring budget cuts to offset assistance to any overseas ally

by RT / February 24th, 2024

US Representative Matt Gaetz speaks at the CPAC conference on Friday in suburban Washington. ©  Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

US Representative Matt Gaetz has called for withdrawing from the UN and cutting off funding to the global body to free up money to support Israel’s war effort against Hamas.

Speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event on Friday in suburban Washington, the Florida Republican demanded that Washington account for all new spending on foreign aid by making equivalent cuts to the federal budget. Gaetz made his comments as US President Joe Biden’s administration continued to scold Republican lawmakers for failing to approve an emergency spending bill that includes about $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

“We shouldn’t have any foreign aid to any other country without corresponding cuts to our own bloated federal budget,” the congressman told a cheering CPAC crowd. “If you want to send aid to Israel, fine, pay for it by defunding the United Nations.”

I want the UN to be zeroed out in our budget. The US should be out of the UN, and the UN should be out of the US.”

Gaetz and other conservative lawmakers have balked at approving additional support for Kiev, saying Biden is merely prolonging Ukraine’s conflict with Russia while providing no plan for ending the bloodshed. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a $14.3 billion aid bill for Israel in November, but Biden has insisted that assistance to West Jerusalem be bundled with military funding for Ukraine and Taiwan.

The White House admitted last month that it had run out of money for Kiev after burning through $113 billion in previously approved funding. Biden has claimed that Republicans are blocking aid to Ukraine at the behest of Donald Trump, his likely opponent in this year’s presidential election. He told supporters this week that GOP politicians are worse than the racist segregationists he worked with decades ago in the Senate. “These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles.”

Gaetz said Washington’s previously approved Ukraine aid packages are now “slushing around the money-laundering capitals of the world.” He noted that amid Western outrage over the death earlier this month of Russian activist Alexey Navalny in a Siberian penal colony, the media should be reminded that American journalist Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison.

The congressman added that wealthy European allies have relied on Washington to fund their defense. “What’s really left unsaid in this Ukraine aid debate is that Europe’s fecklessness is a direct result of them becoming national security welfare queens, largely at your expense.”

Quitting the UN would be a logical way to free up funds for Israel, Gaetz argued. “How about take the money away from the entity that had some of their own people attacking and killing Israelis?” he asked. “It seems like a good offset.”

The RT network now consists of three global news channels broadcasting in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Read other articles by RT, or visit RT's website.

Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour

1 day ago
By Jasmin Fox-Skelly

Features correspondent

Several members of the ape family have been observed playing tricks on each other, behaviour which hints at a sense of humour (Pic: Getty Images)

We think of humour as a distinctly human emotion, but some animals may also use it to strengthen their bonds.

When you think about what sets our species apart from other animals, a good sense of humour probably features fairly high up on the list.

We love to laugh – so much so, that an appreciation of comedy seems almost ingrained into our species. Babies as young as three months old giggle and find it hilarious when their parents pull funny faces. By eight months, infants have learned how to use their own faces, bodies and voices to make grown-ups laugh. Soon after, parents may notice that their child has turned into a full-time comedian, deliberately playing with things they know they shouldn't with a cheeky grin on their face.

However, a new study shows that humans may not be alone in their love of playing practical jokes. Animals can tease each other too. Together with colleagues, Isabelle Laumer, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), watched over 75 hours of videos of great apes interacting with each other. Great apes are our closest living relatives, and include orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas. The apes in the study all lived in zoos, and were filmed attending to their daily routines.

Members of all four species were observed teasing one another. The researchers identified 18 distinct teasing behaviours, with the top five including poking, hitting, hindering the movement of a fellow ape, body slamming, and pulling on a body part. Some apes repeatedly waved body parts or objects in front of their fellow apes' faces, or, in the case of orangutans, pulled each other's hair.

Dogs can be encouraged to play by approaching with a loping gait and then suddenly running away (Credit: Getty Images)

"What we saw often was that a juvenile would sneak up behind an adult that was busy grooming another ape, and proceed to poke them or hit them on the back, sometimes even surprising them," says Laumer, first author of the study.

"They'd then wait and watch for the adult's response. Usually, the target would just ignore them, and so they'd persist in their teasing, making the behaviour more and more elaborate and difficult to ignore, until they sometimes ended up slamming the adult with their entire body."

The teasing behaviour was similar to that adopted by young human children, according to the researchers, in that it was intentional, provocative, persistent and included elements of surprise, play and checking for the recipient’s response. The human equivalent might be sticking your tongue out at someone and then running away to gauge their reaction.

Many scientists believe that humour is far more widespread amongst the animal kingdom

This style of teasing could even form the foundation for more complicated forms of humour. "Joking in humans requires quite complex cognitive abilities," says Laumer. "You need theory of mind (the ability to imagine the world from someone else's perspective), knowledge of social norms, the ability to anticipate others' responses and to appreciate the violation of other's expectations," she says.

As all four great ape species are capable of playful teasing, it suggests that a sense of humour may have been present in our last common ancestor, who lived 13 million years ago.

However, many scientists believe that humour is far more widespread amongst the animal kingdom than this. For example, in his book The Descent of Man, biologist Charles Darwin suggests that dogs may have a sense of humour, writing:

"If a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke."

Wolves and other species related dogs also seem to share some of the traits related to play 

(Credit: Getty Images)


Anyone who owns a dog may have also noticed that during play, they produce a sort of breathy snorting sound that almost sounds like laughter. In a 2005 study, animal behaviourist Patricia Simonet played the sound to dogs at a rescue shelter. She found that listening to dog "laughter" made the shelter dogs less stressed out.

Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says he has collected decades worth of data showing dogs engage in teasing behaviour similar to that shown by Laumer and her colleagues.

For example, when trying to get an otherwise reluctant dog to play, one dog may approach another with a loose gambolling gait before running away.

"I've seen this in dogs, foxes, wild coyotes and wild wolves," says Bekoff.

In fact, Bekoff says that during his career he has heard stories about many species who act like stand-up comedians and jokesters, including horses, Asian black bears and the scarlet macaw.

There's even evidence that rats enjoy a good laugh

Meanwhile, other researchers have noted that dolphins appear to produce sounds of joy while they are play-fighting, and elephants trumpet in excitement when playing. Some parrots have been known to tease other animals for fun, for example by whistling at and confusing the family dog.

There's even evidence that rats enjoy a good laugh. For the last decade or so, Jeffrey Burgdorf, research associate professor at Northwestern University in the US, has been tickling rats for a living. When the rats are tickled, they squeak joyfully in a high-pitched noise similar to a giggle. They come back again and again for more, and can even be taught to play hide and seek for a "tickling reward", according to work done by a separate group at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Now Burgdorf and his team are using their findings to inform treatments for depression.

"What we've been learning is that the animals are most attentive when they are making these vocalisations," says Burgdorf.

Rats have been observed emitting a high-pitch "giggle" when tickled 

(Credit: Getty Images)

"My supervisor [neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp] would always say play is the fertiliser for the brain, and it's true. Their brains are connecting. They're making new synapses and new neural connections. And so I think that tells us that when we're in those playful humorous moods, we're actually performing at our best and we are being our best selves," says Burgdorf.

However, while rats clearly love being tickled, is their high-pitched giggle really evidence that they have a sense of humour? Most of the evidence for animals having a sense of humour is predominantly anecdotal, as few large-scale studies have been conducted. It's also difficult to know why an animal engages in a certain behaviour. Are the apes in Laumer's study simply playing a practical joke, or are they trying to defuse tension, initiate play, or even just get attention?
What better way to make friends, after all, than to share a good joke?

"Do I think that animals have a sense of humour? Yes, I think they do, but it's difficult to prove," admits Bekoff.

"For example, I've come across households with two dogs, where at feeding time one dog runs to the front door and barks. The other dog then runs to see who's there, while the first dog runs back and eats their food. So, you could say that's showing a sense of humour, but the first dog may have just learned that that's how they get more food," says Bekoff.

There's also the question of what evolutionary purpose humour could serve in animals. In humans, it's thought that laughter evolved as a way of help individuals bond. What better way to make friends, after all, than to share a good joke?

Is it possible that humour serves the same role in animals?

"In humans, humour can serve as like an ice-breaker, removing social barriers and strengthening relationships," says Laumer. "We don't know if it's the same in apes or other animals, but it's possible. To know for sure we would need to test and observe more groups of primates and other species," she says.

No Union Democracy, No Union Revitalization


Union democracy shouldn’t be seen as an abstract good separate from more important strategic considerations about rebuilding labor. Without democratizing labor, we can’t rebuild labor.

United Auto Workers members attend a rally on October 7, 2023, 

in Chicago, Illinois.

 (Jim Vondruska / Getty Images)

Chris Bohner 

JACOBIN

26/02/2024


Are labor unions democratic, and does it even matter? The recent transformation of the United Auto Workers (UAW), led by newly elected president Shawn Fain and the rank-and-file caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy, has provoked new debates about the governance of American unions.

For over seventy years, the UAW was under the complete control of just one party, the Administration Caucus. It wasn’t until the UAW settled a wide-ranging criminal complaint with the Department of Justice in 2020 that union members obtained the right to directly elect the top officers of their union (approved in a referendum supported by 64 percent of the membership). UAW members promptly threw out the Administration Caucus, engaged in a victorious strike against the Big Three automakers, and launched one of the most ambitious organizing campaigns in recent history.

Is it just a coincidence, or is there any link between the UAW’s democratic reforms and the more militant direction of the union? And if there is such a link, does it have any lessons for the broader labor movement? In a recent Jacobin article, I discussed some flaws in the state of contemporary union democracy, contending that the direct election of top union leaders is an important reform that could help reinvigorate the labor movement. Dave Kamper wrote a reply defending the current state of union democracy, saying that while he of course values democracy within the labor movement, “democracy is a value, not a strategy” and won’t necessarily lead to more militant unions.

There have been some significant victories for unions in recent years, but the percentage of workers who are unionized is still declining, and labor is not organizing at a rate that will reverse this trend. There are many external causes for the decline, but one internal factor is a failure of union leadership and a breakdown of democratic governance — “one member, one vote” is a worthy reform that could help address this failure.

“The Electoral College on Steroids”

In starting to answer the question of whether unions are democratic, let’s review the two predominant election models for electing top officers — positions typically vested with significant power to set a union’s direction. A handful of unions have direct elections (or “one member, one vote”), while most elect delegates to a convention at the local level through a membership vote, who then nominate and elect the top officers. The delegate system looks democratic, but the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), two of the largest private sector unions, provide examples of how the delegate system can work in practice.

Like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters before they were taken over by the Department of Justice in 1989, the UFCW and SEIU make liberal use of ex officio delegates: elected local officers who automatically became delegates without a membership vote. This is similar to the “superdelegate” system used by the Democratic Party that was famously deployed by party insiders to blunt the momentum of Bernie Sanders’s insurgent presidential candidacy.

Kamper argues the “delegates of [the UFCW] convention were all directly elected by members in secret-ballot elections.” However, according to the UFCW Constitution, top local union officers are automatically delegates to a convention by virtue of their office “without separate nomination and election as a delegate,” even if they were elected to office up to three years before the convention.

As one UFCW member remarked, the system is “like the Electoral College system on steroids.” Indeed, the UFCW delegate system is analogous to voting for candidates to the Electoral College before knowing the Democratic or Republican nominees for president.

Because of superdelegates and other features of the UFCW constitution, the UFCW reform group Essential Workers for Democracy estimates that up to 60 percent of the delegates to the 2023 convention were officers or staff. This built-in incumbent bias is a central reason why the top leadership “elections” at the UFCW resemble a dynastic form of succession. Over the last thirty years, there have been only three UFCW International Presidents, none of whom faced competitive or contested elections.The UFCW delegate system is analogous to voting for candidates to the Electoral College before knowing the Democratic or Republican nominees for president.

The lack of leadership challenges occurred as the union lost over 200,000 members, saw a steep drop in union density in its core industry (supermarkets), and negotiated a union contract at Kroger — one of the UFCW’s largest employers — that leaves one out of five workers on food stamps and other social assistance. Kamper argues reformers aren’t doing the hard organizing work to challenge UFCW leadership, but the structural obstacles to democratic participation are a better explanation.

UFCW isn’t the only large union using a superdelegate system to control union conventions. SEIU has an upcoming convention in 2024 to replace Mary Kay Henry, the retiring president of the union. Under the SEIU constitution, not only are the top officers of locals automatically delegates to the convention (even if elected up to three years ago), but the entire slate of local officers are automatically delegates. For example, SEIU’s largest local — 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers, representing some 450,000 members — is apportioned two hundred delegates for the 2024 convention, but seventy-nine of the delegates, or 40 percent, are superdelegates.

The superdelegate system is just one undemocratic feature of union governance, but there are many other formal and practical obstacles impeding worker participation, open debate, and competitive leadership elections. Kamper doesn’t address these obstacles, but surely union members voting for superdelegates years before a convention — without any knowledge of the competing convention candidates or resolutions — aren’t meaningfully participating in a democratic process.

“Morbid Symptoms of Democracy’s Opposite”

It is true that “democracy can and does have a different look in different unions,” and some delegate systems can be substantively democratic. One example is the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), while Kamper offers the National Education Association’s (NEA) annual Representative Assembly (RA). Still, he provides no data on how many NEA delegate elections are contested or the degree of member participation — all critical indicators of a robust democratic culture. Incidentally, Becky Pringle won the top office at the last RA with 93 percent of the delegate vote.

Is it a “disservice” to the labor movement, as Kamper warns, to ask the “question of how leaders are chosen”? Kamper, who has written insightfully on labor, didn’t think so when promoting Sara Nelson (the president of the Association of Flight Attendants) as the next president of the AFL-CIO. Arguing that Nelson’s election would be an “enormous boon” to “building a more democratic, militant, progressive US labor movement,” Kamper criticized the fact that “the overwhelming majority of the people . . . will have no effective say in how delegates are selected.”

Although the AFL-CIO president has very limited powers, the leaders of national unions have considerable constitutional muscle to drive the strategic direction of a union. Top officers typically control the finances of the national union, set the strategic direction of organizing and contract fights, establish and limit local jurisdictions, and impose trusteeships on rebellious locals. In the case of the UFCW, a small committee led by the international president can prohibit local unions from voting on contracts, deny strike benefits for unsanctioned strikes, and override strike votes.

Given the powers of top officers, the question of how leaders are chosen is essential. Jonah Furman’s Jacobin article “How Democratic Are American Unions?” suggested that one metric to measure whether unions are democratic is to look at union leadership: “Do incumbents ever lose their positions to a challenger? Are there (meaningful) challengers? Obviously, leadership challenges aren’t the source of ‘democracy,’ but the lack of such challenges . . . could very well be morbid symptoms of democracy’s opposite.”

In my article, I presented data on the election of top officers at the largest unions. Four of the six large unions with “one member, one vote” had competitive or contested elections for the top spot at the last convention. In contrast, for the fourteen unions without direct elections representing 10.6 million members, only three had competitive elections at the previous convention, and not one incumbent lost.

Kamper doesn’t address this data because he argues there is no strategic value to democracy. However, one of the primary arguments for democracy is that contested leadership elections with open debate lead to better long-term decision making than autocratic systems. That’s why “one member, one vote” is valuable as a reform — it isn’t a “silver bullet,” but it is an important pressure valve that members can use when local democracy is not working effectively.Of course, union democracy doesn’t ‘automatically’ lead to more militant or effective unions, but it is a crucial ingredient.

In this regard, Kamper ignores the importance of “one member, one vote” in revitalizing the UAW and, conversely, the strong link between delegate systems and the rampant corruption that necessitated the federal takeover of several large unions. Instead, Kamper focuses on the Teamsters, pointing out that direct elections did not “automatically” lead to a militant union under James Hoffa Jr, the former general president.

This is true, but every presidential election at the Teamsters since 1991 was competitive, a rarity in many delegate systems. Meaningful elections are important organizing vehicles for members to openly debate union strategy, helping sustain the relevance of reform movements like Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

When Hoffa Jr imposed the UPS contract in 2018 against a majority of workers voting no, “one member, one vote” gave Teamster members a direct avenue to throw out his successor and elect new leadership. It is highly doubtful that this would have happened under a less responsive delegate system.

Oligarchy vs. Democracy in the Labor Movement

Kamper doesn’t look very deeply into the actual practice of democracy in today’s unions because, surprisingly, as much as he values union democracy abstractly, he sees little strategic value in democracy as a path to labor’s revitalization. This is not an uncommon view, as some labor theorists have long argued that oligarchy and elite rule are necessary for labor unions to effectively fight the vastly disproportionate power of capitalists.

But this view may be surprising to contemporary reform movements seeking to change their unions or the many rank-and-file activists profiled in Herman Benson’s classic book on union democracy: Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers: How Insurgents Transformed the Labor Movement. As Benson documents, union reformers fought for democracy at great personal cost, frequently subject to retaliation by employers and union leaders and, in some cases, violence and murder. These members weren’t motivated by some abstract moral value of democracy. They saw democracy as a strategy to transform unions that were failing to effectively represent workers in their fight against employers.

Of course, union democracy doesn’t “automatically” lead to more militant or effective unions, but it is a crucial ingredient. Kamper claims there hasn’t been a “systematic effort to study” the relationship, but he overlooks some essential academic scholarship. Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin’s book Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions exhaustively probes the relationship between union democracy and mass organizing in the 1930s and 1940s by the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO).

Citing a 1948 study of union democracy, Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin point out that most unions at the time — especially the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions — were “not even nominally democratic.” But when they looked more closely at the CIO unions (many of whom had the opportunity to write their constitutions from scratch), Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin found that “seven out of ten CIO international unions, as of that same year [1948], were democratic: either highly (29 percent) or moderately (40 percent); only three out of ten (31 percent) were ruled by an autocrat.”

Moreover, Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin “found that the contracts won by the locals of stable highly democratic international unions were systematically more likely to be prolabor on a set of critical provisions (management prerogatives, the right to strike, and the grievance procedure) than those won by locals of stable moderately democratic and stable oligarchical internationals.” The findings of Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin are consistent with a large body of theory that argues democracy is a more effective governance system than autocratic forms of organization.

The labor movement has rightly condemned the undemocratic features of our political system, calling for the elimination of the filibuster and the expansion of voting rights to create a government more responsive to the working class. But why shouldn’t the same standards apply to union members seeking to participate in the governance of their union?

“One member, one vote” is no silver bullet, but as Mike Parker and Martha Gruelle argued in their classic book Democracy Is Power, “the demand for direct elections can be an important tool in a movement for reform, although not a substitute for a movement.”

CONTRIBUTORS
Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.