Importing Research Based Anti-Bullying Program

University of Kansas

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Kansas plan to bring a highly successful anti-bullying effort, the KiVa program, to American schools. Starting as early as the 2012-13 school year, a pilot program could kick off in selected classrooms in Lawrence, Kan. If shown to be successful there, soon afterward the model could expand nationally.

KiVa, implemented in Finland in 2007, has impressed researchers with its proven reduction in bullying incidents. According to one recent study, KiVa "halved the risk of bullying others and of being victimized in one school year."

"Any time you see an intervention reported in the literature, if they work, they barely work," said Todd Little, KU professor of psychology and director of the Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis. "This is one of the first interventions we're seeing with effects that are impressive and pervasive. We here at KU are going to be the sole source for testing KiVa in the U.S."

The program takes a holistic approach to the bullying problem, including a rigorous classroom curriculum, videos, posters, a computer game and role-play exercises that are designed to make schools inhospitable to bullying. When bullying episodes do occur within the school, a small team of trained employees addresses the incident individually with the victim and bully or bullies to ensure bullying is ultimately stopped.

"The KiVa program targets the peer environment, trying to create an ecology where bullying is no longer tolerated," said Anne Williford, assistant professor of social welfare at KU. "Instead of targeting only a bully and victim for intervention, it targets the whole class, including kids who are uninvolved in bullying behavior. KiVa fosters skills to help students take actions, either large or small, to shift the peer ecology toward one that does not support bullying."

The researchers said the program works because it recognizes that bullies sometimes may earn higher social status from their behavior.

"People have traditionally framed bullying as social incompetence, thinking that bullies have low self-esteem or impulse problems," said Patricia Hawley, KU associate professor of developmental psychology. "But recent research shows that bullying perpetrators can be socially competent and can win esteem from their peers."

By changing perceptions of peers who are neither bullies nor victims, the program undercuts a social environment that supports bullying.

"It changes the rewards structure," Hawley said. "At the end of the day, the goals of the bully are like yours and mine — they want friendship and status. They have human goals, not pathological ones. With KiVa, bystanders are set up to win by intervening, and their status can go up. As a bystander, I can achieve goals of friendship and status by standing up to a bully."

In Lawrence schools, the KU researchers hope to compare instances of bullying and victimization in both intervention and control groups to establish the strength of the KiVa program in a U.S. setting.

School district officials welcomed the opportunity.

"We're pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Williford and KU's School of Social Welfare on the KiVa anti-bullying project," said Kim Bodensteiner, Lawrence USD 497's chief academic officer. "Given our experiences using other bullying prevention programs, Lawrence Public Schools' teachers and staff can provide valuable feedback to researchers during the development of KiVa program materials. We look forward to the possibility of participating in a future pilot study."

Results from the pilot program are to be measured by KU's Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis.

Is the Singularity Near? Chips that Behave Like Brains

By Jordan Robertson
AP Technology Writer

Computers, like humans, can learn. But when Google tries to fill in your search box based only on a few keystrokes, or your iPhone predicts words as you type a text message, it's only a narrow mimicry of what the human brain is capable.

The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they've made a key step toward combining the two worlds.

The company announced Thursday that it has built two prototype chips that it says process data more like how humans digest information than the chips that now power PCs and supercomputers.

The chips represent a significant milestone in a six-year-long project that has involved 100 researchers and some $41 million in funding from the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. IBM has also committed an undisclosed amount of money.

The prototypes offer further evidence of the growing importance of "parallel processing," or computers doing multiple tasks simultaneously. That is important for rendering graphics and crunching large amounts of data.

The uses of the IBM chips so far are prosaic, such as steering a simulated car through a maze, or playing Pong. It may be a decade or longer before the chips make their way out of the lab and into actual products.

But what's important is not what the chips are doing, but how they're doing it, says Giulio Tononi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who worked with IBM on the project.

The chips' ability to adapt to types of information that it wasn't specifically programmed to expect is a key feature.

Read the rest of the story here.

Repercussions of a Patient’s Suicide

by Robert M. Gordon, PhD, ABPP

The Pennsylvania Psychologist

Dr. Gordon

Psychologists approach their voice-mail messages knowing the full range of human drama might come pouring forth. Entering my 35th year of practice, I was a bit weary of hearing them. Freud warned us never to expect appreciation, no matter how hard one works, from the three impossible professions: parenting, governing, being a psychotherapist. I was not expecting to hear gratitude.

The first message was from five attorneys who were having drinks when they discovered they all had been in treatment with me. On the message, they joked that they were debating over who needed a tune-up. Their appreciation felt good. I will always remember that first message and the one that followed.

The second message began, “Dr. Gordon. You do not know me, but Calvin always spoke highly of you. …”

How nice, I thought, Calvin is referring his friend. Calvin was 45 when he first came to me after the death of his widowed mother about 10 years ago. He was an only child. Calvin was friendly, but very shy. He occasionally dated but never married – except, perhaps, his profession: He was brilliant, a scientist devoted to his work. Calvin had lifelong obsessive-compulsive disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. Following the death of his mother, he had his first major depression. He was seeing a good therapist in his community and continued to see him for years. However, he had found my papers online and asked to see me for consultation. He hoped a psychodynamic approach might provide a more comprehensive perspective. As it turned out, the interpretations helped Calvin feel more deeply understood, which in turn deepened our therapeutic relationship.

Calvin traveled an hour and a half to see me, first weekly, then, after resolving his depression, about once a month for years. He had formed a strong attachment. Before leaving, he had the habit of shaking my hand three times, and saying three times, “Thank you.” One day, quite spontaneously as he left, he said, “I love you.” I said I loved him, too. Frankly, at first I said it to be gracious. But in time, I did feel love for Calvin.

I hadn’t seen him for quite a while, but last year Calvin was let go from his job. His work was his source of identity and reliable connection to this world. He fell into a severe depression. Medications were not working. His psychiatrist suggested hospitalization, but Calvin was terrified of it. He trusted my opinion and I told him it was now necessary. Eventually, only ECT brought him out of his psychotic depression. When I last saw Calvin a month before this call, he was better, but remained lost.

The voice continued, “When I hadn’t heard from Calvin for a few days, I went to his home. I found him in the kitchen. He had shot himself. …”

I felt an internal protest against his words. I heard someone crying and then realized my face was wet. My emotions had outraced my cognition. The tears flowed uncontrollably.

I called Calvin’s friend. I needed details to help process the unbelievable.

I went into professional autopilot for the rest of the day. That evening, as I told my wife, I cried again.

What made it awful was not just his death, but the horror that preceded it. I kept envisioning this gentle person who knew nothing of firearms, buying a powerful gun, writing out instructions so others would know what to do and be minimally inconvenienced. Then, all alone, feeling the most profound despair, squeezing the trigger. No good person should die that way.

Throughout more than 30 years, I had not lost a patient to suicide. To outsiders, I would tell of my skillful rescues. To fellow professionals, I confessed it was mainly luck. And now I was struggling not only with the first suicide of a patient, but the suicide of someone I cherished.

When part of a person wants to end suffering or punish someone from the grave, there is usually enough conflict to send out a verbal or nonverbal message that reads, “Please stop me.” However, when there is little conflict, a person just does it. I know we cannot control others. Nevertheless, I obsessively reviewed what I could have done.

In the weeks that followed, I would overreact to my patients’ suicidal thoughts. I went too soon to discussions of a safety contract, medication, interpersonal supports and even the possibility of hospitalization with clients who wished to die but who were not actively suicidal. For a period, my empathy was compromised by my anxiety. One patient said, “Relax. I am only sharing feelings. I would never kill myself.” If patients do not overtly tell us we are off-target, they may become more symptom-focused and banal in the narrative. They will re-enact how they shut down in the absence of empathy. Patients’ reactions provide immediate supervision to those open to hear it.

In time, my affects eased. However, they unconsciously surfaced as defenses. I would not take referrals if I thought the person was a potential suicide risk, such as someone suffering from borderline personality disorder or major depression. I considered reducing my hours. I shifted from mainly direct care to more diagnostic consultations and forensic work. These decisions were multi-determined, as are all rationalizations. But the fuel beneath was my fear of another suicide.

I found it helpful to share my feelings with close colleagues, but mostly with my wife, a psychoanalytic candidate and my best support. She knew how to listen with empathy, without resorting to psychological Band-Aids.

Then our Pennsylvania Psychologist editor, Dr. Andrea Nelken, wrote that she wanted to do a special issue on suicide in response to military and bullying deaths. She asked whether, if a client of mine had ever committed suicide, I would be willing to write about the experience.

She did not know I had lost my first patient to suicide just two months earlier. I did not want to do it. However, being a psychologist has taught me the value of honestly sharing our pain. Writing this has helped me to accept the reality of this tragedy, even while part of me waits for Calvin to shake my hand three times once again.

NY judge won't order Gitmo doc probe

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK – A judge has declined to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and should be stripped of his license, halting what civil-rights advocates have called the first court case amid a push to shed light on psychologists' role in terror suspects' interrogations.

The person who brought the case — another psychologist — doesn't have legal standing to do so, Manhattan Civil Court Judge Saliann Scarpulla said in a ruling filed Thursday.

Rights activists and some psychologists have pressed regulators in several states — unsuccessfully so far — to explore whether psychologists violated professional rules by designing or observing abusive interrogations.

In New York, rights advocates focused on John F. Leso, saying he developed "psychologically and physically abusive" interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The state Office of Professional Discipline, which oversees psychologists, declined last year to look into Leso. The agency said that his Army work is outside its purview and that the agency isn't in a position to address larger questions about the appropriateness of detainee interrogation methods.

The decision spurred the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, the New York Civil Liberties Union and psychologist Steven Reisner to sue the agency last fall and ask the judge to force a review of techniques developed by Leso, who holds a New York psychologists' license.

"The ruling is unfortunate, as Dr. Reisner's claims raise serious and fundamental questions that should have their day in court," Center for Justice and Accountability lawyer Kathy Roberts said in a statement.

She said the groups are considering an appeal but also keeping their eye on proposed state legislation that would require investigating any allegation that a health care professional has participated in torture or other improper treatment.

Representatives for the state professional discipline office and the state Attorney General's office didn't immediately return calls. No contact information was immediately available for Leso, who isn't named in the court case and never chose to weigh in with a filing of his own. An Army spokesman didn't immediately return a call about Leso.

The rest of the story can be read here.

Psychologist withdraws SJC appeal on license

BY: Colman M Herman and Bruce Mohl
CommonWealth

August 24, 2011

A female psychologist who had sex with a former patient is withdrawing her court appeal seeking the return of her license.

Brookline psychologist Mary O’Neill acknowledged having a sexual relationship with her patient, Eric MacLeish, just weeks after his therapy sessions ended. The standard punishment in such cases is permanent license revocation, but O’Neill filed an appeal with the state Supreme Judicial Court arguing that her license should be only temporarily suspended because her lapse in judgment was caused by the collapse of her own marriage.

The case was scheduled to be heard next month, but SJC Clerk Susan Mellen said O’Neill’s attorney told her he is withdrawing the appeal. Mellen said some paperwork must be completed before the withdrawal is official, but she says she has already told the SJC justices not to bother studying the case files. The Associated Press reported that O’Neill’s attorney  confirmed he was withdrawing the appeal, but gave no reason for the decision. The attorney could not be reached by CommonWealth.

The case was the focus of a lengthy article on CommonWealth’s website that dealt with the legal issues involved as well as O’Neill’s high-profile patient, MacLeish. MacLeish is an attorney who represented many of the clients who sued the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston alleging priests had sexually abused them. The case brought MacLeish national attention, but court records indicate it also scarred him emotionally and made him realize that he had been sexually abused as a child at the hands of a teacher at a boarding school in England and by a scoutmaster associated with the school.

In 2004, MacLeish turned to O’Neill for help. She diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and treated him for 10 sessions between August and September 2004. Shortly after those sessions ended, the two were sleeping together.

Linda Jorgenson, a Massachusetts attorney who has represented hundreds of people who have claimed their therapists abused them sexually, said she couldn’t understand why O'Neill would withdraw her appeal. "Her briefs have been filed. All that is left is for the oral argument to take place in September,” she said. “I don't see anything that she had to lose by waiting for the court to issue its ruling."

Thanks to Gary Schoener for the information.

The reader can find the earlier blog post here.

Should you blow the whistle?

What to do when you suspect your adviser or research supervisor of ethical misconduct.

By Cassandra Willyard

The Monitor on Psychology

After graduating with a master’s in counseling, “Jackie Frank” (not her real name) decided to get some research experience before applying to a PhD program. She took a position at a small medical center where a researcher had a grant to study post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse. As part of the job, Frank interviewed study volunteers to assess the severity of their condition — and that’s when she noticed something fishy was going on.

“Our supervisor framed leading questions and expected you to do that as well,” Frank says. The researchers, she believes, were trying to manipulate the study results “to make a bolder, statistically significant statement.”

Frank later noticed that some of data had been changed. “At that point, I knew we didn’t have the same ethical values,” she says.

Frank debated whether to “suck it up,” but ultimately decided to leave before her funding ran out. In her exit interview, she brought up her concerns and handed in a formal letter detailing her observations. Not long after, she heard that the lead researcher was under investigation for possible misconduct.

Nearly every graduate student faces ethical uncertainties, says Melissa Anderson, PhD, a professor of higher education at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who studies research integrity. But these quandaries become even more complicated when you suspect that your superior is involved in ethical misconduct.

“Graduate students, like all other researchers, are working at the frontier of knowledge,” she says. “And with every new thing, there’s the potential for new ethical complications.” The line between “cleaning up” and “cherry picking” data can be fuzzy, for example. And students may not be privy to all the nuances of a study’s protocol.

Even if ethical misconduct is clear, whistle-blowing may not always be the best option for you, says Michael Zigmond, PhD, a neurology professor at the University of Pittsburgh and associate director of an ethics workshop for graduate students. If you’re a fourth-year student and your adviser adds the head of the department to your paper even though he didn’t do any work, bringing it to the authorities’ attention may not be worth the potential damage to your career. On the other hand, if you’re working for a professor in another department and you witness sketchy research practices, quitting quietly and sharing your concerns in an exit interview — as Frank did — might be a good way to go.

Here’s some tried-and-true advice on how to navigate these and other ethical quagmires:

• Review the evidence. Avoid jumping to conclusions, Anderson says. You may not know the whole story. Reflect on your communications with the person you suspect of wrongdoing. What led you to suspect something isn’t quite right? Is there evidence to support what your gut is telling you?

If you don’t know what constitutes misconduct, consult your university’s guidelines or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity’s handbook on responsible conduct of research. Every university that receives federal research funding is obligated to adopt the federal definition of scientific misconduct — fabrication, falsification or plagiarism — and some institutions may have even stricter definitions.

Then write notes about any ethical violations you suspect, suggests Anderson. Be sure to jot down the details of every conversation: What was said, who was present, where it occurred, and the date and time. Save your emails, both the ones you send and the ones you receive. Keeping track of what you see can help you form a conclusion and provides invaluable documentation if you decide to report the situation. “Good recordkeeping throughout a research collaboration is important in any case,” she says. “But it becomes really important when something bad is going on.”

The rest of the story is here.

N.Y. Still Pursues Case Against Whistle-Blower

By Danny Hakim
The New York Times

The Cuomo administration is continuing to pursue a two-year-old disciplinary case against Jeffrey Monsour, a state employee at the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities who has been an outspoken critic of the agency’s management.

Mr. Monsour, 50, a direct-care worker, is accused of getting into an argument with a co-worker in front of a resident in 2009. The state is seeking a four-week suspension, a penalty that exceeds those imposed on many employees who committed acts of abuse or neglect against developmentally disabled people.

Mr. Monsour has long been a gadfly within the office, which runs more than 1,000 group homes and institutions. Over the years, he has filed many Freedom of Information requests examining its practices, annoying agency officials, and he sees the case being brought against him as their latest attempt at retribution.

The case highlights the agency’s haphazard approach to discipline.

Mr. Monsour was written about by The New York Times in March; that article told of a state worker who, while being investigated by the police in a case of sexual assault against a severely disabled resident, returned to his job without penalty, despite witness testimony and DNA evidence implicating the employee. That worker was eventually convicted of endangering an incompetent person, a charge stemming from the assault case, and was jailed. Another worker described in the article racked up multiple offenses, including twice punching residents in the face, before losing his job.

This year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo forced out the agency’s commissioner, installing Courtney Burke, a policy expert, in the position, and he has asked Clarence J. Sundram, a former regulator, to lead a broad review of the agency’s practices. Seeking to add predictability to the disciplinary system, the administration recently negotiated a plan with the Civil Service Employees Association to create a matrix of punishments for various offenses.

But it has continued to pursue the case against Mr. Monsour.

Last month, after prodding by The Times and Mr. Monsour’s lawyer, the administration took the unusual step of turning over nearly 200 pages of transcripts from Mr. Monsour’s arbitration proceedings, offering a rare window into a continuing disciplinary case involving a state employee.

The rest of the story can be found here.

California medical board fails to discipline 710 troubled doctors

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

California's medical board failed to discipline 710 troubled doctors even as they were disciplined by hospitals, surgical centers and other healthcare organizations in the state, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report by Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Public Citizen was based on an analysis of doctors' records in the National Practitioner Data Bank from 1990 to 2009. The Department of Health & Human Services uses the data bank to track doctors' discipline, medical malpractice payments and other actions. The data released to Public Citizen did not name the doctors or their workplaces.

Of the doctors who escaped state discipline in California, 35% had racked up more than one disciplinary action from another entity, according to the report.

"If the hospital or HMO has taken action, why hasn't the board?" asked Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's health research group. "That's something that as a physician or a patient I would be worried about. Hospitals rarely discipline doctors. When they do, it's usually for very serious infractions."

Jennifer Simoes, a Medical Board spokeswoman, said officials have reviewed the report but more analysis is needed.

"We believe more data needs to be obtained, but like many state agencies, we have a 20% vacancy rate and we're trying to focus on our core functions," she said, noting that board officials had been contacted by Public Citizen about investigating the report's findings. "We told them we would do it when we had the resources." She said a state hiring freeze contributed to other deficiencies noted in the report.

At least 102 of the doctors who escaped discipline in California had their privileges to practice at a given facility suspended, limited or revoked after peer reviews, according to the report.

The entire story can be read here.

Retractions Of Scientific Studies Are Surging

By Ed Silverman
http://www.pharmalot.com/

Over the past decade, the number of medical journals that have issued retractions has climbed precipitously. Since 2001, the overall number of papers that were published in research journals increased 44 percent, but at the same time, the number of papers that were retracted climbed more than 15-fold, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Thomson Reuters.

Put another way, there were just 22 retraction notices that appeared in journals 10 years ago, but 139 were published in 2006 and by last year, the number reached 339. Through July of this year, there were a total 210 retractions, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science, which maintains an index of 11,600 peer-reviewed journals.

Meanwhile, retractions related to fraud rose more than sevenfold between 2004 and 2009, exceeding a twofold rise traced to mistakes, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. After studying 742 papers that were withdrawn from 2000 to 2010, the analysis found that 73.5 percent were retracted simply for error, but 26.6 percent were retracted for fraud. Ominously, 31.8 percent of retracted papers were not noted as retracted (read the abstract).

The conclusion? Either there is more fraud or more policing? Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health and a co-founder of the Retraction Watch blog that began recently in response to the spate of retractions, writes us that the simple use of eyeballs and software that can detect plagiarism has made it possible to root out bad papers.

He also notes, however, that there are more journals, which explains why there are more papers, in general, being published. “So the question is whether there have been more retractions per paper published,” Oransky writes, and then points to this chart to note that were, indeed, many more.

“That’s really no surprise, given the increasing numbers of eyeballs on studies, and the introduction of plagiarism detection software. It’s unclear whether the actual amount of misconduct and legitimate error has grown; it may just be that we’re picking up on more of it,” he continues. “What makes it difficult to tell is a problem we often see at Retraction Watch: Opaque and unhelpful retraction notices saying only ‘this study was withdrawn by the authors.’ How does that make for transparent science? We think journals can do a lot better, by demanding that authors and institutions come clean about what went wrong.”

And why is there more fraud? As the Wall Street Journal notes, there is a lot to be gained - by both researchers and journal editors - to publish influential papers. “The stakes are so high,” The Lancet editor Richard Horton tells the Journal. “A single paper in Lancet and you get your chair and you get your money. It’s your passport to success.”

The entire story can be read here.