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Communicating Information & Drug Fraud: Matthew Herder’s Lecture about the History of Drug Regulation in Canada
By Domenic Rosati (MLIS candidate 2017)
Matthew Herder’s lecture about the history and present state of Canada’s drug fraud regulations was particularly interesting from an information management point of view because the central theme was the communication of information. The lecture was called “Fraud Forgotten” because recent/current drug regulation is characterized by elusiveness. Why? Herder asserts that over half of studies about drugs are not published and half of those published are likely to be distorted. Investigators of drug data receive little support, have to undergo rigorous procedures to request this information, and promise that they will not divulge any of the data publicly. The majority of communication that takes place between the drug companies and the regulators is closed
In order to understand how we got here, Herder took us on a journey through drug regulation history in Canada. One of the illustrations that he showed was an early Canadian drug fraud bulletin. This was a historical example of open communication where the public was involved in the process. After the 1887 Adulteration act, Canada’s drug regulation body began to publish fraud bulletins that reported known adulterated ‘nostrums’ or medicines and persons who were committing drug fraud. While Herder notes that much of the reporting in the bulletin was often not strong enough evidence for court action against fraud offences, the bulletin was important in the court of public opinion. If adulteration cases escaped the courts, the public was still aware of the offences and infractions, so Herder argued that the possibility of shame deterred potential fraud. Another function the bulletin served was establishing drug adulteration standards. Importantly, bulletins provided the potential for independent testing.
Around the 1920’s, relations between the drug industry and the medical profession, combined with changes in drug production contributed to a new perspective on drug regulation in Canada. There was a diminishing criticism of drug companies and a movement to try and protect proprietary information about the pharmaceutical industry. The result was a closed circuit regulatory communication channel wherein the bulletin was no longer published and drug fraud investigation and enforcement were now managed between by regulators and the drug industry. This trend has continued to the present day resulting in a lack of transparency, a narrow definition of fraud, and a weak drug fraud prosecution system.
While it is tempting to think the solution to drug fraud regulation is to open all communication to the public, Herder said we cannot assume transparency will automatically lead to effective regulatory practices. In other words, having access to drug fraud information does not mean that we are putting that information to good use. He argues that transparency and regulation practices have to go hand in hand. What we learn from Canada’s drug bulletin was that it was great for circulating standards, but failed to remain a strong regulator because it was not integrated with other areas of enforcement. A completely open channel of communication is complicated by proprietary information, the requirement for competent independent investigators, and more. Drug fraud policies also don’t account for contemporary ways of manipulating data.
Herder offers two steps that we can take to at least start thinking about more transparent communication with drug companies: de-antiquating adulteration (which is an attempt at revealing alternative methods of regulation and transparency with regard to drug fraud in Canada) and re-imagining local analysts (why do regulation bodies have to be in Ottawa, or government-centric? Perhaps better funding support could be provided to scientific researchers in order to empower them as analysts).
Herder’s lecture revealed the complications of regulating drug fraud. Importantly, he showed that an understanding of how the communication of information is vital to the understanding of this complex issue.
IM Public Lecture: Matthew Herder (Dalhousie-Medicine & Law)
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. When feasible, recordings of the lectures are posted here for wider circulation. For the full schedule, visit the Public Lecture page of our website.
Fraud Forgotten? What the History of Drug Regulation Teaches Us About the Importance of Transparency Today
Matthew Herder
Dalhousie University
Lecture Details
Wednesday, November 4th, 2015 from 12:00-1:00pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Ave
Abstract: Greater transparency is needed in the realm of pharmaceutical drugs. The current policy focus is on disclosing more information about the safety and effectiveness of drugs. But to be effective, transparency must serve another purpose – namely, of enabling standard setting through a more participatory, public model of drug regulation. I turn to the history of Canadian drug regulation to demonstrate that such a conception of transparency is not only possible, but increasingly needed. I argue that tying transparency to a revitalized concept of fraud in drug research and development might help activate more participatory, public regulatory work.
Biography: Matthew Herder is an associate professor in the Faculties of Medicine and Law at Dalhousie University. He holds three law degrees from Dalhousie and Stanford University’s Law School. His research centres around biomedical innovation policy, with a particular focus on intellectual property law and practices connected to the commercialization of scientific research. He is currently the Principal Investigator on a three year CIHR operating grant. He has been commissioned to write reports and appear as an expert witness before key national and international institutions, including the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development and, most recently, two Canadian Parliamentary committees, which contributed to the most important changes to Canada’s Food and Drugs Act since the thalidomide disaster of the 1960s.
Informacy and Metaliteracy: What Literacy looks like in the Age of Google.
By: Domenic Rosati (MLIS Candidate 2017)
Dan Russell’s Information Management public lecture Mindtools: What Does it Mean to be Literate in the Age of Google? was a challenge to common place notions of literacy in an information society heavily dependent on Google and other web services. He offered two alternative concepts that can help us understand what being literate could mean today: Informacy, the operational ability to use contemporary literacy technologies, and Metaliteracy, the ability to learn how to learn literacy technologies.
In order to understand the significance of Informacy, Russell asked us to think about about what it means to be literate. Using the example of reading music, Russell showed that literacy is tied into the ability to operate the technology associated with that literacy. He also mentioned that in the 18th century being literate would have meant knowing how to make a quill and ink. Russell’s point, following Walter Ong’s studies of the transformative effects of writing, is that “Literacy is a technology based system.” Informacy extends the notion of literacy to recognize this technical aspect of literacy. Russell argues that understanding literacy as Informacy is important because new literacy technologies are allowing us to search more than ever before, becoming more ubiquitous, and changing at a rapid rate. Reading and writing will not be enough for getting around in contemporary society; we will need to understand how to operate the tools we depend on to read and write.
Russell has seen the need for modifying our definitions of literacy in his work in researching user search experience at Google. His lecture provided us with many examples for his case. First, he mentioned a searcher tasked with finding activities in San Fransisco on a Saturday night. The example was humorous because the searcher began to search for ‘adult activities.’ Russell asked if the searcher was illiterate. While the searcher could read and write, Russell was making the point that not knowing the connotations of certain search conventions was a serious impediment to this searcher finding information. Russell went to on to cite ‘ctrl-f’, spoof sites, internet language and visual conventions of the web as examples where a user must have the knowledge of how these technologies operate in order to use them appropriately and garner information.
Instead of suggesting we get to work implementing technical literacy strategies about how to operate specific tools due to Informacy, Russell explains the need for a second concept: Metaliteracy. By way of statistics about youtube alone, Russell shows how we could never keep up with the amount of information added to the web. Less obvious is that we can also never keep up with the rate at which web sites and applications will change. Metaliteracy is learning how to deal with these changes and additions of content by always asking what is possible with the technology at hand, or learning “what changes and how.” One of the examples of this is his test put to 250 engineers to find a 1977 overhead picture of a certain address. They all failed to look in google earth under the image archive feature. His explanation for this is that the engineers were not looking out for what was possible. Russell also mentioned his son searching for a song using “oh oh oh oh oh song” as a query. Russell thought this would certainly fail and so he rejected the possibility that google could mine millions of QA posts with similar queries and match it with a correct answer. This possibility turned out to work and Russell’s son found the song. A more concrete example of Metaliteracy Russell gives is the grey arrow that expands information in google. He told us if a searcher ignored this button they could think that South Africa only has 6 official languages when it has more. Russell said that an important part of literacy is learning how to pay attention to these technical changes in websites and that Metaliteracy is that process.
His summary suggested that today’s literacy is captured by four, not three, R’s:
- Reading
- Writing
- Arithmetic
- Research
The fourth one, research, is added because Informacy and Metaliteracy are about knowing how to search and find information to read and write about within the framework of contemporary literacy technologies of the web. Without this research component, our reading and writing is not functional. That is, our reading and writing would not operate where information flows.
Both Russell and an audience member agreed that there is a clear distinction between capital-R research and research. Russell notes that we need to move beyond the look and find culture that has pervaded the web into a search and analyze culture. One instance mentioned was the idea of understanding web site credibility as a component of Informacy. As we understand internet genres and visual cues, we can have a better sense of what is credible on the internet. In addition to this, Russell briefly touched on the ability use Google Fusion with data sets found on the internet to get answers from data yourself.
With all of these examples in mind, Russell makes a pretty good case for having a modified understanding of literacy to include both awareness of the technologies that underpin literacy and the processes by which we learn how to learn these technologies. Informacy and Metaliteracy are certainly useful concepts to keep in mind when the technologies and standards you are using today are going to be changed tomorrow and these concepts can help us take hold of current trends that want us as students not to focus on specific software or tools but on the processes that underlay the operation of those tools.
Listen to an audio recording of the full lecture here.
IM Public Lecture: Dan Russell (Google Inc.)
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. When feasible, recordings of the lectures are posted here for wider circulation. For the full schedule, visit the Public Lecture page of our website.
Mindtools: What Does it Mean to be Literate in the Age of Google?
Lecture Details
Wednesday, October 21st, 2015 from 5:30pm-6:30pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Avenue
Abstract: What does it mean to be literate at a time when you can search billions of texts in less than 300 milliseconds? Although you might think that “literacy” is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding. Knowing how to read is just the beginning of it — knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, how to interpret the texts you find, how to organize and use the information you discover, how to understand your metacognition — these are all critical parts of being literate as well. In this talk Russell will review what literacy is today, in the age of Google, and show how some very surprising and unexpected skills will turn out to be critical in the years ahead. We have created powerful new tools for the mind. Thing is, those tools are constantly evolving and changing even as the things they operate on change as well. This puts us in the position of having to learn how to find tools, and understanding the substrate on which they work. Literacy in these days is not just reading and writing, but also understanding what knowledge tools are available, and how they can be used in interesting new ways. And the role of the designer turns out to be critical in this new understanding of literacy
Biography: Daniel Russell is the Űber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness in Mountain View. He earned his PhD in computer science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence until he realized that amplifying human intelligence was his real passion. His day job is researching how people search and the ways they come to learn about the world through Google. His 20% job is teaching the world to search more effectively. Dan enjoys teaching, learning, running and music, preferably all in one day. Dan blogs at SearchReSearch (http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com), teaches search skills classes online at PowerSearchingWithGoogle.com, and teaches live search/research classes live throughout the civilized world.
PANEL DISCUSSION: IMAGINING THE FUTURE OF CANADA’S MEMORY INSTITUTIONS
Please join us for this exciting panel presentation and Q&A featuring:
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Graham Flack (Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage) BIO
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Guy Berthiaume (Librarian & Archivist of Canada) BIO
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Carrie- Ann Smith (Chief, Audience Engagement, Pier 21)
Canada’s memory institutions are uniquely positioned to shape the way Canadian’s celebrate their common culture and heritage. As noted in the 2015 Council of Canadian Academies report “the digital world has the potential to fundamentally change the relationship between memory institutions and people for the better”. Students and faculty from the School of Information Management will participate in an open dialogue to explore the ways in which memory institutions can provide leadership in a digital society, connect Canadians in meaningful ways, create new communities, and provide new opportunities for collaboration, innovation and economic prosperity.
Light refreshments will be served.
Time: Thursday October 15, 2015 – 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: University Club (Great Hall), 1 Alumni Crescent, Halifax NS
RSVP’s Required: Please click here to RSVP by Monday, October 12th at 4:00pm
IM Public Lecture: Marc Taconet (Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome)
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. When feasible, recordings of the lectures are posted here for wider circulation. For the full schedule, visit the Public Lecture page of our website.
iMarine in Support of FAO’s Blue Growth Initiative: The Information Requirements*
Lecture Details
Thursday, October 8th, 2015 from 4:30-6:30pm
University Hall, MacDonald Building, 6300 Coburg Road (across from the University Club, Studley Campus)
Reception to follow the lecture – co-sponsored by the Dalhousie President’s Office, Dalhousie Libraries, and the Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture (5:30-6:30pm).
*Co-sponsored by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization
Abstract: In order to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has recently launched its Blue Growth initiative. A key challenge for the promotion of Blue Growth is the need for facts-based decision making across multiple scientific disciplines, a challenge which a data infrastructure such as iMarine can help articulating. iMarine aims at developing collaborative science, and the platform has demonstrated a strong potential to deliver cost-efficient solutions by pooling together data, software, methodologies and expertise. Beyond the technological demonstration, its uptake however requires the development of a comprehensive sustainability plan, including governance, data policies, marketing, outreach, and capacity building (www.i-marine.eu/Pages/Home.aspx).
Biography: Marc Taconet is the Chief of the Statistics and Information Branch, FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, and Secretary of the FIRMS partnership. A member of the FAO Rome-based staff since 1987, Mr. Taconet has led the development of the Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS), played a leading user-community role in several European Union-funded projects, and chaired the iMarine board.
IM Public Lecture: Keith Lawson
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. When feasible, recordings of the lectures are posted here for wider circulation. For the full schedule, visit the Public Lecture page of our website.
Exploring Space and Place with Mobile Applications
Keith Lawson
School of Information Management, Dalhousie University
Lecture Details
Monday, September 28th, 2015 from 5:35pm-6:35pm
Room 1020, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Avenue
Abstract: A new interest in space and place has encouraged museums and archives to find ways to use mobile devices to create connections between items in their collections and the locations associated with these items beyond the walls of their institutions, giving visitors a new access and opportunities to create new experiences. This paper brings together ideas from Michael de Certeau, tourism studies, game studies, and mobile interface theory to examine how digital objects—texts (images, audio and video) presented through mobile devices create an experience of place. This experience may be of a single place or of multiple places joined in a larger narrative space.
Biography: Keith Lawson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University. His teaching focuses on communications and technology, including a course on Web Design and Architecture — which has a Digital Humanities component. He has worked on the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Archive and on projects with Dalhousie University Digital Archives and Special Collections.
Since work on Thomas De Quincey as a graduate student, Keith has been interested in imaginative responses to urban life. His current research focuses on the use of mobile applications by institutions of cultural memory to connect visitors and tourists to objects, places, and events.
MLIS Alumni Event – Montreal, 10 July 2015
Dalhousie MLIS grads based in Montreal had an opportunity to meet with Dr. Bertrum MacDonald and Dr. Fiona Black during the 23rd annual international conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), which met at McGill University on 10 July 2015. Fiona Black (MLIS, 1993), Sean Swanick (MLIS, 2009), James Ross (MLIS, 2015), and Bertrum MacDonald presented papers at the conference which was hosted by the Université de Sherbrooke, Bibliothèque et Archives de Québec, and McGill University. During a break in the conference, the Dalhousie grads met to share news about career developments and activities at the School. Amber Lannon, Jennifer Zhao, Sean Swanick, and Michael Groenendyk work with McGill University Libraries, Nicholas Warren is a staff member with the English Montreal School Board, and James Ross is member of the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research team at Dalhousie University.
l to r: Bertrum MacDonald, James Ross (‘15), Jennifer Zhao ( 2007 ), Michael Groenendyk ( 2013), Nicholas Warren (2007 ), Sean Swanick ( 2009), Amber Lannon ( 1999), Fiona Black ( 1993)
MLIS Alumna, Heather O’Brien, Presents Community Engagement Workshop
Heather O’Brien (MLIS ’02) is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), University of British Columbia (iSchool@UBC).
Workshop Details (full information can be found here):
Community Engaged Learning as a Capstone Experience
Thursday August 13, 2015 – 10:00 AM
Kenneth Rowe Management Building, Room 1007