Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-16-2009

[andrewducker]

• Killings are lowest in 20 years
  Overall crime is down by 5% and violent crime has fallen by 6%, and gun crime has seen a 17% fall. Rape is up, as is burglary and mugging/picking pockets.
  (tags: crime UK)
• Ireland outlaws blasphemy
  Gah!
  (tags: ireland law religion blasphemy)
• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
  From the people that brought you Pride And Prejudice and Zombies...
  (tags: funny book JaneAusten)
• When people complain about needing a criminal records check before being allowed to work with children
  Get them to read this...
  (tags: Child_abuse children law UK crime)
• X-Men Universe Relationship Map
  Dashed line indicates one of the parties is from an Alternate Universe
  (tags: comics relationships funny comic xmen visualization)
• Just what is a big salary?
  Which tells me the figures on my poll are for people who are paid normal salaries - and doesn't include self-employed people (i.e. contractors and the like). Read the comments - and feel your brain melt!
  (tags: money statistics)
• Researchers use light to move physical objects
  A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a repulsive light force that can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.
  (tags: light physics science)
• The myth of the chemical cure
  A mental health expert talks about psychiatric drugs and what they really do. Hint - they don't fix you, they put you in an altered state that you may prefer to your natural one.
  (tags: depression bbc psychology drugs serotonin health)

Comments

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Ethically it's a bit of a minefield. Clearly anyone who holds to the general principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has to make some form of exception in order to satisfy the competing ethic of "don't let children be harmed".

Pragmatically if we knew how many potential child abusers managed to gain jobs in care then we'd be better placed to know if this clash of ethics is worth resolving with CR checks.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Nicely put. I've been enjoying a bunch of your comments recently.

I work in a charity, and I look at how much money we have to spend doing background checks. And how we can't take on *any* short term volunteers because not only would we not see a return on paying for a check, but the whole process can take months.

And it's not like we had a referendum or reasoned public debate. We just have had an explosion of agencies and quangos and bureaucracy responding to the 90s paedo panic.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

I actually work at the minute researching child protection decisions made by sexual health practitioners. Various ethical things tend to come up! My favourite one is currently the tension between patient confidentiality and the need to disclose suspicions of abuse. Particularly given that there tends to be a swing between preserving the family and taking children deemed at risk into care as soon as...(After Baby P and simialar cases we are heading towards the latter at pace I fear)

[broin.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Anything you're likely to blog about, or should we look for an academic paper in the future...? =)

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

There will be a paper, next year I would imagine. Being a little new to this game I'm not sure how long the publication timetable takes.

I'm unsure what the NHS status is on blogging about research projects so to stick on the safe side I probably won't do anything about it over on ye olde blog... (andyourelectronmicroscope.wordpress.com)

I might do something on decision making and risk assessment though... Given I have a shed load of references for that...

[andrewducker]

I believe it's all been simplified - if you look at the stuff that the original post is talking about you apply to a central agency, hand them a small amount of cash, and they tell you what you need to know. I agree that large bureaucratic processes can get ridiculous - but I believe this one has now been streamlined a fair bit.