You’re mid-sentence when your companion whips out their smart phone and starts tapping away. Your words hang in the air as your friend disappears into the digital world. You feel invisible. You have been ‘phubbed’.

Etiquette would dictate that ‘phubbing’ – snubbing someone while you concentrate on your phone – is incredibly rude. But with the rise of the smart phone, ‘phubbing’ has become so common that it’s now considered normal.

Researchers at the University of Kent in the UK have been investigating ‘phubbing’. They say that there are three factors that cause people to reach for their phone; internet addiction, fear of missing out (FOMO) and a lack of self-control.

Karen Douglas, psychology professor and co-author of the study says that while humans have always experienced issues around self-control, smart-phone use has exacerbated it.

“Being constantly connected via smartphones and the internet generally means that information is available to people all the time, so there is more to know and potentially more to miss out on than before these technologies existed,” she says.

Another factor that has caused ‘phubbing’ to become normal is that when we are ‘phubbed’ we are more likely to go on and ‘phub’ someone else. We go from ‘phubee’ to ‘phubber’.

In other words, we are caught in a vicious cycle of ‘phubbing’ behaviour. And the more we see people whipping out their phones in social situations the more we accept it.

Douglas notes that while smart phone addiction is the most proximal explanation for ‘phubbing’ its constant reinforcement is a huge problem.

“People ‘phub’, are ‘phubbed’, then ‘phub’ even more. So a behaviour that is potentially detrimental to human communication has become self-perpetuating,” she says.

There is, however, a backlash to the anti-social trend.

‘Anti-phubbers’ can download posters, stage ‘phubbing’ interventions or name and shame a ‘phubber’ via the website stopphubbing.com, started by 23-year-old Australian graduate student Alex Haigh in 2013.

Psychologist Jocelyn Brewer says we need to develop ‘nettiquette’ in our peer and friendship groups.

“We really need to work on developing emotional intelligence and soft skills, rather than expecting software to do the work for us.”

Taken from the Sydney Morning Herald (10/06/16)

Chotpitayasunondh, V., & Douglas, K.M. (in press).  How “phubbing” becomes the norm: The antecedents and consequences of snubbing via smartphone. Computers in Human Behavior.

Karen Douglas and Co-investigator Robbie Sutton have been awarded over £56,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council to ask “Why do people adopt conspiracy theories, how are they communicated, and what are their risks?

In their multi-disciplinary work, they will explore perspectives from psychology, information engineering, political science, and sociology. Co-investigators also include Aleksandra Cichocka, Jim Ang and Farzin Deravi

Academics from The Universities of Kent, Nottingham and Christ Church University together with industrial leaders held a mini-symposium on the topic of agricultural animal reproduction on Friday, 15 April, at Discovery Park in Sandwich. 

It was the first event hosted by the Canterbury Christ Church University since the launch of its Life Sciences Industry Liaison Lab at the business park in March. University scientists joined together with industrialists from Illumina, JSR Genetics, Topigs Norsvin and IVF Biosciences to explore the importance of collaborative research as part of ongoing CISoR initiatives in non-human reproduction.  Three BBSRC grant applications have arisen from the collaboration.

https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/news-centre/university-news/2016/life-sciences-host-animal-ivf-event-at-discovery-park.aspx

A high-level delegation from the Punjab government has paid a visit to the UK to assess British pig production and genetics as the Indian state intends to develop its burgeoning pig sector. Further details can be found here.

On 2nd March Nick Hopwood of the University of Cambridge gave the HG Wells lecture on ‘The many births of the test-tube baby’. It is generally accepted that following in vitro fertilization in Oldham, Louise Brown became the world’s first ‘test-tube baby’. Her birth, thanks to 2010 Nobel prize winner Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe and their team, was a major international news story in July 1978. Following much apprehension about such ‘implants’, the press celebrated Louise, a ‘miracle of ordinariness’, as making medical history. This was, however, far from the first claim to a test-tube baby; since 1944, various researchers had reported fertilizing human eggs to produce embryos and even infants. Nick highlighted two points about these reports. Some were made in journal articles, some in the general press and some in both. And some later announcements maintained far less than some early ones, a sign that standards changed. In 1969, for example, when Edwards et al. reported ‘early stages of fertilization’, not all specialists accepted even this, while others dismissed it as old hat. Rather than taking us through a litany of claim and counter-claim Nick gave us a deep insight into the manner, means and enthusiasm with which the claims were made and, equally the manner, means and vitriol with which opponents and colleagues assessed and contested them. Nick’s analysis focused on changes, on the one hand, in standards of evidence, and on the other, in norms of communication, especially the ways that scientists used not only learned journals and textbooks, but also newspapers and television. The most striking example was the birth of Brown herself, of which for many months the Daily Mail provided the fullest account.

For nearly 2 hours of talk and discussion, Nick intrigued a 50-strong audience with fresh perspectives on this, the founding achievement of reproductive biomedicine. He helped us grasp why some of the claims were more credible than others and why, after a far from certain beginning, and a good deal of controversy, the world agreed that Louise was ‘the one’. Nick ended with the point that, for impactful discoveries such as IVF, journal articles, however desirable, may be neither sufficient nor necessary successfully to stake medical and scientific claims. The Centres for the History of the Sciences (CHotS) and for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR) are incredibly grateful for Nick for his time and enthusiasm and hope to work together with him further in the future.

Mothers who have postnatal depression are unlikely to have more than two children according to research carried out by Kent evolutionary anthropologists. 

Surrogacy in the 21st century: rethinking assumptions, reforming law

Friends House, London, 6th May 2016

Surrogacy laws in the UK are now over 30 years old and look increasingly out of date. Within the same timeframe, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have significantly developed, and their place in modern society has become firmly established, both in terms of family creation and with regard to the extended medical research opportunities they provide. Surrogacy is a form of assisted reproduction, whether an arrangement requires the use of IVF, the storage of gametes of one or more parties outside of the body in a licensed setting, the use of donated gametes, or none of these. It is a legitimate form of family creation for those who have no other option to have their own child, and who exercise the choice not to adopt.

The law relating to ARTs was overhauled in 2008, but little changed in relation to surrogacy other than small and necessary extensions of the categories of people to whom a ‘parental order’ might be available. No consideration was given to the fundamental assumptions that underpin the entirety of the regulation of surrogacy. Since the law on surrogacy was created, we have also witnessed astonishing amounts of social change, not only in terms of who we consider to be ‘families’ or ‘parents’, but also in wider social acceptance of difference. In addition, the internet explosion has made surrogacy an international business, often raising both ethical and practical concerns when overseas arrangements are entered into from the UK.

This one-day event is designed to test and challenge the assumptions that underpin the existing UK law on surrogacy, showing how and why it has become out of date, in a variety of different contexts, and how it fails to protect the interests of children and families created via surrogacy. It draws upon and discusses the findings in the November 2015 report of the Surrogacy UK Working Group on Surrogacy Law Reform, along with reflections from a range of other commentators including Professor Margot Brazier and Baroness Mary Warnock, who each chaired government inquiries into surrogacy, publishing their reports in 1998 and 1984, respectively.

Further details can be found here

Drawing on research carried out as part of the ‘Uses and Abuses of Biology’ programme, Ellie will talk about the rise of ‘neuroparenting’ and discuss how Government ‘early intervention’ policies based on dubious claims about neuroscience both undermine the autonomy of the family and tarnish science’.

6.30pm-8.30pm, Tuesday 8^th March

YE OLDE BEVERLIE

St Stephen’s Green, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7JU

Dr Ellie Lee

Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR)

The session will be moderated by:

Dr Ruth Cain, Kent Law School and CISoR

A light buffet will be provided

Thanks to the University of Kent Public Engagement with Research Fund