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The intersection of open science and brief interventions

Home health care services among health care professions is not a new concept. Home health care has proven to be more cost effective and is often preferred by patients and families compared to in hospital care or extended stays at skilled nursing facilities. In recent years, advances in technology, have allowed telehealth to become a promising alternative allowing patients to receive safe and effective treatment at home. Initial benefits of telehealth included increasing access to quality healthcare in areas where quality care may not be readily available, such as rural America. Currently, with the coronavirus (COVID-19), telehealth has become a primary mode of healthcare delivery to maintain social distancing protocols when in person care is not immediately required. Additionally, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) allowed private physical therapists to bill for telehealth services under Medicare part B as of March 1, 2020. In this review we focused on the impact of physical therapy management for older adults living at home and receiving telehealth/mHealth within their home.

In recent times, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok have become the main outlet for spreading news and information in various fields including politics, health care and education. The deep integration of social media in contemporary society grants us with new ways to interact with one another and exchange information. Despite these benefits, social media can be utilized by various units to spread misinformation and disinformation or ‘Fake News’ to unsuspecting social media users. Within this global misinformation crisis, the emergence of short videos as a way to convey information has revealed a greater issue in the perceptions of fake news and its dissemination. Through a study of past literature, there seems to be a gap in current work which does not examine the effect of a video’s contextual items (e.g., superimposed captions) in influencing user perceptions of the video’s truthfulness/falsity. As such, perceptions and attitudes around fake videos or false news is an area of work needed to be built upon, being a focus of this thesis. To properly examine the influence of context on perceptions of misinformation across social media, an effective investigation process must be carried out. A survey was created using Qualtrics, containing a participant information statement along with demographic questions and participant consent. The selection criteria for this study are as follows: participants must be over 18, and participants must be familiar with social media and use at least one platform on a somewhat regular basis. Participants should also have a stable internet connection which seamlessly supports HD zoom meetings. If the participant has a bad internet connection or noise interfering with the interview, the study will not continue. To select suitable participants for this study, the recruitment platform of Prolific will be utilized. 24 participants will be selected. Participants will be first required to undertake the initial Qualtrics survey in which they will answer relevant demographic questions. They will also be required to provide contact information which will be utilized in conjunction with Prolific to schedule a zoom interview. This interview will take place online via Zoom due to the current restrictions and concerns regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These interviews will be semi-structured in which participants will be exposed to true and fake videos. For the aims of this study, there will be two sets of interview groups of which participants will be randomly allocated to. Both groups will be exposed to 5 videos relating to COVID-19 or the COVID-19 vaccine, 2 of which will be fake or contain misinformation, with 3 videos being true news. However, Group 1 will be exposed to videos which contain superimposed contextual captions. Group 2 will be shown videos which do not contain the superimposed contextual captions. In this interview, participants will be told the details of the study again in which any questions or concerns can be answered. Following this, participants will be asked questions concerning their misinformation perceptions and attitudes. After a viewing of the videos, participants will be asked questions regarding the video truthfulness and again asked their attitudes/perceptions towards misinformation and fake news on SM. Audio recordings of this interview will be stored for further analysis. The entire initial survey and interview process will take 1 hour per participant. Participants will be paid with a $20 transfer for their time, which is handled by Prolific. After the conduction of the initial questionnaire and interviews, cleaning and pre-processing of the collected data and question answers will take place. We will examine the differences in video truthfulness conclusions and perceptions across the two user groups in order to see a possible impact of contextual captions on attitudes surrounding misinformation

This data set comprises de-identified transcripts of semi structured qualitative interviews conducted as part of the ESRC funded project “Biomodifying technologies and experimental space: organisational and regulatory implications for the translation and valuation of health research”. The project was led by researchers based in the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies at the University of Oxford in partnership with colleagues at the Universities of Sussex and York. Biomodifying technologies are those which modify living biological tissue in novel and increasingly patient-orientated and customised ways. The case study biomodifying technologies in this project were: ‘gene-editing’ whose goal is to understand and remove disease-related mutations, the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells that can be controlled to create different types of tissue for cell therapy, and the emergence of 3D printing of biological material which aims to create novel structures for bodily repair and renewal. The project addressed the following research questions: 1) How can the experimental space which these technologies currently occupy be characterised? What impact will this have on translational health research and its likely trajectories? 2) What are the challenges and risks posed by these technologies for existing, legal, regulatory and governance regimes? How are development strategies being shaped by these regimes? 3) What is defined as the benefit or value of these technologies? Which groups benefit or are seen to benefit, and how is benefit and value assessed? How does consensus about their value build? The project team utilised a mixed methods approach for UK fieldwork combining documentary analysis of various literatures, including the academic and grey literatures, with qualitative semi-structured interviews with a range of key stakeholders in each of the fields being studied. These include scientists working in academic laboratories, representatives of SMEs, research agencies, regulators, and senior staff in important service organisations.

Objective: One research group has recently published three articles on the ways in which alcohol companies and industry social aspects organizations (SAOs) communicate with the public. These articles show how the information produced by the alcohol industry works to produce doubt and uncertainty. Replies from SAOs were published in the respective scientific journals. This article examines these “moments of controversy,” asking in what ways, on which grounds, do the SAOs contest the claims made about them? Method: Three moments of controversy were examined, prompted by articles on SAO information on cancer, on use of Twitter, and on pregnancy and fertility. The articles (n = 3), the responses from the SAOs (n = 8), and the replies by authors Petticrew and colleagues (n = 4), were analyzed, identifying the rhetorical repertoires at work. Results: The responses by SAOs use two main strategies: 1. Posing narrow questions of accuracy rather than engaging with the overall findings of the articles on the context and framing of information; and 2. Making normative claims about what it is to do good science, suggesting that the articles and their findings are not. The second strategy questions the very legitimacy of research examining SAOs. The credibility of being published in the scientific literature affords the responses themselves a rhetorical function, a resource for later use to signal doubt and uncertainty. Conclusions: The SAO interventions in the scientific literature generate controversies. Furthermore, the published traces they leave in the scientific literature enhance SAOs’ ability to make credible claims that the original findings were controversial.

Introduction In 2015/2016 controversy followed the publication of a report on an anthropological study of Australian and New Zealand night-time economies funded by a major alcohol producer. This paper explores the background, moments of public controversy and political uses of the report. Methods Informed by the sociology of scientific controversies, we review the available relevant work of the author of the report, associated material such as press releases, newspaper articles (n = 18) and industry submissions to government (n = 12). Attention was paid to the ways in which claims were made about the relationship between alcohol and violence, and the ways in which credibility and legitimacy were constructed. Results The author of the report has longstanding associations with alcohol industry organisations. Claims made regarding alcohol and violence have remained highly consistent over time, and appear oblivious to developments in the evidence. In the media, the story was largely framed as a contest of credibility between compromised parties. The report continues to be used in alcohol industry submissions to government. Discussion and Conclusions This analysis suggests that this is a ‘counterfeit scientific controversy’; in our assessment, the report has had value not as a contribution to the scientific literature, but as a resource in the claims-making practices of the alcohol industry. Studies of the ways in which industry actors foster science-related content conducted at significant social and conceptual distance from the core of the relevant research community will enhance understandings of the ways in which industry actors engage with science and policy.

Additional file 2. Appendix 2 – Data extraction table.

Additional file 3. Appendix 3 – GRADE CERQual evaluation table.