Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Whatever happened to the Malawian anti-plastic activist inspired by goats? – NPR

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, an activist from Malawi, was one of six recipients of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize. Majiga-Kamoto has been campaigning to convince Malawi to implement a ban on thin plastics. Goldman Environmental Prize hide caption

In June 2021, NPR profiled Gloria Majiga-Kamoto of Malawi, who saw goats dying after eating plastic bags and decided to take on her nation's plastic industry. Cheap, single-use plastic is such a problem in Malawi that in 2015 the government instituted a thin plastic ban. But before the ban could go into effect, the country's powerful plastic industry filed an injunction. That's until Majiga-Kamoto, who works for a local environmental organization, came along, organizing protest rallies and marches. In 2019 the nation's High Court finally ruled in favor of the ban. In 2021 she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work. So what's happened to her in the last year?

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Gloria Majiga-Kamoto says in the past year she's become in her words "the plastic girl." We reached her in Blantyre, the financial capital of Malawi, to get an update on the thin plastic ban, and hear about her new tactics for fighting plastic pollution around the world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Volunteers with Art Malawi, a local arts organization, clean plastic litter and debris from the Mudi River in Blantyre, Malawi. Volunteers worked for months to clean up the river. Art Malawi/Mudi River Cleanup hide caption

What does being 'the plastic girl' mean?

Being 'the plastic girl' is being that one person that everybody sends pictures to if they see plastic pollution anywhere. [Laughs] Or they're tagging me in everything. So it's a bit mortifying because it also sort of reminds you how little progress you're actually making. The thing with policy is, when it's in place, you almost think everything is just going to magically work out, right? But it's very slow progress and sometimes, to be sort of stuck in the moment, the slow motion, it's a bit frustrating. You want to wake up today and know that things are so different. That's been a bit overwhelming for me personally. I think it's given me more of a sense of responsibility to say, 'What more can I do?'

The point of the law was to ban the manufacturing of thin plastic in Malawi. But it seems there are still thin plastic producers operating in the country. What's going on with you and your supporters?

We've now gone back to the courts. There's been a judicial review application by one of the [plastic] companies with the commercial courts, which is crazy because this issue was resolved in the Supreme Court.

What [the plastic companies] are contesting is the list of the plastics that have been banned. So because that list is [being] reviewed [the government] cannot target the companies. Right now the government can only target the distributors and the users of plastic, which is a very difficult thing to do because these are just local Malawians.

We've been calling for the president to take action because we can't keep on using the courts. [Earlier this month] we had the national cleanup day for civil society organizations. We took a stand and said, 'We're not participating in the cleanup because we cannot keep cleaning up somebody else's mess." The whole point of the ban, the whole point of setting up the cleanup initiative, was to say that once the ban is in place, we come together as a country and clean up.

But if we continue to produce plastics and then we still say people should come out and clean up, it's not fair because we are cleaning up somebody else's mess and [the manufacturers are] making a profit off of it!

So you're now not participating in government-sponsored cleanups and demonstrations as a symbol of your frustration with the government.

Yes. As of now we've actually refused to take part in the national cleanup campaigns, from this month until the president makes a very clear statement on the need for the judiciary to address this issue once and for all. We need him to make a directive on the implementation of the ban.

You don't want the government greenwashing, basically.

No. [Laughs] You know, we're done.

I feel like, if you're 'the plastic girl', people around the world look to you for guidance on how to combat plastic pollution in their countries. So I'm wondering, can you give people some ideas about what you've learned?

We organized a cleanup with support from the Goldman Prize funds. And what we did was when we gathered all the plastics, we took them straight to a plastic company, because we said, 'We don't know what to do with this waste. So you tell us what to do with it. You continue producing it, so take it back!'

We'll do that for every single cleanup. We're taking it back to the plastic manufacturers because we don't want it. And we don't know what to do with it. Don't give us the task of writing proposals to come up with projects that are going to recycle, because we can't. You have to do something about it. And I think that [taking plastic waste back to the plastic companies] showed them that we're watching and we're waiting to see what's going to happen.

I know globally, there's been a campaign to break free from plastic. We're not the only country facing this challenge. This is a very huge sector. It's got huge profits. They've got money, they've got more than we will ever have. But we have got the power and I think that's the most important lesson of all.

So when you gave them back the plastic, did they take it?

They were so reluctant, but we went there with media and then they had to take it back. We don't know what they did with it, but it was such a strong statement.

I think their fear was that if they take it, then everybody starts taking all of their plastic to them on the cleanups. And that's exactly what we want! [Laughs.]

So we've been trying to tell people that if you're doing a cleanup, you need to have a plan for your plastics because you can't throw it at the landfill. That kind of pressure is showing [the thin plastic manufacturers] that we're not backing down.

It's kind of showing the hypocrisy, how you really can't recycle a lot of plastic.

Exactly.

What is your next target?

We still have work to do in plastics. I mean, even [if] the ban comes back into full effect, there will still be a lot of work trying to get people to change. We are working on a program for TV called Waste Talk, it should go live on air next month. It's just 10 minutes every day, a conversation on the types of waste that you experience. Get people to understand what waste is, how they can manage it better, who they can actually take it to, and the incredible people that are managing our waste on our behalf.

So you're focusing on human behavior in addition to targeting manufacturers.

I feel like one of the challenges we have is a disconnection once you throw [plastic] in the bin you get disconnected from it.

So I always ask people, if we're in a meeting and they have a plastic bottle, I say, "After you use that bottle, can you imagine ever meeting that bottle again? Like if you had your name on that and you met it inside an animal or, you know, in the most awkward place, in a fish, in a beautiful lake when you're swimming with your family and then you see your bottle just wash up on the shore toward you. How would you feel?" So getting people to be aware that waste has a life-cycle and we are part of that life cycle to the end of it.

Julia Simon is a regular contributor to NPR's podcasts and news desks, focusing on climate change, energy and business news.

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Whatever happened to the Malawian anti-plastic activist inspired by goats? - NPR

Human Behavior

Drugs Effects of Ketamine in Mice Can Depend on the Sex of the Human Experimenter – Neuroscience News

Summary: Mice respond better to the antidepressant effect of ketamine when the drug is delivered by men, not women, a new study reports.

Source: University of Maryland

Many researchers who work with mice can tell you that mice behave differently depending on who is handling them.

Anecdotal reports and some existing scientific reports indicate that mice tend to be more fearful and uptight around men, and relaxed and comfortable around women. Whether this behavior actually affects research results though, remains a sort of the elephant in the room that not many people seem to want to address.

Now, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have shown that mice respond more to the antidepressant effects of the drug ketamine when administered by men and not bywomen.

The group demonstrated that the response of mice detected in a specific region of their brain from handling by a man is essential for ketamines effect to work. Then, the researchers identified the mechanism behind this response.

The researchers say that while the influence of the sex of the scientist administering ketamine is not directly relevant to the human response to ketamine, thebrain mechanismunderlying their findings could help determine why some people do not respond to ketamine anti-depressant therapy and suggest ways to potentially make this therapy work better for those patients who do not respond well.

The findings were published on August 30 inNature Neuroscience.

Our findings in mice suggests that activating a specific stress circuit in the brain may be a way to improve ketamine treatment. Our thought is that you may be able to provide a more robust antidepressant effect if you combine the ketamine with activation of this brain region, either a drug that spurs this process in the brain or even some sort of specific stressor, said Todd Gould, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at UMSOM.

Dr. Goulds team anecdotally noticed that ketamines antidepressant-like effects only seemed to work consistently when male researchers administered the treatment to mice. The team reached out to other labs studying mouse responses to ketamine, who reported the same issues, but no one had yet systematically documented the phenomena and investigated the cause.

At the time, most of Dr. Goulds team was women and so figuring out why the experiments did not work when women performed them was essential to the team getting workable data, so they could move forward with project.

To look into this, they began by observing mouse preference for being around T-shirts or cotton swabs rubbed on the wrists, elbow, or behind the ear that came from men versus women. The mice preferred spending more time around T-shirts and cotton swabs that came from women rather than men. When the researchers used a chemical to block the smell of the mice, they no longer preferred womens T-shirts or cotton swabs over mens.

Compared to humans, mouse sense of smell and their sensitivity to pheromones (airborne hormones) are more keenly developed, so its not surprising that they respond differently to many smells, including those of men compared to women, said Dr. Gould.

Next, they confirmed the original anecdotal findings with a systematic experiment using many researchers to verify that mice responded to ketamine when administered men, but not by women. Then, the researchers wanted to understand the mechanism behind why the mice behave this way.

The researchers investigated several factors potentially involved in mediating ketamines response in mice, but ultimately settled on one: corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF). CRF is located region of the brain, known as the hippocampus, responsible for learning and memory that had previously been associated with depression.

When the researchers had women administer the ketamine along with an injection of CRF, the mice finally responded to ketamine as if they were being treated with an antidepressant.

We think that some people may have higher or lower levels of CRF, and we believe that people do not respond well to ketamine antidepressant therapy might respond if we could administer the treatment with some CRF-related chemical that could induce ketamines effects, said Polymnia Georgiou, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Goulds laboratory, who led the project.

Alternatively, we typically see the antidepressant effects of ketamine lasting 1-3 days, but with CRF administration, it is possible that we may be able to extend the effects to last longer with CRF.

Mark T. Gladwin, MD, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean at UMSOM, said, These are exciting new findings that underscore the importance of basic research to lay the foundation for future clinical innovations. Our investigators are leaders in the study of new approaches for the treatment for depression, such asketamine.

They also found an unexpected interaction between the sex of themicestudied and the sex of the scientist administering the drugs, highlighting the importance of evaluating unexpected effects of our experimental systems and approaches.

Author: Press OfficeSource: University of MarylandContact: Press Office University of MarylandImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.Experimenters sex modulates mouse behaviors and neural responses to ketamine via corticotropin releasing factor by Polymnia Georgiou et al. Nature Neuroscience

Abstract

Experimenters sex modulates mouse behaviors and neural responses to ketamine via corticotropin releasing factor

We show that the sex of human experimenters affects mouse behaviors and responses following administration of the rapid-acting antidepressant ketamine and its bioactive metabolite (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine.

Mice showed aversion to the scent of male experimenters, preference for the scent of female experimenters and increased stress susceptibility when handled by male experimenters.

This human-male-scent-induced aversion and stress susceptibility was mediated by the activation of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) neurons in the entorhinal cortex that project to hippocampal area CA1. Exposure to the scent of male experimenters before ketamine administration activated CA1-projecting entorhinal cortex CRF neurons, and activation of this CRF pathway modulated in vivo and in vitro antidepressant-like effects of ketamine.

A better understanding of the specific and quantitative contributions of the sex of human experimenters to study outcomes in rodents may improve replicability between studies and, as we have shown, reveal biological and pharmacological mechanisms.

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Drugs Effects of Ketamine in Mice Can Depend on the Sex of the Human Experimenter - Neuroscience News

Human Behavior

Nobel Prize-winning economist says he doesn’t see anything that resembles a recession in the U.S. – CNBC

Thaler, the 2017 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is best known for his work in behavioral economics.

Scott Olson | Getty Images

Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler says the U.S. may have recorded two successive quarters of economic contraction, but it's "just funny" to describe it as being a recession.

"I don't see anything that resembles a recession. We have record low unemployment, record high vacancies. That looks like a strong economy," Thaler told CNBC's Julianna Tatelbaum on Wednesday.

"The economy is growing, it's just growing slightly less fast than prices. And that means real GDP fell a little bit, but I think it's just funny to call that a recession," he said. "It's not like any recession we've seen in my rather long lifetime."

U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, fell by 0.9% year-on-year in the second quarter, following a 1.6% decline in the first quarter. Two consecutive falls in GDP growth meet the traditional definition of a recession. Officially, the National Bureau of Economic Research declares recessions and expansions, and likely won't make a judgment on the period in question for months.

Thaler, the 2017 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is best known for his work in behavioral economics and for explaining the so-called "hot hand" fallacy alongside singer Selena Gomez in the 2015 film "The Big Short."

His work looks at how people make decisions that are seemingly irrational according to economic theory, and his co-written book, "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness," describes how this can be used to create better public policy solutions and "nudge" human behavior.

Asked about U.S. inflation, which rose 8.5% year-on-year in July, Thaler said, "There was this long debate about whether inflation was transitory or not, and team permanent seems to be winning, though I think they may be declaring victory a little too quickly."

Inflation is the rate of change in prices as opposed to high prices, he noted.

"At least some of the high prices we're observing are caused directly either by the war in Ukraine or by supply chain problems from China. And we hope that both of those factors are temporary," he said.

"Maybe a year from now there will still be fighting in Ukraine and there will still be Covid in China, but we hope that that's not the case, and if one or both of those problems is mitigated then I could see some prices going down."

Thaler also addressed U.S. wages, which have stagnated against productivity since the 1970s but recorded sharp rises in the two most recent quarters amid a tight labor market, reportedly spooking the Federal Reserve over the potential for a wage-price spiral.

"If I was the head of a union, I would certainly be asking for a big raise next year to compensate my workers for the higher prices they're facing," Thaler said.

"I would say if that happens once, personally I would applaud that, because people who are getting wages, what we're calling wages, are the people who have been lagging behind the 1% in terms of how much money they're making," he continued.

"Certainly everywhere I go you see signs of a shortage of labor, and supply and demand says wages should go up. I can't go into a restaurant in the U.S. that doesn't have a 'help wanted' sign in the door. So wages are going to go up, and I think that's good."

CNBC's Jeff Cox contributed to this article.

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Nobel Prize-winning economist says he doesn't see anything that resembles a recession in the U.S. - CNBC

Human Behavior

Bay Area’s summer COVID surge is nearly over. What happens next? – San Francisco Chronicle

The Bay Areas summer COVID-19 surge is winding down as case numbers reach levels last seen in April.

With no new coronavirus variants of concern on the horizon, the region appears headed for a welcome respite in the pandemic. And as early as next week, the federal government could start shipping out updated booster shots that target the latest omicron sublineages and could help extend vaccine protection well into the fall.

Despite the many reasons to feel optimistic, Bay Area health experts caution that weve been here before and that the coronavirus remains an unpredictable foe.

Its tough to say where were going to head next, said Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford. We dont know when the next big surge is going to be, but we do know in the winter months we have seen resurgences.

One challenge going forward is that tracking case numbers has become increasingly difficult with so many people now testing at home results of which are not usually recorded with the state or counties or not testing at all. The problem could be exacerbated starting Friday, when federal officials are set to stop sending out free, at-home COVID test kits through the mail due to a lack of funding.

As of Tuesday, the Bay Area reported a seven-day average of 18 daily coronavirus infections per 100,000 residents, according to state figures, while Californias seven-day average fell to 21 per 100,000, down from 37 three weeks ago. The statewide test positivity rate has plunged to 8.7% but remains well above the 1.2% average recorded in mid-March following the winter surge.

Schools across the state are reopening without virus mitigation measures that were in place last year but some students are still wearing masks.

COVID deaths, however, have plateaued with the state now averaging 45 per day. The Bay Area is reporting 14 deaths a day, up from just 5 a day recorded a month ago. Hospitalizations also remain stubbornly elevated, with 3,108 patients tallied in California on Tuesday, including 540 in the Bay Area roughly the same numbers recorded in mid-June.

Ive been so humbled by the virus, Im reluctant to make any predictions, said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley. The good news is were coming out of the surge. But that doesnt give me a great deal of comfort because when we reached our nadir the week before Thanksgiving last year, Southern Africa experienced omicron and within six weeks we were in the worst part of the pandemic we ever experienced.

We didnt see it coming until it hit us right in the face, he said, referring to the largest though not deadliest wave of the pandemic yet.

The highly contagious and immune-evasive omicron subvariant BA.5 is still the dominant strain of the virus, making up about 94% of the sequenced coronavirus cases in the Northern California region, trailed by the newer BA.4.6. There are currently no other variants raising red flags, the experts said.

I would say the caseload is still decently high, said Karan. All the metrics are trending downward, but where that settles is unclear.

Other factors could slow the downward trends or even cause a new upswing in the fall, however.

Schools across the state are reopening without virus mitigation measures that were in place last year, in alignment with updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that no longer calls for masking inside classrooms or surveillance testing for students and staff.

The number of people getting reinfected with the virus also could create a long tail of infections before the surge fully subsides, especially as shorter days and cooler months arrive and people spend more time indoors.

The things we know contribute to these surges are still in play, Swartzberg said, adding that human behavior could play a role in what comes next. Whats different this year is people have decided the pandemic is over or of negligible import and are acting accordingly.

Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSF chair of medicine, said in a lengthy Twitter thread over the weekend that he still plans to abstain from indoor dining and don a mask in crowded rooms until daily case rates fall below 5 for every 100,000 people in the region. But that puts him in the minority, with a growing number of Americans saying they have returned to living their normal pre-pandemic lives, according to a national survey.

Were facing other forces, Karan said. Were facing politicians who want to move on. Were facing fatigue, where people dont care about getting infected anymore. I see a lot of people trying to downplay the virus because they dont want to change behaviors or see policies they consider intrusive, such as mask mandates.

That could be a dangerous attitude, experts say.

If the general public assumes the pandemic is over, already sluggish vaccine uptake could mean fewer people line up for the new bivalent COVID boosters that target both earlier strains of the virus and later variants in the omicron family.

Only two-thirds of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and less than half of those have received their first booster dose, according to the latest figures from the CDC.

And despite the widespread availability of new drugs and treatments that cut down the number of virus-related hospitalizations and deaths, there is increasing concern now about the potential impact of long COVID, which the government has just started researching. Between 2 million and 4 million people are out of work due to the symptoms of the persistent condition, according to a recent report from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

It's a mixed bag right now, Swartzberg said. The big question mark is what this virus is going to decide to do. The other question is, what are people going to decide to do?

Aidin Vaziri is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com

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Bay Area's summer COVID surge is nearly over. What happens next? - San Francisco Chronicle

Human Behavior

If you want to create a fearless organization, here’s how – WRAL TechWire

Editors Note: Grace Ueng is CEO of Savvy Growth, a leadership coaching and management consultancy founded in 2003. Her great passion to help leaders and the companies they run achieve their fullest potential combined with her empathy and ability to help executives figure out their why is what clients value most. Grace writes a regular column for WRAL TechWire to help readers become happier and therefore, better leaders.

You always give people the benefit of the doubt!

A coaching client recently shared issues he was having with one of his direct reports. When I asked him a question to perhaps see the situation from that persons perspective, he immediately said, You always give people the benefit of the doubt. I left that session not sure about his comment, other than he didnt think that was necessarily a good thing. It sounded like he thought I was too easy on his people.

As I shared in Back in the Classroom at Harvard Business School, I was energized by having a front row seat in the classroom of Professor Amy Edmonson, guru on human behavior and author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth.

Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmonson (Photo credit: Harvard)

How to create a fearless organization?

Professor Edmonsons powerful research proves that teams that have psychological safety are those that have the best outcomes. Her lecture and presentation of materials impressed me so much that I wanted to learn more, so I pored myself into her book.

I synthesize her work into my top three findings in the hopes that you will examine just how fearless your organization is today and how you can make it even more so tomorrow.

The relationship between Trust and Psychological SafetyThe importance of both

When you give someone the benefit of the doubt, they then trust you. When you are in a psychologically safe environment, others give you the benefit of the doubt.

That brought me back to my clients comment that he thought I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I realized that what I originally took as a criticism is actually a good thing. I should have realized that I am the opposite of being too easy. I almost always hold people to very high standards.

Consulting clients have said that I have an almost magical ability to get people to open up and share in my discovery process, when I speak to their customers and lost deals. I bring out a-has on why they win or lose to competitors that they had previously had no knowledge. Rather than possessing magical abilties, I simply create a space that is safe for them to open up and share these insights.

Releasing the brakes

Psychological safety is not a perk or a nice to have. It is an essential in creating the passionate employee engagement that leads to the desire to build and innovate, which in turn is essential to be a leader in todays marketplace. While this safety is not the gas that fills the tank, it releases the brakes to help innovation to take hold and then accelerate.

Learning Environment & DEI

Supporting an organization that promotes learning is critical to the scenario of having employees just showing up and doing their jobs. Supporting this requires an environment of listening. Professional development as part of a persons lifelong learning, is often a key attribute of workplace satisfaction.

Psychological safety is essential for any DEI strategy, particularly one that values diversity of thought. A workplace that is truly characterized by inclusion and belonging is by definition a psychologically safe workplace.

Safety: Psychological & Physical

Whether it be innovation, quality, or patient safety, issues and opportunities are best uncovered and brainstormed when team members feel safe to speak their mind without fear of being stigmatized or having their career mobility threatened. In healthcare settings, more errors are reported and therefore safety protected in psychologically safe environments. The more highly complex and interdependent an organization, the more important this is.

Edmonson shared how cancer research teams where psychological safety did not exist, employed workarounds versus figuring out the root cause so that the issue doesnt happen in the first place. Edmonson states that nowhere is employee engagement more important than with frontline healthcare workers where differences in speaking up or not can lead to life or death.

One of the CEOs we work with often tells her frontline and managers to use their voice. And with years of repetition and making sure she is accessible, she has heard from many. Unfortunately, in most companies, this is rare. When they hear encouragement to use their voice, many employees have no idea how. And it is often most difficult not with someone many levels ahead of you, but with your own manager.

The asymmetry of voice and silenceEdmonson discusses at great length how it is much easier not to use your voice. Using your voice is effortful and risky now, with benefits that are realized in the far away future if at all. Silence offers self-protection benefits. Holding back bad news and great ideas, that one is not yet confident is great, is easier and safer. Teams will only use their voice if an environment of psychological safety truly exists. Not speaking up is often simpler than sorry.

Most people go through an automatic calculus in their decision of should I speak up? No one was ever fired for silence. The instinct to play it safe is powerful. We can be completely confident we will be safe if we remain silent. Another one of the implicit theories of voice is related to fear of insulting someone higher in the organization. By suggesting change, you might be calling the bosss baby ugly and they could get defensive. In the end, in being silent, you are depriving customers of many good ideas and your company the opportunity to create impactful change.

How does your team rate? 7 statements to ask each member of your team to rate their level of agreement/disagreement.

If you create a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.

Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.

People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.

It is safe to take a risk on this team.

It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.

No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.

Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are well utilized.

Powerful & vulnerable phrases

You may need to take interpersonal risk to lower your teams interpersonal risk. When a boss appears to know everything, no one wants to take situational risk. Adopting a humble mindset is realism that gets the most out of your team. Confidence and humility are not opposites. Confidence when warranted is preferable to false modesty. Humility is not false modesty, rather it is the recognition that you dont have all the answers or have a crystal ball. When leaders express situational humility, teams adopt more learning behavior.

Admit your errors and shortcomings

When Anne Mulcahy was named CEO of Xerox, the company was facing going out of business. She quickly became known as the master of I dont know and led Xerox out of bankruptcy and orchestrated a remarkable turnaround.

Express interest and availability.

What can I do to help?

What are you up against?

What are your concerns?

In the moment, be vulnerable, interested, and available. Your attempts may be ignored or rebuffed. But it is a risk worth taking.

You must also be in the room.

American billionaire investor, Ray Dalio, founder of the worlds largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, is known for his gospel of radical transparency.

He began a unique company culture that operated under a rule that you could not talk about others unless they were also in the room, so they could learn from what is being said. Those that talked about colleagues behind their back were referred to as slimy weasels!

Bridgewater even has a transparency library where videos of every executive meeting are kept so that anyone in the company can see how issues and policies are discussed.

Say thanks.

The courage of speaking up and taking the risk must be followed with a word of thanks rather than immediately disagreeing. Give that feedback only after pausing and saying thanks.

Try that this week; you may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

About Grace Ueng

Grace is CEO of Savvy Growth, a leadership coaching and management consultancy founded in 2003. Her great passion to help leaders and the companies they run achieve their fullest potential combined with her empathy and ability to help leaders figure out their why are what clients value most.

Graces core offerings are one on one coaching for CEOs and their leadership teams, facilitating workshops on Personal Branding and Speaking Success and conducting strategic reviews for companies at a critical juncture. A TED speaker, she is hired to give motivational keynotes and lead Happiness Works programs for companies and campuses.

A marketing strategist, Grace held leadership roles at five high growth technology ventures that successfully exited through acquisition or IPO. She started her career at Bain & Company and then worked in brand management at Clorox and General Mills. She is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School and holds a positive coaching certification from the Whole Being Institute.

Grace and her partner, Rich Chleboski, a cleantech veteran, develop and implement strategies to support the growth of impact focused companies and then coach their leaders in carrying out their strategic plans. Their expertise spans all phases of the business from evaluation through growth and liquidity.

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If you want to create a fearless organization, here's how - WRAL TechWire

Human Behavior

Now CNN wants to be less "partisan": Will the media never learn its lesson? – Salon

If you want to understand Donald Trump's malevolence and the immense harm he has caused the American people and the world, you need to follow one basic rule:Take the worst thing you can imagine about Trump's character, behavior and motivations. Then take that several steps further, into the realm of apparent absurdity. Then, quite likely, you will have arrived at some approximation of the truth.

Accept that Donald Trump is a bottomless maw of perfidy, enabling and perpetrating the worst excesses of human behavior, and the reality of the Age of Trump comes into sharp focus. That is not "doom porn" or "hysteria" or "Trump derangement syndrome." It is simply the truth, which offers us some possibility of understanding, and ultimately of victory. Refusing to believe the truth, however,leads to inevitable defeat in the struggle to save America and the world from the rising fascist tide.

The axiom that we should expect the worst or worse than the worst from Trump and his movement applies to almost every issue before, during and since his presidency: the coronavirus pandemic, Russia's interference in the 2016 election, chronic fraud and corruption and self-dealing, and of course the Big Lie, Trump's coup attempt and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

That same rule certainly applies to the Department of Justice investigation of Donald Trump for having taken hundreds of highly classified and top-secret documents (reportedly including information about the nuclear weapons) from the White House and storing them at Mar-a-Lago for his own purposes.

Two weeks ago, the FBI obtained a warrant and searched Trump's residence at his private resort in Palm Beach, where they seized many boxes of documents. The mainstream media was compelled to act shocked and amazed at the potentially serious crimes the former president may have committed.

The axiom that we should expect the worst or worse than the worst from Trump and his movement applies to everything associated with his rise to power and his term in office.

Such a reaction was not wholly unreasonable. This is the first time in American history that the Department of Justice and the FBI have investigated a former president for serious criminal charges. Moreover, the implication that a former commander in chief could actually be engaged in some form of espionage or extortion involving national secrets potentially endangering the safety and security of the American people may sound like something torn from the pages of a subpar spy thriller rather than an actual possibility.

Two weeks later, the scale and implications of Trump's possible violations of the Espionage Act and other laws regarding presidential records and government secrets now appear much worse.

In response to this investigation, Donald Trump is now claiming that he is a "victim" of a political "witch hunt." That is predictable and entirely untrue. Like other fascists and political strongmen, Trump believes he is above the law. To that end, Trump is effectively encouraging his followers to engage in acts of violence to defend him and the MAGA movement from President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, the Democrats and other perceived enemies.

If the media and the larger political class had observed my basic rule about the limitless possibilities of Trump's perfidy, nothing about his continuing political crime spree would come as a surprise.

Too many people in media and political class have chosen to remain on the endless treadmill of shock and surprise, largely because that narrative is both profitable and comforting. Controversy drives viewers, readers and advertising revenue; spectacle keeps the public watching, reading and clicking. To borrow from the world of professional wrestling, too often the mainstream news media is selling "the sizzle and not the steak."

This creates an endless cycle of the spectacular that numbs public sensibilities; the next event in the cycle must be even more shocking and amazing than the last one. Perspective is lost, and the public's capacity for discernment and good decision-making is further diminished.

To keep repeating the narrative that Donald Trump's behavior is somehow "shocking" or "surprising" is also comforting for the news media and larger political class because it presupposes that Trump and the neofascist movement are limited or somehow governed by the "norms" and "rules" of democracy. In other words, it relies on the assumption that there is some bottom to their perfidy and willingness to harm democracy, society and the American people.

Repeating the narrative that Trump's behavior is "shocking" or "surprising" is comforting it presupposes that he is somehow limited by the famous "norms" of democracy.

To state the truth, that there are no such limits, is simply not acceptable in this context. So the mainstream media continues with its obsolete habits in attempting to explain the behavior of Trump and his movement and the threat they represent. In practice, this desperate normalcy bias results in the persistence of "both sides" coverage and an obsession with "objectivity," "fairness" and "balance," rather than a willingness to act as bold and unapologetic defenders of democracy.

There are many recent examples.

Last week, journalist Brian Stelter's CNN show "Reliable Sources" was abruptly canceled by Chris Licht, the network's new CEO.Licht reportedly did not approve of Stelter's "opinionated style," has issued directives to writers and on-air personnel to stop referring to Trump's false claims about the 2020 election as the "Big Lie" because that language is too "partisan." Licht also reportedly wants more conservative guests and more "straight news reporting" on CNN. These changes are not about presenting a more robust truth to viewers, but about maximizing profits by appealing to Republicans, Trump supporters and "centrists."

Licht also took the unusual step of meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders, apparently to discuss CNN's future direction. The right-wing echo chamber is celebrating this decision as a de facto apology tour for the network's purported "liberal bias."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

What do "balance" and "fairness" look like when one political party is engaged in a systematic assault on democracy, freedom and the rule of law, not to mention truth and reality itself? And what about the fourth estate's obligation in a democracy to tell the truth, stand up to the powerful and hold elected officials and other leaders accountable?

Writing at Medium, Wajahat Ali recently observedthat "fascismwill be welcomed and normalized in America as long as it delivers good ratings, money, and access to power":

Most American institutions, especially corporate media, have refused to learn anything from the past five years in which the GOP and the entire right-wing ecosystem have become a radicalized and weaponized authoritarian movement that views them as oppressive instruments of "the deep state."

The message that sends to America is that it pays to be a bad-faith actor. You get to fail up, as long as you provide the ratings. Just look at Donald Trump. In 2016, former CBS CEO Leo Moonves infamously admitted that Trump"may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."Former CNN CEO Jeff Zucker still has no regrets about helping elevate and mainstream Donald Trump through "The Apprentice"and CNN's initial coverage of his 2015 rallies. Nobody's perfect, right?

It's not just CNN, but media companies across the board, that have learned all the wrong lessons. In May 2022, CBS News hired Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former chief of staff, who was utterly complicit in enabling all of his destructive incompetence.A CBS executive justified the hire by saying they needed more Republicans for "access,"assuming Democrats would lose the majority in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. ABC News gave a lucrative contract to Chris Christie to become a political commentator.The Viewjust added Alyssa Farah, Trump's former White House Director of Strategic Communications, as a permanent host. The big lie and the violent insurrection were a bridge too far for Farah, and that gives her and other conservatives a lifetime pass to fail up in life even though they were fine with Trump's racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, lies and cruelty. There is affirmative action in media, but it only exists for Republicans. ...

I look forward to news panels in 2023 in which guests will debate whether slavery was actually a force of benevolence, and whether or not Jews have space lasers and are using them to replace white people. After all, you can't be a good "centrist" journalist who plays it down the middle if you don't make space for these conversations where everyone can come and be heard.

A recent Washington Post articleoffered another example of how the mainstream media continues to normalize Trumpism and American neofascism. The headline reads: "Six drastic plans Trump is already promising for a second term." The subheading follows: "In recent speeches, the former president has begun specifying new policies he'd pursue if he returns to the White House, with an emphasis on crime, voting and shrinking the government."

This linguistic frame presents Trump and the Republicans' assaults on democracy and other authoritarian behavior through the broken lens of "normal politics" and "business as usual." In reality, Trump's plans for a second term would involve establishing himself as an American king or emperor with the power to fire government employees for "disloyalty", to use the National Guard as his personal stormtroopers in Black and brown communities and to expand the war on multiracial democracy by creating a new Jim Crow-style system of white minority rule.

American politics has been broken by asymmetrical polarization and negative partisanship: On one side, the Republican fascists want to end multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with a Christo-fascist apartheid plutocracy. On the other side, the Democrats and other pro-democracy forces want to stop them. There is no moral equivalency: The two parties are not equally responsible for the country's democracy crisis.

Yet institutional norms and rules within mainstream media continue to encourage false equivalency.Last June, media scholar Jay Rosen interviewed Mark Jacob, a former editor at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times,about the media's failures in the Age of Trump. Jacob reflected on how he tried to ensure an equal number of quotes from Republicans and Democrats in news articles, and how that supposed commitment to "balance" actually empowered Trump and his forces:

There were a number of errors in my process. One was in thinking of a news story as a stage that allowed Republicans and Democrats to perform their talking points, rather than as a way to inform readers about the issues and the facts as much as possible. It was also a mistake to prioritize who was speaking rather than what they were saying. There are times when a party's leadership has coalesced around a lie. The Republican disinformation about the Jan. 6 committee, for example. If you're obligated to run a quote by Republican leaders on that, you're going to run a lie. And if you don't debunk it at the same time, you're enabling the liars.

When did I come to grips with this problem? As the Republican Party became more corrupt and at the same time more adept at laundering its message through legitimate media. You see, my equal-time approach made more sense when the two major parties were equally corrupt and dishonest. They were both pretty bad in the '80s and '90s, and there are still bad actors in the Democratic Party today. But as the Republican Party en masse has become an increasingly dangerous, anti-democratic force, equal time for the parties has become equal time for truth and for lies.

This "old-fashioned mainstream journalism approach," in which both Republicans and Democrats get to "have their say," Jacob said, was "failing our democracy" and "was increasingly being exploited by propagandists":

The idea that we had to be fair to Republicans-vs.-Democrats instead of being fair to the public and the facts was a great gift to professional political liars. They were able to insert fake issues into the mainstream news agenda. And they saw their falsehoods repeated by "objective" journalists, conferring a sense of legitimacy. Old-fashioned journalism has been no match for right-wing propaganda. It's been a slaughter.

Saving American democracy from the Republican fascists requires the news media and other public voices to defend, without apology or qualification, multiracial democracy, the Constitution, human rights, civil rights and the rule of law. To be "biased" against fascists and other authoritarians is a virtue; it's the minimum that should be demanded of the fourth estate in a liberal democracy.

If the American media were truly objective, it would consistently report on the Republican fascists' existential threats to democracy, freedom and society. What the Trumpists and neofascists thrive on is cowardly neutrality in which evil and good, right and wrong, lies and truths are presented as effectively the same thing. As a practical matter, that framework empowers the Republican fascists and larger white right and other anti-democracy forces.

American politics has been broken by asymmetrical polarization: There is no moral equivalency between the two parties. They are not equally responsible for the crisis of democracy.

Embracing pro-democracy journalism would also mean acknowledging that reporters, editors, producers and other journalists, are real human beings, not automatons or abstractions who exist outside society, untouched by the consequences of politics and larger questions of power and society. The pursuit of "objectivity" is both pointless and false.Alex Sujong Laughlin explores thisin an article for Poynter following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, when managers at some newsrooms sent emails "reminding workers to avoid tweeting anything that may give a perception of bias":

The emails were sent in service of newsrooms' desire to uphold the journalistic value of objectivity or at least the appearance of it. When, according to Gallup, only 36% of the country has a "great deal" or "fair" amount of trust in the mass media, I understand why the need for legacy newsrooms to be perceived as "unbiased" seems critical.

But the pursuit of the appearance of objectivity (as opposed to focusing on truthful and contextual reporting of the news) has always been a cynical public relations tactic, one that came to prominence at a time when the industry and who works in it looked very different than it does today. Performing objectivity is outdated, and if we want to preserve public trust in media institutions, the best thing we can do is to tell the truth. ...

Rather than adapting to the rhetorical needs of an unprecedented period of democratic destabilization, legacy newsrooms are clinging to outdated values while conceding only when public opinion demands it, or when the Overton Window shifts so an issue becomes mainstream.

We can do the important work of witnessing the world, verifying truth, and contextualizing it for our readers while acknowledging our humanity and telling the truth about how these decisions will affect us personally.

We are running out of time in the struggle to save American democracy and society from the Republican fascists and their forces. The American news media and other public voices must escape the comforts of normalcy bias and the empty hope that the Republican fascists and other "conservatives" are fundamentally good people who will snap back to their senses and renew their supposed commitment to shared democratic norms and values.

In the final episode of "Reliable Sources," Brian Stelter said: "It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues it's required, it's patriotic. We must make sure we do not give a platform to those who are lying to our faces."

The American media should treat Stelter's words as a guiding principle and embrace the responsibility of defending democracy. This is an existential battle. We have no need of neutral referees.

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about the crisis of democracy

Originally posted here:
Now CNN wants to be less "partisan": Will the media never learn its lesson? - Salon

Human Behavior

The Recycling Partnership Showcases Organization’s Efforts in 2022 Impact Report – waste360

The Recycling Partnership was established with one goal in mind - creating a truly circular economy across the globe to bring an end tooverflowing landfills.

In its 2022 Impact Report,the organization breaks down all of the individual successes theyve had a hand in influencing to date. Looking into each aforementioned facet of the waste reduction issue, the report proudly touts some amazing steps forward towards their goals.

System change requires collaborationsolving with communities, MFRs, materials and packaging manufacturers, brands and retailers, and people, writes CEO Keefe Harrison.

Diving first into their work towards supporting communities, The Recycling Partnership examines a few areas where their work has pushed different states and cities towards their own recycling-oriented goals. The organization cites its workin Michigan, Orlandoand Baltimore inits efforts to achieve higherrecycling rates.

Michigan released a statewide goal of increasing recycling rates in the state from 14 percent in 2019 to 45 percent by 2030. In order to help them in making this objective a reality, The Recycling Partnership worked with local materials recovery facilities (MRFs), haulers, solid waste management authorities and environmental non-profits to decrease recycling contamination and supply resources.

Utilizing the strategy of collaboration, The Recycling Partnership was able to leverage itsFeet on the Street program to supply 400,000 recycling bins across the state and bring recycling contamination levels down. This, in turn, will allow recycling rates to increase as fewer materials are rejected.

In the first year of this collaboration, the recycling quality improvement program resulted in a 35 percentaverage reduction in contamination for curbside collection programs, a 26 percentaverage contamination reduction for drop-off programs, and a 10% increase in participation across most involved communities," the Impact Report states.

The report also explores another target area of The Recycling Partnership -MRFs.

Up to 25 percentof aluminum beverage cans are missorted at a typical MRF, according to research done by the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI). The Recycling Partnership has pinpointed this gap as a means of furthering theindustry towards its own goals of high recycling rates.

To provide what they can to this initiative, The Partnership launched an Aluminum Beverage Can Capture MRF Grant Program to invest in eddy-current separators, robotic sorters, other equipment, and process improvement to capture more cans during the sortation process asserts the report,.

This grant program has since endowed five grants of considerable size to companies that reach the criteria, allowing them to bring down the amount of missorted cans, recycle more material and progress towards circularity.

A large facet of The Recycling Partnership's work with correcting human behavior to empower people to recycle, and not just that, but recycle correctly.

To achieve this, the organizationlaunched the Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact, where themain goal is to provide as much education on the topic of recycling as possible while paying a lot of attention to its accessibility. With hopes of this educational access increasing consumer recycling rates, it is impossible to overlook the general access to proper recycling programs.

Currently 40 percentof all Americans lack equitable access to recycling, and the Center aims to drive "measurable change by leveraging our National Recycling Database, including targeted pilots of the newly launched chatbot, community partnerships, proven recycling education, and established track record of improving local recycling programs."

Looking to measure impact, the organization haslaid out several goals including the following; recover and collect more than 1 billion pounds of new recyclables each year, transform thousands of packages to recyclability, andreduce tens of millions of pounds of packaging through improved designs.

While they are excited about the leaps made thus far, they are not satisfied just yet. The Recycling Partnership has plans to continue pursuing efforts in all of their target categories and further employing their strategy of cooperation to accomplish widescale recycling change.

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The Recycling Partnership Showcases Organization's Efforts in 2022 Impact Report - waste360

Human Behavior

Major Depression: The Chemical Imbalance Pillar Is CrumblingIs the Genetics Pillar Next? – Mad In America – Mad in America

The Pillars of Biopsychiatry

In a widely discussed July, 2022 analysis, psychiatrists Joanna Moncrieff, Mark Horowitz and colleagues reviewed numerous studies and found no consistent evidence of there being an association between [the neurotransmitter] serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.

The response by supporters of mainstream psychiatry was at times marked by personal attack and distortion, and other times by statements from academic psychiatrists that Moncrieff et al. found nothing new, and that psychiatry has known for many years that serotonin levels are not associated with depression. Yet as Robert Whitaker showed, psychiatry continued to promote the serotonin chemical imbalance story after knowing it was wrong, and pharmaceutical companies, and academic psychiatriststold us a story that their own research had shown to be false, and they did so because it benefitted guild interests and the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies.

If psychiatrys serotonin and chemical imbalance pillars are now crumbling, the genetic predisposition (heritability) pillar remains in placefor now. In this article I review the evidence that psychiatry ceaselessly puts forward in support of the heritability of major depression (hereafter, MD). I will first describe MD genetic studies based on families, twins, and adoptees, and then finish with a more detailed critical evaluation of MD molecular genetic studies, which have failed to discover genes shown to cause MD. The genetics of depression story I will tell differs fundamentally from the story told in most textbooks, academic review articles, popular media accounts, and online sources.

The American Psychiatric Association sees MD as a genetically based serious medical illness, for which brain chemistry may contribute. Critics have challenged these claims, and some have questioned the validity and reliability of the MD diagnosis itself. Inter-rater reliability refers to the ability of psychiatrists to agree on a diagnosis. MD reliability is low (inter-rater reliability kappa = .25), and has been decreasing. A diagnosis must be reliable in order to be valid. If MD cannot be reliably identified, it cannot be a valid diagnosis. (Although reliability is a prerequisite for validity, a reliably identified condition must still be validated by other means.) Therefore, research based on a diagnosis of major depressive disorder or a similar condition begins on shaky ground.

Although mainstream outlets and the general public often get this important point wrong, most genetic researchers and their critics are in agreement that the results of MD family studies (depression running in the family) cannot be interpreted genetically, because family members share common environments as well as common genes. MD adoption studies have been carried out in an attempt to separate these influences, but their flaws led top psychiatric genetic researchers Jonathan Flint and Kenneth Kendler to conclude in 2014, Surprisingly, no high-quality adoption study of MD has been performed, so our evidence of the role of genetic factors in its etiology comes solely from twin studies.

A subsequent 2018 MD adoption study by Kendler and colleagues, based on Swedish adoptees and families, was subject to the problems and potential confounds that characterize psychiatric adoption research. These problem areas include adoption agencies typically selective and non-random adoption placements, late separation, late placement, range restriction and the screening of adoptive families for psychological and financial stability, and shared prenatal environment. It is likely that some adopted children experienced attachment-rupture trauma, emotional suffering, loneliness and neglect, and other adverse childhood conditions that can lead to psychological problems later in life.

Kendler and colleagues 2018 adoption study was based on the records of over 14,000 adult adoptees obtained from Swedish population registers. Children were placed in their adoptive homes up to five years of age (late placement, probable late separation). Diagnoses were taken from hospital and medical records found through the registers. The researchers concluded, The parent-offspring resemblance for treated MD arises from genetic factors and rearing experiences to an approximately equal extent. They calculated a modest 16% MD heritability estimate. However, the studys MD rate among adoptees was 50% higher than among people who grew up in intact families (15.6% vs. 10.2%), meaning that adoptees and non-adoptees constituted distinct populations in relation to MD. It follows that the studys findings cannot be applied (generalized) to people who grew up in intact families. Due to the above-mentioned problems related to both the Kendler study and psychiatric adoption studies in general (including the reliability/validity issue), like the earlier investigations the 2018 Kendler et al. adoption study results cannot be interpreted genetically.

If a genetic theory of behavior depends on twin study data, the theory is in serious trouble. Based on twin study results, biopsychiatry estimates MD heritability in the 30%-40% range. (I make a distinction between psychiatry and biopsychiatry, while being aware that biological and genetic approaches currently dominate psychiatry. The psychiatric genetics field is a major component of biopsychiatry.) Genetic theories in psychiatry are based on studies using reared-together twin pairs. Other than anecdotal reports on individual pairs, there are no reared-apart twin studies in psychiatry, even though psychiatric texts at times say that there are.

Psychiatric twin studies use the classical twin method, which compares the concordance rates or behavioral correlations of reared-together MZ (monozygotic, identical) versus reared-together same-sex DZ pairs (dizygotic, fraternal). MZ pairs are assumed to share 100% of their segregating genes, whereas DZ pairs are assumed to share on average 50%. The results of MD twin studies show that MZ pairs resemble each other more for MD compared with same-sex DZ pairs at a statistically significant level. I will designate this finding rMZ > rDZ (with r representing the behavioral correlation).

All sides of the genetics of depression debate expect a twin study finding of rMZ > rDZ. The main disagreement centers on how this expected-by-all finding should be interpreted.

Genetic interpretations of rMZ > rDZ require acceptance of the long-controversial MZ-DZ equal environment assumption, also known as the EEA. According to the EEA, MZ and same-sex DZ pairs grow up experiencing roughly equal environments, and the only behaviorally relevant factor distinguishing these pairs is their differing degree of genetic relationship to each other (100% vs. an average 50%). This key assumption is obviously false, however, since when compared with same-sex DZ pairs, MZ pairs grow up experiencing

Most modern twin researchers concede the point that MZ environments are more similar. For example, in a 2014 article by criminology twin researcher J. C. Barnes and colleagues, ironically written in defense of twin research, the authors properly recognized, Critics of twin research have correctly pointed out that MZ twins tend to have more environments in common relative to DZ twins, including parental treatmentcloseness with one anotherbelonging to the same peer networksbeing enrolled in the same classesand being dressed similarly.

Despite recognizing that MZ and DZ twin pairs grow up experiencing very different environments, twin researchers have used eight different arguments in support of the EEA. In my forthcoming book Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of an Illusion (Routledge, 2023), I examine each of these eight arguments and show that none holds up (a partial examination of these arguments can be found here). Because the EEA is false, the results of a psychiatric twin study finding rMZ > rDZ can be explained by non-genetic factors. Decades of studies designed to test the EEA have failed to alter this basic conclusion.

In a 2000 MD review and meta-analysis based on twin study data, leading genetic researchers Patrick Sullivan, Michael C. Neale, and Kendler calculated a 37% MD heritability estimate based on the greater MZ versus DZ resemblance for depression. Sullivan and colleagues sensibly did not claim that MZ and DZ environments are equal, and like most authors of the six depression twin studies they analyzed, they sidestepped the twin methods unequal environments problem by defining the EEA in its trait-relevant form: The critical equal environment assumption, they wrote, posits that monozygotic and dizygotic twins are equally correlated in their exposure to environmental events of etiologic relevance to major depression (emphasis added).

A principle of science, however, is that the burden of proof falls on people making a claim, not on their critics. Therefore, MD twin researchers using this trait-relevant definition of the EEAand not their criticsare required to identify the specific and exclusive trait-relevant environmental factors involved in a diagnosis of major depression. Until this happens, and until they then determine that MZ and DZ pairs were similarly exposed (or not exposed) to these factors, the EEA as conceptualized by Sullivan and colleagues fails completely. Because the EEA is false, MD twin study and twin-study-based meta-analysis results cannot be interpreted genetically.

Biopsychiatry is confronted with another major predicament. It relies on the production and accuracy of heritability estimates (h2) that range from 0% to 100%, but these estimates are based on a string of questionable assumptions. One of these assumptions is the long-disputed idea that genetic and environmental factors are independent from each other (additive) and do not interact. In a 2022 analysis, sociologist NicolasRobette and colleagues examined the assumptions that heritability estimates are based upon, and concluded, None of the hypotheses inherent in heritability estimates are verified in humans. This is a strong statement that, if true, should lead to the abandonment of heritability estimates in psychiatry and other behavioral science fields.

The heritability concept was developed in the 1930s as a tool to help predict the results of selective breeding programs of farm animals, such as milk production in cows. Since the 1960s, h2 has been extended by behavioral researchers and others into a measure of the relative importance of genetic and environmental influences on various psychiatric conditions, and behavioral characteristics such as IQ and personality. Critics generally object to h2 being used in this way, in part because nature and nurture influences interact with each other, meaning that it is not possible to separate and partition these influences. This leads to a rejection of variance explained by descriptions of the causes of psychiatric conditions.

Heritability estimates do not indicate the strength or weakness of potential genetic influences, or imply anything about changeability. Psychologist David Moore and David Shenkwrotein The Heritability Fallacy that the term heritability, as it is used today in human behavioral genetics, is one of the most misleading in the history of science. A strong statement that may well be true.

Like other psychiatric diagnoses, the decision to perform major depression molecular genetic research was based on the belief that earlier family, twin, and adoption studies produced indisputable evidence in favor of substantial heritability. This is the fundamental error of MD gene-finding strategies. Because family, twin, and adoption studies have failed to provide such evidence, there is no good reason to assume that genes for depression even exist. Future historians may well conclude that the search for non-existent genes was a scientific folly of epic proportions.

When assessing MD gene discovery claims, we should keep these additional points in mind.

The three main (at times overlapping) eras of psychiatric molecular genetic research, which dates back to the 1960s, have been the linkage, candidate gene association, and the current GWAS/PRS eras (genome-wide association study/polygenic risk score). Another area of research focuses on potential rare risk variants such as copy number variants, or CNVs. Although claims of CNV-MD gene associations have appeared in recent years, I will focus on molecular genetic studies using the candidate gene, GWAS, and PRS approaches.

Psychiatric candidate gene researchers generate hypotheses about a diagnosis, and then identify candidate genes that might play a role in causing it. Genes become MD candidates based on their role in influencing brain functions believed to be related to the diagnosis. Flint and Kendler reported that as of 2013, more than 1,500 MD candidate gene association studies had been published, and almost 200 genes had been tested. Similar to the linkage era, however, the candidate gene era in the behavioral sciences is now widely recognized to have been, as leading behavioral genetic researcher Robert Plomin conceded in 2018, a flop.

In a 2019 analysis appearing in the American Journal of Psychiatry, behavioral geneticists Richard Border, Matthew Keller and colleagues concluded that findings from the MD candidate gene era are likely to be false positives:

The study results do not support previous depression candidate gene findings, in which large genetic effects are frequently reported in samples orders of magnitude smaller than those examined here. Instead, the results suggest that early hypotheses about depression candidate genes were incorrect and that the large number of associations reported in the depression candidate gene literature are likely to be false positives.

In a subsequent interview, Keller asked, How on Earth could we have spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars studying pure noise? A similar question could be asked in relation to schizophrenia candidate gene research.

An example of earlier candidate gene era excitement is found in a 2009 academic journal article entitled The Role of Serotonin in the Pathophysiology of Depression: As Important as Ever. In this publication psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff and Michael Owens reviewed and updated their 1994 citation classic article describing what they believed was a big serotonin gene discovery: One of the most exciting findings is the importance of SERT [serotonin transporter] polymorphisms [gene variants] in vulnerability to depression, and the interaction of this genetic marker with environmental factors. Both authors reported paid advisory roles with and research funding from several drug companies, and Nemeroff reported stock ownership in six related companies. At the height of the candidate gene era an article appeared in a major mass media outlet wondering out loud whether people with depression are morally obligated to forgo bearing children in order to avoid passing on their bad genes. The genetic predisposition and serotonin theories of MD have been linked for many years.

Psychologist Stuart Ritchie recalled in 2020 that when he was an undergraduate student between 2005 and 2009, candidate gene studies were the subject of intense and excited discussion. By the time I got my PhD in early 2014, they were almost entirely discredited. For Ritchie, who otherwise strongly supports behavioral genetic research and theories, reading through the candidate gene literature is, in hindsight, a surreal experience: they were building a massive edifice of detailed studies on foundations that we now know to be completely false.

The Most Famous Candidate Gene-Environment Link of Them All. A highly publicized MD-candidate-gene link was put forward in a widely cited 2003 study by Avshalom Caspi and colleagues (according to Google Scholar, cited over 10,400 times as of August, 2022, or about 550 citations per year over 19 years), who concluded that people experiencing stressful life events are more likely to be diagnosed with depression if they carried 5-HTTLPR, a variant genetic sequence within the SLC6A4 gene that encodes a protein that transports serotonin within neuronal cells. For many people, the Caspi study provided a sensible explanation for the causes of depression, where life events and genetic predisposition combined to explain why some people become depressed, while others do not. However, despite the publication of at least 450 research papers about this genetic variant, by 2018 or so it was clear that the 5-HTTLPR depression theory did not hold up.

The rise and fall of the 5-HTTLPR-depression link was described in psychiatric drug researcher Derek Lowes aptly-titled 2019 Science article, There Is No Depression Gene. The depression candidate gene literature, he wrote, turned out to be all noise, all false positives, all junk. A 2019 online article by a psychiatrist using the pen-name Scott Alexander documented years of subsequently unsubstantiated 5-HTTLPR-depression claims in the scientific literature, and how the media popularized these claims by calling 5-HTTLPR and a few similar variants orchid genes, because orchids are sensitive to stress but will bloom beautifully under the right conditions. Who could say a bad word about orchids? Alexander summed up the 5-HTTLPR debacle as follows:

First, what bothers me isnt just that people said 5-HTTLPR mattered and it didnt. Its that we built whole imaginary edifices, whole castles in the air on top of this idea of 5-HTTLPR mattering. We figured out how 5-HTTLPR exerted its effects, what parts of the brain it was active in, what sorts of things it interacted with, how its effects were enhanced or suppressed by the effects of other imaginary depression genes. This isnt just an explorer coming back from the Orient and claiming there are unicorns there. Its the explorer describing the life cycle of unicorns, what unicorns eat, all the different subspecies of unicorn, which cuts of unicorn meat are tastiest, and a blow-by-blow account of a wrestling match between unicorns and Bigfoot.

So ends the sorry and expensive MD candidate gene story. Despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on the depression studies alone, and despite genetic researchers sincere and admirable desire to prevent and alleviate human suffering, the behavioral science candidate gene era turned out to be, in the words of our planets top behavioral geneticist, a flop.

Given the failure of family studies, twin studies, adoption studies, linkage studies, candidate gene studies, and rare variant studies to produce scientifically acceptable evidence that disordered genes play a role in causing MD, supposedly hypothesis-free GWAS/PRS research has become the last hiding place of potential MD heritability. GWAS researchers attempt to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs(pronounced snips by those in the field).These variants, numbering in the millions and curated in an ever-growing digital catalogue available to researchers, are considered common minority variants of genes present in at least 1% of the population. Because multiple comparisons are made, the GWAS significance threshold is very high, usually 5 108. A PRS study combines statistically significant and non-significant individual SNP hits to produce a polygenic (composite) risk score. Polygenic risk scores have been described as constructed as a weighted sum of risk allele counts using effect sizes estimated from GWAS as the weights. They are expressed as a percentage.

As GWAS pioneer Jonathan Flint, Ralph Greenspan, and Kendler repeatedly stressed in their 2020 book How Genes Influence Behavior (2nd ed.), A GWAS does not find association with a gene. A GWAS finds associations with a locus, which is a geneticists term for placea place in the genome where the genetic variant is found.If the variant found by a GWAS altered a coding region, as was initially hoped, then it would be straightforward to say which genes were involved in the trait under investigation. But GWAS hits turned out not to be coding for SNPs.

To repeat: A GWAS does not identify causative genes, and a gene association points to a correlation or to a chance finding, not to a cause. The classic example of a correlation not implying cause is that if red-haired people in a given society are persecuted, and for this reason alone many red-haired people suffer from depression, this indicates only that genes for red hair are associated with depression, not that they cause depression.

In 2014, Flint and Kendler recognized the failure of the nine GWASes published up to that time. Since then, a few studies have produced GWAS SNP hits that psychiatry and the media now put forward as solid MD gene associations. However, psychiatric GWAS/PRS studies have been the subject of controversy for several reasons. I will mention a few of the problem areas.

Associated With Caused By. As we saw, a GWAS identifies regions of the genome (hits) associated with a condition. It does not identify genes that cause it, and associated with does not mean caused by.

Population Stratification Confounds. GWAS/PRS findings are subject to the confounding influence of population stratification (pop strat), which can lead to spurious findings (explained here, here, here, and here). Briefly, population stratification refers to differences in allele frequencies between cases and controls due to systematic differences in ancestry, rather than association of genes with disease. No generally accepted remedy for pop strat has been found, although many have been proposed and attempted.

Dependence on Heritability Estimates. Heritability estimates both justify and guide a GWAS. Researchers assume that heritability estimates are important and roughly accurate, and that MD heritability is in the 30%-40% range. If a heritability estimate is inflated due to systematic bias, or if heritability estimates are meaningless in and of themselves (apart from their original purpose of helping predict the results of a selective breeding program), attempts to find causative genes will end up as expensive failures.

A Scientific Fishing Expedition? By definition, a scientific fishing expedition is a hypothesis-free method, where researchers base their conclusions on significant correlations that in the GWAS context pop up on a Manhattan Plot. According to an author writing in a clinical psychiatry publication, The termfishing expeditionis used to describe what researchers do when they indiscriminately examine associations between different combinations of variables not with the intention of testing a priori hypotheses but with the hope of finding something that is statistically significant in the data. It could be argued that a GWAS is a type of fishing expedition, or even more, a massive gene-trawling juggernaut hauling in as much variation as possible. In 2016, behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer referred to the GWAS method as unapologetic, high-tech p-hacking.

Conflicts of Interest. Potential conflicts of interest exist when research, researchers, and institutions are funded by companies that profit from the promotion of biological and genetic explanations of depression. A large-sample GWAS claiming 178 significant loci-associations for MD, including replication of the findings in an independent sample, was published in 2021. Yale Universitys Daniel Levey was the lead author, and the corresponding author was psychiatric researcher Murray B. Stein. Dr. Steins competing interests statement read (I marked companies that develop antidepressant drugs with an asterisk), M.B.S. reports receiving consulting fees in the past 3 years from Acadia Pharmaceuticals*, Aptinyx*, Bionomics*, BioXcel Therapeutics*, Boehringer Ingelheim, Clexio Biosciences*, EmpowerPharm, Engrail Therapeutics*, Genentech/Roche, GW Pharmaceuticals, Janssen*, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Oxeia Biopharmaceuticals. The annual consulting fee income Dr. Stein received was not disclosed. The article said that he and a co-author secured funding for this project. The direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe played a significant role in this study, a company that stood to profit from the discovery of relevant MD genes. There is a symbiotic relationship between psychiatry, biopsychiatry, direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies, and the drug companies. All have a vital and mutual interest in convincing the public that psychiatric conditions are real brain-based diseases rooted in genetics, in need of medication like other diseases. As Robert Whitaker and others have shown, all share in the profits.

Other Unlikely GWAS Findings. The GWAS method has produced some questionable and even humorous findings. These include significant hits for behavioral characteristics that include getting concussions, self-reported childhood maltreatment, crying habits, female sexual dysfunction, food liking, household income, ice cream flavor preferences, loneliness, being a morning person, musical beat synchronization, regular attendance at a sports club, pub, or religious group, and white wine liking. Results of this type are obvious GWAS red flags, just as they were during the failed candidate gene era.

Polygenic Risk Score Cautions and Warnings. In an interview, veteran psychiatric genetic researcher Elliot Gershon described PRS as sort of a mindless score, and that you cant really tell anything from the polygenic risk factor. In a detailed analysis, sociologist/criminologist Callie Burt described several potential PRS environmental confounds, and concluded that scores should be used sparingly and cautiously with caveats placed front and center. Historian of science Nathaniel Comfort warned that polygenic risk scores are in no sense causal. A group of genetic researchers concluded that polygenic scores are computed under erroneous assumptions. Medical researcher Keith Baverstock called polygenic risk scores a dangerous delusion.

Science is in the midst of a replication crisis (also known as the reproducibility crisis), meaning a crisis brought about by the discovery that some key findings across various scientific fields were probably non-findings resulting from research that was poorly performed, manipulated to match confirmation biases or funding source expectations, or even fraudulent. The traditional scientific research and publication process makes it possible for researchers to change various aspects of their study after reviewing their data, but before submitting their paper for peer review and publication. Science writer Ed Yong wrote a 2019 Atlantic article about how confirmation biases may have played a role in prolonging what Lowe called the all noise, all false positives, all junk MD candidate gene era:

Many fields of science, frompsychologytocancer biology, have been dealing with similar problems: Entire lines of research may be based on faulty results. The reasons for this so-called reproducibility crisis are manifold. Sometimes, researchersfutz with their datauntil they get something interesting, orretrofit their questionsto match their answers. Other times, they selectively publish positive results while sweeping negative ones under the rug, creating a false impression of building evidence.

Such practices have led to increasing calls for research preregistration, where investigators would have the option or be required to submit their research rationale, hypotheses, design and analytic strategy, and planned data-collection stop point to a journal for peer review before they collect and analyze their data. Although we may never be able to eliminate bias altogether, wrote cognitive neuroscientist Chris Chambers, a sure way to immunize ourselves against its consequencesis peer-reviewed study preregistration.

Yong saw the problems that led to the downfall of depression candidate gene research as characteristic ofan academic world that rewards scientistsfor publishing papers in high-profile journalsjournals that prefer flashy studies that make new discoveries over duller ones that check existing work. Researchers are rewarded for beingproductiverather than beingright, for building ever upward instead of checking the foundations. (The validity of twin studies question is an example of a foundation that molecular genetic researchers rarely check.) After enough (albeit weak) studies are published, according to Yong they create a collective perception of strength that can be hard to pierce. Hard to pierce, that is, until the entire false-positive structure comes crashing down.

Most likely, Stuart Ritchies 2020 evaluation of the behavioral candidate gene era will be the eventual evaluation of the behavioral and psychiatric GWAS/PRS era as well (emphasis added): They were building a massive edifice of detailed studies on foundations that we now know to be completely false.

I have shown that family, twin, adoption, and molecular genetic studies have failed to provide scientifically valid evidence that genes play a role in causing depression. Combined with the recent findings by Moncrieff and colleagues that serotonin is not associated with depression, the idea of MD as a medical condition is in serious trouble.

To understand the true causes of depression, we must focus on family (including abuse and trauma), social, and political environments, including racial, gender, class, and other types of oppression/discrimination. We must address peoples increasing social isolation and disconnection from each other, lack of meaning and purpose, consumerism, and fears of present or future calamities such as pandemics, climate change, and nuclear war. The idea of depression as a medical/genetic condition must be reevaluated, and non-medical prevention and intervention strategies should be promoted. This is the approach of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), developed by psychologists Lucy Johnstone, Mary Boyle, and others. In a 2020 introductory book, the authors described the Frameworks overall message as follows:

All forms of adversity and distress are more common in social contexts of inequality and other forms of deprivation, discrimination, marginalisation and injustice. This evidence does not support the individualisation of distress, either medically or psychologically. Instead, it implies the need for action, primarily through social policy, at the earliest possible point, before the destructive and self-perpetuating cycles are set in motion.

Psychiatry sees a depressed person and asks, What is wrong with you? The PTMF asks, as do most psychotherapists, What happened to you? Given the lack of evidence, terms such as serotonin, chemical imbalance, brain disease, genetic predisposition, genes, and heritability should not be found in the answer to either of these questions. As James Davies wrote, the medical model describes suffering as being rooted in individual rather than social causes, leading individuals to think that it is them rather than the economic and social system in which they live that is at fault and in need of reform.

Psychiatrys longstanding major depression chemical imbalance and brain disease claims used to support the medical model are now crumbling. The longstanding and related depression as a heritable disorder claim awaits its turn.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussionbroadly speakingof psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers own.

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Major Depression: The Chemical Imbalance Pillar Is CrumblingIs the Genetics Pillar Next? - Mad In America - Mad in America

Human Behavior

Expanding Alzheimer’s research with primates could overcome the problem with treatments that show promise in mice but don’t help humans – The…

As of 2022, an estimated 6.5 million Americans have Alzheimers disease, an illness that robs people of their memories, independence and personality, causing suffering to both patients and their families. That number may double by 2060. The U.S. has made considerable investments in Alzheimers research, having allocated US$3.5 billion in federal funding this year.

Why, then, are researchers no closer to a cure today than they were 30 years ago?

Back in 1995, researchers created the first transgenic mouse model of Alzheimers disease, which involved genetically modifying mice to carry a gene associated with early-onset Alzheimers. Myriad studies have since focused on mouse models that accumulate abnormal proteins in their brains, a hallmark of the disease. Although these studies made great strides in understanding specific mechanisms involved in the disease, they have failed to translate into effective treatments.

As research scientists working with nonhuman primates, we believe that part of the problem is that mice dont reflect the full spectrum of Alzheimers disease. A more complementary animal model, however, could help researchers better translate the results from animal studies to humans.

A critical aspect of understanding what goes awry in Alzheimers disease is the relationship between brain and behavior. Researchers rely heavily on animal models to do these types of studies because ethical and practical issues make them impossible to conduct in people.

In recent years, researchers have developed alternative methods to study Alzheimers, such as computer models and cell cultures. Although these options show promise for advancing Alzheimers research, they dont supersede the need for animal models because of important limitations.

One is their inability to replicate the complexity of the human brain. The human brain has an estimated 86 billion neurons that perform highly complex computations. While computer models can simulate the workings of specific neural circuits, they are unable to fully capture these complex interactions and work best when used in concert with animal models.

Similarly, cell cultures and brain organoids miniature brains derived from human stem cells are unable to adequately mimic the aging process and all the ways the components of the human body interact with one another.

As a result of these limitations, researchers turn to animal models that better reflect human biology and disease processes.

According to the National Association for Biomedical Research, approximately 95% of lab research conducted in animals in the U.S. is done in mice and rats. Alzheimers is no exception: For more than 25 years, research on Alzheimers has focused on using transgenic mice to better understand the biological changes associated with the disease.

Because mice do not naturally get Alzheimers, they are genetically engineered to develop abnormal proteins known as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tau tangles to mimic Alzheimers in their brains. These protein accumulations impair brain function and are associated with memory impairment. While studies on treatments that remove these proteins have been able to improve cognition in mice, similar interventions have failed in people.

This highlights the challenge of translating animal research in the lab to people in the clinic. Mouse studies often mirror only a single aspect of the disease that may not be directly relevant to people. For example, most transgenic mouse models focus on amyloid protein buildup while neglecting other crucial aspects of the disease, such as overall neurodegeneration. Such limitations have led some scientists to question the value of using mouse models for Alzheimers research.

It is important to recognize, however, that scientific knowledge often advances in incremental steps through the collective results of many studies using different methods and models. Rodent studies provide the necessary foundation for animal models that better mimic the full scope of Alzheimers such as nonhuman primates.

The specific features of a species including brain structure, cognitive ability, life span and the extent to which they show the hallmarks of Alzheimers determine how suitable it is for specific research questions. Based on these factors, we believe that nonhuman primates are particularly well suited for Alzheimers research.

Primates are a diverse group of mammals that includes humans, apes, monkeys and prosimians. Nonhuman primates are particularly valuable for understanding human aging and Alzheimers disease because their genetic makeup, brain, behavior, physiology and aging process closely resemble those of people. Aging monkeys experience cognitive, physical and sensory decline as well as a variety of illnesses, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, much like aging people. Perhaps most critical for Alzheimers research, nonhuman primates live much longer than rodents and can naturally develop some of the hallmarks associated with Alzheimers as they get older.

Using nonhuman primates in research faces some challenges. Compared to mice, nonhuman primates are more expensive to house and feed, and face a growing shortage in research facilities. Nonhuman primates are also prime targets for activists seeking to stop the use of animals in research. Yet, in light of ongoing failures with rodent models, nonhuman primates could significantly help scientists better understand and treat Alzheimers.

Scientists study Alzheimers in nonhuman primates in a number of ways.

In one approach, researchers examine species with short life spans, such as gray mouse lemurs or common marmosets, to measure how brain and behavior naturally change with age and identify potential predictors of disease. Other researchers may instead accelerate the disease process by inducing plaque or tangle formation in the brains of longer-lived species, like rhesus macaques. These approaches yield studies that are particularly promising for testing treatments in a short time frame.

A third approach takes advantage of recent advances in genomics to study marmosets born with genetic mutations involved in Alzheimers. This method provides the opportunity to test preventive treatments during early life, well before any sign of the disease appears.

Lastly, comparing Alzheimer-like patterns across primate species may help reveal critical risk factors for developing the disease, which could be reduced to promote healthy aging.

We believe that research in nonhuman primates, when conducted with the highest ethical standards, provides the best chance to understand how and why Alzheimers disease progresses, and to design treatments that are safe and effective in people.

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Expanding Alzheimer's research with primates could overcome the problem with treatments that show promise in mice but don't help humans - The...

Human Behavior

Sadrick Widmann, cidaas: there is a broad range of cybersecurity measures a company should implement nowadays – CyberNews.com

A set of tools for managing roles and access privileges of individual network entities to various cloud and on-premise applications is called Identity and Access Management (IAM).

The primary purpose of IAM is a single digital identity for everyone and everything. Once that is established, it must be observed and modified throughout the access cycle of each user or device.

We sat down with Sadrick Widmann, a cloud IMA-focused company cidaas CEO, to discuss the most pressing issues of this side of the field.

How did cidaas originate? What would you consider the biggest milestones throughout the years?

The idea for cidaas developed out of a customer project of WidasConcepts. At that time, a well-known German medical technology company was looking for a solution for its customer identity and access management that would allow not only the administration of identities but also their authentication and authorization on a central platform.After evaluating several software solutions, we came to the conclusion that no vendor mapped all the requirements "out-of-the-box" and that major development efforts would be necessary to configure the solution as desired. The result is cidaas Europes #1 Cloud Identity & Access Management.

Can you introduce us to your identity platform? What are its key features?

Cidaas is the leading European Cloud Identity & Access Management and delivers an out-of-the-box solution with which companies can establish a unified identity across all channels and the highest security. Cidaas is characterized in particular by feature completeness. Starting with the extensive authentication options for login or multi-factor authentication to our group management with which B2B use cases or family and friend scenarios can be easily implemented as well as our advanced consent management. But also, innovative functions like the Real World Identification with which the digital and the real-world identity of users can be linked.

For example, the access to stadiums or events can be managed, or the cidaas ID validator with which a digital identity verification can be performed via an AutoIdent, for example for the opening of a bank account or for the digital driver's license check, round off the platform.

One important characteristic of the cidaas platform, which our customers often highlight, is the Everything is an API approach and the event-based architecture of cidaas. The Everything is an API allows one to access all features of cidaas via API and the event-based architecture allows reacting in real-time to any event happening in the cidaas platform. Both features allow a perfect integration of cidaas into any software landscape or application.

What are the most common methods threat actors use to bypass various identity verification measures?

There are many different attack vectors in the context of authentication, but since the password is still the predominant authentication method, most attacks continue to be password-centric and follow classic attack patterns.

Therefore, brute force attacks are still one of the most common methods, in particular, brute force attacks with credential stuffing or credential cracking demonstrate high success rates. In these attack patterns, attackers utilize existing compromised credentials and variations of these to authenticate at different services and platforms. The biggest collection of leaked credentials haveibeenpwnd contains nearly 12 billion credentials.

Additionally, also classical Phishing attacks are still common and still show a much too high success rate.

The advantage of these attack patterns is the broad range of victims that can be reached as well as the ease of implementation, reducing the barriers of the attack, combined with a good success rate, it is perfect for any attacker.

The best way to overcome these attack patterns is to move to passwordless and multi-factor authentication to eliminate the password as an attack vector.

How do you think the recent global events affected the cybersecurity landscape?

The recent events had a huge impact on the cybersecurity landscape. Starting the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly changed the way we work. Remote work and distributed work are part of everyday life, which also meant that classic cybersecurity concepts had to change. Users are no longer located in the secure corporate network protected by firewalls, but all over the world. But it is not only the world of work that has changed; the pandemic has also had an impact on private life, giving digitization a further boost, at least in part.

Also, the recent development in Ukraine affects the cybersecurity landscape massively, especially since state players and also hacker collectives are getting in on the action. In addition to the actual threat situation, which has increased, the perceived threat situation is also decisive and shapes the cybersecurity landscape.

My hope is that recent global events will have a positive effect on cybersecurity and lead to increased investment in cybersecurity by companies and nations.

What are the main issues associated with password-based authentication?

We already discussed password-centric attack patterns, but the main issue with password-based authentication is the human. The human factor combines different human behavioral patterns which undermine the password. That starts with the reuse of passwords, users tend to use the same or a variation of the same password test123 and test1234, which makes it easy for the attacker to guess the password in a brute force attack.

Moreover, the users do not select random passwords but subconsciously use certain patterns to assign passwords. These patterns can be modeled by attackers to reduce the number of possible passwords (solution space). Basically, attackers do not need to test random passwords during an attack, based on leaked credentials and models which map the patterns of password selection, the solution space an attacker needs to test during an attack shrinks massively.

Besides quality identity management solutions, what other cybersecurity measures do you think every company should implement nowadays?

There is a broad range of cybersecurity measures a company should implement nowadays. Important are all measures known to secure the networks and internal infrastructure: firewalls, protection against malware, monitoring of software and hardware systems, antivirus software

Important is also to keep software and hardware up-to-date, sadly this is quite often not the case in many companies, and in particular outdated software is in place. Finally, security awareness within the company is an essential building block of cybersecurity.

As for personal use, what security measures can average individuals take to prevent their identity from being stolen?

As an individual, you can take different measures to reduce the risk of identity theft. Obviously, caution and thoughtful behavior are important. Additionally, individuals should move to passwordless authentication options if available, more and more digital services offer such options like many of our customers do.

Users should also start using multi-factor authentication, in particular for important services and sensitive data. But it is not only the individual who should take action, also companies and providers need to do their job and integrate identity & access management as well as other security solutions to protect their user data.

What do you think the future of identity and access management is going to be like? Do you think the use of biometrics is going to take off?

I am curious to see the future development of the Identity & Access Management market. There are some interesting trends, be it Zero-Trust, digital identity verification, or the connection between digital and real-world identity.

I am also quite sure the use of biometrics will take off, it is one of the most comfortable options for users, and most of the users are already used to it, due to the device biometrics like FaceID or TouchID on Smartphones. In particular, in the context of passwordless authentication, user comfort and therefore biometrics is important.

Would you like to share whats next for cidaas?

As a leading European Cloud Identity & Access Management, we have big plans for the future. We want to further strengthen our position in Europe and also expand into other markets. We also have some cool new features planned that will help our customers to implement Identity & Access Management perfectly.

We have already briefly touched on a few topics above, from zero trust to real-world identification (identifying users in the real world, e.g. at the point of sale or when accessing the stadium), which we will continue to drive forward with cidaas.

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Sadrick Widmann, cidaas: there is a broad range of cybersecurity measures a company should implement nowadays - CyberNews.com