So was at a one-day workshop – excuse me, a “national research community forum” for work yesterday.  And while the absurdities are of a different flavor from what I’m used to with academic conferences, they still abound.

Things get off to a bad note when I walk into the Grand Ballroom at the Doubletree and have a serious case of deja vu.  See, it turns out that the last time I was in that particular space was fall of our senior year, when I — along with the football coach and certain other luminaries from our alma mater, including (I believe) Tojo — attended a sort of meta student government conference.  It wasn’t Junior State (or was it?  My memory’s hazy now), but it involved debating resolutions and such as if we were a “real” legislature with policy committees, etc. 

It was at that conference that I first discovered that there are, in fact, some really, really hard core fascists in this state.  Who apparently live in places like Orosi (it only now occurs to me that growing up in Tulare County is probably punishment enough for the evil those people tried to accomplish at that conference).  They were proposing policies like granting the CIA the authority to assassinate foreign leaders.  That they succeeded in getting these resolutions passed — and by large margins — left me in deep doubt of the intelligence of my fellow students.  Later (years later), I have sometimes wondered if it was at least theoretically possible that the Orosites (Orosini?) may simply have been proposing the most ridiculous shit imaginable in order to discredit what was, patently, a ridiculous set of proceedings.

In a peculiar sort of naivete that I think now probably stems from having growing up the child of the machine, I focused my hatred only partly only the fascists, and more directly on the president of the organization.  My thinking went something along the lines of “if only she’d exerted better leadership, we could have shut those bastards down!”  (I find that naivete now charming, and recognize from a better knowledge base the basic truth of what I believed some five years prior to any sustained exposure to political theory).  I cultivated that hatred, and carried it with me, into college: the president of that organization had gone to Rio Americano and was one of the few people from the Sacramento area who also went to Stanford.  While we did not ever meet on campus, I did not scruple to make certain discreet enquires among my friends, which produced the darkly comforting report that, yes, she was in fact unhappy, neurotic, and lonely. 

Yes, I carried that hatred with me for years, keeping her name in my pocket like some worry rock that I could pull out at a moment’s notice to remind myself of the link between political incompetence, cowardice, and the public articulation of evil. 

I left that particular hatred somewhere in Texas.  I can’t even recall that woman’s name now, thankfully.

So it was with thoughts like these that I sipped my coffee and munched on not-half-bad pastries.  The conference, I should say at this point, was on human subjects research protocols and institutional review boards (IRBs).  I went, obviously, in my capacity as someone who does this for a living, and with the goals of finding out, at the very least, what some of the latest news is on this front.  What I took away from the conference was not that, sadly.

The first speaker, bless her heart, pontificated for 45 minutes on the following topics:

a.) how it was vitally necessary to do research on emotional trauma, even if that means doing research on people who’ve been traumatized really really recently, as in like yesterday.  I personally did not find this a particularly controversial point.  Evidently at least some people do, as she was really defensive about this.

b.) how she’d discovered all kinds of things by doing this research that other people are too timid to do.  Fair enough — that’s why we give tenure to people like you, sweetie.

c.) how she’d worked out a process where she has a boilerplate proposal ready to go to her IRB on a moment’s notice so that she can get approval AFAP anytime a disaster happens.  That way she can be in San Diego, or New Orleans, or Banda Aceh, or wherever, within 36 hours to start interviewing people.  Okay.  Though I kind of doubt that that’s the sort of arrangement that one can work out prior to getting tenure and establishing a national reputation as somebody who’s really hot shit in your area.  I’m just sayin’.

d.) Finally, how not once — in all the 10,000+ interviews she’s conducted for her research over the course of her career — has she ever had an “adverse event” (i.e., a respondent had something bad happen to them because of the interview).

It was around this point that I said sotto voce “well pin a ruffle on your nightie…”  This aroused at least one snort of laughter from my table-mates, none of whom I knew.

We then had “break-out sessions” (danger Will Robinson!  I half expected lessons in how to crunk.  Would that I had been so lucky).  Unfortunately, among the array of options available, many had less than fully descriptive titles: e.g., “The Nuts and Bolts of the IRB” (so, would this be for people submitting to an IRB, or for people who run an IRB?), “IRB Review in CTSA sites” (ummm, teacher?  What’s a CTSA?), and my personal favorite: “The Michigan Initiative: Unchecking the Box” (seriously, WTF?). 

I went to one entitled “Research vs. Program Review.”  There I learned such helpful things as:

a.) when research isn’t really research, because (i) it’s not systematic, (ii) it’s not an “investigation,” (iii) it doesn’t “contribute” to generalizable knowledge, or (iv) it does contribute, but the knowledge isn’t “generalizable”. In any of these cases, you may or may not need to do IRB review.  Because, you know, it depends.

b.) when program evaluation isn’t program evaluation, because (i) there’s no ”program” to be evaluated (ii) there is a “program” but you don’t intend to share the results of your evaluation with anybody, (iii) it is a “program,” you do intend to evaluate it, and you do intend to share the results with other people, in which case it might actually be “research,” (iv) same as (iii) only not, in which case you get a free pass.  Or, as helpfully stated in the powerpoint handouts I was given: “program evaluations do not meet the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) definition of human subjects research and do not have to be reviewed by an IRB.”  Except, oh wait, the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) notes that some such such activities are human subjects research.

It was along about this point that I came to the conclusion that this particular presenter had missed his calling as an interpreter of the Talmud. 

On a completely different note: Happy New Year, people!

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I decided some time ago that there’s nothing, really, to be gained by contributing to the gab-fest surrounding the primary — on either the Republican or the Democratic sides.  As far as I can tell, the analysis of why people are voting for Hillary or Barack amounts to nothin’ but a hill of beans.

Aside from which, I hope ya’ll voted, and here’s to walking precincts once this slugfest is over….

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I re-applied for direct deposit yesterday (through the university, of course).   Because, of course, when “the large public agency” canceled it, that then meant I had to pick up my check at the university too.  Though for the record, they at least paid me on time.

Let’s see how long it takes the bitchez in HR to notice this time.

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So I had a brief conversation with the manager at the Roundhouse Weatherstone’s on the CSUS campus.  Their reasons for selling the enterprise?

a.) it lacked brand-specificity (in his words, you can’t tell it’s a Java City).  I don’t really believe this, but whatever.

b.) they’ve had a declining profit margin at the store for 20 years.  “What do you mean?” I asked, “how could that be?”

And of course, it hits me.

I’ve been buying coffee at that store for 20 years.  Jiminy Christmas, how did this happen?

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