Anna Rajala has published some preliminary remarks on her research into dementia statistics, discourse, and affect. The Finnish article is intended for physiotherapy professionals, and it was published in the journal of the Finnish Association for Physiotherapists, Fysioterapia.
The starting point for the research is the observation that capitalism is dependent on quatifications of all sorts. One such quantification in health research is the use of statistical knowledge. In dementia research, statistics are frequently used to emphasize the need for continuing research into dementia and to underline the ‘catastrophe’ of the ‘dementia pandemic’ that is challenging healthcare systems and national economies all over the world. Rehabilitation research is no exception. Based on an extensive analysis of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, Rajala’s reserach demeonstrates that statistics are used to justify research into physical rehabilitation with the aim of mitigating the impact of dementia, and often there is an economic undertone to the use of statistics, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. There is, however, also a rhetorically interesting feature in the use of dementia statistics: the use of emotionally-laden language and intensifiers is frequent, which makes the use of statistics in rehabilitation research far from emotionally detached (contrary to what one might expect from clinical research).
This affective statistical language can be looked at through classical rhetoric and through the aim of convincing the reader or listener by appealing to their emotional and psychological state. It seems, then, that in order to be convincing, scientific writing need not be, and indeed is not, detached and emotion-free. Quite the contrary. Whether the decision to appeal to emotions is conscious or not, this observation offers an opening to re-think quantifications and the scientific ideal of detached objectivity. These affective cracks in ‘scientific objectivity’ may also demonstrate that capitalist academia is not a monolith, but made of humans with human needs and concern for others.
Rajala has also presented the preliminary observations of her study at the European Sociological Association Ageing in Europe Midterm Conference 20-22 January 2021 and the World Physiotherapy Congress 9-11 April 2021.
The research is still on-going and we will update on further developments.
Full reference: Anna Ilona Rajala, Affektiivinen diskurssi ja dementiatilastot – retorisen vakuuttamisen keinoina fysioterapiatutkimuksessa, Fysioterapia vol 68, issue 5 (2021), pp. 32-38.