Although extensive research addresses minorities' low participation in clinical research, most focuses almost exclusively on therapeutic trials. The existing literature might mask important issues concerning minorities' participation in clinical trials, and minorities might actually be overrepresented in phase I safety studies that require the participation of healthy volunteers. It is critical to consider the entire spectrum of clinical research when discussing the participation of disenfranchised groups; the literature on minorities' distrust, poor access, and other barriers to trial participation needs reexamination. Minority participation in clinical trials is an important topic in public health discussions because this representation touches on issues of equality and the elimination of disparities, which are core values of the field.

This paper responds to the criticism that "observer effects" in ethnographic research necessarily bias and therefore invalidate research findings. Instead of aspiring to distance and detachment, some of the greatest strengths of ethnographic research lie in cultivating close ties with others and collaboratively shaping discourses and practices in the field. Informants' performances -however staged for or influenced by the observer -often reveal profound truths about social and/or cultural phenomena. To make this case, first we mobilize methodological insights from the field of science studies to illustrate the contingency and partiality of all knowledge and to challenge the notion that ethnography is less objective than other research methods. Second, we draw upon our ethnographic projects to illustrate the rich data that can be obtained from "staged performances" by informants. Finally, by detailing a few examples of questionable behavior on the part of informants, we challenge the fallacy that the presence of ethnographers will cause informants to self-censor.

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We explored the extent to which the soil seed bank differed genetically and spatially in comparison to two actively growing stages in a natural population of Plantago lanceolata. All seed‐bank seeds, seedlings, and adults of P. lanceolata within eight subunits in a larger population were mapped, subjected to starch gel electrophoresis, and allozyme analysis in 1988. Gel electrophoresis was also used to estimate the mating system in two years, 1986 and 1988. The spatial distributions of seeds, seedlings, and adults were highly coincident. Allele frequencies of the dormant seeds differed significantly from those of the adults for four of the five polymorphic loci. In addition, a comparison of the genotype frequencies of the three life‐history stages indicated that the seed bank had an excess of homozygotes. Homozygosity, relative to Hardy‐Weinberg expectations, decreased during the life cycle (for seed bank, seedlings, and adults respectively: Fit = 0.19, 0.09, 0.01; Fis = 0.14, 0.04, ‐0.12). Spatial genetic differentiation increased sixfold during the life cycle: (for seed bank, seedling and adults: Fs1∗∗∗ = 0.02, 0.05, 0.12). The apparent selfing rate was 0.01 in 1986 and 0.09 in 1988. These selfing rates are not large enough to account for the elevated homozygosity of the seed bank. Inbreeding depression, overdominance for fitness, and a “temporal Wahlund's effect” are discussed as possible mechanisms that could generate high homozygosity in the seed bank, relative to later life‐history stages. In Plantago lanceolata, the influence of the mating system and the “genetic memory” of the seed bank are obscured by the time plants reach the reproductive stage.