Belief, Knowledge and Expertise. The emergence of the lay expert in medical sociology

The paper has three main aims. First, to trace – through the pages of the Journal – the changing ways in which lay understandings of health and illness have been represented during the 1979-2002 period. Second, to say something about the limits of lay knowledge (and particularly lay expertise) in matters of health and medicine. Third, to call for a re-assessment of what lay people can offer to a democratised and customer sensitive system of health care and to attempt to draw a boundary around the domain of expertise. In following through on those aims, the author calls upon data derived from three current projects. These latter concern the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down’s syndrome; the development of an outcome measure for people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury; and a study of why older people might reject annual influenza vaccinations. Key words: Lay health beliefs, lay expertise, Alzheimer’s, Traumatic Brain Injury, Vaccinations

Science, Geography of

Interest in the geography of science has increased significantly over the past 20 years to create a highly interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Rejecting the spatial determinism of earlier work, geographers and many others have developed insights from the sociology and philosophy of science and from social and cultural theory to examine the spatiality of science in all of its diversity and complexity. Particular attention has been paid to the sites at which scientific knowledge has been produced, assessed, and consumed and to the transmission of science over physical, cultural, and cognitive terrain.

INVESTIGATING THE POSTWAR DECLINE OF RACE IN SCIENCE

Race as a biological category has a long and troubling history as a central ordering concept in the life and human sciences. The mid-twentieth century has been marked as the point where biological concepts of race began to disappear from science. However, biological definitions of race continue to penetrate scientific understandings and uses of racial concepts. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and science and technology studies and an in-depth case study of the discipline of immunology, this dissertation explores the appearance of a mid-century decline of concepts of biological race in science. I argue that biological concepts of race did not disappear in the middle of the twentieth century but were reconfigured into genetic language. In this dissertation I offer a periodization of biological concepts of race. Focusing on continuities and the effects of contingent events, I compare how biological concepts of race articulate with racisms in each period. The discipline of immunology serves as a case study that demonstrates how biological concepts of race did not decline in the postwar era, but were translated into the language of genetics and populations. I argue that the appearance of a decline was due to events both internal and external to the science of immunology. By framing the mid-twentieth century disappearance of race in science as the triumph of an antiracist racial project of science, it allows us to more clearly see the more recent resurgence of race in science as a recycling of older themes and tactics from the racist science projects of the past.

Avian flu: the creation of expectations in the interplay between science and the media

This paper examines the emerging cultural patterns and interpretative repertoires in reports of an impending pandemic of avian flu in the UK mass media and scientific journals at the beginning of 2005, paying particular attention to metaphors, pragmatic markers ('risk signals'), symbolic dates and scare statistics used by scientists and the media to create expectations and elicit actions. This study complements other work on the metaphorical framing of infectious disease, such as foot and mouth disease and SARS, tries to link it to developments in the sociology of expectations and applies insights from pragmatics both to the sociology of metaphor and the sociology of expectations.

Integrating science through Bayesian Belief Networks : case study of Lyngbya in Moreton Bay

Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) are emerging as valuable tools for investigating complex ecological problems. In a BBN, the important variables in a problem are identified and causal relationships are represented graphically. Underpinning this is the probabilistic framework in which variables can take on a finite range of mutually exclusive states. Associated with each variable is a conditional probability table (CPT), showing the probability of a variable attaining each of its possible states conditioned on all possible combinations of it parents. Whilst the variables (nodes) are connected, the CPT attached to each node can be quantified independently. This allows each variable to be populated with the best data available, including expert opinion, simulation results or observed data. It also allows the information to be easily updated as better data become available ----- ----- This paper reports on the process of developing a BBN to better understand the initial rapid growth phase (initiation) of a marine cyanobacterium, Lyngbya majuscula, in Moreton Bay, Queensland. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Lyngbya blooms in this region have increased in severity and extent over the past decade. Lyngbya has been associated with acute dermatitis and a range of other health problems in humans. Blooms have been linked to ecosystem degradation and have also damaged commercial and recreational fisheries. However, the causes of blooms are as yet poorly understood.

Making sense of an everyday science text : linguistic, visual and spatial design

In this article, we take a close look at the literacy demands of one task from the ‘Marvellous Micro-organisms Stage 3 Life and Living’ Primary Connections unit (Australian Academy of Science, 2005). One lesson from the unit, ‘Exploring Bread’, (pp 4-8) asks students to ‘use bread labels to locate ingredient information and synthesise understanding of bread ingredients’. We draw upon a framework offered by the New London Group (2000), that of linguistic, visual and spatial design, to consider in more detail three bread wrappers and from there the complex literacies that students need to interrelate to undertake the required task. Our findings are that although bread wrappers are an example of an everyday science text, their linguistic, visual and spatial designs and their interrelationship are not trivial. We conclude by reinforcing the need for teachers of science to also consider how the complex design elements of everyday science texts and their interrelated literacies are made visible through instructional practice.

The Second Life of urban planning? Using neogeography tools for community engagement

The majority of the world’s citizens now live in cities. Although urban planning can thus be thought of as a field with significant ramifications on the human condition, many practitioners feel that it has reached the crossroads in thought leadership between traditional practice and a new, more participatory and open approach. Conventional ways to engage people in participatory planning exercises are limited in reach and scope. At the same time, socio-cultural trends and technology innovation offer opportunities to re-think the status quo in urban planning. Neogeography introduces tools and services that allow non-geographers to use advanced geographical information systems. Similarly, is there potential for the emergence of a neo-planning paradigm in which urban planning is carried out through active civic engagement aided by Web 2.0 and new media technologies thus redefining the role of practicing planners? This paper traces a number of evolving links between urban planning, neogeography and information and communication technology. Two significant trends – participation and visualisation – with direct implications for urban planning are discussed. Combining advanced participation and visualisation features, the popular virtual reality environment Second Life is then introduced as a test bed to explore a planning workshop and an integrated software event framework to assist narrative generation. We discuss an approach to harness and analyse narratives using virtual reality logging to make transparent how users understand and interpret proposed urban designs.

An in-depth study of a teacher engaged in an innovative primary science trial professional development project

The implementation of effective science programmes in primary schools is of continuing interest and concern for professional developers. As part of the Australian Academy of Science's approach to creating an awareness of Primary Investigations, a project team trialled a series of satellite television broadcasts of lessons related to two units of the curriculum for Year 3 and 4 children in 48 participating schools. The professional development project entitled Simply Science, included a focused component for the respective classroom teachers, which was also conducted by satellite. This paper reports the involvement of a Year 4 teacher in the project and describes her professional growth. Already an experienced and confident teacher, no quantitative changes in science teaching self efficacy were detected. However, her pedagogical content knowledge and confidence to teach science in the concept areas of matter and energy were enhanced. Changes in the teacher's views about the co-operative learning strategies espoused by Primary Investigations were also evident. Implications for the design of professional development programmes for primary science teachers are discussed.