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This article delves into the underexplored relationship between lay expertise and temporality by analysing semi-structured interviews with parents who treat their autistic children using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The analysis indicates that time and temporalities play a significant role in how parents construct and enact their expertise. Faced with uncertainty, urgency, and inadequate support from medical and educational systems, parents assumed crucial responsibilities in managing their children's therapies. Over time, they acquired knowledge and skills, ultimately claiming expertise in caring for their children, making therapy decisions and administering treatments. Parents engaged in complex time work as they attempted to orchestrate everyday, developmental, therapeutic, and social rhythms, alternating their focus between future and present. They endeavoured to synchronise their children's rhythms with those of peers by using CAM therapies not yet adopted into conventional medicine, which they perceived as slow and outdated. This study contributes novel insights into autism care, temporalities of care, and the under-examined nexus between lay expertise and temporality.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a paradigmatic case for childhood medicalisation. Critical studies of medicalisation have pointed to the increasing clinical role of schools, with teachers tending to rely on medical treatment of students with ADHD and are perceived as a primary source of diagnostic information. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with teachers working in two Israeli elementary and middle schools, this research explored how teachers mediate the medicalisation process and understand their responsibilities in the classroom amidst the emphasis on inclusion in contemporary Israel. We found that teachers offer a wide range of explanations of the disorder and its prevalence, and their attitudes to medication are ambivalent. We argue that teachers develop pedagogical (lay) expertise in the field of ADHD in parallel with and in opposition to medical solutions. Such expertise is based on practical experience and close interaction with students. A top-down ideological imperative of inclusion, combined with uncertainty about ADHD, has generated a bottom-up set of preformative practices of 'containment' of troubled students. Teachers' emerging knowledge and practices raise questions about the relationship between medicalisation, policy, expertise and the pragmatic value of medical categories when applied outside the medical establishment., (© 2024 The Author(s). Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

When it comes to health-related information-seeking behavior, online communities play a key role for some groups, such as parents. With a case study of online communities in a loosely organized vaccination system, that of Austria, we study how parents make use of a prominent online forum (parents.at) in their vaccination trajectories and situate this analysis in its socio-political context. Based on inductive qualitative analysis of relevant threads (n = 27), we find that parents use forums in three ways: First, the forum serves as a platform through which parents seek orientation in a loosely organized and fragmented vaccination system. Second, the forum offers space for sharing, collecting, and evaluating different forms of expertise. In doing so, parents carve out a space in which they can comfortably put lay expertise and credentialed expertise on a par, particularly in their advice to peers. Third, and on that basis, parents use the forum for deliberating on future or past vaccination-related decisions. In doing so, they frequently draw on idiosyncratic notions of individual risks and benefits. These three practices enable parents to accumulate and share what we label navigational capital. We conclude that parents resort to online spaces both out of a subjective need and, for some, as a result of a dysfunction of the national childhood vaccination program which offers little orientation for parents., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Embodied health movements (EHMs) advance their agendas by mediating the production, circulation, and revision of biomedical knowledge. To do this, their constituents become lay experts by blending their embodied experience of illness with self-taught technical knowledge. However, it is unclear how lay expertise is routinized within EHMs, and consequently, to what extent it can be made durable in long-term partnerships with credentialed experts. I follow the OpenAPS community-a group of people with type one diabetes who engineered an open-source 'artificial pancreas'-from their inception in the transient #WeAreNotWaiting movement to their research collaborations with endocrinologists and detente with the FDA. I argue that OpenAPS user-contributors formalized their expertise in three steps: First, they broke the OpenAPS algorithm into modules so that prospective users must become experts to assemble it. Second, they lowered this barrier to entry by facilitating the socialization of new user-contributors with a training ritual. And third, they intervened in the strained endocrinologist-patient relationship. These tactics- restricting membership, reproducing expertise, and realigning interests-won the respect of credentialled experts who saw themselves in the OpenAPS community's image. While not all EHMs follow this trajectory, this case demonstrates that lay expertise can mature and assume new institutional forms without relying on commercialization or patronage.

Despite physicians' near monopoly over medicalization historically, various stakeholder groups shape an increasingly complex process today. This study examines a relatively new initiative, "health coaching," within the context of the changing nature of medicalization. Utilizing 51 in-depth interviews with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) coaches, participant observation from seven ADHD symposia, and ADHD coach publications, I examine coaching's emergence as a partial challenge to medicalization. Findings reveal a field comprised mainly of individuals personally affected by ADHD whose dissatisfaction with institutionalized framings and practices underpins a push for liminal medicalization. Members move between medical and nonmedical discourses to frame ADHD as a paradox of pathology and gift. Additionally, they leverage and commodify personal experience alongside institutional and alternative knowledge into an adjunct or substitute to medication and potential challenge to therapy-one aimed at "self-actualization" versus "treatment." Such efforts highlight (de)medicalization's dimensionality, simultaneous medicalization and demedicalization, and a lay-driven enterprise's role in such processes.

Introduction: Although randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examine "objective" indicators of safety and efficacy of investigational drugs, participants may not perceive study medications as neutral entities. Some medications are imbued with social and cultural meaning, such as stigmatized medications for opioid use disorders. Such perceptions surrounding substance use treatments can extend to the research context and shape RCT participants' experiences with and adherence to study medications., Methods: Considering these complexities in substance use research, we conducted a nested qualitative study within a multi-site, pragmatic RCT in Canada testing two treatments (methadone versus buprenorphine/naloxone) for opioid use disorder. Between 2017 and 2020, we conducted 115 interviews with 75 RCT participants across five trial sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec., Results: Using an abductive coding approach, we characterized participants by their previous experience with medication for opioid use disorder and by their exposure to drug culture and drug scenes. Across these experience types, we identified systematic differences around participants' perceptions of the study medications, sources of information and expertise, and medication stigma., Conclusion: Our findings illustrate the critical importance of social context in shaping medication beliefs and study experiences among people who use drugs, with implications for the conduct of future RCTs in substance use., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

'Experiential knowledge' has been identified as a key epistemic resource used by lay people to contest medical authorities and build new knowledge related to health. The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for such experience-based epistemic projects. This article contributes to understandings of the as yet under-theorised concept of experiential knowledge by analysing accounts of a group of Swedish women who claim that their use of contraceptive copper IUDs has led to systemic side effects not recognised by health care providers. Based on digital group interviews and written essays, we distinguish between three components or stages of experiential knowledge at work in the women's use of experience as an epistemic resource: somatic knowing, collective validation and self-experimentation. Drawing on a critical realist framework, we defend a notion of experiential knowledge as crucially, while only partially, based on a bodily and practical access to aspects of reality organised by extra-discursive principles. By providing theoretical complexity to the notion of experiential knowledge, we contribute resources for discriminating between and evaluating various experience-based claims, something that is particularly needed in the current 'post-truth' era where experience-based knowledge claims pointing in divergent directions flourish., (© 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

In this research, we investigate the public understanding of the World Happiness Report within the context of its highest-ranking country: Finland. We analyse how two actors, Finnish online media and their readers, understood the publication as well as the concept being measured: happiness. Digital media adopted an ambivalent stance towards both the World Happiness Report ('sports victory' vs 'societal problems') and the concept of happiness ('reticence to define happiness' vs 'secrets of Finnish happiness'). Readers agreeing with the World Happiness Report define Finland as an 'almost utopia' while readers disagreeing with the World Happiness Report, in addition to presenting a reversed image of Finland ('almost dystopia'), further justify their distrust towards the World Happiness Report by attacking the publication, its authors and the participants (Finns). Both actors carefully construct their understanding of happiness to fit their arguments aimed at the glorification/scandalization of the World Happiness Report.

The city government of Chicago adopted a 'racial equity' approach to tackle racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. Drawing on experience addressing core vulnerabilities associated with HIV risk, Chicago public health experts who designed COVID-19 mitigation initiatives recognised that the same social determinants of health drive racial disparities for both HIV and COVID-19. Yet, when building an infrastructure to respond to COVID-19, disease surveillance and data collection became the priority for investment ahead of other forms of public health work or the provision of social services. The building of a disease surveillance infrastructure that responded to and supplied data took precedence over addressing social determinants of poor health. Community-based organisations that might have otherwise organised for social service provision were incorporated into this infrastructure. Further, public health officials often failed to heed the lessons learned from their experience with HIV vulnerability. Based on qualitative analysis of 56 interviews with public health experts and policymakers in Chicago, we argue that the prioritisation of disease surveillance, coupled with a scarcity model of public health provision, undermined the city's attempt to redress racial inequities in outcomes. We argue that the economisation of pandemic response exacerbates health disparities, even when racial equity frameworks are adopted., (© 2022 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

During the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic, credentialed experts-scientists, doctors, public health experts, and policymakers-as well as members of the public and patients faced radical uncertainty. Knowledge about how Covid-19 was spread, how best to diagnose the disease, and how to treat infected patients was scant and contested. Despite this radical uncertainty, however, certain users of Covid-19 Together , a large online community for those who have contracted Covid-19, were able to dispense advice to one another that was seen as credible and trustworthy. Relying on Goffman's dramaturgical theory of social interaction, we highlight the performative dimension of claims to lay expertise to show how credibility is accrued under conditions of radical uncertainty. Drawing on four months of data from the forum, we show how credible performances of lay expertise necessitated the entangling of expert discourse with illness experience, creating a hybrid interlanguage. A credible performance of lay expertise in this setting was characterized by users' ability to switch freely between personal and scientific registers, finding and creating resonances between the two. To become a credible lay expert on this online community, users had to learn to ask questions and demonstrate a willingness to engage with biomedical knowledge while carefully generalizing their personal experience., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021.)

At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics related to the unknowns in medicine. Then we examine two streams of inquiry with a focus on uncertainty and ignorance-(1) research on the interconnections between technology, medical authority, and ignorance and (2) research on lay expertise within the context of ever-present uncertainties. For decades, and to good effect, medical sociologists have asked, "What does medicine know, and what are the consequences of such knowing?" Going forward, we encourage medical sociologists to examine the unknown in medicine and the consequences of not knowing.

Recent literature on the public understanding of science has focused on replacing the deficit model of public communication in which experts disseminate information with one that encourages public participation and dialogue. Situated within this call for increased participation, this study looks at self-care practices in which medical expertise is not passively consumed by the layperson, but shared and (re)produced through arenas of lay practice. This collective knowledge production is facilitated by the online environment, which provides access to mediated medical knowledge and the ability to form communities in which users can negotiate this expertise and share their experiences. The laypersons examined here are members of the Canadian online collective, Running Mania, highlighting how this negotiation of expertise occurs in a "wellness" community. Drawing from member interviews and website observations of the site's injury forum, the study examines collective injury management using two dominant theoretical discourses surrounding lay knowledge and participation in medical expertise: the lay expert whose knowledge arises from experience and the expert patient whose knowledge base parallels dominant biomedical discourse. Using the coproduction model and the related concepts of tinkering and logic of care from material semiotics, the research examines how these knowledge forms articulate to produce an intermediary discourse unique to this collective's articulation of running and caring practices, a discourse that is enacted in individuals' embodied negotiation of these multiple forms of medical expertise. It suggests that the logic of care has the potential to bridge the expert/lay boundary since the need for persistent, attentive tinkering applies across epistemological divides: in "good" care practices, multiple expertises are needed, both expert and lay, to hold the body together., (Crown Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

When seeking advice online about health concerns, forums dedicated to medical themes are increasingly becoming an appreciated source of information for many individuals. In online health communities, patients can ask questions or otherwise seek advice that is particularly relevant to them. While they may find some of the advice useful, other advice may be perceived as less valuable. By studying the advice-seeking, advice-giving, and advice-evaluation behaviours in one of the largest online health communities in Europe, this paper looks at what determines which advice is perceived as helpful, and why. Drawing on network theory, we analysed the interaction data of 108,569 users over twelve consecutive years based on all publicly available information of an established Q&A online health community. Utilising zero-inflated negative binominal modelling, our results show that advice received from others, who have similar predominant interests, is valued more when reaching out for lay expertise. If this advice is given by peers, who can also draw on expertise from other health areas, allowing for a combination of diverse "lay" expertise, the advice is valued even more. Advice provided by those who are quick to obtain the latest knowledge available in the larger community further reinforces these effects. Our findings offer an original view to understand the influence of lay expertise exchanged via online health communities and hold implications for both policy-makers and medical practitioners regarding their approach to patient-initiated use of social media for health-related reasons., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Empowering ordinary citizens with the capacity to deliberate is a core issue in science communication. Despite growing deliberative practices in developed nations, it is significantly less understood how public deliberation can happen among populations who live with limited educational resources and poor urban infrastructure in developing countries. This article studied a case of a well-designed deliberation method, Deliberative Poll, in Tamale, Ghana. I analyzed the stimulus information video and thousands of speech acts from deliberation transcripts to examine how expertise was used and what was deliberated in public dialogue. A broad range of expertise and interests were represented. Participants had thoughtful discussions on complex policy issues and their discussion results were considered by local policymakers. This article contributes to our understanding of how to effectively foster public deliberation among populations in the Global South and measure the nuances of expertise and public reasoning on science.

The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains - body-mind-spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital self-tracking - we map such practices through the concept of 'everyday fringe medicine'. The concept of everyday fringe medicine enables us to bring together various critical health and well-being practices and to unravel the complex modes of contestation and appreciation of the medical establishment that are articulated within them. We find three critiques of the medical establishment - critiques of medical knowledge production, professional practices and the knowledge base - which make visible the complexities related to public understandings of science within everyday fringe medicine.

This article explores the production and type of knowledge acquired in the course of specific digital self-tracking activities that resemble research and are common among followers of the Quantified Self movement. On the basis of interviews with self-trackers, it is shown that this knowledge can be characterised as a verified and practical self-knowledge, and that science in the form of scientific sources, methods and quality criteria plays a key role in its production. It is argued that this self-related knowledge can be conceptualised as self-expertise, and its production as personal science. The article then discusses the implications for the science-society relationship. In contrast to self-tracking data, so far self-knowledge has hardly caused any resonance in science, although science currently appears open to the insights from single subject (N-of-1) research. As a new mode of public engagement with science, personal science instead mainly leads to an individual self-expertisation.

Peer support workers are now working with patients in a variety of settings, coming into close contact and even work alongside health professionals. Despite the potentially influential position peer support workers hold in relation to those engaged in support activities, their role, duties and their relationship to peers and health professionals lack clarity and is often defined by other actors. This study explores how peer support workers interpret and define the activities, responsibilities and knowledge associated with their work. Using methods of membership categorisation analysis, we analysed interview materials generated by conducting individual semi-structured interviews during the autumn of 2016 with prostate cancer peer support workers ( n  = 11) who currently volunteer as support workers in Finland. Although the peer support workers acknowledged the psychosocial aspects of the work, we argue that their interpretations extend far beyond this and encompass expertise, advocacy and activism as central features of their work. These can be used to strengthen their position as credible commentators and educators on issues relating to cancer and men's health; raise awareness and represent the 'patient's voice' and attempt to influence both policy and clinical practice. These findings suggest that by categorising their work activities in different ways, voluntary sector actors such as peer support workers can attempt to portray themselves as legitimate authorities on a range of issues and influence decision-making ranging from individual level treatment decisions all the way to health policy.

Sociologists have documented how the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted pharmacovigilance (PV), defined as the practices devoted to detecting and preventing adverse drug reactions (ADRs). In this article, I juxtapose the official postmarketing system of PV with firsthand accounts of ADRs as found in 60 YouTube vlogs created by 29 individuals who recount debilitating reactions to fluoroquinolones, a common class of antibiotics. Whereas official PV is said to contribute the banalization of risk, these vlogs exemplify the dramatization of risk. I consider the vlogs as instances of lay PV. They represent lay knowledge claims created in response to perceived failures in the official system of regulation. As such, lay PV shares commonalties with other articulations of lay expertise as a counter to medical authority. At the same time, this case also underscores how the YouTube platform offers new tools for the creation and distribution of lay expertise.

CSCW research is increasingly interested in the ways that people use technology to discuss health and disability online. In addition to studying how people share information and seek and provide emotional support, a growing area of interest is health activism. In this paper, we analyze how a project centered around sharing "real and raw" experiences with dementia provides a safe platform for people to share their authentic experiences. These accounts counter predominant depictions of dementia and push back on tokenistic involvement of people with this condition. In a study involving observations and interviews with members of this project, we find that people with dementia must negotiate several goals which at times compete with each other: sharing a "real and raw" look at dementia, changing attitudes, showcasing a polished presentation, and inhabiting a safe space. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions for CSCW on configuring a space for dialogue on sensitive topics, health activism, and sharing online with dementia.

White nationalists have a genetic essentialist understanding of racial identity, so what happens when using genetic ancestry tests (GATs) to explore personal identities, they receive upsetting results they consider evidence of non-white or non-European ancestry? Our answer draws on qualitative analysis of posts on the white nationalist website Stormfront, interpreted by synthesizing the literatures on white nationalism and GATs and identity. We show that Stormfront posters exert much more energy repairing individuals' bad news than using it to exclude or attack them. Their repair strategies combine anti-scientific, counter-knowledge attacks on the legitimacy of GATs and quasi-scientific reinterpretations of GATs in terms of white nationalist histories. However, beyond individual identity repair they also reinterpret the racial boundaries and hierarchies of white nationalism in terms of the relationships GATs make visible. White nationalism is not simply an identity community or political movement but should be understood as bricoleurs with genetic knowledge displaying aspects of citizen science.

Researchers across academia, government, and private industry increasingly value patient-led research for its ability to produce quick results from large samples of the population. This study examines the role played by self-experimentation in the production of health data collected in these projects. We ask: How does the collaborative context of online health communities, with their ability to facilitate far-reaching collaborations over time and space, transform the practice and epistemological foundations of engaging in n = 1 experimentation? We draw from a digital ethnography of an online patient-led research movement, in which participants engage in self-experiments to develop a protocol for using psilocybe-containing mushrooms as a treatment for cluster headache, an excruciating neurological disease for which there is little medical research and huge unmet treatment need. We find that the collectivizing features of the internet have collectivized self-experimentation. Group dynamics shape everything in "collective self-experimentation," from individual choices of intervention, reporting of outcomes, data analysis, determinations of efficacy, to embodiment. This study raises important questions about the role that individuals play in the creation of medical knowledge and the data that informs crowdsourced research., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Anna Leuschner argues that there is problematic circularity in Helen Longino's approach that postulates the existence of some shared norms as a necessary precondition for well-functioning pluralistic communities. As an alternative, Leuschner proposes to approach the establishing of more pluralistic communities through political means on a case-by-case basis, taking relevant epistemic and political factors into account. In this paper, I argue that there is an alternative understanding of norms that avoids circularity. I do so by drawing on Isabelle Peschard's discussion of shared practice. I go on to show that norms, so understood, are important in the cases where a political decision may not alone be sufficient for establishing a successful community. Specifically, I discuss pluralistic communities that include laypersons in possession of relevant expertise as an example., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Measurement of public trust in sources of information about science primarily examines whether the public turns to the "science communication industry" for information about science. Research posits, however, that scientists are not the singular cultural authority on science. Here, we examine the extent to which people turn to religion and religious individuals for information about science. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of US adults, we examine what factors-when individuals have a question about science-shape respondent's likelihood of turning to science-based versus religion-based sources. Results show that religiosity is a strong positive predictor of looking to religious sources for scientific information, but it does not deter seeking out scientific sources. The results also show that interest in science has a positive influence on the likelihood of turning to a religious source.

This commentary argues that we need to take ignorance and non-knowledge seriously in the fields of science communication and public understanding of science. As much as we want ignorance to disappear, it seems that it is here to stay-in the sciences and in the rest of society. Drawing on the vast but scattered literature on ignorance and non-knowledge, we suggest that paying closer attention to these phenomena could be beneficial for science communicators. Despite the fact that ignorance and non-knowledge, just like knowledge, today are highly politicized fields, they may also open up for new lines of inquiry and may be key to more pluralistic and equal democratic deliberation about science and technology.

Both academic and legal communities have cautioned that laypersons may be unduly persuaded by images of the brain and may fail to interpret them appropriately. While early studies confirmed this concern, a second wave of research was repeatedly unable to find evidence of such a bias. The newest wave of studies paints a more nuanced picture in which, under certain circumstances, a neuroimage bias reemerges. To help make sense of this discordant body of research, we highlight the contextual significance of understanding how laypersons' decision making is or is not impacted by neuroimages, provide an overview of findings from all sides of the neuroimage bias question, and discuss what these findings mean to public use and understanding of neuroimages.

The prospect of fracking in the United Kingdom has been accompanied by significant public unease. We outline how the policy debate is being framed by UK institutional actors, finding evidence of a dominant discourse in which the policy approach is defined through a deficit model of public understanding of science and in which a technical approach to feasibility and safety is deemed as sufficient grounds for good policymaking. Deploying a deliberative focus group methodology with lay publics across different sites in the north of England, we find that these institutional framings are poorly aligned with participants' responses. We find that unease regularly overflows the focus on safety and feasibility and cannot be satisfactorily explained by a lack of understanding on the part of participants. We find that scholarship from science and technology studies productively elucidates our participants' largely sceptical positions, and orientates strategies for responding to them more effectively.

This article examines how residents in Natura 2000 sites in Southern Portugal 'imagine themselves' as publics participating in biodiversity conservation. Through nine focus groups (n = 49) it seeks to understand whether and how these self-imaginations reproduce and/or resist experts' highly shared, hegemonic, representations across two dimensions: the epistemic and the normative. Analysis of the groups' discussions shows that (1) reproduction is clearer in the normative dimension, conveyed through discursive formats that place 'people' as its actor and exempt the Ego from it; (2) resistance is clearer in the epistemic dimension, relying on vibrant claims of local knowledge, yet it can be maintained as hidden discourse; (3) the forms of reproduction or resistance that emerged were hybrid ones; and (4) self-imaginations are more fragmented and negative in normative matters and more unified and positive in epistemic matters. We discuss how these findings help understand how hegemonic representations are maintained/resisted in enduring public-expert relations., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Over the past 20 years, thousands of citizen science projects engaging millions of participants in collecting and/or processing data have sprung up around the world. Here we review documented outcomes from four categories of citizen science projects which are defined by the nature of the activities in which their participants engage - Data Collection, Data Processing, Curriculum-based, and Community Science. We find strong evidence that scientific outcomes of citizen science are well documented, particularly for Data Collection and Data Processing projects. We find limited but growing evidence that citizen science projects achieve participant gains in knowledge about science knowledge and process, increase public awareness of the diversity of scientific research, and provide deeper meaning to participants' hobbies. We also find some evidence that citizen science can contribute positively to social well-being by influencing the questions that are being addressed and by giving people a voice in local environmental decision making. While not all citizen science projects are intended to achieve a greater degree of public understanding of science, social change, or improved science -society relationships, those projects that do require effort and resources in four main categories: (1) project design, (2) outcomes measurement, (3) engagement of new audiences, and (4) new directions for research., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Discourses of 'neuroplasticity' have become increasingly apparent in the neurosciences and wider society. These connect with broader narratives about the 'changing brain' throughout the life-course. Here, we explore their presence in the talk of a range of publics. Their presence is indicative of how novel neuroscience is accepted, or not, by our participants. In particular, we suggest that any acceptance of the science relates to their personal and/or professional experiences of change (to their own or others' subjectivities) rather than to some intrinsic and widely-held significance of scientific concepts per se. Accordingly, we also submit that it is in part through the congruence of some neuroscientific claims to everyday experiences and perspectives that the former are rendered legible and salient. In this respect, 'lay' knowledge has considerable import for the wider cultural authorisation of that of 'experts'., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Background: The impact of chronic diseases in our society is growing. The idea of self-care generates understandable enthusiasm and is seen as a natural answer. It is important to develop an understanding of self-care practices that goes beyond a clinical understanding of the disease and that acknowledges everyday practicalities, and the perspective of the patient., Objective: To shed light on some of the practicalities of everyday chronic self-care, to expose to analysis the key role of lay expertise and to stress the importance of its recognition in future chronic care practices and technology., Design: Ethnomethodological investigations based on observations of a patient support group (10 months) and some shadowing sessions of everyday practices, semi-structured interviews with individuals with type 1 diabetes (n = 14) and professional caregivers (n = 7)., Analysis: The qualitative data analysis was inspired by grounded theory and aimed at ordering data under emerging categories and topics., Results: The patient's knowledge and expertise is critical to grounding, integrating and complementing technical-medical/clinical knowledge in everyday chronic self-care. To deal with the intricacies and difficulties of everyday chronic self-care, individuals with type 1 diabetes develop different ways of knowing and dealing with the disease that need to be equally taken into account in the reorganization of care delivery, and in the design of the tools to support it., Conclusion: Rethinking the traditional separation between hard and soft data may be a possible first step towards rethinking the role of lay expertise in chronic care towards better supports for self-care practices and patient empowerment., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The extent to which nuclear energy technologies are, in some sense, "stigmatised" by historical environmental and military associations is of particular interest in contemporary debates about sustainable energy policy. Recent claims in the literature suggest that despite such stigmatisation, lay views on such technologies may be shifting towards a "reluctant acceptance," in the light of concerns about issues like anthropogenic climate change. In this paper, we report on research into learning and reasoning processes concerned with a largely unknown nuclear energy technology; namely fusion power. We focus on the role of the nuclear label, or "brand," in informing how lay citizens make sense of the nature of this technology. Our findings derive from a comparative analysis of data generated in Spain and Britain, using the same methodology.

As surveillance-oriented security technologies (SOSTs) are considered security enhancing but also privacy infringing, citizens are expected to trade part of their privacy for higher security. Drawing from the PRISE project, this study casts some light on how citizens actually assess SOSTs through a combined analysis of focus groups and survey data. First, the outcomes suggest that people did not assess SOSTs in abstract terms but in relation to the specific institutional and social context of implementation. Second, from this embedded viewpoint, citizens either expressed concern about government's surveillance intentions and considered SOSTs mainly as privacy infringing, or trusted political institutions and believed that SOSTs effectively enhanced their security. None of them, however, seemed to trade privacy for security because concerned citizens saw their privacy being infringed without having their security enhanced, whilst trusting citizens saw their security being increased without their privacy being affected.

We review rhetorical studies of the public understanding of science that were published in journals since the last major review in this journal (1994-2011). Our review suggests that a vibrant and increasingly sophisticated body of research 1) has pursued Gross's (1994) emphasis on contextual studies and studies emphasizing judgment of scientific rhetorics, 2) is producing a growing body of work designed to develop specific strategies for scientific rhetorics, and 3) has produced a host of studies exploring science-public interactions (rather than producing sustained fora for such interactions, as Gross argued for). It has, however, 4) produced only modest independent development of rhetorical theories.