Search

We argue that the IPE literature on economic expertise has been characterised by 'methodological elitism' that makes it ill equipped to account for the influence of heterodox and grassroots forms of expertise. To remedy this, we posit a theoretical framework that emphasises the tensions between two forms of professional legitimacy. One is internal legitimacy and it is rooted in appeals to scientific objectivity, political neutrality and high professional barriers of entry. However, internal legitimacy may clash with external legitimacy, which is a function of a clear articulation of social purpose. Taking the surprising rise of Modern Monetary Theory as a case study, the paper makes two claims. First, its ideas did not coalesce into a distinctive heterodox brand of economics through traditional mechanisms like academic peer-review and citation networks, but through intense online activity. Second, the messaging that spurred MMT consistently combined constitutive claims with explicit declarations of social purpose. The result was an open project with a broad normative appeal, which successfully enrolled a large group of passionate followers and co-creators. To date, IPE scholars have been blind to such alternative forms of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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with those of peers by using CAM therapies not yet adopted into conventional medicine, which they perceived as slow and outdated.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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This crossing boundaries section addresses the substantial aspects at stake in reshaping the nexus between science, politics and society triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, three main dimensions are explored: first, the emerging forms of science-related populism and how political narratives challenge and dispute prevailing scientific knowledge; second, the platformization of science communication and the active role of users and communities in consuming and spreading online misinformation; third, the role of lay expertise in contesting the epistemic authority of science during the health emergency. The authors explore the related topics by mobilizing different theoretical frameworks from STS studies, media studies and legal science, also moving from empirical to theoretical level in order to challenge the “surface” of a multilayered phenomenon.

Many actors claim to be experts of specialized knowledge, but for this expertise to be perceived as legitimate, other actors in the field must recognize them as authorities. Using an automated topic-model analysis of historical texts associated with the U.S. amateur radio operator movement between 1899 and 1927, we propose a process model for lay-expertise legitimation as an alternative to professionalization. While the professionalization account depends on specialized work, credentialing, and restrictive jurisdictional control by powerful field actors, our model emphasizes four mechanisms leading to lay-expert recognition: building an advanced collective competence, operating in an unrestricted public space, providing transformational social contributions, and expanding an original collective role identity. Our analysis shows how field expertise can be achieved outside of professional spaces by non-professionalized actors who master activities as a labor of love. Our work also reveals that lay-expertise recognition depends on the interplay between collective identities and collective competence among non-professional actors, and it addresses the shifting power dynamics when professional and non-professional actors coexist and strive for expertise recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution introduces Current Sociology's special subsection 'The advent of the citizen expert: Democratising or pushing the boundaries of expertise?', which deals with the increasing involvement of 'ordinary citizens' as experts into political and social debates. From an integrated perspective that transcends policy fields and societal realms, the special subsection deals with the epistemic and democratic implications of this transformation in civic participation and knowledge validation practice. It pays special attention to the tensions that can be implied by citizen expertise's 'double promise' of tapping into novel channels of participation and idle knowledge resources at the same time. Three promising themes and research avenues are identified that the advent of the citizen expert highlights: The changes in liberal-democratic culture indicated by the emergence of this new actor category, the way societal power relations are impacted by the elevation of citizen expertise and the subsequently shifting boundaries and standards of what can count as knowledge or expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a pragmatist theorising of different repertoires of valuation as an analytical grid to understand how actors of participatory projects assess the value of citizen expert participation. It conducts justification analysis on interview data from 21 projects that engage citizens as lay experts in Finland to illustrate how this analytical approach helps explain the contradicting meanings assigned to the concept as well as the resulting possibilities for participation. The article identifies two main conflicts in which different justifications for citizen expertise become explicit: debates over who can be a citizen expert and what the scope of their participation should be. Our results show how in the Finnish context, industrial justifications are often used to bolster claims for the right to participate. However, the industrial value-base is also the most reoccurring object of critique, suggested to create a narrow and above-defined role of a citizen-engineer for the citizen experts. The article illustrates how the diverse justifications might lead to contradicting constructions of citizen expertise, contributing to conflicting expectations, ambiguous and tokenistic participation, and feelings of exclusion among policy actors. It argues for justification analysis as a tool to identify and compare these undergirding valuations across policy fields and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initiatives that attribute expert status to 'ordinary citizens' proliferate in a range of societal realms and are generally celebrated for 'democratising expertise'. By tapping new sources of knowledge and participation simultaneously, such 'citizen expertise' practices seem to provide responses to the contemporary decline of trust in political elites and traditional experts that seriously challenges the legitimacy of democratic policy-making. This study distinguishes between three quintessential types of citizen expertise ('local knowledge', 'service user involvement' and 'citizen science') and, from an integrated perspective, critically discusses the value of citizen expertise for public knowledge production and democratic governance. Drawing on empirical insights and on theories of democracy and of expertise and knowledge, the concepts of expertise and participation are refined and quality conditions of citizen expertise are developed. The study argues that citizen expertise is epistemically particularly valuable when it is based on distinct, non-ubiquitous experiences and on collective, not just individual, insights. It contends that representativeness is key to the democratic legitimacy of citizen experts in the policy context and points to the key role of organised civil society in establishing the required accountability relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Online forums are important for parents' vaccination trajectories in systems that offer little guidance or orientation. • Online forums facilitate sharing and accumulating navigational capital. • Parent use online forums to address questions that seem too conflictual in face to face encounters with health care providers. • Parents use online forums for sharing, collecting, and evaluating lay and credentialied expertise. • Peer to peer advice could be beneficial towards vaccine acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the online storytelling about the Xylella fastidiosa outbreak in the Apulia region (Italy), as represented by a collection of User-generated content retrieved from Facebook, Youtube and Reddit over a time span of 7 years (>16k comments). We examine the episode as a revelatory case of framing mechanisms that, in many technoscientific conflicts, enable two different reality construction strategies to compete almost on an equal basis: «canonical» scientific knowledge, and «alternative» contents (i.e. non-orthodox «science», local and traditional knowledge). We use Computer-Assisted Text Analysis (CATA) to investigate popular themes, and their semantic vocabulary. We find that discourses on Xylella fastidiosa are strongly polarized and structured around two tensions: «expertise vs political» conflicts, on the one side, and «scientific vs alternative» solutions, on the other. Then, we identify three main knowledge production strategies and introduce a typology of «alternative methods» and «cures», highlighting those formal traits that may have made them trustworthy for the general public. We nevertheless call for more research that may find a recursiveness in such framing mechanisms in the online representation of other technoscientific conflicts.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Storytelling has long been used as a theoretical framework for understanding how we share information and learn about health – and illness – online. But is it all about storytelling on social media platforms? To explore how and to what extent personal stories shape health content on these platforms, this article presents an analysis of tweets discussing the BRCA gene mutation – a hereditary cancer condition. Theoretically, the study advances a new conceptual framework to explore social media practices within issue-based and long-lived social media threads. Methodologically, it develops a platform-oriented discourse analytic approach. Findings show that non-narrative content is actually more common than storytelling in Twitter conversations about BRCA, with a number of patient advocates acting as gatekeepers of scientific information. Most BRCA storytelling is mediated and shared in third person, with those at the heart of these stories becoming exemplars within the BRCA 'subculture'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new yet increasingly important phenomenon in science communication, lay experts' communicating science to patients is currently under-researched. Drawing on ethnographical study of an on-line support group in China and analyzing the interaction between a lay expert and patients, this article investigates the construction of lay expertise through the use of emotion discourse and evaluation language. Situating the analysis in wider historical and social context of science communication in China, I discuss the different roles of lay expertise in the West and China. It is observed that the application of emotional discursive strategies, though mainly serves to assert the moral justness of science authorities in this case study, may in the future facilitate informed discussions on cancer treatment, science and health. • Emotion discourse and evaluation language should not be taken as direct reflections of interactants' inner states. • Instead, as this study demonstrates, they constitute important resources in the lay expert's on-line communication with other cancer patients. • Drawing on these linguistic resources, the lay expert moralizes different positions regarding science and asserts the moral justness of science authorities and believers. • This lay expert's discursive practices and stances contrast starkly with its Western counterparts. • Some explanations are provided concerning this observed contrast with Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: Cet article revient sur l'évolution des collaborations entre associations et instituts d'expertise dans le domaine de la santé environnementale en France de 1990 à aujourd'hui. L'article décrit la manière dont les organismes d'expertise se sont adaptés à un nouveau contexte, plaçant leurs collaborations avec les associations au cœur des agendas institutionnels. En retraçant la généalogie des politiques d'ouverture à la société, nous donnons à voir les enjeux, les différents groupes d'acteurs embarqués, ainsi que les normes et les procédures à travers lesquels ces politiques sont mises en œuvre. Enfin, nous soulignons les principales limites de ces politiques, dessinant des perspectives aux associations et organismes d'expertise pour poursuivre le changement enclenché. This paper reviews the evolution of alliances between advocacy groups and associations, on the one hand, and scientific institutes and agencies, on the other, in the field of environmental health in France from 1990 until now. The article describes how these public institutions of expertise have adapted to a new context, placing their collaborations with associations at the heart of their institutional agendas. By retracing the history of opening policies to society, we show the stakes, the different groups of actors involved, as well as the norms and procedures by which science reaches out to society. Finally, we highlight the main limitations of these policies and outline opportunities for associations and expertise organizations to continue this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed both as a solution to and as an additional part of the tobacco problem, e-cigarettes have been the subject of risk controversies since they were launched in 2006, followed by massive divergence in media, public health approaches and regulations across the world. This study explores vapers' risk perceptions and accounts of the public risk communication and regulation of e-cigarettes in a Norwegian context were nicotine-containing e-liquids are prohibited from being sold by domestic retailers. Based on analyses of semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 30, 17 males) with adult vapers, I find that the participants emphasised three important dimensions related to risk. First, they perceived vaping as harm reduction by substituting for smoking. Second, they devalued much of the risk communication about e-cigarettes from Norwegian health authorities and media. Interlinked with their harm-reduction approach, they perceived the present regulation of nicotine e-liquid and vaporisers as increasing risk by decreasing their availability to smokers. Third, in general they preferred the lay expertise available online to the health authorities' information on e-cigarettes. The analysis displays a lack of trust among the participants in what can be labelled as top-down information. Based on these dimensions, I conclude that the dissonance between vapers risk perceptions and the regulation and mixed messages in risk communication of e-cigarettes has contributed to their preference for bottom-up expertise. From the vapers' point of view, e-cigarettes represent harm reduction, and the vaper community symbolises a bottom-up health movement where peer assistance compensates for a perceived lack of assistance from health authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • The paper responds to Leuschner's criticism of circularity in Longino's account. • Thinking about norms in terms of shared normative practice avoids circularity. • Cultivating shared norms is crucial for communities that include laypersons. • A successful collaboration in climate science provides an example of shared practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. 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. 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. 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. • Medications for opioid use disorder have social meaning that can influence research. • Participants' prior experiences shape medication beliefs and RCT participation. • Nested qualitative studies within RCTs provide robust data on research experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conceptual paper, I begin with a differentiation between generic 'competence' and professional 'expertise', the latter being manifest at the communicative level. I characterise professional expertise more broadly to include 'communicative expertise' as well as 'distributed expertise'. With regard to decision-making, expertise is no longer seen as an attribute of individuals deriving from scientific knowledge and practical experience. Instead, 'distributed expertise' in its mediated format underpins decisionmaking in many professional and institutional settings. I then extend the notion of 'distributed expertise' as constitutive of 'lay expertise' and 'expert systems'. Access to and use of 'expert systems' in optimal ways inevitably reconfigures the very conditions and consequences of professional expertise. I argue that 'communicative expertise' in professional practice comprises not only knowledge/skill about the mechanics of communication but also the channels through which the other types of knowledge/skill (including scientific, experiential, relational, technological, organisational, legal and ethical) are communicated in real-life settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]