By Sheeva Azma, MS (a neuroscientist turned science writer)
Substantial editing and fact-checking by Kelly Tabbutt, PhD (a sociologist and writer)
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As a company both working at the interface of marketing, journalism, policy, writing, and science, and engaged in SciComm training, we have lots of ideas for improving science and science communication alike. We get these ideas from working at the interface of many different fields which often don’t interact with each other and often do not readily connect with science.
Keep reading to learn more about our thoughts on ways understanding sociology can help improve the scientific enterprise!
Science is a highly social enterprise influenced in nonobvious and obvious ways by the wider culture and values of society.
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What is “sociology of science”?
3 Examples of Science x Sociology
– ChatGPT Hype
– Gatekeeping in Science
– The Role of Trauma in Everyday Life
Improve Your Understanding of Sociology of Science and Technology
Hire Fancy Comma, LLC for Socially-Relevant SciComm Mentoring and Training
What is “sociology of science”?
“Sociology of science” is a sub-discipline within the social sciences, and specifically, sociology, that studies this social aspect of science. Generally, “social aspects” of science are those factors at the individual, family, community, society, or even global level that have to do with how humans are influenced by, understand, and behave within any given social context. Examples of social aspects of science include: the structure of interpersonal interactions and relationships, including responsibilities members have to each other and the institution; how responsibilities and powers are delegated; the structure of scientific institutions such as who’s in charge, where people stand in the hierarchy, and how this affects their ability to realize their individual and institutional goals; and concerns for financial, political, and academic (intellectual) support.
“Science is a cultural tradition, preserved and transmitted from generation to generation partly because it is valued in its own right, and partly because of its wide technological applications,” wrote sociologists Joseph Ben-David and Teresa Sullivan in 1975. As they describe, sociology of science “deals with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity.” In other words, the sociology of science studies science as a human activity. For more information on the sociology of science and what it contributes to our understanding of the scientific process, read Helen Longino’s article for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Sociology of science is closely related to another subfield of sociology, called sociology of knowledge. Sociology of science and sociology of knowledge are intertwined but distinct subfields. Sociology of science is specifically concerned with science (discovery, research, learning, and teaching), while sociology of knowledge is more abstract, concerned with things like the role of power in the construction and propagation of truth and knowledge in any context: examples include scientific, political, and/or religious contexts. Sociology of knowledge concerns the who, how, and when of truth and knowledge construction and propagation.
Sociology of science, on the other hand, seeks to understand the social aspects of the scientific enterprise itself, including those aspects that are influenced by and influence the social world: ourselves, our communities, our culture. Sociology of science comprises research about the social structure of the institutions of science and their relationship to other institutions as well as the influence on and construction of scientific knowledge.
“Although science was once seen as the product of individual great men working in isolation, we now realize that, like any other creative activity, science is a highly social enterprise, influenced in subtle as well as obvious ways by the wider culture and values of its time,” reads the back cover of Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis.
Questions sociologists might ask about the process of science as a human activity can include:
- In what ways are the social aspects of scientific institutions organized? For example, how do changes in leadership impact the division of labor and power among members of scientific institutions (including academic institutions)? … or, how do societal shocks (for example, a pandemic or recession) shape institutional goals and policies?
- What is the relationship between the social aspect of science and the construction of scientific knowledge? For example, how do power dynamics in organizations, academic institutions, and society influence whose theories are funded, researched, and accepted?
- How did modern science emerge and become institutionalized? In this context, the word “institutionalized” means “codified or concretized into codes and structures that continue regardless of who holds what roles across time.”
- How is scientific work maintained and controlled? For example, who and what mechanisms protect scientific institutions and standards from change? In what contexts are changes made?
- To what extent does society influence the type of research questions that scientists might ask? More specifically, for example, how do cultural trends and societal shocks impact what questions scientists are asking? Or, how do structural (society-level) inequalities shape which questions are asked?
- How do scientists decide to pursue a research question and organize their research endeavors? What drives their interest in a particular question? Why do they choose a particular method for answering their question? How do they decide what samples or examples to use in their research?
- In what ways does the scientist themself, and their role in society, affect the way they do research? In other words, how do a scientist’s identities and life experiences influence their questions and methods?
- What are the effects of social relations and values on science research? Examples of social relations include how people interact with their professors, peers and colleagues, students, important stakeholders (government officials, granting agencies, or potential investors, for instance), and a general audience.
- What are the social aspects of scientific inquiry? For example, how does the political environment influence scientific research? Or, how does the economy influence research?
- In what ways does scientific research affect human life and society?
Working to gain knowledge about the social aspect of science means understanding that science doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it happens in the context of society, performed by humans, for humanity. Understanding the sociology of science can inform not only science but also help improve SciComm.
Understanding sociology and its role in understanding the context of science can be a huge part of making science more applicable to everyone in the world, help understand inherent biases and limitations of scientific research, and more. Keep reading for three examples of where science and sociology intersect.
3 Examples of Science x Sociology
When we as scientists ignore the social aspect of science and pretend that universal scientific truths, especially those relating to human health and behavior, exist outside of the context of human society, our research fails to be relevant to or have a meaningful impact on society.
Sociology adds the human element to science. It seeks to understand who is doing the science, who is implicated in and affected by the science, and generally, how the science impacts society. It also looks at the who, how, when, and why of new technology use. Understanding the social aspect of science can make science more relatable to society and more applicable to everyone in it.
Here are three examples in the technology, health, and science realms that demonstrate how much social context matters.
ChatGPT Hype
I’ve previously written about how ChatGPT works, and what makes it different from human language processing. It’s easy to see the impact ChatGPT has had on society, so far (as of writing this in July 2022). An artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT can generate content based on prompts that you provide. Immediately after its public launch, ChatGPT gained popularity not only as a way to automate writing, but also as a chatbot that could be used for customer service, for instance.
Unfortunately, since its launch, people have started to learn – the hard way – about the limitations of ChatGPT. As a large language model, ChatGPT basically can be thought of as a “fancy autocomplete,” as NPR’s Planet Money says. (By the way, you can check out a ChatGPT episode of Planet Money here.)
The social implications of ChatGPT appear limitless at the moment, as it continues to be a shiny new tool experiencing immense popularity. It can be used to write content in the style of different writers and even come up with entire screenplays. As we learn about ChatGPT and what it can and can’t do, this is changing the state of work for writers and content creators everywhere.
ChatGPT does have its limitations, which prevent it from being used more widely in society. For example, it makes up references and data points. As the New York Times reports, a lawyer used ChatGPT to develop documents for a legal case and didn’t fact-check the output. ChatGPT made up legal decisions and citations in serving up the lawyer’s request, and he ended up facing punishment.
ChatGPT’s rapid adoption has changed content writing. Writing a quick summary article based on a Google search may now be relegated to the world of automation rather than to humans. Companies can save money by learning how to use ChatGPT to rapidly generate content for free – and they have been. As a result of ChatGPT, I have had to lean into aspects of my skillset that can’t be replicated by an AI chatbot – detailed subject matter expertise, the ability to synthesize and critically interpret information, and the use of my neuroscience background to write engaging text that can readily be comprehended for human minds, by my human mind.
ChatGPT has affected tangible sectors of the economy. For example, its impact can be seen in marketing. Marketers, facing budget shortfalls, have resorted to ChatGPT to save money. According to Harvard Business Review, marketing budgets are down 9.5% since last year. In the first high-profile labor dispute involving ChatGPT, actors and writers are currently (as of August 2023) on strike in Hollywood, California. They are protesting the many unfair practices in the entertainment industry, including the use of AI to create scripts based on existing content. The outcome of the labor disputes have implications for writers everywhere.
The AI chatbot’s impact on society, and efforts to rein in ChatGPT via government regulation and other means, remains to be seen in the long-term. “ChatGPT is being used by millions of people, many of whom don’t have any training or education about when it is ethical to use these systems or how to ensure that they are not causing harm,” Jeff Hancock, an AI expert, told the Stanford University News.
Society will also change as a result of ChatGPT. Some argue it will “improve communication” by making it easier to write; others say it will create more miscommunication and disinformation due to the ease of highly customized, automated content generation to achieve a variety of goals.
ChatGPT is a great study of sociology of science and technology. It shows that AI, long relegated to the ivory tower and computer science geniuses, now has made it out of academia and industry to be used in tools available to anyone. Now it is a part of our everyday lives just as mobile phones and smart devices are.
Understanding the ways ChatGPT can be used in SciComm and ways that the technology is being used by other industries represents an important sociology of science perspective. Check out our May 2023 newsletter, “ChatGPT x SciComm x Society,” to learn more, or check out our YouTube video interview with Ema Pirciu on what a ChatGPT-enabled future might look like (at least, for us writers).
Gatekeeping in Science
Gatekeeping is the practice of controlling who or what ideas are (and are not) allowed entry into, or legitimization within, a field.
One main aspect of sociology of science relates to the way humans perform the scientific process – the standards and practices accepted as legitimate by the scientific community at large.
Looking at the culture of science can be a helpful lens to assess the reasons that science seems to fail to reach society. One can look at the people performing science as a means to understanding the types of interests and backgrounds represented. Consider that science is heavily male and white, with people mostly from middle and upper class backgrounds. This may be the reason why three-fourths of all clinical trials were also heavily male and white in 2020 (down from 84% in 2014). Of course, necessity is the mother of invention, therefore, societal shifts and shocks can drive change. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a shift in clinical trials to boost diversity and ensure that the biomedical research occurring could be relevant to the entire population.
Science is indeed a product of the people who perform it. That is, it is in large part driven by the interests and goals of those conducting (and overseeing and funding) it. Gatekeeping in science represents the undercurrent preventing the changing tide of improving diversity. This doesn’t mean just diversity of backgrounds, but also diversity of ideas. It can be difficult to go against a mainstream idea in science. Entire Twitter feuds have been dedicated to dueling scientific theories lately.
One reason I founded Fancy Comma was to be able to make a career for myself independent of gatekeeping. As a scientist, it felt like the more I persevered, the more obstacles I faced…not so as a self-employed freelance writer. There’s nobody to tell me “no” or doubt me anymore.
Examples of gatekeeping in science include:
- Discrimination such as sexism and racism (among other -isms)
- Women being unable to dress up at conferences or at work for fear of one’s supervisor, men, or other women scientists noticing and claiming that their outfit (or even their hairstyle) is “unprofessional”
- Talking in jargon – that is, scientists using technical language indecipherable to non-scientists or those outside their specialty
- Women receiving less credit for their work – not being cited as often as men
- Supervisors undermining graduate students’ careers, which research suggests affects not only one’s self-esteem but also their creativity.
- Supervisors exploiting student labor through overwork and underpayment, especially when student work goes unmentioned in studies
- Being denied opportunities or being forced to do volunteer work that does not advance one’s career
- Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers being unable to pursue science-adjacent pursuits such as science communication or science policy because “it takes too much time” out of one’s graduate work
- Being forced out of a PhD program and/or leaving with a Master’s degree (if one is lucky enough to do so – many people get no degree to show for all the years they spent in lab working towards a PhD)
- Science “bro culture” that normalizes drinking with colleagues after work (not the ideal environment for networking as it can be a source of sexual harrassment)
- No space for SciComm to make science more inclusive (Check out Fancy Comma’s SciComm FREE SciComm resource page!)
- Biased marketing algorithms that market science careers more to men than women (yes, apparently, robots can gatekeep)
- Aligning on progressive political values but little else
That’s quite the list, isn’t it? Dealing with it all becomes tiring day after day. In undergrad and grad school, the women I worked with worked way too hard and still went relatively unnoticed, compared to their male colleagues. They were wonderful people, and really cared about their colleagues; they also worked hard to balance all of the extra baggage of being a woman in science. While their stories are inspiring, I could never relate to them and did not desire to have to balance it all the way they did. Maybe that’s why most women who study science in undergrad and graduate school leave for other degrees? Being good at science is not something that is socially normative, or sometimes even acceptable for women to brag about in small talk, I have learned. It is definitely a little weird (not that being a writer is especially great to bring up in small talk with strangers, either – haha). I can only imagine that things are just as bad, and probably worse, for racially marginalized people in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM).
Experiences of economic disadvantage are another aspect rarely represented in academic science, and really, all academic disciplines that require a graduate degree or more. According to Kelly, “The race-gender-class nexus is the bread and butter of sociological studies of inequality.” Not only can most structural inequalities be explained in terms of race, gender, or class, but the impacts of inequalities along each of these interact and creates compounding inequality (in sociology, this is called “intersectionality”). For example, while women overall are underrepresented in science, minority women (such as Black women) are more underrepresented than white women, and economic disadvantage further exacerbates this gap. What’s more, people who have not grown up with parents who are academics are less likely to be academics themselves; nearly 25% of people on the tenure track have a parent with a PhD, according to Nature.
Gatekeeping slows down research by ending the careers of people who become marginalized in the system. Along with that, we lose important research questions that don’t get answered because the people working in science don’t have the life experiences that might equip them to comprehensively investigate (or even care about) about those topics.
Science is shaped by society’s expectations of scientists – what they look like (for example, a middle-aged, bearded white man in a lab coat) and how they behave, which in turn can become insurmountable barriers for those who don’t fit the mold of these social expectations.
The Role of Trauma in Everyday Life
Trauma impacts individuals and has ramifications for society. On the individual level, a person who has experienced traumatic events may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among other stress and trauma disorders and personal and social challenges that impede their ability to practice self-care and maintain prosocial interactions and relationships that promote their wellbeing. In today’s “hustle culture,” trauma does not often get talked about or acknowledged. One example is society’s effort to go back to a “normal” post-pandemic without realizing that, even if we are in a post-pandemic reality that resembles pre-pandemic life, we experienced three stressful and traumatic years that have changed all of us.
On the level of society, a traumatized person may act in ways that may be difficult for other people to understand. Their actions, interactions, and reactions may result in others’ misinterpreting and misdiagnosing their issues – if their issues are even recognized as symptomatic of a larger challenge. These misinterpretations may even get them in trouble with the law. As one example, many people who struggle with stress or trauma disorders cope through substance abuse. Many who are diagnosed with substance abuse disorder resort to crimes like theft or robbery to obtain drugs, which exposes them to arrest and often incarceration in jails and prisons. The same can be said of those whose coping strategy is aggression, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. In fact, many studies of incarcerated people have found that a significant proportion of those serving time in jails and prisons have experienced one, often many, traumas in their childhood and adult life, as this webinar from the National Institute of Corrections states.
It’s no secret that adverse life experiences, whether adverse childhood experiences (also called ACEs – things like abuse, neglect, poverty, or parental incarceration or mental illness), or adulthood traumas, make it difficult to learn and enact behaviors that are healthy and prosocial. Kelly, a sociologist, and I, a neuroscientist, talked about this in an April 2023 interview called “Why Science Needs Sociology.” Check out our discussion at this link or below.
Society would benefit from a level of “trauma literacy” in terms of understanding the neural basis of trauma, the fact that stress literally kills, and the ways that stress manifests in behavior. If society could increase its awareness of the symptoms and triggers related to trauma responses and disorders, focusing on mental health awareness and de-escalation tactics, that would help improve our society greatly. Wars could be, if not entirely avoided, then diminished in their human toll if we realized the dire consequences on our nervous systems and psyches. It is a toll that affects not only soldiers but those displaced by conflict, and everyone in society who bears witness to the physical and mental carnage.
In the criminal justice system, reacting with compassion and the goal of treatment and well-being can help turn the tide. The criminal justice system could take a greater role in management, de-escalation, and treatment. Trauma-informed training could help officers (and lawyers, judges, and jail and prison workers) recognize and better respond to trauma-related responses. Law enforcement officers could get help with their own trauma-related symptoms so that they could avoid acting impulsively out of fear, or exacerbating trauma through aggressive behavior (escalation).
The neurophysiological impacts of trauma – however it may exist in our lives – affect the nervous system of individual people, but also have cascading impacts on society through social relationships and behavior. Trauma can lead to aggressive or self-destructive behavior (often both), cause challenges in social interactions, and create alienation, perpetuating the emotional and social challenges of trauma. Going back to the example of ChatGPT, an article in the Wall Street Journal details the human toll of developing the generative AI chatbot. Humans were tasked with developing it and fixing the “edge cases” – the places where the AI could not do a good job, especially in terms of content moderation. These humans, who were forced to comb through graphic images and manually label them in some cases, developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and, in at least one case, a guy’s family left him – leaving him a note on the dinner table – because he was unable to cope with the stresses of the job.
PTSD can make someone hard to live with, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Some social impacts of PTSD, a trauma disorder, include “interpersonal problems, parenting difficulties, and reductions in household income” as well as “mental and physical health comorbidities.” Therefore, it’s in nations’ best interests to understand the personal and social impacts of trauma and reduce it wherever possible to benefit society as a whole.
Other examples of ways trauma interacts with society include construction and villainization of immigrants and immigration, affecting asylum seekers and refugees, both groups who are both exposed to a high amount of trauma and also often dehumanized in the news, creating an additional trauma burden for society.
Lastly, preconceptions of entire categories of people – that leaders – including criminal justice actors as well as doctors, professors, and others in positions of power and influence – have based on race, gender, age, class, education, citizenship status, and so on – can also impact society. These preconceptions are often internalized through our social experiences.
As one example, look at the way society constructs the image of the “criminal” as someone who is defined by inherently and irreparably corrupt behaviors: an irredeemable person, especially when these labels are disproportionately applied (sometimes before any illegal behavior occurs) to particular segments of society based on race and class. These representations and perceptions perpetuate the escalation of interactions between law enforcement and the patterns of disproportionality in severity of penalties by the criminal justice system along race and class (and sometimes gender) lines. All of this is exacerbated for those struggling with mental illness or emotional challenges, creating a traumatic downward spiral for humanity.
Trauma’s neurological basis comes from the stress literature and our knowledge of the ways that the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis leads to glucocorticoid release, which literally kills brain cells. Considering the sociological aspect of this phenomenon gives trauma a holistic perspective and brings it full circle to help boost public understanding and awareness, and in turn, helps in creating a less traumatizing world (or at least raising awareness of things that are bad for one’s mental health, that we tend to hustle and grind through anyway). The role of trauma on the individual and social level is more complex than the examples mentioned above. Nonetheless, these examples present a glimpse of the significance of trauma and the role of science and social sciences in understanding and addressing this challenge.
Improve Your Understanding of Sociology of Science and Technology
At Fancy Comma, we work to improve the conversation between science and society. Check out all of our posts about sociology and specifically, sociology of science. You can also read our science communication blog archives or check out our resources page for scientists interested in science communication, science policy, marketing, and/or science journalism.
Hire Fancy Comma, LLC for Socially-Relevant SciComm Mentoring and Training
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