{"id":7912,"date":"2012-09-26T14:23:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T19:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=7912"},"modified":"2012-09-26T14:23:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T19:23:20","slug":"social-science-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2012\/09\/26\/social-science-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Social science in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Nadine Lymn, director of public affairs<\/em><\/p>\n

Social scientists have been weathering repeated attacks<\/a> lately from congressional leaders deriding \u00a0the value and validity of their work. The scientific community has responded<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 The Ecological Society of America is one of several scientific societies serving as a collaborator<\/a> to show support for social science and its contributions to other fields and to society. A new initiative of the National Academy\u2019s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences in Action<\/em><\/a> (SBSIA) aims to \u201craise awareness of the vitality, validity, and value of the social and behavioral sciences to the scientific enterprise, to public policy, and to the nation\u2019s well-being\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, a symposium, held at the National Academy of Sciences, highlighted the key role social science plays in national security, medicine and engineering.\u00a0 Biologist Rita Colwell<\/a>, health policy analyst Lucian Leape<\/a>, national security psychologist Robert Fein<\/a> and mechanical engineer John Lee<\/a> were among the speakers who highlighted how social science is integral to their work.<\/p>\n

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Rita Colwell speaks at the symposium. Photo: N. Lymn<\/p><\/div>\n

Colwell said that without her social scientist colleagues, she would have had neither the access nor the success in reaching the 150,000 individuals in 50 villages in Bangladesh to tamp down the incidence of cholera. \u00a0This social-biological collaboration reduced cholera by 50 percent in three years.\u00a0 \u00a0The insights provided by a social scientists opened the way to reach these communities, said Colwell.\u00a0 The social scientists developed the questionnaire with local mores in mind, knowing what questions would and would not be appropriate in the region. \u00a0They understood the cultural practices and environmental views of the local people and selected families to participate in the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been a tragedy\u201d said Colwell, if the scientists had missed the chance to help so many people who were suffering and dying from this disease.\u00a0 Colwell has studied cholera for 40 years and she and colleagues knew that it can be dramatically curtailed by filtering water through sari cloths folded five times. \u00a0Cholera\u2014which is often fatal\u2014is a bacterium that occurs naturally in the environment and is associated with a tiny zooplankton called a copepod.\u00a0 Filter out the copepod and you\u2019ve also filtered out the cholera bacterium, along with a host of other water-borne bacteria and viruses.<\/p>\n

Women in the rural villages of Bangladesh are the ones who educate the family and are therefore key to addressing the problem\u2014Colwell and her fellow researchers \u00a0in essence trained the women to be extension agents who learned how to filter the water and then shared this technique with others.\u00a0 When Colwell and colleagues did a follow-up study<\/a> five years later, they found that a significant proportion of women were still filtering water for their households and that the severity of cholera cases had declined.<\/p>\n

Health policy analyst Lucian Leape focused his remarks on what he sees as a deeply pervasive problem in US health care: disrespectful behavior in the medical community.\u00a0 Basically, said Leape, people in the medical community don\u2019t treat each other very well and that leads to all sorts of problems.\u00a0 Belittling of medical students by their superiors, verbal abuse of nurses and humiliation of patients are all disrespectful behaviors.\u00a0 If that disrespectful conduct is not changed, argued Leape, we won\u2019t make the headway we need to in patient care.\u00a0 \u201cWe need help from social sciences\u201d he says, to make [health care] more humane.\u00a0 The main problem areas in the health care system, said Leape, are rooted in social science questions.<\/p>\n

In addition to the disrespect issues, we also know that doctors are not trained to work in teams; the entire system is set up to reward individual achievements and results in a strong barrier to working collaboratively or to admit personal errors.\u00a0 In a nutshell, doctors don\u2019t \u201cdo teams\u201d very well \u2014 at the expense of patient care, and even survival.\u00a0\u00a0 In an environment where a resident or nurse does not feel safe in pointing out an error for fear of punishment from higher-ups, they may not speak up and a patient may suffer as a result.\u00a0 The goal is to create an environment in which errors in procedure can be pointed out without risking punishment, and with the belief that it will improve the situation.<\/p>\n

In an interesting parallel to Leape\u2019s remarks, Robert Fein talked about his work in the psychology of school shooters and other assassins.\u00a0 The environment in which a person is operating is very relevant to their behavior and humiliation, or perceived humiliation, is frequently a significant contributor.\u00a0 \u201cHumiliation is the parent of bad behavior,\u201d said Fein.<\/p>\n

Looking for patterns of behavior is more helpful than trying to develop a profile of someone inclined to become violent, said Fein.\u00a0\u00a0 Plenty of people may fit a given profile but never take violent actions.<\/p>\n

Other speakers addressed rapidly advancing technologies and how people interact with them.\u00a0 John Lee, who holds degrees in both psychology and mechanical engineering, talked about the need to make the \u201cmarriage\u201d between people and technology work.\u00a0 Focusing on the mechanics of technology is insufficient.\u00a0 Lee said we need to understand people\u2019s behavior and the relationships they develop with rapidly changing technologies such as heavily computerized cars and smart phones.<\/p>\n

View the webcast of the symposium (or segments thereof) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo: http:\/\/sareedreams.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/saree_water_filter.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nadine Lymn, director of public affairs Social scientists have been weathering repeated attacks lately from congressional leaders deriding \u00a0the value and validity of their work. The scientific community has responded.\u00a0\u00a0 The Ecological Society of America is one of several scientific societies serving as a collaborator to show support for social science and its contributions to other fields and to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[638,341,125,92,477,1248,1454,1455,558],"class_list":["post-7912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-and-society","tag-bacteria","tag-collaboration","tag-disease","tag-environment","tag-health","tag-public-policy","tag-social-and-behavioral-sciences-in-action","tag-social-sciences","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}