Abstract
[E]pidemiology is inevitably entangled with society, and it is not feasible or desirable to study the causes of disease in the abstract (Pearce, 1996: 682).
The most significant insight that has emerged from sociological studies of science in the past 15 years is the view that science is socially constructed ⋯. “[F]acts” are produced by human agency through the institutions and processes of science, and hence they invariably contain a social component ⋯ Form a sociological viewpoint, scientific claims are never absolutely true but are always contingent on such factors as the experimental or interpretive conventions that have been agreed to within relevant scientific communities ⋯. [S]cience as we know it often takes the form of written texts or inscriptions, such as a curve on graph paper, a scattering of dots on photographic films, or an x-ray picture that looks like a supermarket bar code ⋯. The inscription is a substitute for reality ⋯. For sociologists of science, deconstruction means nothing more arcane than the pulling apart of socially constructed facts ⋯ (Jasanoff, 1993: 77–82).
A number of studies have linked the history of specific disease episodes—malaria epidemics, outbreaks of typhus, or of smallpox—to wider patterns of political and economic change. Yet in limiting their time frame they have been unable to describe how these linkages have evolved over longer periods of time and how realignments in specific sets of political and economic interests have shaped the longer history of both health and health care (Packard, 1989: 20).
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(2002). Epidemiology, Law, and Social Context. In: Case Studies in Forensic Epidemiology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47524-3_10
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