Dilshani Sarathchandra

Migrant Selectivity or Cultural Buffering? Investigating the Black Immigrant Health Advantage in Low Birth Weight

Prior studies on population health have reported an “immigrant health advantage” in which immigrants tend to show better health outcomes compared to their native-born racial/ethnic counterparts. Migrant selectivity and cultural buffering have been proposed as explanations for this relative advantage, predominantly in studies that focus on Latino immigrants’ health in the US. This study adds to the relatively scant literature on black immigrant health advantage by comparing the two hypotheses (migrant selectivity and cultural buffering) as related to black immigrant health. The effect of nativity on infant low birth weight is tested using data from the US Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results indicate that immigrant black mothers do have relatively better health outcomes that may result from cultural buffering, which reduces their risky health behaviors.

The Cultural Negotiation of Publics–Science Relations Effects of Idaho Residents’ Orientation Toward Science on Support for K-12 STEM Education

Understanding the intersections of science and publics has led to research on how diverse publics interpret scientific information and form positions on science-related issues. Research demonstrates that attitudes toward science, political and religious orientation, and other social factors affect adult interactions with science, which has implications for how adults influence K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. Based on a statewide survey of adults in Idaho (n = 407), a politically and religiously conservative western state, we demonstrate how attitudes toward science, measured through a composite measure “orientation toward science,” and other social factors are correlated with support for STEM education. Results show that “orientation toward science,” along with political orientation and respondents’ perceptions of feeling informed about science, predicts behavior intentions to support STEM education. Our findings suggest that a nuanced and localized approach to fostering support for K-12 STEM education would resonate with populations regardless of political orientation, and they illuminate new ways of thinking about how political orientation more generally impacts thinking about science in the context of complicated “socio-scientific relations.” In exploring how people think about science in a politically and religiously conservative state, we provide insights on potential outcomes in other states, should conservative ideology spread. We argue that the publics’ relationship with science and, by extension, support for science education, is more fluid, as many of us suspect, than ideological polemics suggest.

Tea Party Health Narratives and Belief Polarization: the Journey to Killing Grandma

In the past decade the U.S. public has expressed varying degrees of skepticism about certain factual claims, and of “expertise” more broadly. Ideological and partisan belief polarization seems to have elevated public anxiety about topics ranging from climate change and vaccines to immigration and healthcare policy. Furthermore, polarized narratives about scientific, medical, and political topics have encouraged “directionally motivated cognition”, leading to a decline in institutional trust among some fractions of the U.S. political spectrum. Our case study of the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) (i.e. a political organization that promotes the Tea Party goals) uses data from 45 interviews, 80 hours of participant observation, and content analysis of movement literature, to examine the nature and nuance of health narratives employed by the Tea Party. Specifically, we explain a central narrative in TPP organizing that features “a villainous Left covertly seeking to harm U.S. citizens” as the root of three key TPP health care narratives: (1) Democratic health initiatives enslaving youth; (2) the political left profiting from covertly making Americans dependent on states health care programs; and (3) the left clandestinely seeking to violate the constitution as represented by their efforts to “kill grandma”. These narratives reflect the increased polarization of attitudes towards healthcare, as well as a broader distrust of the political left who, activists believe, are advancing a political agenda of social control. Ultimately, we argue that culturally driven healthcare narratives of the Tea Party have had a significant impact on right-wing public opinion and Republican politics regarding U.S. healthcare policy. Many Tea Party concerns are reflected in the Republican policy positions, including those related to the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Risky Science? Perception and Negotiation of Risk in University Bioscience

Scientists’ risk perceptions play a critical role in determining the risks that they are willing to accept in their work. This study investigates academic bioscientists’ risk perceptions by examining the judgments working scientists employ in day-to-day research decisions. The study draws from theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Sociology of Science and Risk Analysis. Using data gathered from 694 survey responses of bioscientists at a land grant research university in the U.S. Midwest, this study identifies four dimensions of perceived risk (i.e., intellectual challenges, competition, career risks, and societal risks) and demonstrates how these dimensions are associated with a series of demographic, life-course, and contextual factors. Findings indicate that university bioscientists’ subjective risk judgments are shaped by their professional experience, sources of funding, research orientation, professional networks, and perceived significance of research, which in turn may affect their research decisions.

Can I Live? College Student Perceptions of Risks, Security, and Privacy in Online Spaces

This study explores U.S. college students’ perceptions of risk, security, and privacy in online spaces, and the strategies used by students to manage online risks. Twenty-one students participated in in-depth interviews and shared their experiences with online spaces and their perceptions of cyber threats. Our findings indicate that student cybersecurity concerns are shaped mainly by routinization and ritualization of risk, optimistic bias, and self-efficacy. Strategies commonly employed to overcome risks include accessing sources that are perceived as credible and trustworthy, restricting information sharing, and exercising learned helplessness—or, what we term here as the “can-I-live syndrome.”

To Tell the Truth

Abstract Numerous food scares have become news in recent years, a situation that could lead to questions concerning the due diligence of those supplying food to consumers. This study looks at how various actors tied to the food supply, including producers, processors, retailers and government agencies, have tried to transition news coverage of food scares into something that matches their interests or which places the blame for problems elsewhere. Using Goffmans notion of keys, we investigate the ways in which the public was portrayed during three food scares—Alar, mad cow disease and genetic engineering—to understand how claimsmakers were reshaping press coverage of these crises. Findings show that while some coverage has changed over the years and across issues—from the public needing protection in the 1980s to being concerned in the late 1990s—keys have been used by actors in these stories to highlight roles that were necessary to protect a public that is unable to fend for itself when food becomes risky.

Making Room for a Postcolonial Critique in the Introductory STS Curriculum

Over the past few decades, research in ‘postcolonial technoscience’ has grown steadily within the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Breaking away from the Euro/West-centric models of analysis, this scholarship has developed new conceptual frameworks and tools to address political economies of science and knowledge. However, in our teaching of STS, particularly at the introductory level, there seems to be limited engagement with these aspects of STS, and a continuation of Euro/West-centrism of the predominant discourse. In this chapter, I suggest that enriching the introductory STS curriculum with recent literature in postcolonial technoscience can provide students with an opportunity to examine how local and global inequities may affect science, and how science may be used to sustain such inequities. Instructors of introductory STS courses can better serve students by encouraging explorations of the regulatory ideals of Western science in relation to local and global standpoints and postcolonial criticisms.

The Effects of Media Coverage of Scientific Retractions on Risk Perceptions

Media coverage of scientific studies identifying technological risks generally amplifies public risk perceptions. Yet, if subsequent media coverage reports that those studies have been retracted, are risk perceptions reversed or attenuated? Or, once amplified, do risk perceptions remain elevated? Answering such questions may improve our understanding of risk perceptions of some publicly controversial technologies, for example, childhood vaccines and genetically modified (GM) food. We engage with the social amplification of risk framework, especially scholarship on news media as a risk amplification (or attenuation) station. In a between-subjects experiment, we examine the extent to which perceived risk of GM food is influenced by (a) news of a study reporting that eating GM food causes cancer and/or (b) news of its retraction. Whereas initial news coverage amplified all measured risk perceptions, news of the study’s retraction effectively reversed them to nonamplified levels.

Public Understanding of Science and K-12 STEM Education Outcomes: Effects of Idaho Parents’ Orientation Toward Science on Students’ Attitudes Toward Science:

Over the past few decades, public anxiety about how people interact with science has spawned cycles of discourse across a wide range of media, public and private initiatives, and substantial research endeavors. National and international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education initiatives and research have addressed how students interact with science and pursue careers in STEM fields. Researchers concerned with adult interaction with science have focused on factors that influence how citizens gather and interpret scientific knowledge and form positions on scientific issues, applications, and/or policy in a politicized democratic milieu. Building from research on how the public interacts with science in and outside of formal education, this study focuses on attitudes toward science among students in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades and their parents. Little research to date has paired the STEM experiences of adults with their children. We find that the extent to which parents are positively oriented toward science significantly shapes their children’s attitudes toward science. Furthermore, between 7th and 10th grades, students with parents holding positive orientations toward science are more likely to sustain positive attitudes toward science. Since the foundation for most adults’ interactions with science develops in the K-12 environment, we demonstrate that the foundation, as expressed in adulthood, may directly affect the ways the next generation of students interacts with science. We offer insights into the importance of developing student learning into the social scientific research on public understanding of science and how important scientific issues of today interplay with society.