Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rethinking theories: the basis of practical research and problems with paradigms
- 2 Basic critical realist concepts
- 3 Structure and agency: making connections
- 4 Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?
- 5 Four planes of social being: more connections
- 6 Researching transformative change over time
- 7 The point is to change it: connecting research to policy and practice
- ABCD–Articles, books, commentary and dictionary-glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index of subjects
- Index of names
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rethinking theories: the basis of practical research and problems with paradigms
- 2 Basic critical realist concepts
- 3 Structure and agency: making connections
- 4 Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?
- 5 Four planes of social being: more connections
- 6 Researching transformative change over time
- 7 The point is to change it: connecting research to policy and practice
- ABCD–Articles, books, commentary and dictionary-glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index of subjects
- Index of names
Summary
During 2020, governments faced questions about how they should work to reduce the spread of COVID-19. How should they first impose the lockdown and later manage its gradual ending? How could they protect public health while planning the slow return to ‘normal’ life? How could they best guide the public to cope with differences between preand post-pandemic views of what is ‘normal’ and healthy?
The UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, consisted mainly of scientific advisers to government departments, virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and medical experts with risk management and ‘nudge’ behavioural scientists. Their expert advice varied, and was widely criticised. Just as COVID-19 starkly revealed many problems in our present unequal society, it has highlighted limitations in scientific expertise and its relations to policymaking.
Among innumerable policy decisions, just one example was prisons. There had long been campaigns to close many prisons. England and Wales had the largest prison population in Western Europe in April 2020, when there were plans for the early release of up to 4,000 of the 82,500 prisoners. Prison governors advised that thousands more prisoners should be released early. The aims were to reduce prison overcrowding and thereby reduce COVID-19 infection rates and deaths among prisoners and staff as well as in the communities around the prisons.
Instead, only 33 prisoners were released, and in a double confinement the rest were locked up in their cells for over 23 hours a day. A prison ship and 500 shipping containers were ordered to provide extra cells. The policy increased physical and mental illness and suicide rates among already severely disadvantaged social groups.
How can researchers best inform governments and the public on questions about health and illness? A first step could be to point out differences between the main versions of science and the contrasting kinds of information, analyses and insights that they offer. It would also help to review contradictions between these different versions of science and consider how to resolve them. Opportunities for transformative health-promoting change could also be researched. These are the major themes in this book.
Valid and convincing research
Chinese doctors, Professor Huang and colleagues, urgently warned in the Lancet in January 2020 that COVID-19 would cause a pandemic. The editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton,4 pointed out ‘a national scandal’ in contradictions between two reactions to the challenge of COVID-19.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Critical Realism for Health and Illness ResearchA Practical Introduction, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021