Social Science Space

David Canter considers how it is that people judge vaccination related risks so bizarrely.

Our work in recent years has focused on how to prevent people from falling for misinformation in the first place, building on a framework from social psychology known as inoculation theory.

The reports from Britain’s hospitals in the last few days have been truly worrying. No one should doubt the reality […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused extraordinary devastation, claiming millions of lives and disrupting the economy and daily life across the […]

David Canter considers the tragic implications of people not understanding what they are told by politicians and experts.

It is possible that we could abolish death by COVID, argues Robert Dingwall, by continuing the restrictions of 2020 indefinitely – the problem, of course, is that we would simply die from something else.

David Canter considers why the social sciences failed to influence behavior in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. The virologists had been preparing for a new virus for some years, so were already ahead of the game when they had to start creating a new vaccine. What preparations had social psychologists, sociologists or anthropologists for the inevitable emergence of a new pandemic?

As the toll from the COVID-19 pandemic increased, polling suggests counter-intuitively that resistance to a future vaccine has also risen. Anthropologist Heidi J. Larson identified several likely drivers of this, including scientists themselves.

Figuring out how public health professionals can most effectively combat misinformation about the flu vaccine is a critically important question for public health research. Looking at the latest research, what is the best way to communicate this importance.