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PubMed2004

Evolution and the American social sciences: An evolutionary social scientist's view.

American social scientists rarely ever use evolutionary concepts to explain behavior, despite the potential of such concepts to elucidate major social problems. I argue that this observation can be understood as the product of three influences: an ideologically narrowed political liberalism; a fear of ''Social Darwinism'' as a scientific idea, rather than a scientific apostasy; and a widely believed criticism of evolutionary thinking as deterministic, reductionistic, and Panglossian. I ask what is to be done to encourage social scientists to learn and to apply evolutionary lessons. I answer with four solutions. First, evolutionary social scientists should more effectively educate their non-evolutionary students and colleagues. Second, they should publicize, even popularize, accessible refutations of perennially misleading criticisms. Third, they should more credibly assure skeptics that evolutionary theory not only keeps the ''social'' in social science but better explains social behavior than can any individual-level theory, such as rational-choice theory. Fourth, they should recall that biology took generations to become Darwinian, and they must understand that the social sciences may take as long to become evolutionary.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1992

Developing partnerships for health and social science research: the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) social science component.

A decade after its inception, the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) adopted a social science component. Health social science concepts were added to a physician training curriculum encompassing epidemiology, biostatistics and clinical economics, and a position was created for qualified social scientists at 26 clinical epidemiology units in developing country medical schools. This paper describes the INCLEN model for strengthening partnerships among clinical epidemiologists and social scientists. The rationale for interdisciplinary training is presented along with the difficulties inherent in attracting social scientists to a new career path. These include problems of recruitment, training curricula, re-entry, and career sustainability. The need is identified for collaborative international efforts to promote an infrastructure for professional growth and sustainable careers in health social science.

Biometry↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[The pediatrician and social sciences].

The social aspects of child health have been emphasized recently. A better understanding requires of Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, Public Health and Health Sciences. The application of these is requested in the pediatric activities.

Behavioral Sciences↗
PubMed1995

Citation analysis of faculty publication: beyond Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index.

When evaluated for promotion or tenure, faculty members are increasingly judged more on the quality than on the quantity of their scholarly publications. As a result, they want help from librarians in locating all citations to their published works for documentation in their curriculum vitae. Citation analysis using Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index provides a logical starting point in measuring quality, but the limitations of these sources leave a void in coverage of citations to an author's work. This article discusses alternative and additional methods of locating citations to published works.

Abstracting and Indexing↗
PubMed1988

Perceived risk, real risk: social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment.

Risk assessment is commonly seen as the domain of physical and biological sciences, with social scientists focusing instead on risk management and communication. This division is unnecessary, and it may lead to errors in risk assessments. Social science input is needed for more accurate calculations of risk consequences and probabilities and for identifying potential biases created by certain risk assessment procedures, as well as in analyzing and explaining public responses to risk. Findings, moreover, suggest that the dichotomy between "real" and "perceived" risk is less "real" than is often assumed, particularly in cases involving controversial technologies.

Accidents↗
PubMed1980

The behavioral and social sciences.

In the social sciences, as in other sciences, progress is often placed by advances in observational techniques and instruments. This article reviews some of the recent technical progress in the social sciences ans then discusses three substantive frontier areas that are particularly exciting at present: evolutionary theory, especially in relation to sociobiology, the theory of human rational choice, and the newly christened discipline of cognitive science. All three claim to provide explanations for broad areas of human behavior.

Behavior↗
PubMed1997

[Spanish scientific production in biomedicine and health sciences during the period 1990-1993 (Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index) and comparison to period 1986-1989].

BACKGROUND: In 1993 a first study on the scientific production of Spain in 1986-1989 on Biomedicine and Health Sciences, through the Science Citation Index (SCI) was published. The analysis attained the level of centres, with special emphasis in those related to the Health Care System. This paper analyses the period 1990-1993, offers a wider coverage including the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database, and compares both time periods. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Documents indexed by SCI and SSCI, CD-ROM version, with at least one Spanish address, published in biomedical and medical journals during the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993, have been studied. Quantitative and qualitative bibliometric indicators for the analysis by subject matter, geographic distribution, institutional sector and centre of origin have been used. Global data were also analysed according to economic and human resources. RESULTS: A total of 21,434 documents were studied, of which 67.9% were journal articles. The highest contributors were Universities (48.8% of the documents) and Hospitals (45.3%). The autonomous communities of Madrid (31.9%) and Catalonia (26.9%) concentrate more than half the production-developed principally by hospitals-followed by Andalucía (11.7%) and C. Valenciana (7.8%). The most active disciplines were biochemistry/molecular biology (13%), neurosciences/neurology (8.4%), pharmacology/pharmacy (8.4%) and medicine, general/internal (7.9%). Comparing the results with period 1986-1989, some of the differences observed could be explained by the fact of MEDICINA CLINICA being included in SCI since 1992. An increase in the number of citable items (72.9%), number of journals used (from 1,086 to 1,346) and international cooperation rate (13.5% to 18.3%) was detected. The institutional sectors with the highest growth rate were Hospitals (92.9%) and Consejo Superior de investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) (119.3%). Scientific production and visibility of publications (measured as impact factor of journals used) grew in most disciplines, being the quantitative increase greater in cancer/oncology, gastroenterology/hepatology, genetics/heredity and cardiovascular system. No substantial changes as to geographic distribution of documents or most active centres were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Spanish scientific activity grew steadily every year and its visibility improved, being the Health sector one of the main actors. When comparing both four-year period. Spain moved up from the seventh to the sixth position in the ranking of EU countries according to its scientific output in biomedicine and health sciences.

Databases, Bibliographic↗
PubMed1976

[The epistemological obstacle in the constitution of social sciences].

I. General conception. The author contends that the constitution of science requires the completion of two different tasks: a) a negative-critical one, i.e. the clearing of the theoretical field through expurgating all pre-scientific ideologies jeopardizing the growth of scientific concepts; and b) a positive-constructive one, or the actual building up of a science through the production of the formal-abstract object, using ontically indeterminate raw material. Those tasks have characteristics that differ from the formal and factic-natural sciences to the social sciences. The reasons for the differences are: a) the former two have established objects, whereas the latter ones have their objects in the process of undergoing constitution, and thus possessing and oscillating ambiguity; b) the former two sciences have specific methods related to their specific objects, whereas the latter ones have a host of methods, all of them advocating scientific status; c) the former two sciences integrate their concepts into systems so as to constitute the unity of their meaning, whereas the latter ones lack a systematic integration. The consequence is that sciences already constituted (formal and factic-natural sciences) have, by the same token, established the co-implication of both moments (negative-critical and positive-constructive), to the extent that they are in the midst of universes admitting some law-system. Social sciences, on the contrary, set a double register of problems: a) "in-themselves", as they suppose the opening of a new way to approach the object; and b) "for-themselves", as long as that opening is performed at the expense of pre-scientific ideologies that bar the developments to be done "in-themselves". Furthermore, the double task is not accomplished in the same fashion in logic-formal sciences and factic-natural ones, both groups having an apodictic adequation (absolute in the first group, relative in the second one) between the context of discovery and the context of justification, be it formal or experimental, whereas in social sciences there is no such adequation, as they are still searching and trying to establish the mutually foundating relationship between both contexts. II. The epistemological obstacle in Psychology. Psychology, belonging to the general class of social sciences, is subject to two kinds of epistemological obstacles: a) those stemming from "common sense", born and nourished in the naïve, day-to-day experience, and being used as a general canon for usual as well as entirely new situations; they reach the status of a pre-critical "knowing", based solely on beliefs, and advocating to provide the grounds for our opinion on singular and general subjects; and b) those stemming from the "speculative discourse", understood as a system of notions encircling themselves and pretending to have an analogical reference to real objects, when analogy only actualizes objects that are absent...

Humans↗
PubMed1970

Communication in the physical and the social sciences.

Although composed of similar elements and structured similarly, the communications systems associated with the physical sciences and the social sciences differ markedly with respect to the operation and use of these elements. For both groups of disciplines, as information flows through the system it encounters lags and filtering, and much of a scientist's communication behavior is an effort to compensate for these factors. Because the lags and filtering within each system differ in loci and extent, the members of different disciplines adjust to them differently, and the overall information flow patterns in the physical and in the social sciences differ.

Communication↗