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Epigenetics is regarded by many as a compelling domain of biomedicine. The purported novelty of epigenetics has begun to have various societal ramifications, particularly in relation to processes of responsibilisation. Within sociology, it has stimulated hopeful debate about conceptual rapprochements between the biomedical and social sciences. This article is concerned with how novelty is socially produced and negotiated. The article engages directly with scientists' talk and writings about epigenetics (as process and field of study). I aim to advance an explicitly sociological analysis about the novelty of epigenetics that underscores its social production rather than an account which participates in its reification. I attend to definitional skirmishes, comparisons with genetics, excitement and intrigue, and considerations of the ethical dimensions of epigenetics. Any assertions that epigenetics is exciting or important should not inadvertently elide reflexive consideration of how such characterisations might be part of the machinery by which they become real.

In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is seeking to encourage researchers to move away from diagnostic tools like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM). A key mechanism for this is the "Research Domain Criteria" (RDoC) initiative, closely associated with former NIMH Director Thomas Insel. This article examines how key figures in US (and UK) psychiatry construct the purpose, nature, and implications of the ambiguous RDoC project; that is, how its novelty is constituted through discourse. In this paper, I explore and analyze these actors' accounts of what is new, important, or (un)desirable about RDoC, demonstrating how they are constituted through institutional context and personal affects. In my interviews with mental health opinion leaders, RDoC is presented as overly reliant on neurobiological epistemologies, distant from clinical imaginaries and imperatives, and introduced in a top-down manner inconsistent with the professional norms of scientific research. Ultimately, the article aims to add empirical depth to current understandings about the epistemological and ontological politics of contemporary (US) psychiatry and to contribute to science and technology studies (STS) debates about "the new" in technoscience. Accordingly, I use discussions about RDoC as a case study in the sociology of novelty.

Psychological therapy today plays a key role in UK public mental health. In large part, this has been through the development of the (specifically English) Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Through IAPT, millions of citizens have encountered interventions such as cognitive behaviour therapy, largely for the treatment of depression and anxiety. This article interrogates how this national response to problems of mental ill-health – and the problematization itself – was developed, accounted for, and sustained. By imbricating economic expertise with accounts of mental ill-health and mechanisms of treatment, IAPT has revivified psychological framings of pathology and therapy. However, it has done so in ways that are more familiar within biomedical contexts (e.g. through recourse to randomized controlled trial studies). Today, the initiative is a principal player in relation to which other services are increasingly developed. Indeed, in many respects IAPT has transformed from content to context within UK public mental health (in a process of what I term 'contextification'). By documenting these developments, this paper contributes to re-centring questions about the place and role of psychology in contemporary healthcare. Doing so helps to complicate assumptions about the dominance of linear forms of (de)biomedicalization in health-systems.

In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is seeking to encourage researchers to move away from diagnostic tools like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM). A key mechanism for this is the "Research Domain Criteria" (RDoC) initiative, closely associated with former NIMH Director Thomas Insel. This article examines how key figures in US (and UK) psychiatry construct the purpose, nature, and implications of the ambiguous RDoC project; that is, how its novelty is constituted through discourse. In this paper, I explore and analyze these actors' accounts of what is new, important, or (un)desirable about RDoC, demonstrating how they are constituted through institutional context and personal affects. In my interviews with mental health opinion leaders, RDoC is presented as overly reliant on neurobiological epistemologies, distant from clinical imaginaries and imperatives, and introduced in a top-down manner inconsistent with the professional norms of scientific research. Ultimately, the article aims to add empirical depth to current understandings about the epistemological and ontological politics of contemporary (US) psychiatry and to contribute to science and technology studies (STS) debates about "the new" in technoscience. Accordingly, I use discussions about RDoC as a case study in the sociology of novelty.

Epigenetic processes are garnering attention in the social sciences, where some scholars assert their importance for theorizing social life. I engage with such ideas here by drawing on interviews with leading bioscientists. To begin with, I underscore the (productive) uncertainties of those working in and around epigenetics; I describe these as a manifestation of 'epistemic modesty', and suggest that dissensus helps to propel biomedical innovation. Then, drawing on the concept of 'alien science', I detail some researchers' ambivalences regarding the notion of 'transgenerational inheritance'; their dissatisfaction with the (public) communication practices of other scientists (situated in what I term a regime of 'epistemic ostentatiousness'); and the challenges faced when moderating societal discussion of epigenetics in ways that expand excitement whilst deflating (what researchers regard as) unrealistic expectations. The paper concludes with reflections on the knowledge machinery of the (social) sciences, and employs the study data to interrogate sociological engagements with epigenetics.

Research in neuroscience and epigenetics is prominent in biomedicine and beyond. Some policy makers, health professionals and other citizens have intuited particular implications from these 'social biologies', leveraging them to support policies that many find problematic (e.g., around the early years). This enjoins scholarly attention to the uses to which science is put, but also to how and why biomedical knowledge comes to be imbued with certain kinds of salience (both by 'advocates' and by 'critics').

Neuroscience is viewed by a range of actors and institutions as a powerful means of creating new knowledge about our selves and societies. This article documents the shifts in expertise and identities potentially being propelled by neuroscientific research. It details the framing and effects of neuroscience within several social domains, including education and mental health, discussing some of the intellectual and professional projects it has animated therein (such as neuroethics). The analysis attends to the cultural logics by which the brain is sometimes made salient in society; simultaneously, it points towards some of parameters of the territory within which the social life of the brain plays out. Instances of societal resistance and agnosticism are discussed, which may render problematic sociological research on neuroscience in society that assumes the universal import of neuroscientific knowledge (as either an object of celebration or critique). This article concludes with reflections on how sociotechnical novelty is produced and ascribed, and the implications of this.

In recent years, personality disorders – psychiatric constructs understood as enduring dysfunctions of personality – have come into ever-greater focus for British policymakers, mental health professionals and service-users. Disputes have focussed largely on highly controversial attempts by the UK Department of Health to introduce mental health law and policy (now enshrined within the 2007 Mental Health Act of England and Wales). At the same time, clinical framings of personality disorder have dramatically shifted: once regarded as untreatable conditions, severe personality disorders are today thought of by many clinicians to be responsive to psychiatric and psychological intervention. In this article, I chart this transformation by means of a diachronic analysis of debates and institutional shifts pertaining to both attempts to change the law, and understandings of personality disorder. In so doing, I show how mental health policy and practice have mutually constituted one another, such that the aims of clinicians and policymakers have come to be closely aligned. I argue that it is precisely through these reciprocally constitutive processes that the profound reconfiguration of personality disorder from being an obdurate to a plastic condition has occurred; this demonstrates the significance of interactions between law and the health professions in shaping not only the State's management of pathology, but also perceptions of its very nature.

The concept of "ethical research" holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a variety of countries. Some commentators have viewed this "new" means of governance positively; others, however, have been resoundingly critical, regarding it as restrictive and ethics bodies and regulations unfit for the task they have been set (or have set themselves). Regardless, it is clear that science today is an "ethical" business. The ways in which formal and informal ethical discourses and practices—what might be called "regimes of normativity"—structure scientific work and the meanings it is ascribed with have, however, been underexplored. This article attends to how science and ethics articulate; how they are, in many ways, co-produced. Exploring these processes of co-production casts into sharp relief the essential emotionality of science; the relationships investigators have with their colleagues, work, and research participants pulse with emotion, potentially shaping in important ways the very kinds of knowledge that laboratories produce.

Citizens today are increasingly expected to be knowledgeable about and prepared to engage with biomedical knowledge. In this article, I wish to reframe this 'public understanding of science' project, and place fresh emphasis on public understandings of research: an engagement with the everyday laboratory practices of biomedicine and its associated ethics, rather than of specific scientific facts. This is not based on an assumption that non-scientists are 'ignorant' and are thus unable to 'appropriately' use or debate science; rather, it is underpinned by an empirically-grounded observation that some individuals may be unfamiliar with certain specificities of particular modes of research and ethical frameworks, and, as a consequence, have their autonomy compromised when invited to participate in biomedical investigations. Drawing on the perspectives of participants in my own sociological research on the social and ethical dimensions of neuroscience, I argue that public understandings of biomedical research and its ethics should be developed both at the community level and within the research moment itself, in order to enhance autonomy and promote more socially robust science. Public bioethics will have play a key role in such an endeavour, and indeed will contribute in important ways to the opening up of new spaces of symmetrical engagement between bioethicists, scientists, and wider publics – and hence to the democratisation of the bioethical enterprise.

"The relationships between law, science, and society are central to a diverse range of practical, ethical and theoretical issues. With an increasing emphasis on the fluidity and uncertainty of each of these areas, the analysis of their intersection(s) has become complex. This book examines the interface between studies of these topics from the socio-legal studies and science and technology studies (STS) perspectives. The scholars gathered here interrogate the joint roles of law and science in the construction and stabilization of socio-technical networks, objects, and standards, as well as their place in the production of contemporary social realities and subjectivities. Accordingly, scholars have borrowed from a range of disciplines and case studies to analyse not only how such intersections materialize, but also how and from where they should be approached. Knowledge, Technology and Law illustrates how these complex and multifaceted links between scientific knowledge, material artefacts, practices and identities can be charted. This volume presents original dialogues on this emerging field and will therefore be of great interest to those researching the intersections of law, science, and society"--

Researchers from the humanities and social sciences can help governments emerge and recover from COVID-19, yet their perspectives continue to be ignored and marginalised. Humanities and social science research can provide the political, historical, cultural, social, and economic insights to deepen our understanding of the pandemic, how it has been experienced, how to overcome it, and how best to learn from it.

BACKGROUND: Since its introduction in 1991, Malaysian palliative care has made significant progress, with an estimated 26 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and 68 government hospitals providing palliative care facilities and services nationwide. Distinct models between these sectors create unique challenges for each sector in progressing palliative care, requiring different strategies to address these. METHODS: Drawing on existing literature available on palliative care in Malaysia and interviews from 10 management and healthcare staff of Malaysian palliative care NGOs, this article casts new light on the field. Specifically, the paper explores the various health-related and policy-related challenges NGOs have identified in progressing palliative care in the country, as well as the current and future strategies they employ to address these. RESULTS: Despite immense progress in Malaysian palliative care, existing services cannot meet the current and projected demand. The interviews identify numerous barriers hindering Malaysian palliative care, including financial matters, perception issues, logistical concerns and challenging government policies. CONCLUSION: Increased advocacy, establishment of specialised palliative care education, and greater co-operation between different sectors are strongly recommended to help develop palliative care in Malaysia.