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The COVID-19 pandemic has had enormous effects on health, wellbeing, and economies worldwide. Governments have responded with rapid and sometimes radical public health interventions. As nations grapple with the question of how to regain normality without unnecessarily endangering lives or healthcare systems, some scientists have argued for policies to encourage or compel the use of face coverings in community (non-clinical) settings, despite acknowledged gaps in the evidence base for the effectiveness of such a measure. This commentary has two objectives. First, in the face of strong arguments that face coverings are a commonsense intervention, with negligible downsides, that can only do good, we make the case for caution in changing policy. Many seemingly benign public health interventions have the potential to cause harm, and that harm is often socially differentiated. We present five arguments for caution in policy change. Second, we reflect on the wider implications of the increasingly overt approaches to policy advocacy taken by some scientists. Drawing from the theory of post-normal science, we argue that the science–policy interface in the case of face coverings has taken a surprisingly traditional form, falling short of interdisciplinary integration and failing to incorporate insights of the full range of relevant experts and affected stakeholders. We sketch a vision for an alternative, more mature, relationship between science and society that accepts uncertainty, embraces deliberation, and rises to the challenge of developing knowledge to improve public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 20 January 2010, the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published an announcement of a 'fundamental review of the family justice system' in England and Wales - Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own, independent systems under their devolved governments. Even the most casual reading of this brief document reminds those of us who work from time to time in the field of family law and policy why we sometimes wonder what the point of our efforts might be. It repeats the familiar mantras about the complex and adversarial nature of the legal system in dealing with family breakdown, about the virtues of mediation and about the desirability of compelling all system users through a portal controlled by mediators before they encounter the legal system. Once again, the politics of divorce in the UK have led policy-makers into an inappropriate and retrograde approach that ignores the lack of evidence that lawyers and courts do indeed promote conflict, the lack of evidence for mediation's effectiveness or for any significant level of unmet consumer demand for its services and of the growing retreat from mandatory mediation in other common law jurisdictions. As is increasingly typical in UK political life, consumers are only to be sovereign if they make the choices that government requires them to make. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of pre-emptive ethical regulation developed in the biomedical sciences has become a major threat to research in the humanities and the social sciences (HSS). Although there is growing criticism of its effects, most commentators have tended to accept the principle of regulation. This paper argues that we should not make this concession and that ethical regulation is fundamentally wrong because the damage that it inflicts on a democratic society far exceeds any harm that HSS research is capable of causing to individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a report on an Academy of Social Sciences debate held on 15 March 2006. The debate concerned the nature, character and development of the social sciences. Four leading social scientists were asked to reflect upon the nature of the social sciences in the light of various transformations in both intellectual thought and in those processes that seem to be restructuring human life as we move into the 21st century. These changes in different ways seem to problematise the idea of what Bruno Latour refers to as a purified realm of social relations separate from other spheres and around which a social science(s) can be developed. Is there a distinct realm of the social and if there is what is it? What is the relationship between such a social realm and other domains? What does this imply for the kind of social science that might be undertaken? These questions were presented to the Academy debaters and all came up with interestingly different responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors consider some of the wider implications of the construction of a common European regulatory regime for professions and links this with more general discussion about the rise of the regulatory state in Europe. Regulation has come to be recognized as the most appropriate mode of governance both for individual European states and for collective policy management through the institutions of the European Union (EU). The processes, of state and European regulatory systems for professions and regulatory functions for states, have been considered predominantly in economic terms as part of the movement towards a single market. However, it is arguable that such an analysis neglects the implications of the harmonization of professional regulation for the construction of a single polity, for the extent to which the EU represents, implicitly or explicitly, a state-building project. The authors here assess the limitations of the role of law in such processes and conclude by discussing the association between the authority of states and professions in the reproduction of legitimate political and professional power.

Suggests that in order to express ideas that are literal, in the relative absence of familiar stock characters or personifications, the relevant thoughts are expressed using other familiar items. Newspapers and Internet sources consulted for references to cloning; Rhetorical flourishes and metaphors used in the genetically modified food debate.

The deregulation of labour markets is said to be a crucial condition for success in the global marketplace and national profession are widely viewed as obstacles to free trade in services. However if national professions are under pressure, is arguable that the logic of global markets will stimulate the rise of global profession. The moral dimension of professions as a class of occupations is further emphasized in the discussion of competition policy when the scholar wonders whether it is "indecent" to compare the pay of a curate or explain to that of a "journeyman in any common trade," although the actual figures are similar. The management of related problems of trust and uncertainty is a crucial functional issue for market societies. One of the particular contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to social thought was its proposed alternative to the idea that social order rested on fictive compact, contract or convention. Order in society didn't emerge from an agreement to create an authority or an explicit body of rules which everyone would obey.

Marian Roberts (1992) raised a number of critical points about our research on divorce mediation, to which we have already replied (Dingwall and Greatbatch, 1993). This paper is an additional clarification in response to her further critique (Roberts, 1994). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In her recent article, Marian Roberts (1992) has raised a number of questions about our research on divorce mediation. The article includes a useful updating and summary of recent United Kingdom developments and provides valuable insights into the current thinking of some of those active in mediation practice. However, it also offers a partial and simplistic representation of our work, exemplifies serious misunderstandings of our objectives and methodology, and makes inaccurate statements about our findings. Some of these failings result from the limited accessibility of our published work in the United Kingdom, where there are few outlets to publish research on mediation and related issues in law and society studies. Unfortunately, this has led Mrs. Roberts to rely on problematic texts for some important aspects of her critique and to omit others of some significance to an understanding of our position. In view of this, in this article we begin our response by sketching the historical context of the three papers upon which she focuses. We shall then consider her principal objections in detail, underlining the distinction between the advocacy of mediation as a preferred form of dispute resolution by a leading and articulate practitioner and the social scientific analysis of this new version of an ancient interactional form. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The civil work activities of the probation service have for many years suffered from a policy of benign neglect and have been overshadowed by both political and academic interest in its work with offenders. The way in which probation officers have applied their social work skills in practice in a range of areas has been carefully scrutinised, especially in relation to their work in preparing social inquiry reports. This article seeks to redress this balance, offering an account of some research into the work probation officers do for civil courts, and exploring the complex relationship between ideology and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]