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Background: In public health emergencies, evidence, intervention, decisions and translation proceed simultaneously, in greatly compressed timeframes, with knowledge and advice constantly in flux. Idealised approaches to evidence-based policy and practice are ill equipped to deal with the uncertainties arising in evolving situations of need. Key points for discussion: There is much to learn from rapid assessment and outbreak science approaches. These emphasise methodological pluralism, adaptive knowledge generation, intervention pragmatism, and an understanding of health and intervention as situated in their practices of implementation. The unprecedented challenges of novel viral outbreaks like COVID19 do not simply require us to speed up existing evidence-based approaches, but necessitate new ways of thinking about how a more emergent and adaptive evidence-making might be done. The COVID-19 pandemic requires us to appraise critically what constitutes 'evidence-enough' for iterative rapid decisions in-the-now. There are important lessons for how evidence and intervention co-emerge in social practices, and for how evidence-making and intervening proceeds through dialogue incorporating multiple forms of evidence and expertise. Conclusions and implications: Rather than treating adaptive evidence-making and decision making as a break from the routine, we argue that this should be a defining feature of an 'evidence-making intervention' approach to health.

This paper critically analyses the introduction of drug detection dogs as a tool for policing of illicit drugs in New South Wales, Australia. Using Kingdon's "multiple streams" heuristic as a lens for analysis, we identify how the issue of drugs policing became prominent on the policy agenda, and the conditions under which the alternative of drug detection dogs for illicit drugs policing came to be endorsed by decision makers. By applying Kingdon's heuristic, we also consider how this approach may be used to illuminate the limitations of the evidence-based policy paradigm in the context of policing policy.

While the methods used to study 'elites' are of particular relevance in policy research, to date there has been little examination of the particular challenges associated with 'elite' interviewing in this field. More specifically, the issues associated with interviewing 'elites' while conducting qualitative research in a contested policy domain, especially if policy processes are being studied as they play out in real time, remain underexplored. While the extant literature on 'elite' interviewing has begun to grapple with the notions of 'power' and 'vulnerability', the question of how these notions might need to be rethought in the context of a politicised policy domain remains open for examination. This article provides a methodological and reflexive account of the challenges associated with conducting research in one highly contested policy domain, namely, drug policy. Drawing on examples from a study which examined Australian drug policy processes, this article examines issues associated with anonymity and confidentiality produced through power relations between researcher and participant, particularly as these play out in a contested policy domain. In doing so, this article critically reflects on the practical and political implications for data collection, analysis and reporting of policy research.

There is growing investment in the development of new methods, networks, and infrastructures of knowledge coordination to prepare for disease threats to come. 'Outbreak science' is an emerging field that proposes to improve epidemic preparedness and precautionary response. But what are the effects of framing and governing 'outbreaks' in this anticipatory mode? What ways of knowing and doing preparedness and response does outbreak science open up and foreclose through its promise of fast, actionable information in situations of uncertainty? We consider how 'outbreak' is made governable through its evidencing, with profound, and unevenly distributed, social and material repercussions. We focus on one problematisation intrinsic to outbreak science, that is, the need for speed. Drawing on work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) on pollutants and the slow burn of environmental harms, we argue that constituting 'outbreak' as a problem to be managed with immediacy and speed obscures the long-enduring temporalities and complex ecological relations of disease. We suggest 'slow dis-ease' in conjunction with 'perpetual care' as alternative modes of problematising outbreak. There is a practical difference made possible by making time for slow dis-ease, a time that is currently lost by the rapid, anticipation and short-term event focus of outbreak science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The way people who inject drugs (PWID) feel about drug policy may be profoundly shaped by lived experience of stigma and the subjectivities made available in policy and practice. Using a community-based participatory research approach, this study investigated why PWID hold particular views, and considered the complexities of how lived experience and opinions about drug policy intersect within this affected community. Methods: Three qualitative focus groups were undertaken. Participants were presented with survey results arising from a previous study, and asked to interpret and explain the possible rationales underlying the opinions expressed by their peers. Findings: A duality of opinion was identified, borne from lived experience of stigmatisation, which sometimes led PWID to qualify levels of support. By exploring the rationales underlying opinions, a tension emerged between what PWID theoretically know to be effective interventions, and experiences of how policies are delivered. A sense of "within-group" stigma emerged, with sub-groups of users and drug types denoted as more "dangerous" than others. Conclusions: This study illustrates how theoretical knowledge and lived experience intersect to inform opinions about drug policy. Through in-depth discussions with the affected community, we are reminded that public opinion research is always an interpretative and sensitive pursuit.

Keywords: Academic disciplines and traditions; engagement; intervention; epistemology; methodologies; methods; politics; power; governance EN Academic disciplines and traditions engagement intervention epistemology methodologies methods politics power governance 969 972 4 10/06/23 20230901 NES 230901 This issue of I Science, Technology, & Human Values i , published a year after the death of Bruno Latour, offers a collection of four articles reflecting on the unfolding legacy of a foundational thinker in our field. Academic disciplines and traditions, engagement, intervention, epistemology, methodologies, methods, politics, power, governance. [Extracted from the article]