University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
J Health Soc Behav. 2021 Sep;62(3):271-285. doi: 10.1177/00221465211009202.
At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics related to the unknowns in medicine. Then we examine two streams of inquiry with a focus on uncertainty and ignorance-(1) research on the interconnections between technology, medical authority, and ignorance and (2) research on lay expertise within the context of ever-present uncertainties. For decades, and to good effect, medical sociologists have asked, "What does medicine know, and what are the consequences of such knowing?" Going forward, we encourage medical sociologists to examine the unknown in medicine and the consequences of not knowing.
在 COVID-19 大流行的核心，存在着医学的一个普遍特征。医学充满了无知。抓住这一时刻来评估当前的医学社会学状况，本文阐述了医学无知的社会学。我们借鉴了早期医学社会学关于不确定性的研究成果，以及社会学中关于无知的新兴研究，以帮助理解与医学未知相关的普遍但有时无形的动态。然后，我们考察了两个关注不确定性和无知的研究领域：（1）研究技术、医疗权威和无知之间的相互关系；（2）在不断存在的不确定性背景下，研究外行专业知识。几十年来，医学社会学家一直在问，“医学知道什么，这种知识有什么后果？”今后，我们鼓励医学社会学家研究医学中的未知和不知道的后果。
