The Epistemological Divide in NIH Funded HIV Prevention Science

• In Event: 387 - Regular Session. Sociology of Science 2

Abstract

Social scientific and public health literature on NIH-funded, HIV behavioral prevention science often assumes that this body of work has a strong biomedical epistemological orientation. We explore this assumption by conducting a systematic content analysis of all NIH-funded, HIV behavioral prevention grants for MSM between 1989-2012. We find that while intervention research strongly favors a biomedical orientation, research into the antecedents of HIV risk practices strongly favors a sociological, interpretive and structural orientation. Thus, with respect to NIH-funded HIV prevention science, there exists a major disjunct in the guiding epistemological orientations of how scientists understand HIV risk, on the one hand, and how they engineer behavior change in behavioral interventions, on the other. Building on the extant literature, we suggest that the cause of this disjunct is likely attributable not to an NIH-wide positivist orientation, but to the specific standards of evidence used to adjudicate HIV intervention grant awards, including randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other quantitative measures of intervention efficacy.

Authors

• Adam Isaiah Green, University of Toronto

• Kat Kolar, University of Toronto