The word gossip conjures up images of high school rumor mills, or maybe workplace drama in a corporate break room — we don’t exactly think of prestigious biologists whispering among their microscopes about a colleague’s latest research blunder. However, academic science is no different. Sociologists know that any workplace can have its fair share of gossip, particularly among frustrated colleagues who feel otherwise powerless.

Drawing from interviews with 251 academic scientists in elite and non-elite departments in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Simranjit Khalsa, and Elaine Howard Ecklund found that scientists use gossip to police their colleagues. This gossip is often about someone’s sloppy data analysis, unethical research methods, faked co-authorship, or misused funds. It may even warn about a colleague’s tendency to exploit or abuse students, with one interviewee describing a faculty member as “so, so unethical that [they] bea[t] people up and … abus[e] them…throw[ing] sandals and what not!”

The researchers argue that this gossip is not just a way to make small talk around the water cooler, either. In a profession where many are hesitant or unable to formally report, let alone prove, professional transgressions, scientists use gossip as a means to warn newcomers about untrustworthy colleagues and even tarnish the ever-important reputation of a researcher. A sullied reputation can have serious consequences for a scientist, affecting their ability to secure funding, publish in top journals, and even prevent them from receiving promotions.  Scientists use gossip as a means to warn newcomers about untrustworthy colleagues and even tarnish the ever-important reputation of a researcher. 

But gossip’s influence is limited. As with many hierarchical organizations, senior researchers often continue enjoying their power and prestige even when their shoddy work becomes common knowledge through the grapevine. On the other hand, junior faculty are more vulnerable to the harms of gossip, as well as the risks of being labeled untrustworthy should they get caught gossiping themselves. The study ultimately serves as a warning to scientists: gossip may not be as effective as you’d hope, and it can easily backfire. Tread lightly.

Debates regarding the use of public funds to construct new world-class sport arenas continue, as some believe it will foster economic and social growth in the host city while others strongly disagree this idea. Yet resistance has proven difficult. In a recent paper, sport sociologist Jay Scherer documented the efforts of one such grassroots organization—Voices of Freedom (VFD) in Canada—in their attempts to stop the Edmonton Oilers hockey arena from 2011 to 2013.

In opposition to the estimated $606.5 million arena for the Edmonton Oilers, concerned citizens formed the VFD to inform the public of the financial concerns regarding the arena. VFD first gained traction when they questioned the conclusions of the City Shaping report because it failed to include the potential pitfalls of constructing a new arena. The organization sought to mobilize public resistance by conducting city-wide telephone surveys, distributing brochures, purchasing billboards, and creating informative websites.

Scherer collected ethnographic accounts of his two-year personal experiences working with the Board of Directors of the VFD. He also conducted in-depth interviews with board members. While initially promising, VFD experienced many difficulties, such as lack of human, financial, and material resources needed to maintain public interest in opposing public funding for the Oilers arena. Additionally, Scherer found that citizens could not fully participate because of the complexity in understanding deliberations associated with development projects. Investors also intimidated board members and citizens who wanted to participate in public debates regarding the arena. These citizens feared personal, financial, and professional ramifications for openly opposing the arena development. Ultimately, VFD ceased of operations.

Scherer’s research highlights the limitations of grassroots organizations such as Voices for Democracy to compete in the political arena when it comes to stopping public funds being used for sport arenas. His work also helps us think about the importance of political officials’ accountability to their communities regarding the use of public funds to support these large projects.

Criminological theory suggests that voluntary organizations — nonprofit groups that provide services to the neighborhood — are associated with decreased levels of crime. Research shows that voluntary organizations create neighborhood cohesion and decrease potential stressors that have been found to increase criminal activity. Yet, there is research on this relationship that finds weak, or even opposite, effects than the theory suggests, with some studies finding voluntary organizations to actually increase crime levels. In a new study, James Wo, John Hipp, and Adam Boessen complicate the relationship by taking into account how long the voluntary association operates within a particular neighborhood.

Using data from the National Center of Charitable Statistics, the U.S. Census, and local police departments, the researchers find that neighborhoods with more voluntary organizations are weakly associated with lower levels of crime after controlling for between neighborhood and city variation. But when they consider the length of time each voluntary organization has operated in each neighborhood, they find an “age-graded effect.” That is, organizations that have spent more time in the neighborhood are more effective in reducing crime. The effect also varies by association, and civil advocacy and community associations, for example a minority rights association, are associated with the most consistent decreases in crime across types of crime. Organizations that have spent more time in the neighborhood are more effective in reducing crime.

The results of this new study reveal that not only are certain organizations more effective in reducing certain types of crimes, but significant resources, leadership, and time must be devoted to an organization before it has a significant impact on the level of crime in an area. The authors note that organizations may face challenges upon startup, such as gaining trust with the community or funding issues, or they may have services or events that take time to take effect. Although the stakeholders in voluntary organizations want, or even need, to show tangible effects for funding or legitimacy, the research here suggests that the longer you let the voluntary centers incubate, the more extensive their impact on community safety.  

In recent years, the political landscape of criminal justice in the United States has shifted away from the “get tough on crime” era of the 80s and 90s,and politicians from all backgrounds seem to be embracing more lenient criminal justice reforms. However, a recent study by Katherine Beckett, Anna Reosti, and Emily Knaphus challenges the assumption that there is a general consensus. Instead, they argue that the state of criminal justice politics and policies is more aptly defined by complexity and contradictions, which may hinder meaningful reductions in prison populations.

Beckett and her colleagues analyzed state correctional policies collected by the National Council of State Legislatures to assess the punitive or nonpunitive nature of legal provisions enacted from 2000 to 2013. The findings suggest that prior to the recession, many states enacted punitive anti-crime policies, but following 2007, more lenient provisions outnumbered punitive ones by nearly 3 to 1. However, these nonpunitive reforms were mainly limited to drug and parole policies, and a punitive trend towards violent or sex offenses remained and even intensified in some states.

The researchers also reviewed newspaper articles and editorials about criminal justice reform from 2008 to 2014 to understand the surrounding political discussions.  Their results suggest that most news coverage regarding criminal justice reform focused on fiscal concerns as the main justification for reducing correctional populations, while the human costs of mass incarceration were rarely mentioned. Moreover, the intended beneficiaries of these reforms were those individuals who were convicted of a nonviolent or drug offenses. There were only two mentions of policies aimed to benefit those convicted of violent offenses within the 163 articles that were analyzed.

While we are witnessing meaningful progress in reducing prison populations, the current reforms are only geared towards nonviolent offenses. Further, political discourse is typically focused on the money lost to mass incarceration, as opposed to its negative effects on the lives of millions of Americans. Reversing mass incarceration will require incorporating broader reforms that address the social costs of imprisonment and emphasize the humanity of all the individuals under correctional supervision.

We often hear about women who “experiment” with their sexuality during college — they hook up with another woman just to “see what it’s like.” But focusing on the same-gender sexual experiences of college women disregards a large portion of women who never go to college, and a 2011 study argues that women with the lowest levels of educational achievement actually have the highest rates of same-gender sex. So how does same-gender sex function for less educated women, especially those with children or who are married to men?

Jamie Budnick conducted in-depth interviews with 35 women who indicated having at least one non-heterosexual experience. Budnick recruited these women based on their answers to supplemental questions in the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Survey. Of these women, fewer than half attended any four year college and those who did went to schools that were not elite or highly selective.

While all of the women in the study reported some kind of non-heterosexual behavior, only 16% identified as something other than “straight.” Unlike studies of women at elite colleges, the women in Budnick’s study were far more likely to identify as “bisexual” than “queer,” as the term “queer” was often considered derogatory in their social circles. At the time of the interviews, some women remained in relationships with their children’s fathers or felt their same-gender sexualities were simply irrelevant after having children. Instead, having sex with other women — friends in many cases — was a safe and meaningful way to explore same-gender sex and desire.  Although women in less privileged positions may have fewer choices in how they identify, Budnick argues they likely face less pressure to match their identities with their behavior. 

Budnick explains that for many of these women, early motherhood forecloses the possibility to develop or claim an LGBTQ identity and instead these women prioritize their identity as a self-sacrificing parent. And although women in less privileged positions may have fewer choices in how they identify, Budnick argues they likely face less pressure to match their identities with their behavior than more privileged women. Thus, Budnick’s findings demonstrate the importance of social context for understanding same-gender desire and LGBTQ identity.

How do citizens of a country that has gone through a genocide remember and talk about that genocide? How does the survivor’s narrative about who is to blame about a genocide reflect the passage of time and the role of memory? To answer these questions, Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Nicole Fox analyze 102 interviews they conducted with Rwandan genocide survivors as they explore how collective memory is not only socially patterned, but how it also affects narratives on who is to blame for the violence.

Unlike previous studies that find survivors to be more likely to engage in “collective amnesia,” rarely referencing historical precedents leading to violence, survivors in Rwanda often volunteered historical explanations for the violence. Nyseth Brehm and Fox find little variation in the use of historical explanations across generational cohort, geographic location or educational attainment. They find that most of the interviewees mentioned at least one historical event as heralding the genocide, with many mentioning colonialism and the 1959 revolution as significant events. The 1959 revolution, especially, is mentioned by almost half the interviewees as being key in ushering a “bad government.”

By locating blame outside Rwanda by blaming colonialism, the international community, and international actors, Rwandans refute the notion that the genocide was due to enduring tribulations within Rwandan society. The authors argue that in post-conflict nations, placing blame on the international community and a “bad government” will have an effect on survivors’ political attitudes and their levels of engagement in reconciliation programs. One such effect may be large-scale support of minimal attempts by regimes to appear more effective than the “bad government” that came before them. Nyseth Brehm and Fox also suggest that in situations such as police violence in America or the refugee crisis in Europe, present day discussions on cultural traumas may transform over time and blame will be apportioned in new ways.  Placing blame on the international community and a “bad government” will have an effect on survivors’ political attitudes and their levels of engagement in reconciliation programs. 

Ten years ago, Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Doug Hartmann published a paper with a surprising finding: atheists were the most disliked minority group in the United States. More Americans said atheists didn’t share their vision of Americans society—and more said they wouldn’t like their child marrying one—than Muslims, gays and lesbians, African Americans, and a host of other groups. Today, however, more Americans have no religious affiliation, and many non-religious groups picked up on this finding as a reason to improve their public image. So, have things gotten better for atheists? The authors recently published the findings from a ten-year follow up to answer these questions, and found that not much has changed.

Despite an increased awareness of atheists and other non-religious people over the last decade, Americans still distance themselves from the non-religious. A new finding from the 2014 data is that Muslims are now statistically tied with atheists for the most disliked group in the United States. This time around, the authors asked some additional questions to get at why so many people dislike atheists. They asked if respondents think atheists are immoral, criminal, or elitist, and whether or not the increase in non-religious people is a good or bad thing. They found that one of the strongest predictors of disliking atheists is assuming that they are immoral. People are less likely to think atheists are criminals and those who think they are elitist actually see it as a good thing. However, 40% of Americans also say that the increase of people with “no religion” is a bad thing.  A new finding from the 2014 data is that Muslims are now statistically tied with atheists for the most disliked group in the United States. 

These findings highlight the ways that many people in the United States still use religion as a sign of morality, of who is a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a good American. And the fact that Muslims are just as disliked as atheists shows that it is not only the non-religious that get cast as different and bad. Religion can be a basis for both inclusion and exclusion, and the authors conclude that it is important to continue interrogating when and why it excludes. 

The concept of the “glass ceiling” has become increasingly popular in the American vernacular and a number of spin-off concepts have developed in its wake. The glass ceiling refers to the invisible barrier that keeps women from being promoted to top-tier positions in traditionally male-dominated careers. Similar concepts like the “bamboo ceiling” and the “stained-glass ceiling” have since been coined to describe the ways that women and minorities are kept from advancing in their careers. Now we can add the “class ceiling” to that list, which is developed in a new study by sociologists Daniel Laurison and Sam Friedman to capture the ways that class origins influence earnings in high-status occupations.

In their study using the most recent UK Labor Force Survey, Laurison and Friedman analyze the occupations of an individual’s parents (their proxy for class origin) and how that influences people’s earnings in high-status occupations like law, medicine, finance, and engineering. By comparing the earnings averages of individuals in these occupations against their class origin, the researchers explore the extent to which class origins predict future earnings.  Simply entering a high-status occupation does not itself signal successful social mobility when differences within occupations act as a barrier to advancement. 

Laurison and Friedman find strong evidence for a “class ceiling” effect in which individuals from working-class origins experience a substantial pay gap when compared to their co-workers who come from upper-class origins. They state, “Even when people who are from working-class backgrounds are successful in entering high-status occupations, they earn 17 percent less, on average, than individuals from privileged backgrounds” in that same occupation. That pay gap translates into up to $11,000 lower annual earnings for individuals from lower-class families. The researchers conclude that simply entering a high-status occupation does not itself signal successful social mobility when differences within occupations act as a barrier to the advancement of those from lower class origins.

More often than not, research on gender-based violence during mass atrocities is focused on violence perpetrated by men against women and girls. There is far less discussion about gender-based violence against men and young boys. In a recently published paper, Gabrielle Ferrales, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and Suzy McElrath shed light on this understudied phenomenon and explore sexual violence against males in Darfur. The authors explain that, although this violence is in some ways about physical domination, it is primarily meant to symbolically dominate and denigrate both the victims and surviving community members.

Using interview data from the Atrocities Documentation Survey (ADS), the authors analyse 1,136 Darfuri interviews conducted in Eastern Chad. The authors examine how gender-based violence against men and boys works to emasculate them through homosexualization, feminization, genital harm, and sex-selective killing. This allows perpetrators to perform masculinity in a manner that is in line with the Sudan’s gender norms, and points to the role that gender plays in influencing patterns of violence. In addition, emasculation allows for a symbolic form of violence to be perpetrated. One such symbolic form of violence is the degradation of males in both this life and the afterlife. This often occurs through post-mortem rape, serving to violate not just burial norms but also ensuring that the victim’s standing is tarnished even in the afterlife. Although this violence is in some ways about physical domination, it is primarily meant to symbolically dominate and denigrate both the victims and surviving community members. 

These findings shed light not only on how sexual violence is perpetrated against men during mass atrocities, but it can also contribute to our understanding of gender-based violence outside of these extreme circumstances. In a recent interview with Ferrales, she states that gender-based violence against men and boys is a reality in societies that frame heterosexual masculinity as dominant. Ferrales points out that “gendered identities […] are privileged in settings ranging from the U.S. to Sudan,” and studying gender-based violence against males during mass atrocities can also provide us with an opportunity to test and evaluate current work on violence against men and women in non-conflict settings.

Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax, while Hillary Clinton has said she believes in climate science and supports efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Partisan divides on climate change have become almost a given and part of accepted party doctrine, but this was not always so. Just eight years ago, most Republican politicians supported climate change policy and Barack Obama and John McCain had nearly identical positions on the issue in 2008. However, after initial expectations that Obama would pass climate change legislation, gridlock set in and opinions about global warming became increasingly polarized.

To trace the growing partisan divide in attitudes about global warming, Riley Dunlap, Aaron McCright, and Jerrod Yarosh use Gallup polling data from 1997 to 2016 to show how public opinion regarding the existence, causes, and solutions to a warming planet have diverged between Democrats and Republicans, particularly during the Obama administration. Splits between self-identified Republicans and Democrats in believing whether or not climate change is happening has consistently been much higher in the past eight years than between 1997-2002. In 2016, about three-quarters of Democrats agreed that global warming is occurring, compared to only one-quarter of Republicans. In the past decade, Democrats have become increasingly more likely to believe that warming has been caused by human actions. While Democrats have become more concerned about the impacts of climate change (56% in 2016), Republicans’ concern has remained the same (around 25%).   In the past few years, about two-thirds of Republicans, compared to one-fifth of Democrats, felt that media coverage exaggerated global warming. This is a change from the relatively small partisan divide of 10 percentage points just twenty years ago. 

The authors claim that political divides might be related to different attitudes about the media and scientists. In the past few years, about two-thirds of Republicans, compared to one-fifth of Democrats, felt that media coverage exaggerated global warming. This is a change from the relatively small partisan divide of 10 percentage points just twenty years ago. While there is growing scientific evidence and consensus on rising global temperatures, there have been increasing partisan splits with much fewer Republicans believing scientists agree on global warming.

Increasing partisan splits on environmental protection are particularly telling of broader ideological divides because there was recently relative agreement between the parties. The authors claim that this hardening of partisan and ideological positions means that bi-partisan legislation on reducing carbon emissions and other climate policies is unlikely in the near future, but views can and have changed in the past.