Analysis on the move: deconstructing troublesome health questions and troubling epidemiology

Qualitative research gets close to experiences of pain, illness, and disease; consequently, qualitative researchers often find themselves asked troublesome questions (i.e., laypeople ask for practical, helpful answers to their everyday illness concerns). This is not surprising, but of interest is the fact that academics ask each other such troublesome questions as part of academic discourse. When academics ask such questions, they may sometimes be after practical information, but they may also be using the questioning as an attack on the supposed excessive relativism of social constructionism. Three key analytical moves that offer a useful deconstruction of troublesome health questions are outlined, showing that they are another useful topic of constructionist inquiry. To lessen abstraction, these moves are brought to bear on a case study of a possible connection between pesticide use and birth defects, thus showing how social science and epidemiology can be connected, troubled, and extended in the process.