The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) is a non-profit

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

working on social and lifestyle issues. It is based in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, but is not part of, and has no relationship to,

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Organisation and focus

SIRC has a ‘social intelligence’ unit, monitoring and assessing social, cultural and ideological trends. SIRC's approach has an

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

and

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

rather than a

sociological Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...

flavour. The SIRC has played a central role in advising the government on the development of a "Code of Practice on Science and Health Communication" for communication science issues to the media, which has been criticised for promoting mainstream views and suppressing dissenting voices.

Criticism

When the SIRC criticised journalists for publishing stories on health scares, the ''

BMJ ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origina ...

'' asked "how seriously should journalists take an attack from an organisation that is so closely linked to the drinks industry?." The commissioning of the SIRC by pharmaceutical industry group HRT Aware to write a well-received report highlighting favourable outcomes from HRT was also noted in an editorial in the ''BMJ'' as part of a PR campaign following the 2002

Women's Health Initiative The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was a series of clinical studies initiated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1991, to address major health issues causing morbidity and mortality in postmenopausal women. It consisted of three ...

study. The BMJ noted that SIRC shared its leading staff and offices with the research company MCM Research, which asked on its website: "Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives?".

Staff

The Advisory Board includes the

social anthropologists Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...

Professor

Lionel Tiger Lionel Tiger (born February 5, 1937) is a Canadian-American anthropologist. He is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and co-Research Director of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Early life and education Born ...

, Professor Dwight Heath and Professor

Robin Fox Robin Fox (born 1934) is an Anglo-American anthropologist who has written on the topics of incest avoidance, marriage systems, human and primate kinship systems, evolutionary anthropology, sociology and the history of ideas in the social scien ...

. Directors include *

Kate Fox Kate Fox is a British social anthropologist, co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) and a Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Research. She has written several books, including '' Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of Engl ...

. She has published on beauty &

body image Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, ps ...

, the psychology of

scent An odor (American English) or odour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds that are generally found in low concentrations that humans and animals can perceive via their sense ...

pub A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

behaviour,

body language Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Th ...

etiquette Etiquette () is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a ...

gossip Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others; the act is also known as dishing or tattling. Gossip is a topic of research in evolutionary psychology, which has found gossip to be an important means ...

drugs A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...

flirting Flirting or coquetry is a social and sexual behavior involving spoken or written communication, as well as body language. It is either to suggest interest in a deeper relationship with the other person or, if done playfully, for amusement. It ...

celebrations Celebration or Celebrations may refer to: Film, television and theatre * ''Celebration'' (musical), by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, 1969 * ''Celebration'' (play), by Harold Pinter, 2000 * ''Celebration'' (TV series), a Canadian music TV serie ...

and

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

. * Peter Marsh – best known for work on

football hooliganism Football hooliganism, also known as soccer hooliganism, football rioting or soccer rioting, constitutes violence and other destructive behaviours perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism normally involves ...

and the connections between

drinking Drinking is the act of ingesting water or other liquids into the body through the mouth, proboscis, or elsewhere. Humans drink by swallowing, completed by peristalsis in the esophagus. The physiological processes of drinking vary widely among o ...

and

disorder Disorder may refer to randomness, non-order, or no intelligible pattern. Disorder may also refer to: Healthcare * Disorder (medicine), a functional abnormality or disturbance * Mental disorder or psychological disorder, a psychological pattern a ...

Funding

SIRC is partly funded by income from MCM Research, "an Oxford-based company which specialises in applications of social science to real-world issues and problems".MCM – Front Page
/ref> SIRC also obtains funding in its own right.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Social Issues Research Centre
Non-profit organisations based in the United Kingdom Public policy think tanks based in the United Kingdom