[1] Her work often highlighted the ramifications of unchecked scientific advances and potential threats to privacy and civil liberties.
[4] Nelkin testified in an Arkansas creationism trial,[4][6] which she stated was "one of a series of exercises to get religion back into schools.
Her book The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon, co-written with Susan Lindee, was used as a teaching text.
Nelkin served as an advisor to the United States government's Human Genome Project,[1] among other policy boards and assessment panels internationally.
She wrote Nuclear Power and its Critics: The Cayuga Lake Controversy (1971) as a case study sponsored by the Cornell University's Program on Science, Technology and Society.
[12] The book documented the differing stakeholder perspectives, including scientists from Cornell University, the Citizen's Committee to Save Cayuga Lake, representatives from the Atomic Energy Commission, New York State Department of Health, and NYSE&G.
[13][4][12] Critics noted the book was a "painstaking history" [12] that may not be "useful or interesting" to the general reader,[13] but valuable in that it posed questions about the role of scientists in public debate, as well as how the scientific dimension was portrayed in the media.
[4] This project marked the beginning of Nelkin's long-term interest in public controversies, including sound pollution in relation to Logan Airport, creationism, atomic power, and the application and management of technology.
[4] Nelkin asserted that fundamentalists focus on education because it is one area where parents can "exert control over their lives and families".
[18] The culture of journalism and pressures to respond to events causes the superficiality or oversimplification of science reporting in the press, raising concerns when scientific breakthroughs and calamities (e.g., AIDS, Three Mile Island, the Challenger Disaster) are overstated.
[2] These concerns raise issues of civil liberties, human integrity, and personal privacy [23] in the form of institutionalized social control.
The book covers reproductive issues, eugenics, genetic discrimination (e.g., by insurance companies, educational settings, and workplaces), intelligence, criminal behavior, homosexuality, and addiction.