Together with Wiebe Bijker he started the movement known as Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) within the sociology of science.
He is a significant contributor to the study of Sound culture, and his books include a major study of Robert Moog.
Trevor Pinch's book, Confronting Nature is widely considered the definitive sociological account of the history of the solar neutrino problem, and was mentioned by Raymond Davis in his 2002 Nobel Prize acceptance speech