Introduction: Embracing Ambivalence and Change
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 291-300, September 2022.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200044?af=R
New Meanings in the Archive: Privacy, Technological Change and the Status of Sources
Abstract
This essay reflects on how technological changes in biomedicine can affect what archival sources are available for historical research. Historians and anthropologists have examined the ways in which old biomedical samples can be made to serve novel scientific purposes, such as when decades-old frozen tissue specimens are analyzed using new genomic techniques. Those uses are also affected by shifting ethical regimes, which affect who can do what with old samples, or whether anything can be done with them at all. Archival collections are subject to similar dynamics, as institutional change and shifts in ethical guidelines and privacy laws affect which sources can be accessed and which are closed. I witnessed just such a change during my research into human genetics using archives in the Wellcome Collection. A few years into my project, those archives had their privacy conditions reassessed, and I saw how some sources previously seen as neutral were now understood to contain personal sensitive information. This paper describes the conditions of this shift—including the effects of technological change, new ethical considerations, and changing laws around privacy. I reflect on how these affected my understanding of the history of human genetics, and how I and others might narrate it.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200027?af=R
“How Many Individuals Consider Themselves to Be Cell Biologists but Are Informed by the Journal That Their Work Is Not Cell Biology”
Abstract
What can we gain from co-analyzing experimental cultures, regionalization, and disciplinary phenomena of late twentieth century life sciences under our historiographic looking glass? This essay investigates the potential of such a strategy for the case of cell biology after 1960. By merging perspectives from historical epistemology inspired by the work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger with a focus on boundary work in the realm of scientific publishing, community building, and disciplinary norms, a set of understudied scientific practices is exposed. These practices, historically subsumed under the label descriptive, have been as central in cell biology as hypothesis-driven research aiming at mechanistic explanations of cellular function. Against the background of an increasing molecular-mechanistic imperative in cell biology since the late 1960s, knowledge from descriptive practices was often judged as having low value but was nonetheless frequently cited and considered essential. Investigating the underlying epistemic practices and their interactions with disciplinary gatekeeping phenomena (as policed by journals and learned societies) provides historiographic access to the plurality of experimental cultures of cell biology, scattered into many interdisciplinary research fields—with some of them only partially engaged with mechanistic questions.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200019?af=R
Experimental Systems in the Co‐Construction of Scientific Knowledge
Abstract
The publication of Toward a History of Epistemic Things 25 years ago was a landmark in science studies. Not only was the book a brilliant overview of new research trends, but it was also a personal and highly original contribution because of its emphasis on the major role of experimental systems in the construction of scientific knowledge. The paths that it opened have not yet been fully explored. More seriously, the ambition of the author to reinforce the value of scientific knowledge by the role of experimental systems in its construction has not been pursued.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200016?af=R