Richard Lewontin proposed that the ability of a scientific field to create a narrative for public understanding garners it social relevance. This article applies Lewontin's conceptual framework of the functions of science (manipulatory and explanatory) to compare and explain the current differences in perceived societal relevance of genetics/genomics and proteomics. We provide three examples to illustrate the social relevance and strong cultural narrative of genetics/genomics for which no counterpart exists for proteomics. We argue that the major difference between genetics/genomics and proteomics is that genomics has a strong explanatory function, due to the strong cultural narrative of heredity. Based on qualitative interviews and observations of proteomics conferences, we suggest that the nature of proteins, lack of public understanding, and theoretical complexity exacerbates this difference for proteomics. Lewontin's framework suggests that social scientists may find that omics sciences affect social relations in different ways than past analyses of genetics.

中文翻译：

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探索后基因组世界：后基因组科学的不同解释和操纵功能


理查德·莱文廷 (Richard Lewontin) 提出，科学领域为公众理解创造叙事的能力赋予其社会相关性。本文应用 Lewontin 的科学功能（操作性和解释性）概念框架来比较和解释当前遗传学/基因组学和蛋白质组学的社会相关性认知差异。我们提供了三个例子来说明遗传学/基因组学的社会相关性和强大的文化叙述，而蛋白质组学则不存在对应的例子。我们认为，遗传学/基因组学和蛋白质组学之间的主要区别在于，由于遗传的强烈文化叙事，基因组学具有很强的解释功能。基于蛋白质组学会议的定性访谈和观察，我们认为蛋白质的性质、公众理解的缺乏和理论的复杂性加剧了蛋白质组学的这种差异。 Lewontin 的框架表明，社会科学家可能会发现组学科学以不同于过去遗传学分析的方式影响社会关系。