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Between the lab and the Wild: Establishing the Potential of Gene Drive Mosquitoes for Malaria Control Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Marianne Mäkelin
Malaria control has been one of the defining goals in global health. Recently, strategies that aim to control the insect-borne disease by altering mosquito biology have gained interest. One such st...
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Trajectories of the Anthropocene as a boundary concept bridging debates about climate change and ecological collapse (years 2000–2019) Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Alessio Giacometti, Paolo Giardullo
Since its first appearance, the concept of the Anthropocene has achieved remarkable success in terms of users and audiences, among both specialists and non-specialists alike. While not yet formalis...
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The ‘obligatory passage point’ in knowledge co-production: Italy’s participatory environmental monitoring platform Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Sergio Minniti, Paolo Magaudda
The process of developing of a participatory environmental monitoring network in Italy, unfolded between 2013 and 2020, is analysed in order to explore the dynamics of knowledge co-production invol...
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Environmental governance through metrics: guest introduction Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Allison Loconto, Scott Prudham, Steven Wolf
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 33, No. 1, 2024)
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Research repertoires and boundary work in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Valentina Marcheselli
The idea of scouting the sky in search of extra-terrestrial signals (SETI) was first proposed in the late 1950s; soon afterwards, its scope was formalised in the so-called Drake Equation, a probabi...
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Ontological overflows and the politics of absence: Zika, disease surveillance, and mosquitos Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Francis Lee
In STS, there has long existed an unease about the analysis of powerful actors and dominant technoscientific narratives. A core concern for the field has been how particular objects, phenomena, and...
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Swept up in the swirls of toxic uncertainties Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 Melina Packer
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Mistrust of the black box: the public auditing of private models in the chemicals regulatory space Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 David Demortain
Metrics foster trust in governing bodies, but their uncertainty can elicit an opposite sentiment of mistrust. In chemicals governance, most of the conversations concerning computational models revo...
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Biochar in the British print news media: an analysis of promissory discourse and the creation of expectations about carbon removal Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Brigitte Nerlich, Carol Morris, Catherine Price, Holly Harris
Biochar is amongst a growing suite of approaches developed to address the climate crisis by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; yet public awareness of biochar is low. In this situation, m...
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Correction Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-06
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Gendering data care: curators, care, and computers in data-centric biology Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Ane Møller Gabrielsen
The increase in molecular data and the use of computer technologies in biology have led to the emergence of professional biocurators, who populate biological databases and knowledgebases with high-...
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‘Shade trees for the next generation’: constructing the promissory publics of prospective cohort studies Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Sibille Merz, Philipp Jaehn, Christine Holmberg, on behalf of the and AdvanceGender Study Group
ABSTRACT Epidemiological cohort studies are a central research design in public health which appeal to, and can reinforce, specific ideas of the nation, sociality and the ‘good’ citizen. The concept of publics, the sociology of expectations and a co-productionist framework provide the theoretical frame to investigate how popular representations of two cohort studies, German National Cohort and UK Biobank
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Bioconstitutional visions in the debate on non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Ingrid Metzler
ABSTRACT Since the summer of 2022, statutory health insurance in Germany reimburses the costs of using non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), a new technology used in prenatal testing, in ‘justified individual cases’. Analysing moments in the long debate on NIPT in Germany through the framework of bioconstitutionalism and with pragmatic lenses helps us to understand how and why this comparatively unique
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Correction Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-15
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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‘Scaling the heights – and the depths: zooming out and in on sociality and science’ Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Shahpour Akhavi
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Border control technologies: introduction Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Nina Amelung, Vasilis Galis
ABSTRACT This introduction together with the whole special issue on border technologies challenges the limitations of potentially simplistic understandings of contestation, disputes, and political intervention inherent in many accounts of material politics. How do border technologies turn borders into a contested space and how do they come to matter for specific affected communities, especially migrants
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Platformization in the built environment: the political techno-economy of building information modeling Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Yana Boeva, Kathrin Braun, Cordula Kropp
ABSTRACT The digital transformation of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) is being hailed as a panacea for the sectors’ problems, with major actors in government and business promoting it as a benevolent harbinger of greater efficiency, productivity, better quality, and environmental performance. However, advancing digitalization in AEC is intertwined with a distinct political-economic
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Vive La Résistance? Standard fire testing, regulation, and the performance of safety Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-27 Graham Spinardi, Angus Law, Luke Bisby
ABSTRACT Because fire safety cannot be measured directly, building regulation uses test ratings to determine whether materials and products meet societal expectations. Fire resistance constitutes the most enduring means of gauging fire safety, providing ratings for how elements of structure perform in a standard furnace test. Although it has long been known that this test is unrepresentative of real
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Provisional by design. Frontex data infrastructures and the Europeanization of migration and border control Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Silvan Pollozek, Jan-Hendrik Passoth
ABSTRACT Data infrastructures for the Frontex joint operations are often only temporary and thus in need of being built up and removed easily, adjustable to changing constellations of security actors, and adaptable to new situations. They need to work through flaws, gaps, and inconsistencies. Still, they fabricate data used for the re-identification of migrants, police investigations, situational pictures
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Security knowledges: circulation, control, and responsible research and innovation in EU border management Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Bruno Oliveira Martins
ABSTRACT The knowledge emerging from research funded by the European Union (EU) through its Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation and other funding streams is significantly shaped by different forms of epistemic control exerted by the EU itself. Through the promotion of industry-research-policy cooperation in EU-funded research, and in light of the growing importance attached to ‘impact
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Contested promises. Migrants’ material politics vis-à-vis the humanitarian border in Niger Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Laura Lambert
ABSTRACT What promises do humanitarian infrastructures make to encourage migrants to abandon their migration projects? And how do migrants contest these promises? In order to curb EU-bound migration in the transit state Niger, the two UN agencies for migrants and refugees established support and outreach infrastructures that incentivized them to enroll in this humanitarian border and abandon migration
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Kickstarting science? Crowdfunded research, public engagement, and the participatory condition Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Chris Hesselbein
Crowdfunding for science has been hailed both as an important means of funding early-career scholars and innovative research projects, and as a novel approach to communicating with and enabling par...
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Practices of radical digital care: towards autonomous queer migration Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Vasiliki Makrygianni, Vasilis Galis
ABSTRACT Digital connectivity of queer migrants on the move to Europe plays a crucial role in confronting border regimes, heteronormativity and racist oppression. ICTs at the disposal of queer migrants interrupt the material politics of silence and violence. However, digital technology also implies serious hazards. Queer migrants use digital space to empower themselves, to build networks, and to trace
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Swedish nuclear waste management as an inert controversy: using critical constructivism to understand cold technological conflict Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Hannes Lagerlöf
Science and technology studies (STS) has long studied scientific controversies as a way to identify prospects for technical democracy. Contemporary STS tends to prioritize ‘overflowing’ controversi...
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Sharing epistemic power: digitally mediated wolf monitoring in Finland Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Taru Peltola, Outi Ratamäki
ABSTRACT Although digital tools have expanded opportunities for various social groups to participate in biodiversity research, these tools typically assign citizens tasks that make them mere assistants of professional researchers, thus maintaining conventional power relations in research processes. Problems may arise if power asymmetries and participant expectations concerning data and participation
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How data governance principles influence participation in biodiversity science Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Beckett Sterner, Steve Elliott
ABSTRACT Biodiversity science is in a pivotal period when diverse groups of actors – including researchers, businesses, national governments, and Indigenous Peoples – are negotiating wide-ranging norms for governing and managing biodiversity data in digital repositories. The management of these repositories, often called biodiversity data portals, can serve either to redress or to perpetuate the colonial
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The Italian debate on the digital COVID certificate: co-producing epistemic and normative rationalities Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-19 Luca Marelli
Italy's digital Covid certificate, known nationally as the ‘Green Pass,’ was enforced through unusual restrictions for a liberal democracy, as part of the government's effort to bolster the Covid-1...
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Stereotypes, gender, and humor in representations of coders in Silicon Valley. Review of TV series Silicon Valley (HBO 2014–2019) Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-18 Hannah Little
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 32, No. 2, 2023)
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The promise of ELSI: coproducing the future of life on earth Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-03 Tess Doezema
Scientific knowledge and authority are central to dire warnings of biodiversity loss and climate change, as well as corollary visions of pathways for environmental repair and the provision of futur...
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Thank you to Science as Culture reviewers Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-27
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 32, No. 1, 2023)
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From evil demiurge to caring hero: images of geneticists in the movies Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Jan Domaradzki
ABSTRACT Although images of science and scientists depicted in popular culture have been criticized as an exaggeration and fear mongering, the cinema is an important resource that influences individuals’ beliefs about science. Because popular depictions of science play a crucial role in constructing the public’s ‘scientific imaginary’ they constitute an inherent dimension of the social understanding
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Metaphors of foreign strangers: antimicrobial resistance in biomedical discourses Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Alena Kamenshchikova, Petra F. G. Wolffs, Christian J. P. A. Hoebe, John Penders, Klasien Horstman
ABSTRACT Complex phenomena such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are often explained in biomedical sciences by using analogies and metaphors. Metaphors play a crucial role in the knowledge production processes, as well as in ensuring the continuity of scientific models of thought. Novel conceptual metaphors, such as ‘AMR is an apocalypse’ or ‘antibiotics are weapons’ are usually immediately recognised
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Negotiating Belgian identity in Wisconsin through ancestry genomics Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 François C. Romijn
ABSTRACT How do Wisconsin-based descendants of Belgian immigrants – living in a mid-western, largely white, and mostly rural community – connect a perceived common Belgian ancestry to a contemporary sense of belonging through genomic ancestry testing (GAT)? Members of this community negotiate GAT’s results in relation to their prior self-identification with Belgian ancestry and present-identity claims
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Teaching the normal and the pathological: educational technologies and the material reproduction of medicine Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-10 John Nott, Anna Harris
ABSTRACT That pathology and normality exist on a complex spectrum of bodily manifestation is an enduring problem at the heart of the philosophy, anthropology and history of medicine. As the primary locus for the reproduction of medicine, medical schools are important sites for cultivating knowledge of what is normal and what is not. Here students come to engage with the slippery concepts of normality
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Data-driven governance and performances of accountability: critical reflections from US agri-environmental policy Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Ritwick Ghosh
Public institutions have increasingly responded to calls for more accountability by promoting ideas of data-driven governance. As this focus on using data tools to strengthen governance intensifies...
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Curating the Widerstandsaviso: three cases of ethnographic intravention in R&D consortia Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-22 Martina Klausner, Jörg Niewöhner, Tim Seitz
ABSTRACT Aligning technological innovation with societal needs is a key concern for knowledge economies. Integrating ethical, legal, and social inquiry into research and development consortia that drive innovation processes has thus become common practice. Ethnographic research in consortia is one such practice. Here, these cover three cases of open ethnographic engagement within R&D consortia in the
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Making kin and unmaking the individual in the Capitalocene Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Christopher Blakley
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 32, No. 1, 2023)
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‘The tool didn’t make decisions for us': metrics and the performance of accountability in environmental governance Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Eric Nost
Governments use metrics made possible by new data technologies to allocate budgets, manage pandemics, valorize ecosystems, and demonstrate how these actions are legitimate. Big data is pointed to a...
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Transposing emotions to conserve nature? The positive politics of the metrics of ecosystem services Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Lucas Brunet
In contrast to terrifying extinction numbers, the metrics of Ecosystem Services (ES) highlight the positive impacts of the functioning of ecosystems for human societies. In the French national park...
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Institutionalised ignorance in policy and regulation Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-22 Katharina T. Paul, Samantha Vanderslott, Matthias Gross
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2022)
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From data revolution to data narratives Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-09 Guilherme Cavalcante Silva
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 32, No. 1, 2023)
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New techno-natures: the future of human reproduction in sci-art Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-04 Merete Lie
ABSTRACT In the fields of sci-art, bioart and speculative design, contemporary artists are creating experiential visions of the future based on trends within science. Two artworks with futuristic figurations of human reproduction, Pinar Yoldas’ Designer Babies and Ai Hasegawa’s I Wanna Deliver a Dolphin/I Wanna Deliver a Shark, serve as the point of departure for revisiting the eternal nature-culture
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Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Stefano Crabu, Ilenia Picardi, Valentina Turrini
ABSTRACT Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian
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What is democracy according to STS? Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Anders Blok
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 32, No. 1, 2023)
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Ignorance and the paradoxes of evidence-based global health: the case of mortality statistics in India’s million death study Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Erik Aarden
ABSTRACT Quantitative evidence and metrics play a central role in contemporary global health. Mortality statistics, for example, are considered essential for improving health in the global South. Yet, many observers lament that reliable cause of death data is not available for many low- and middle-income countries. The Million Death Study (MDS) in India forms an effort to address this issue, seeking
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Dazzled by the Sunshine Machines Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Debra Benita Shaw
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 31, No. 3, 2022)
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Judging Post-Controversy Expertise: Judicial Discretion and Scientific Marginalisation in the Courtroom Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-20 Gethin Rees, Deborah White
ABSTRACT The sexual assault trial of R v Hartman included evidence from a sleep expert who found himself increasingly marginalised within the scientific community. Marginalisation takes place following a scientific controversy, when those considered to be on the losing side find it increasingly difficult to be heard by the community, and in particular, their ideas are removed from core texts in the
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Demarcating Patriotic Science on Digital Platforms: Covid-19, Chloroquine and the Institutionalisation of Ignorance in Brazil Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-03 Paulo F. C. Fonseca, Barbara E. Ribeiro, Leonardo F. Nascimento
ABSTRACT As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Bolsonarism movement has promoted the drug chloroquine for treating Covid-19 in Brazil, despite it being mostly rejected by mainstream health institutions as an effective treatment. This situation can be investigated through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ignorance studies supported by methods from digital sociology
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Techno-Scientific Promises, Disciplinary Fields, and Social Issues in Peripheral Contexts Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-27 Pablo Kreimer
ABSTRACT Scientific work has always worked alongside promises of future developments. Promises, though, have very different consequences across different contexts. Indeed, the formulation of scientific promises in peripheral scientific contexts have different structures and consequences, compared to those in hegemonic sites. Promises are intended to provide solutions to important public problems. Yet
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Re-righting Water’s Future with the Master’s Tools? Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-19 Johannes Chan
Published in Science as Culture (Vol. 31, No. 3, 2022)
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Conscious, Complacent, Fearful: Agri-Food Tech’s Market-Making Public Imaginaries Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-23 Charlotte Biltekoff, Julie Guthman
ABSTRACT While the tech sector has seized upon the food system as an area in which it can have a major impact, innovators within the agri-food tech domain are dogged by concerns about public acceptance of technologies that may be controversial or simply not of interest. At the same time, because they operate within an investor-dependent political economy, they must demonstrate that the public will
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Brand New or More of the Same Nuclear? (De)Constructing the Economic Promise of the European Pressurised Reactor in France and the UK Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-23 Markku Lehtonen
ABSTRACT Technological innovation needs construction of promises and expectations to mobilise resources and supportive networks, yet exaggerated promises risk leading to disappointment and undermining this very support. Drawing on an analysis of secondary literature and press articles, the concepts of hype cycle and Regimes of Economics of Techno-scientific Promises (ETP) are applied to examine the
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Secrecies as Organized Ignorance: The Illusion of Knowledge in French Pesticide Regulation Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-23 François Dedieu
ABSTRACT Taking an organizational sociology approach, the study of French pesticide regulation highlights the role of the unexpected effects of secrecies in organized ignorance. It demonstrates that the main regulator, the French food safety agency (ANSES), as well as the users of pesticides, the farmers, develop their own subcultures of secrecy to conceal information about their real practices. These
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Between People and Paper: Inhabiting Experiment in a Journal Club Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Sarah Klein
ABSTRACT In 2015, the Open Science Collaboration reported in the journal Science that a disturbingly large proportion of psychological studies cannot be replicated (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). The ensuing ‘reproducibility crisis’ became a lightning rod for contesting what counts as legitimate research, and for negotiating the relationship between communication infrastructures and research practice
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On the Entanglement of Science and Europe at CERN: The Temporal Dynamics of a Coproductive Relationship Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-05-20 Kamiel Mobach, Ulrike Felt
ABSTRACT The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the oldest, largest, and most emblematic European research infrastructures. Its history, as expressed through narratives of its own organizational identity, does not only reflect the development of its technoscientific activities but also strongly references a multiplicity of performances of Europe. By analysing these narratives
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The Heredity Matrix: Genetics and the Understanding of Mestizaje, Health, and Belonging in Mexico Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-29 Carlos López-Beltrán, Abigail Nieves Delgado, Sandra P. González-Santos, Vivette García-Deister
ABSTRACT Empirical data gathered from group discussions with Mexican undergraduate students from different regions and backgrounds showed that students tend to incorporate information about genetics into their accounts of hereditary intergenerational transmission linked to issues of family resemblance, health, and mestizaje (racial admixture) in a nuanced, elaborated, and non-simplistic manner. Locality
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Toxic Ignorance. How Regulatory Procedures and Industrial Knowledge Jeopardise the Risk Assessment of Chemicals Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-17 Henri Boullier, Emmanuel Henry
ABSTRACT Science and Technology Studies research has shown that processes of producing ignorance have been structurally embedded in the evaluation and regulation procedures of the tens of thousands of hazardous chemicals present on the market. What is the role of industrial actors, regulatory experts and scientific data in the institutionalisation of ignorance? Analysing two European expert panels
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Research Communication on Climate Change through Open Letters: Uniting Cognition, Affect and Action by Affective Alignments Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-10 Carin Graminius
ABSTRACT Affect is increasingly the object of study in research communication, and inducement of affect by means of different communication techniques is encouraged as a means for mobilizing the public. But a focus on affect in purely instrumental terms risks overlooking the multifaceted ways in which affect is used in research communication. Studying open letters on climate change penned by scientists
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What Counts as the Environment in Epigenetics? Knowledge and Ignorance in the Entrepreneurial University Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-02 Clémence Pinel
ABSTRACT Epigenetics research is well-known for its attention to the ‘environment,’ as it explores how what surrounds the genes impacts gene regulation. In addition, epigenetics has commonly been described as the new socio-biology capable of capturing how the broadly defined social environment, structured by social inequalities, shapes biology. Yet, this vision is not realised in the context of the
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Misunderstanding Citizen Science: Hermeneutic Ignorance in U.S. Environmental Regulation Science as Culture (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Gwen Ottinger
ABSTRACT In the United States, ‘fenceline communities' next to petrochemical facilities have been conducting and advocating for air monitoring since the 1990s, highlighting gaps in U.S. environmental regulators' monitoring programs. Citizen science is imagined to be valuable as a source of data for filling such gaps. But fenceline communities' air monitoring activities also underscore regulators' hermeneutic