Social Studies of Science最新文献

{"title":"Making expert advice public in a time of emergency: Independent SAGE and the contestation of science during the Covid pandemic in the UK.","authors":"Noortje Marres, Matías Valderrama Barragán","doi":"10.1177/03063127241309071","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127241309071","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article presents a situational analysis of the expert advice offered by Independent SAGE, a group of scientists that formed in May 2020 in the UK to provide advice on the Covid response. Based on interviews with the group's members and partners, we argue that through its interventions Indie SAGE demonstrated an important alternative approach to linking science and politics in a time of emergency. They showed that the only way to ensure that policy and decision-making on Covid-19 was grounded in knowledge was by making expert advice public. Indie SAGE's decision to 'go public' was a response to the political situation in the UK, one in which scientific advice, in particular public health expertise, was being ignored, sidelined and contested as such. We identify four rationales for making expert advice public: openness, calling out, translation, and responsive engagement. We describe associated modes of intervention that Indie SAGE adopted in relation to different critical situations of Covid-19. Distinctive about their advice, we argue, is its prioritization of <i>situational adequacy</i>. Much of it was explicitly oriented towards addressing practical and existential challenges experienced by particular social groups, professions and everyday publics. We argue that this way of making science public in an 'ontological' register acquires critical importance in a political situation like the UK Covid response, which was marked not just by disagreements about science but growing contestation of science as such. In this respect, our study holds a wider lesson for the understanding of the role of evidence in public politics. To advocate for evidence-based governance, as Indie SAGE did, is not necessarily to endorse a post-political vision of government. When science is contested in a time of emergency, making evidence public becomes a key means for responding to the demands of situations. It is not only pragmatic but a critical accomplishment.</p>","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"512-541"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12304483/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Constructing digital assets through blockchain technologies? Unpacking the techno-economic configuration of non-fungible tokens.","authors":"Alia Miroshnichenko, Kean Birch","doi":"10.1177/03063127241286447","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127241286447","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are novel techno-economic configurations underpinned by cryptocurrency ledgers that transform digital files like graphic art, music, videos, etc. into digital assets. NFTs are often framed as a way for artists and other creators to profit from their activities, transforming 'experiences' into something for sale. As such, NFTs raise some questions pertinent to science and technology studies and political economy. We focus on analysing how NFTs are constructed as digital assets by unpacking the practices, devices, relations, and rights implicated in their construction. We use the concept of 'assetization' to examine the contingencies, problematics, and implications of NFTs and the claims, practices, and entitlements that configure them as a new type of asset. We undertake this analysis through a research-creation process by summarizing and discussing the process of creating and submitting an NFT to a specialized marketplace.</p>","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"631-651"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12304489/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142632179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Right data, wrong data: Statistical sampling and the making of modern agriculture in India.","authors":"Madhumita Saha","doi":"10.1177/03063127241307947","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127241307947","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The size of India's food deficit became a pressing question for the Indian state in the early years of independence. As different organizations, government bodies, and individuals debated over the ways, means, and expertise needed to tide over the food crisis, policymakers realized that the primary requirement was to have a numerical understanding of the problem. Data became crucial to accurately assess production trends and compare them with requirements. This article looks into the use of statistical methods, particularly, random sampling and production estimation through a crop-cutting technique. Exploring the statistical survey work done by P.C. Mahalanobis in Bengal from the late years of colonial rule to the surveys conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research under the supervision of P.V. Sukhatme and V.G. Panse, the article analyzes how different factors, such as varying revenue systems of different regions and administrative structures, power struggles amongst statisticians, and leverage gained by Indian statisticians from support they received from better known British counterparts, all played a role in determining the nature of statistical tools adopted in India to measure its food production. Inaccurate data continued to be a challenge for the Indian state until well into the late 1950s, and that can now be explained in terms of this discord between Mahalanobis-led Kolkata-ISI and the ICAR of Sukhatme's time. India continued to follow different methods of statistical survey of foodcrops, thus, the scientific/political establishment always struggled with the apprehension that they did not have the 'right' data to come up with the correct assessment of the scene.</p>","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"591-612"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142932849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sensory labor as un/knowing in a waste composition study: Identifying a chain of translation.","authors":"Taru Lehtokunnas,Niina Uusitalo,Ulla-Maija Sutinen,Alma Onali","doi":"10.1177/03063127251357625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251357625","url":null,"abstract":"To keep track of the types and proportions of waste produced in society, various waste composition studies are carried out around the world. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines how statistical knowledge about waste was produced in the context of a waste composition study organized by a Finnish waste management company. We follow a chain of actions involving sensory labor to show how waste was translated into numerical knowledge. By shedding light on the sensory labor of producing knowledge on waste, we contribute to social scientific waste research, especially by illustrating how the interplay between senses and waste-as matter that can evoke strong sensations-challenges the possibilities of translating waste into numerical knowledge. We also show how these difficulties are, in turn, managed to create accurate data for the purposes of waste policies. In addition, our study contributes more widely to the public discussion on waste policies by highlighting the role of sensory labor as crucial for the operation of the circular economy.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"12 1","pages":"3063127251357625"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144693261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Computational universalism, or, Attending to relationalities at scale.","authors":"Francis Lee,David Ribes","doi":"10.1177/03063127251345089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251345089","url":null,"abstract":"The social sciences and humanities have increasingly adopted computational terminology as the organizing categories for inquiry. We argue that by organizing research around vernacular computational objects (e.g. data, algorithms, or AI) and divided worldly domains (e.g. finance, health, and governance), scholars risk obscuring the universalizing practices and ambitions of computation. These practices seek to establish new relationalities at unprecedented scales, connecting disparate domains, circulating resources across boundaries, and positioning computational interventions as universally applicable. Drawing on intellectual traditions that inspect the fixity of universalizing claims, we problematize the easy adoption of computational categories and argue that they serve as epistemic traps that naturalize the expanding reach of computational universalism. Instead of accepting the hardened categories of our interlocutors, we propose attending to the partial, effortful, and often contested work of translation and commensuration that enables computational actors to position themselves as obligatory passage points across all domains. This approach reveals not only the remarkable achievements of computational relationalities at scale but also their exclusions, betrayals, and partialities. Our intervention aims to spur perspectives that examine how computational actors parse both technical objects and social worlds to advance universalizing ambitions while simultaneously obscuring the enormous labor required to maintain these divisions and connections.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"38 1","pages":"3063127251345089"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144622108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predictions, uncertainty, and collective epistemic work: How projected futures informed and misinformed enactments of Covid-19","authors":"Tobias Olofsson","doi":"10.1177/03063127251351336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251351336","url":null,"abstract":"By connecting an uncertain present to a potential future, predictions and other forms of projected futures construct meaningful contexts on which actors can lean when seeking to act in the face of uncertainty. This article outlines the background and careers of many, and often contradicting, futures that informed the collective work to define and represent Covid-19 in Sweden during the first half of 2020. Through an analysis of press briefing transcripts, in-depth interviews with centrally placed informants, and a timeline of Covid-19–related events, debates, and policies in Sweden, this article outlines how enactments of Covid-19 evolved over time—from straightforward comparisons to past experiences, to repurposed models intended to make the pandemic calculable, to survey-based extrapolations produced by the Public Health Agency. The article demonstrates how a combination of contextual factors and a continuously evolving knowledge base led some enactments to become more influential than others, allowing them to influence evolving decisions and strategies. The article highlights the role of competing voices and perspectives in the collective epistemic work performed during the pandemic and explores Covid-19 as a multiple entity composed of a patchwork of data and assumptions. Depending on what futures informed them, these enactments varied from catastrophic and dystopian, to hopeful promises of an eventual return to normality.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144603061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Scientific-intellectual movements in the post-truth age: The case of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis","authors":"Sophie Juliane Veigl, Zinaida Vasilyeva, Ruth Müller","doi":"10.1177/03063127251348254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251348254","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past decade, evolutionary biology has seen an unusual number of heated debates centered around the pronouncement of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). This theoretical framework brings together researchers from a range of disciplines in biology, such as ecology, developmental biology, and epigenetics, as well as philosophers of science, to challenge some of the key tenets of contemporary evolutionary theory, by arguing for a greater role of the environment and the organism in evolution. In this article, we analyze the EES as a scientific-intellectual movement (SIM) that has emerged under two specific conditions. First, evolutionary biology has always been both scientifically and socially influential and contested. As a field that claims to answer fundamental questions of how life has come to be, evolutionary biology has shaped causal thinking in fields as diverse as biology, psychology, and economics, and has influenced cultural thought and politics. Second, this specific contestation of mainstream evolutionary thinking emerges in the midst of challenges to particular sciences by what are seen as ‘post-truth’ and ‘anti-science’ movements. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, we examine the credibility strategies that EES proponents employ under these conditions, highlighting what happens when opponents of the EES make use of the ‘post-truth’ label to argue against the EES. We argue that this transposition of structures familiar from public and political debate onto contestations within science represents an important topic of study for STS researchers in the current political moment.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144603412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making data markets: Assetization, valuation, and proxy work in a digital health start-up","authors":"Joseph Donia, Jennifer Gibson, James A Shaw","doi":"10.1177/03063127251353027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251353027","url":null,"abstract":"Digital data are increasingly framed as essential resources in health and medicine, implicating diverse actors who work to transform them into different forms of value. In this article we focus on the diverse and contingent valuation practices that shaped an artificial intelligence-enabled ‘smart’ health technology and the data it generated at different moments in time, and the corresponding asset forms that were envisioned, developed, tested, and marketed. We also outline the role of assetization as a contested but essential design and marketing activity, and introduce the notion of proxy work as an intermediary between data generation and assetization, where people, infrastructures, and other material devices are arranged in such a way that data become capable of ‘standing in’ for something else, allowing accountable forms of value to be realized across multiple sites. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of assetization as a dominant lens through which governments, firms, and other actors increasingly understand the value of digital health data, and the different health-related futures those practices make possible.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144594466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exclusionary data, inclusionary appeals: Gender and equity in an HIV-prevention clinical trial.","authors":"Jason V D'Amours, Miranda R Waggoner","doi":"10.1177/03063127251349231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251349231","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite the social and regulatory expectation that contemporary clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs will include a diverse set of research participants, achieving appropriate representation in clinical research remains tenuous. Of ongoing concern is how experts and regulators navigate decisions about drug approvals when presented with clinical studies that have limited demographic data. Drawing on regulatory discussions about Descovy, an HIV-prevention drug that was studied only in cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men, we analyze a contentious debate over the meaning and impact of including and excluding certain populations from clinical trial design. Extending prior work in science and technology studies on how epistemological frameworks in clinical trials matter for concerns about the production of knowledge and social justice, we show how different conceptualizations of inclusion and equity (specifically, equity in data versus equity in access) come into tension in deliberations over pharmaceutical drug approvals. We argue that the discursive conflict over gender and inclusionary/exclusionary research practices that emerged in the case of Descovy points to an underappreciated feature of equity-temporality-that should be attended to when examining knowledge production in 21st-century clinical and regulatory landscapes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127251349231"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144512772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The extractive loops of biocapital: Venom procurement and antivenom production in India.","authors":"Mathieu Quet","doi":"10.1177/03063127251347915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251347915","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of research and scholarship has examined the exploitation of animals by the biopharmaceutical industry, framing it variously in terms of labour, commodification, or hybrid processes. This article adds to the discussion through an ethnography of antivenom manufacturing in India. It introduces the concept of 'extractive loops' embedding species, locations, and work practices. Extractive loops form a continuum through which non-human life contributes to the manufacturing of resources (raw materials and finished products). The argument relies on a description of the operations required by the production of antivenom, involving: (a) several animal species (mostly snakes, horses, and rodents), (b) connections between a multiplicity of locations, from outdoor fields to industrial sites, (c) a wide range of professional practices, some of them strictly formalized whereas others are mainly informal (such as snake catching), and (d) heterogeneous exploitation of non-human life and products. Extractive loops highlight a key feature of animal exploitation: a recurring series of extractive practices contributing to the continuous fabrication of natural resources.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"37 1","pages":"3063127251347915"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144328916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}