Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte最新文献

{"title":"Reflections on Fieldwork Around Europe**","authors":"Cameron Brinitzer","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70013","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70013","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article is about the act and practice of doing interviews. In contrast to an ascendant enthusiasm for automation, computation, and digitization, it focuses on the process of interviewing as a relational mode of historical research and on uses of interviews that occur prior to their mobilization as evidence in historical accounts. The central argument is that, well before interviews can be used as historical sources, the practice of interviewing is useful for charting scientific networks, creating textual records, and generating archival questions. After setting the analytic stage, the article proceeds almost ethnographically through a series of conversations and interviews in order to illustrate some of the ways that interviewing—as a practice of knowing in and through relations—resists formalization and remains irresolvably human, social, and staged. In the conclusion, the article turns to epistemological questions raised when using interviews in historical writing. It argues that incorporating research interviews into the methodological repertoire of the history of science and medicine offers an occasion to practice reflexivity with respect to the narrative grounds of historical claims. It suggests that this might encourage a confrontation with the discipline's inherited epistemic valuation of naturalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"66-81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147312708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inhaltsverzeichnis: Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 1/2026","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70015","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.70015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147707844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Where Do We Fit? Reflections on Research Interview Practice, Project Design, and Interpretation**","authors":"Dmitriy Myelnikov","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70010","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<p>What is special about historical research interviews in the history of science, technology, and medicine, and how do they compare to the tools of oral historians and social scientists? This essay reflects on three interview projects I have undertaken, each taking a distinct shape. I address methodological and pragmatic aspects of these projects, especially concerns related to anonymity and recovering memories of practice, as well as institutional challenges for placing historical research interviews among the more familiar and structured projects in the social sciences, notably around questions of anonymity. I suggest that we have most to learn from oral historians in thinking about research ethics and empowering the interviewee to decide what they want to happen to the recording and transcript, and whether and how they want to claim credit. At the same time, we can make different choices when it comes to designing, interpreting, and publishing our interviews. I suggest it may be beneficial to think of our work as triangulation across sources, within broader practices of what we might call “historical fieldwork”.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"82-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13047410/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147286097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Research Interviews in Historical Practice**","authors":"Lara Keuck,&nbsp;Soraya de Chadarevian","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70000","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70000","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A key difference between collecting life stories and doing research interviews is the role of the interviewer. While training in oral history may focus on using standard scripts to take a life story, research interviews are motivated by specific questions that arise from particular historical projects and are often not primarily focused on the biography of the interviewee. Therefore, the research interview can be seen as being both less personal with regard to the personal life story of the interviewee and more personal with respect to the foregrounding of the specific interests of the interviewer. Soraya de Chadarevian has been one of the first historians of science to systematically reflect on this and other differences between life story interviews and research interviews. In this contribution, Lara Keuck, who has herself made use of interviews in her research, interrogates de Chadarevian on her approach to research interviews in her historical practice. They discuss how de Chadarevian's personal approach has developed and changed over the past three decades and reflect on the methodological implications that can be distilled from this experience.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"15-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13047408/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145126634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Controlling the Field: Memory, Labor, and Ethics in Oral Histories of Brazilian Human Genetics**","authors":"Rosanna Dent,&nbsp;Ana Carolina Vimieiro Gomes","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70012","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines how oral histories of twentieth-century human genetics in Brazil reveal the politics of memory of fieldwork. Through a comparative analysis of interviews with prominent geneticist Francisco M. Salzano and technician Girley V. Simões, who worked with him for most of his career, this study explores the narrative strategies each employed to establish their historical accounts. Attending reflexively to the oral history encounters, the analysis examines how each narrator negotiates professional identity and moral legitimacy in light of changing ethical norms surrounding research with Indigenous communities. Simões's vivid recollections foreground invisible forms of technical and logistical labor, offering him the opportunity to recast his position as one of active knowledge-making. Salzano's controlled and diplomatic accounts, by contrast, illustrate how the senior scientist curated memory to stabilize his professional legacy and defend disciplinary ethics in the wake of controversy. Contrasting Salzano and Simões's approaches to describing their shared experiences drives home the complex social and political realities of narrating fieldwork, as well as the political valences of remembering and documenting these histories in the present.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"31-49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13047407/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147312725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 1/2026)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70016","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70016","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.70016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147707843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Research Interviews in the History of Science and Medicine—Reflections and New Directions**","authors":"Alfred Freeborn,&nbsp;Hanna Lucia Worliczek","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70011","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70011","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;On 12 November 2024, one of us (AF) received an email from the retired neuropsychologist Rosalind Ridley telling him that the psychiatrist Tim Crow had died two days earlier. AF never met Ridley in person but interviewed her and her husband over a video call in 2022 about their work in the 1970s in Crow's research department. The email was brief and to the point; Ridley finished by wishing AF well with his research.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; It was a few days before an obituary appeared in &lt;i&gt;The Times&lt;/i&gt; and many more academic memorial articles would emerge in the coming weeks—Crow was an important and sometimes controversial figure in the field of biological psychiatry.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; AF had interviewed Ridley and Crow along with several of their colleagues over a period of many years as part of his doctoral research.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; His research became slowly entangled in the collective memory of his interviewees, a small community which originated in Crow's department and went on to influence neurobiological research into schizophrenia in Britain. Its members were often keen and reflective interlocutors in AF's attempt to understand the history of the field. Many of us will have heard it said by our colleagues who do not study the recent past—“I am so happy my actors are long dead”—but for those of us who talk to living scientists, technicians, or patients the experience of interviewing is often transformative on a personal and intellectual level, and raises serious questions, opportunities, and challenges for how we write history.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The rewards of interview work are well-known: unparalleled access to biographical details, off-record perspectives, networks of social relations, and personal archives. Likewise, the dangers are clear: shaky memories, biased narratives, and co-option into professional disputes. Beginning with the Sources for History of Quantum Physics Project launched in the early 1960s, the interview with a living scientist has become an important method and site for historiographical reflection in the history of science.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Since the turn of the 21st century, the digital revolution has made the need for reflection even more important. The advent of near ubiquitous audio–visual recording technology (e.g., smartphones), digital storage, and social media have created new possibilities for who creates, owns, and consumes the narrated past—and who features in it. Novel digital archival possibilities have also raised new legal issues, although questions of ethical review, informed consent, and storage have been central to oral history practices for decades. We feel it is pertinent now to ask after the research interview again: What is particular about doing research interviews for historians of science, technology, and medicine? What do interviews do to the historian? How do we make use of them in practice? These are just some of the questions which guide our reflections in this special issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The practice of interviewing or conver","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"5-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.70011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147285928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Learning with Patient Campaigners About a German Drug Scandal**","authors":"Jesse Olszynko-Gryn,&nbsp;Anja Suter,&nbsp;Edmund Bolger,&nbsp;Birgit Nemec","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70014","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.70014","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The West German drug Duogynon was internationally marketed as a “hormone pregnancy test” (HPT) between the 1950s and 1980s. In the late 1960s it came under suspicion for inducing miscarriage, spina bifida, and a spectrum of birth defects similar to those caused by the sedative thalidomide. In contrast to thalidomide, medical consensus did not form around the teratogenicity of Duogynon and many people who identify as Duogynon-affected continue to campaign for recognition. The informal use of Duogynon as an abortion pill adds a further layer of shame, secrecy, and silence. In this article, we reflect on the value of oral history and the ethics of inclusion within a larger research project that investigates the rise and fall of HPTs, globally. We ask what collaborating with patient campaigners in a more participatory mode than is typical of archival research can contribute to the historical understanding of the Duogynon affair and other drug scandals.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"49 1","pages":"50-65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13047414/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147312698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 4/2025)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"48 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2025-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.70007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inhaltsverzeichnis: Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 4/2025","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.70008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.70008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"48 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2025-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.70008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145719439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}