Bart Penders

The Social Study of Corporate Science: A Research Manifesto.

Laboratory ethnographies have provided valuable insights in the workings of contemporary science and technology and about facts in the making. Nearly all these ethnographic studies have been conducted at nonprofit research institutes. In this article, the authors argue that it is time for science and technology studies (STS) ethnography to direct its gaze toward for-profit knowledge production sites. The authors do so, based on a long-standing recognition that nonprofit academic laboratories do not have a monopoly on knowledge construction. First, they historicize STS’ focus on public knowledge production, distinguishing between two roles for STS. Second, they argue that relationships between industry and society have changed, resulting in increasing corporate transparency. Third, they argue that this change enables STS ethnography to enter corporations and corporate laboratories. The authors conclude by proposing a research agenda for the social study of corporate science.

Understanding life together: a brief history of collaboration in biology

The history of science shows a shift from single-investigator ‘little science’ to increasingly large, expensive, multinational, interdisciplinary and interdependent ‘big science’. In physics and allied fields this shift has been well documented, but the rise of collaboration in the life sciences and its effect on scientific work and knowledge has received little attention. Research in biology exhibits different historical trajectories and organisation of collaboration in field and laboratory – differences still visible in contemporary collaborations such as the Census of Marine Life and the Human Genome Project. We employ these case studies as strategic exemplars, supplemented with existing research on collaboration in biology, to expose the different motives, organisational forms and social dynamics underpinning contemporary large-scale collaborations in biology and their relations to historical patterns of collaboration in the life sciences. We find the interaction between research subject, research approach as well as research organisation influencing collaboration patterns and the work of scientists.

Walking the Line between Lab and Computation: The “Moist” Zone

ABSTRACT Epistemological differences between “wet” and “dry” research (experimentation and computation, respectively) result in practical problems in daily cooperation between researchers. We introduce wet and dry research as different styles of science and, using the example of nutrigenomic research, demonstrate that specific technologies can facilitate cooperation by helping to identify a common ground. To illustrate this point, we discuss the crucial role of the gene pathway map as a communication tool in scientific practice. Where wet and dry science meet, this may result in the formation of a “moist” zone, a site of exchange and cooperation. The existence of a moist zone teaches us about the inner workings of difficult cooperations and demonstrates how the moist zone further stabilizes wet and dry styles of science.

Capable and credible?: Challenging nutrition science

Nutrition science has enriched our understanding of how to stay healthy by producing valuable knowledge about the interaction of nutrients, food, and the human body. Nutrition science also has raised societal awareness about the links between food consumption and well-being, and provided the basis for food regulations and dietary guidelines. Its collaborative and interdisciplinary research has accomplished much, scientifically and socially. Despite this, nutrition science appears to be in crisis and is currently confronted with a public reluctance to trust nutritional insights. Though deflating trust is a general phenomenon surrounding the scientific community, its impact on nutrition science is particularly strong because of the crucial role of nutrition in everyone’s daily life. We, a Dutch collective of nutritionists, medical doctors, philosophers and sociologists of science (http://www.nutritionintransition.nl), have diagnosed that nutrition science is meeting inherent boundaries. This hampers conceptual and methodological progress and the translation of novel insights into societal benefit and trust. In other words, nutrition science is facing limitations to its capability and credibility, impeding its societal value. We take up the challenge to halt the threatening erosion of nutrition science’s capability and credibility, and explore a way forward. We analyse limitations to capability and credibility, then argue that nutrition science is caught in a vicious circle, and end by offering some suggestions to transcend the limitations and escape the current deadlock. We invite nutritional experts as well as scholars from adjacent disciplines to engage in the discussion.

The Value of Vagueness in the Politics of Authorship

Science is a tournament and the prizes are credibility and reputation. Randall Collins described the scientific process as Ban open plain with men scattered throughout it shouting: ‘Listen to me! Listen to me!’ [...] The fundamental process is a competition for attention^ (Collins 1975, 480). The most visible and feasible ways for scientists to build credibility and reputation (at least among their peers) is through amassing authorships. Publications and authorships stand firmly at the heart of Latour and Woolgars’ Bcycle of credit^ and are the key shape in which scientific capital comes (Latour and Woolgar, 1986; van Lente and van Til 2008; Packer and Webster 1996). Of course other forms of scientific capital exist too, ranging from being mentioned in the acknowledgements of a lecture (barely worth it) to a Nobel Prize (jackpot). Authorships are the dominant shape of scientific capital and in our neoliberal audit society, we value more capital over less and continuously keep track of who has it and who hasn’t. My esteemed colleague Dr. Shaw, recently published an editorial titled BThe Virus of Vagueness in Authorship^ (2016) in the pages of this journal. In it, he argues that the vagueness that comes with (a) ambiguity about knowing exactly who did what and (b) different paradigms of credit distribution amongst authors, contributes to even further confusion. While clarity with respect to contributions and the credit and responsibility that ought to come with them, is to be applauded, I doubt whether demanding contributor statements is going to help reduce ambiguity and whether the reduction of vagueness and ambiguity is going to help scientists struggling for credit and relevance—if anything, I will argue, there lies value in vagueness. Author lists are growing longer and longer. On the one hand, this is a result of growing collaborations and different forms of collaboration in science—especially in the exact and biomedical sciences (Wuchty, Jones and Uzzi 2007; Penders, Vermeulen, and Parker 2015; Vermeulen, Parker, and Penders 2013; Parker, Vermeulen, and Penders 2010). On the other hand, this flows from evaluation and audit cultures that focus on quantitative metrics valuing a lot of authorships (Rushforth and de Rijcke 2015). Dr. Shaw has argued elsewhere that through such statements it is possible to filter out illegitimate authors (Shaw and Erren 2015). However, adding contribution statements is unlikely to change authorship designation practices since it does not change the (scientific) process that leads to the publication nor does it relieve publication and evaluation pressure. In fact, it is more likely to add an enormous administrative burden to authors who publish in teams. Bioethical Inquiry (2017) 14:13–15 DOI 10.1007/s11673-016-9768-3

Mythbusters: Credibilising strategies in popular nutrition books by academics

Healthy eating is a prominent concern amongst public health and diet professionals. Public understanding of healthy eating presents a topic of interest in understanding scientific credibility in the public domain. Three prominent Dutch nutrition scientists, Kok, Seidell and Katan, have produced popular science books on healthy eating, aiming to remove myths about food and nutrition from the public domain. I describe how they do so, and which strategies they have chosen to achieve this goal. In their books, they move beyond traditional academic strategies to build credibility and devise credibilising strategies resembling those of diet authors. While doing so, they move beyond the deficit model, but end up competing for dietary credibility on the diet authors’ terms.

Food, Drugs, and TV: The Social Study of Corporate Science.

A substantial proportion of scientists work in for-profit organizations such as companies or consultancy firms. For example, in the United States, 64% of individuals whose highest degree is in science and engineering work in forprofit enterprises or are self-employed (Figure 1). Among those with doctoral degrees in science and engineering, 39% work in for-profit enterprises or are self-employed. Only 42% work in academia, with the rest in government, nonprofits, or other educational institutions (National Science Board, 2010; Shapin, 2008). Although these data surely vary across nations, the observation that the majority of scientists are employed in the for-profit sector is likely to hold up internationally. Scientists and engineers in the for-profit sector mobilize their expertise to design and make new products and to reformulate old ones. They determine consumer preferences, negotiate regulations, strategize investments and cutbacks, and produce data required by regulators. By doing so, these “corporate scientists” have significantly more influence on our lives and on the ways in which we engage with and experience the world than do their academic colleagues. Nevertheless, the bulk of research and theory in Science and Technology Studies/Science, Technology and Society (STS) has thus far been based largely on studies of nonprofit organizations, particularly academic, government, and civil society institutions such as universities and hospitals. This focus on nonprofit science reflects the history of STS. Shapin (2008) argues that from the 1920s onward, Merton and those who follow him have proclaimed that academic “pure” science is the real thing: universal, communal, disinterested, and skeptical. STS proceeded to show that even supposedly disinterested, truth-seeking academic science is value laden, shaped by extra-scientific phenomena, impregnated with power and a means of exercising power. Corporate science, however, was never presented or perceived as disinterested or truth seeking. Corporate science was interested and “impure” by definition and thus required no unmasking. STS scholars have examined the commercialization of nonprofit research institutions and the relationships between industry, government, and academia. But such research tends to reinforce the assumption that academic science was or should be pure in ways that corporate science is not, and that academic science should avoid ruinous entanglement with the power, profit, 429739 BST31610.1177/0270467611429739Schleif er and PendersBulletin of Science, Technology & Society 2011

Side effects of problem-solving strategies in large-scale nutrition science: towards a diversification of health

Solving complex problems in large-scale research programmes requires cooperation and division of labour. Simultaneously, large-scale problem solving also gives rise to unintended side effects. Based upon 5 years of researching two large-scale nutrigenomic research programmes, we argue that problems are fragmented in order to be solved. These sub-problems are given priority for practical reasons and in the process of solving them, various changes are introduced in each sub-problem. Combined with additional diversity as a result of interdisciplinarity, this makes reassembling the original and overall goal of the research programme less likely. In the case of nutrigenomics and health, this produces a diversification of health. As a result, the public health goal of contemporary nutrition science is not reached in the large-scale research programmes we studied. Large-scale research programmes are very successful in producing scientific publications and new knowledge; however, in reaching their political goals they often are less successful.

A ferry between cultures. Crafting a new profession at the intersection of science and society.

The new field of research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of scientific and technological developments (ELSA) is rapidly becoming a professional field with grants, research programmes and university departments devoted to it. At first glance, ELSA seems to be a new development intended to address questions and challenges that arise from advances in the natural sciences. The professionalization of ELSA resembles that of ‘the history of science’, a research field that emerged at the end of the Second World War. The promise that ELSA makes—that it can reacquaint science with society, and the natural sciences with the humanities and the social sciences—was actually first made by science historians in the first half of the twentieth century (van Berkel, 1988). However, although science historians are thought to have failed in respect to this promise, they did manage to craft a new profession at the intersection of science and society (van Berkel, 1988). The question is whether ELSA will be able to succeed where the history of science failed, or whether history will repeat itself. Reflections on the relationship between science and society are not new, but it is only recently that these have received systematic attention from both scientists and non‐scientists. In addition, the public and policy‐makers increasingly demand that large‐scale research programmes or technological advances should be accompanied by studies of their potential social, political and legal impact. This trend probably began when Nobel laureate James Watson announced that the Human Genome Project would devote a significant amount of its funding to study the so‐called ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) of the full human genome sequence (Kitcher, 2001). Inspired by ELSI and further motivated by a desire not to inflame the public—as happened with GM crops or stem‐cell research, for example—many contemporary international large‐scale research initiatives have …

Marching for the myth of science

The Marches for Science this April celebrated the unique role of science as well as nerd culture. But their portrayal of sciences exceptionalism and elitism did little to convince citizens wary of how science affects politics and their lives.