Brian Balmer

Managing Mapping in the Human Genome Project

It is usual in science studies to focus attention on either science policy or laboratory practices. This paper examines the mutual shaping of science and policy through the case of the Human Genome Mapping Project in the UK. It is argued that the evolution of policy was not merely a series of administrative choices. The strategies, boundaries and accounting methods of the programme, together with the organization and conception of research among grant-holders, can be shown to reflect the, often competing, demands from the worlds of science and administration. As policy evolved, the question of what science to support was translated into debates over the best way to do science, what scientific knowledge was for and what was to count as worthwhile knowledge.

The battle for biotechnology: Scientific and technological paradigms and the management of biotechnology in Britain in the 1980s

Abstract This paper is about how institutions adapt and change to accommodate new technologies. Specifically it looks at how one set of institutions, the British Research Councils, accommodated to the emergence of biotechnology in the 1980s, charting the vicissitudes of their relationship and in particular the bitter quarrel which broke out between the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). It suggests that the key factor behind the conflict was not remit (i.e. defence of research territory) but differences in culture, with a lack of symmetry between the scientific paradigm which dominated the MRCs approach and the technological paradigm which drove the SERCs Biotechnology Directorate. Given this difference in cultures, it argues that some plurality of approach was inevitable and that attempts to impose a strong element of co-ordination would not have prevented conflict. However, lighter coordination might have helped, and this could in fact have been achieved had the British government at that time not abdicated from all leadership roles in relation to new technologies and provided no resources to help oil the wheels of change.

Home on the Range What and Where is the Middle in Science and Technology Studies

This article introduces the special issue on middle-range theory in science and technology studies (STS), providing the background to its production and reviewing different notions of “middle.” It begins with Mertons ideas about middle-range theory as a way of moving beyond the production of either descriptions or theories of everything. Instead of seeing the middle as the space between the theoretical imagination and the detailed depiction of everyday practices, the authors outline three ways of thinking about the middle range: as an adjective, the closest to Mertons conception; as a noun, the liminal place between theories, audiences, and levels; and as a verb, a process, a means of making connections across time, discipline, community, and place. A summary of each of the articles in this special issue is provided, preceding a call for further discussion about the role of case studies and the nature of the middle in STS.

A secret formula, a rogue patent and public knowledge about nerve gas : Secrecy as a spatial-epistemic tool

What makes knowledge dangerous? How does secrecy operate to help produce knowledge that is dangerous or otherwise? What happens when ‘nothing happens’? This paper addresses these questions through a case study in the history of chemical weapons research in the UK. It focuses on the publication and subsequent treatment in 1975 of a newspaper article reporting that the patent on the chemical warfare agent, VX, was available in a number of public libraries. Within 10 days, copies of the patent had been withdrawn, a government review of declassification procedures was announced, and in Parliament the Minister for Defence announced that the Government had never patented VX. The implication was that nothing, or nothing worth worrying about, had happened. This paper draws on recently declassified documents to trace the modifications of position that occurred in order for the Minister to arrive at this announcement. I argue that secrecy enabled different readings of the patent in different places and thus acted as a spatial–epistemic tool in the exercise of power. Key features that differed were: the relationship between essential properties attributed to VX and the additional tacit knowledge deemed necessary to make the nerve agent; the degree of revelation that was deemed to have occurred as the secret was differently constructed; and the presumed intent and abilities of putative abusers. The paper closes with a brief consideration of the relevance of a science studies analysis of this case study to contemporary security concerns.

The Royal Society and the ‘brain drain’: natural scientists meet social science

Although concerns about the loss of British scientists to the USA and elsewhere grew slowly throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the Royal Societys 1963 report on the emigration of scientists sparked a very public debate about the ‘brain drain’. This paper concentrates on the Societys key role in creating focus and impetus for the debate through the report and questionnaire survey that informed it. In this engagement with social science research, the tension between the Societys political neutrality, as a representative of science, and political intervention, as an advocate for science, manifested itself in the planning, execution and reporting of its study on scientific migration.

A New Threat

No Cabinet-level decision to abandon an offensive biological warfare programme appears to have ever been taken. Nonetheless, in the previous chapter a close reading of the open statements on policy among various advisory and policy-making committees revealed an uneven gravitation towards a defensive posture. The 1955 DRPC review of defence research reported that biological research was now ‘mainly defensively aimed’.1 In the same year BRAB, the MRD’s advisory board, discussed the establishment’s future research plans ‘in the light of a policy directive by the Minister of Defence, which lowered the general position of Biological Warfare in the research and development programme’.2 By December, the DRPC had ‘recommended that BW research should be restricted to that required for defensive measures. The work of the MRD would be substantially unchanged.’3 This declaration of autonomy referred mainly to the basic research being conducted in MRD laboratories; one area that advisors acknowledged would be affected by the new policy was the pursuit of field trials.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? Perspectives of the Researchers and the Researched on ‘being comfortable’

In a study of volunteers in medical research we found contrasting readings of “being comfortable” by the volunteer research subjects and the researchers. Although the experimental process (testing a new kind of diagnostic technology) involved some physical discomfort—and the researchers focused on this—the volunteers’ concerns centred on feeling socially comfortable and managing feelings of embarrassment or isolation, and they generally made light of the physical aspects. The bias of volunteer concerns, which is understandable in terms of the different situations of researchers and volunteers and the different tensions they create, has potential implications for the engagement of researchers with their research subjects and prevailing standards for the ethical and accountable conduct of research. Both authors contributed to all aspects of preparing this article. The work was approved by the Joint UCH/UCL Research Ethics Committee.

The Anatomy of the Brain Drain Debate, 1950–1970s: Witness Seminar

This witness seminar on the brain drain debate 1950-70s was held on 23 May 2006 in the JZ Young Lecture Theatre, University College London. It was organised by the Department of Science & Technology Studies, UCL, as part of a research project on the Brain Drain debate funded by the ESRC. The witnesses included Prof Ron Bullough (formerly Atomic Energy Research Establishment Harwell and interviewer for British recruitment boards in North America); Sir Alcon Copisarow (formerly Senior Civil Servant with interests in manpower issues); Prof Mike Hayns (recruited to Harwell from North America through British recruitment boards); Sir John Maddox (formerly Science Journalist, The Guardian and Editor, Nature)

How does an accident become an experiment? Secret science and the exposure of the public to biological warfare agents

During the Cold War, British scientists carried out a clandestine programme of research aimed at developing an anti-personnel biological weapon comparable in effect and strategic importance with the atomic bomb. An integral part of their research involved a series of outdoor trials at sea where the scientists exposed animals to clouds of pathogenic (disease-causing) micro-organisms. Not all of these trials ran according to plan and at the culmination of ‘Operation Cauldron’, a series of trials that took place between May and September 1952, something quite unexpected occurred. On the final day of the trials, a fishing vessel, the Carella, strayed into the danger zone around the trial shortly after a test bomb had been detonated. The Carella ignored warnings and the ship’s crew was exposed to an invisible cloud of germs. The authority’s response was to tail the trawler over the next month without notifying the crew, and to listen for a distress call. The Navy also drew up contingency plans in case the crew fell seriously ill; these plans attempted to balance effective treatment of the victims with security considerations. The incident was so sensitive that almost all records of its occurrence were burnt; the single remaining file on the incident remained locked within the Ministry of Defence for 50 years. Apart from a brief article in the British newspaper, The Observer, in 1985, which generated some fruitless questioning from the local MP and a few briefer articles in the local press, together with a short description in the context of a discussion of the complete series of Scottish biological warfare trials, the events surrounding the Carella have not been recounted and analysed in detail (Willis, 2003; Leigh

Role of patient feedback in the design and implementation of clinical trials of optical tomography of the breast

We report preliminary findings from a study of patient-volunteer experience in a clinical trial of optical mammography. We hypothesise that this qualitative data can usefully supplement the technical data collected during clinical tests and be of practical value in decision-making about design modifications, development priorities, and improving acceptability to patients. Findings from interviews with volunteers to date suggest that this method may establish new design criteria not deducible from routine data collection.