Luis Reyes-Galindo

Linking the subcultures of physics: virtual empiricism and the bonding role of trust.

This article draws on empirical material concerning the communication and use of knowledge in experimental physics and its relations to the culture of theoretical physics. The role that trust plays in these interactions is used to create a model of social distance between interacting theoretical and experimental cultures. This article thus seeks to reintroduce trust as a fundamental element in answering the problem of disunity in the sociology of knowledge.

Automating the Horae: Boundary-work in the age of computers:

This paper describes the intense software filtering that has allowed the arXiv e-print repository to sort and process large numbers of submissions with minimal human intervention, making it one of the most important and influential cases of open access repositories to date. The paper narrates arXiv’s transformation, using sophisticated sorting/filtering algorithms to decrease human workload, from a small mailing list used by a few hundred researchers to a site that processes thousands of papers per month. However there are significant negative consequences for authors who have been filtered out of arXiv’s main categories. There is thus a continued need to check and balance arXiv’s boundaries, based in the essential tension between stability and innovation.This article describes the intense software filtering that has allowed the arXiv e-print repository to sort and process large numbers of submissions with minimal human intervention, making it one of the most important and influential cases of open access repositories to date. This article narrates arXiv’s transformation, using sophisticated sorting/filtering algorithms to decrease human workload, from a small mailing list used by a few hundred researchers to a site that processes thousands of papers per month. However, there are significant negative consequences for authors who have been filtered out of arXiv’s main categories. There is thus a continued need to check and balance arXiv’s boundaries, based on the essential tension between stability and innovation.

A note concerning primary source knowledge

We present the results of running 4 different papers through the automated filtering system used by the open access preprint server “arXiv” to classify papers and implement quality control barriers. The exercise was carried out in order to assess whether these highly sophisticated, state‐of‐the‐art filters can distinguish between papers that are controversial or have gone past their “sell‐by date,” and otherwise normal papers. We conclude that not even the arXiv filters, which are otherwise successful in filtering fringe‐topic papers, can fully acquire “Domain‐Specific Discrimination” and thus distinguish technical papers that are taken seriously by an expert community from those that are not. Finally, we discuss the implications this has for citizen and policy‐maker engagement with the Primary Source Knowledge of a technical domain.

Molecular detector (non)technology in Mexico

This paper discusses the introduction of fraudulent “molecular detector” (non)technology into Mexico. The case is used to argue that contemporary science and technology studies’ approaches to scientific policy-making make basic assumptions about the societies they operate in that are inconsistent with the Mexican context. This paper also argues that contrary to what happens in the so-called Global North, the relative power of Mexican science in government and policy circles is as much limited by its relatively weak position as much as it is by self-censorship and unrealized impact in the country’s fragile democracy. The case is also used to highlight the necessity for more politically involved scientific institutions in Mexico, as these become critical safeguards against incoming destabilizing technologies from more powerful nations into the local “peripheral” context.

Introduction: Intercultural Communication and Science and Technology Studies

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the potential contributions that Science and Technology Studies (STS) can make to the study of intercultural communication. We present four STS models that have been central to the study of the topic in recent years: trading zones, trust, interactional expertise, and boundary objects. We argue that communities interested in the study of intercultural communication would benefit from dialoguing with STS as this field has much to contribute to debates over this phenomenon. We also summarise the chapters that compose this book.

‘The Year of the Gull’: Demonisation of Wildlife, Pestilence and Science in the British Press

During 2015 an unusually large number of articles denouncing seagull ‘antisocial behaviour’ appeared in the British press, with public outcry pushing for culls to seagull populations and political figures like former Prime Minister David Cameron publicly denouncing a ‘seagull problem’. We analyse the discourses surrounding these negative representations and compare these to the few published scientific responses to the media hype. We look at how cultural values surrounding wildlife moulded the controversy and the vitriolic attacks on seagulls by the general public, and then compared these to previous cases of wildlife demonization. Specifically, we illustrate how (a) seagulls were first anthropomorphised and then demonised using discourses of social deviancy and (b) boundary-breaching is used as the rhetorical source for pestilence discourses. We conclude by considering how science communication and journalism could be better carried out in similar episodes by first considering them as distinct cultural practices, embedded in specific socio-cultural milieus that are too often ignored by science.

Participant Comprehension and Qualitative Observation: A Micro-Sociological Study of Theoretical Physics

I discuss the different outlooks on ‘observation’ that are most commonly found in social science quantitative methodology by analysing the methodological approach that supported my four-year PhD project on the sociology of theoretical physics. I highlight how my pre-existing immersion into the social world of theoretical physics was the key element in allowing me to describe the sociology of the theoretical ‘thinking science’ subculture in a field where ‘observation’ cannot be carried out in a typical way.