Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Collins, H. M. 1992. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

The original publication of this book was in 1985. I read the updated 1992 edition. The focus on this book is an examination of how we perceive order and our need to replicate. In science, replication is important in particular because when one makes a factual claim, it must be based on evidence and any empirical evidence must be replicable. Collins shares three chapters of specific examples to make his point. He discusses the TEA-Laser, detecting gravitational radiation, and paranormal experiments.

Order and perception are subjectively designed. Whenever there we examine a large number of things we try to categorize. In science, categorization is necessary to make sense of differences. The problem with categorizing is that things don’t really exist in discrete groups of things, but rather as a continuum of individual things. Scientists attempt to define categories by defining attributes. Whenever one creates experiments that either attempt to define a category, or attempts to make conclusions about subjectively defined categories, it becomes difficult to take the next step. That is, it is difficult to draw general conclusions about specific empirical outcomes. This is the problem with inductive reasoning. As soon as one attempts to apply a finding in a specific situation to larger groups, the generalized conclusion will inevitably have to include exceptions.
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The major concern Collins points out about replication is that each group defined and included in an experiment will influence outcomes differently. Generally, empirical work includes undocumented steps. “My concern is not how we could be certain in principle about induced regularities but about how we actually come to be certain about regularities in practice” (Collins 1992, 6). For example, some processes are taught from one lab worker to another through tacit practice. Explicit documented procedures carry a project so far, but there are different ways of doing lab tasks. Practices vary from lab to lab and from practitioner to practitioner. This means that replication includes variation, and variation leads to different exceptions when attempting to analyze and generalize findings.

Bibliography
​Guston, David H., and Kenneth Keniston, . 1994. The Fragile Contract: University Science and the Federal Government. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

This book includes multiple authors. Guston and Keniston are the editors. Each chapter examines some aspect of the relationship between scientific research and government funding sources. The classic challenge for academics is determining research targets. They can range from general so-called ‘basic’ science topics to very specific ways of employing science and technology. Although the generalized idea of scientists desire for unfettered research agenda and the narrow outcomes preferred by funders can be true, it is a very simplistic description. Many researchers are motivated by the financial and prestige benefits of patented discoveries. Also, there are funders more interested in general science than in marketable inventions. Another consideration is the widespread establishment of academic institutes associated with universities that act as both research facilities and business incubators.

Among the considerations some of the authors approach includes the idea of trust. Value-based words such as trust, integrity, and accountability are common in the articles. Actors most generally defined are researchers of various sorts, government and business representatives, and differing descriptions of ‘the public’. What motivates the funders? What motivates the researcher? What role do members of the public play?

The best way I can think of to share the flavor of perspectives is to list the chapter titles. They include - The Social Contract for Science; Universities, the Public, and the Government: The State of the Partnership; On Doing One’s Damnedest: The Evolution of Trust in Scientific Findings; Integrity and Accountability in Research; The Public Face of Science: What Can We Learn from Disputes?; How Large an R&D Enterprise?; Views from the Benches: Funding Biomedical Research and the Physical Sciences; Financing Science after the Cold War; Indirect Costs and the Government-University Partnership; Research in U.S. Universities in a Technologically Competitive World; Constructive Responses to the Changing Social Context of University-Government Relations.

As you can see, there are plenty of meaty topics here. In addition to the language of social values and scientific research, many authors cover aspects of sustainable business to help justify funding and research decisions. 
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Bibliography
​Tallbear, Kim. 2013. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Kim Tallbear is one of my favorite authors related to my studies in science, technology, and society (STS). The title of this work is self-explanatory, but the topics she covered are varied, and certainly explores ideas new to me.

One of overarching themes relates to how human test material such as blood samples have been used in the past in ways not agreed to by the subjects. Often banks of samples and data are sold to companies that develop treatments or further databases that yield not only medical findings, but revenues that come with them.

Tallbear also looks at the accuracy of DNA testing to find one’s ancestry. Such services have become popular in the private sector. There are many reasons to hold such findings suspect, and Tallbear reviews some of the technical issues. In terms of Native Americans, many of the issues are more social than technical. For example, there are specific government benefits for people who can document a native ancestry. Likewise, there is risk to those who claim native heritage when DNA tests don’t support their claim. Another difficulty the author has with native DNA testing is how many people claim specific tribal affiliation based on results. In reality, tribes intermingled so much through economic and warfare activity that it is difficult at best to narrow DNA categories in this way.

The problematic aspects Tallbear raises about DNA testing can be more generalized in two area as she does. The first happens when science and business are tied to each other. She points to the example of the genographic project (mapping the human gene structure) and ‘the business of research and representation’. Others have broached how science represents ‘facts’. Ian Hacking looks at the same issues from a philosophical perspective. He refers to the issues as ‘representing and intervening’. Likewise, Sheila Jasanoff created an entire framework that includes the idea of ‘controlling narratives’.

Tallbear finishes with a look at governance. Who can decide what’s appropriate use and language? Once collected, who owns human genetic tissue? She shares other complicating questions that are still unanswered. Even with modernized legal documents about what sort of rights research subjects cede when they sign a specific document, court cases continue. For example, if a company purchases data or samples from an academic study, then creates large revenues from that resource, are donors entitled to some of it? What part does race play in subject selection? How do scientists define a specific narrow population? How much isolation is required, or intermixing is acceptable, to make the samples be representative of a specific population? As the reader might imagine, such questions can continue. These are ethical concerns for scientists, and often cause ‘native’ people to be unwilling to trust them.
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Bibliography
​Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
 
Andrew Pickering takes a look at science as a practical work. While there are many philosophical arguments abounding in regards to science in theory, he examines social forces that shape and are shaped by the processes in scientific decision making.

Pickering offers some clarification around the word ‘mangle’. He realizes that this has a different meaning in different places. In America, for example, he notes that the word refers to completely messing something up from the original intention of the thing in question. In his sense mangle means, “practice, understood as the work of cultural extension” (original emphasis) (Pickering, 1995, p. 3). He equates ‘mangle’ with ‘change’. To Pickering, the practice of science is to change it from the theoretical to the real.

He uses some examples to show how process and outcomes don’t always follow original assumptions. One example includes experimentation using a bubble chamber. It includes “the extension of the mechanic field of science, specifically of the development of the bubble chamber as an instrument for experimental research in elementary-particle physics” (Pickering, 1995, p. 37). Pickering shares the history of decisions it took to get to a working model, and the modification of how ‘working’ was eventually defined. Since the chamber ultimately did not create the exact vacuum conceived, the vacuum it did achieve served to define what a bubble chamber is.

Other examples in the book include “hunting the quark,” “constructing quaternions,” and “numerically controlled machine tools.” Each comes with its own history of conception through realization with social compromises along the way. Finally, Pickering finishes with two chapters on conceptual arguments about the kinds of influences and ways to perhaps embrace or reconstruct them. In Chapter 6 for example, he puts some focus on scientific norms as espoused by Robert Merton which have been argued about since their inception. Pickering considers these norms (or any others) as ‘articulations’. 
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Bibliography
​Scott, J. (1990). A Matter of Record: Documentary Sources in Social Research. Cambridge: Polity Press.
 
In this work, John Scott explores all sorts of public and private records with the intent of helping researchers understand how best to extract usable information from them. This is a how-to book, but also examines social and ethical issues connected with documents.

One ethical examination comes in a series of chapters examining private documents, the intent of their creation, and in what ways a researcher should approach private documents. Some examples include wills, private journals, or letters written for consumption only by the addressee. Does the passage of time make these documents less privileged? What if any of these are pulled into the public sphere in a court dispute or if the author becomes a public figure by running for political office?

Much of the book is a sort of nuts-and-bolts approach to finding data that matter to the particular focus of the research. For example, health records might be pertinent when looking for concentrations of a particular illness. Health records are private, in particular recent information that is subject to modern HIPAA rules. Access may be limited and the specific way such data can be used through anonymizing is also controlled through various research rules.

For those who seek information that relate to sociological trends or influences, digging through public and private records is inevitable. One example of such research is in the field of family history. Many people are engaged in that research for personal reasons, but once it is published in an academic work or on publicly accessible websites, there are laws and ethical concerns that take effect. John Scott has examined the ins-and-outs in this work about academic use of records.
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Bibliography
​Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd ed.). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
This book is a how-to with background information of how the authors have decided to approach fieldnotes. For those who are unfamiliar, ethnographies are documents that a researcher might create while they observe some human activity. For example, a researcher might attend a public meeting. Fieldnotes are not about the content discussed so much as describing actions and interactions of people participating in the event. The researcher might note a few specific things said, but may be more interested in how a person’s body language or appearance could say something about their messages.

Often, collecting ethnographies might include a more public event such as a meeting or overheard conversation, then supplemented by side conversations the ethnographer might have with one or more of the participants. One of the more difficult parts of making sense of the information collected is referred to as ‘coding’. Depending on what the research is focused on (for example the ethnographer may be interested in financial information, or people relationships, or the impact of policy change) the potential is limitless. Two things happen with coding. At the end of each day, a researcher would go through their fieldnotes and highlight sections based on some ‘code’ or subject area of focus. In this way they can analyze any trends or related topics. The other effect can be that the researcher begins to see unexpected patterns that could redirect the focus of the research project.

One can experience how different this effort is by simply going to a restaurant with a notebook. Then just watch the comings and goings of people (employees, patrons, passers-by, supply vendors, etc.). Literally write what you see describing the people, the environment or ambiance, any conversations you hear, how people treat each other, and what sort of body language you notice. Don’t take anything for granted. Write it as if you had never gone into a restaurant before. Sort of like if a space alien just landed and went into the place. How would they describe what they see? You might also consider yourself as a book author attempting to describe the setting of a story.

The book is full of tips of alternate ways to take notes, code the notes, and then interpret what the researcher writes from a quantitative and qualitative approach. Finally, the authors speak to the balancing act between observing and participating. One can argue that just by being there a researcher causes some difference in the public setting. For example, if an outsider joins a local leadership group the members may be less likely to say things they would if all participants were insiders. For those researchers that spend a long time with a specific community they will inevitably become part of the community if only in a superficial way. The less one joins the community under study the less one might hear that insiders learn over a lifetime. The more one joins the community the more difficult it may be to stay neutral. 
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