Beach Haven

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​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
​Hausse, Heidi. 2019. "The Locksmith, the Surgeon, and the Mechanical Hand: Communicating Technical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe." Edited by Suzanne Moon. Technology and Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press) 60 (1): 34-64.

Review by Michael Beach
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In this article, Heidi Hausse looks at a specific case of an artificial prosthetic hand designed by a surgeon named Ambroise Paré. He had a representation drawn in a publication called Oeuvers in 1575 A.D. In order to allow for increased circulation of the design, a wood cutting of the picture was created by a locksmith named le petit Lorrain. The cutting was then used to reproduce the technical drawing in many subsequently published medical books and documents. Hausse takes a look at the imprint made by the wood carving and compares it to similar printed carvings. She also explores what the pictures do and don’t convey, and who might make use of the drawings.

A couple of themes come out in Hausse’s writing. Although one might imagine the drawings would be of interest to other surgeons, in reality “artisans were a crucial audience” (Hausse 2019, 36). The technical knowledge transfer was more about replicating the apparatus than for post amputation recuperation of patients. As a result, “substantive exchanges of knowledge took place between artisans and learned men” (Hausse 2019, 37) that might otherwise not happen due to cultural status difference. “The role of craft production in the initial creation of the image allows us to consider its purpose in Paré’s surgical treatise from the perspective of an artisan” (Hausse 2019, 47).

Another theme relates to how historians sometimes question the effectiveness of the early printing press to convey technical knowledge. “Many historians have been skeptical of the printing press’s impact on the transfer of craft techniques” (Hausse 2019, 52). One reason given is the interspersing of words and numbers to clarify graphics which are readily understood by technicians, but less so for surgeons. Another reason for skepticism is that “manuals contained either too little or too much of the information needed for a task, and often omitted practitioners’ tricks” (Ibid.). Finally, such sketches might contain mistakes. A few numbers pointing to specific parts didn’t match the accompanying terms. Finally, the documents many of the people creating the documents didn’t understand how the apparatus worked. Think of those in the supply chain to bring the documents about such as “translators, editors, artists, and printers” (Hausse 2019, 55).

Some of this same skepticism might be leveled on similar modern technical documents. Perhaps the difference comes in how easy documents can be published, then corrected and republished. One point that is a common argument among sociologists of technology is the need for tacit or practical experience, that written documents are just not enough. Just think about how many times you’ve may have opened a cookbook only to understand that some of the process for adding ingredients is not always clear. Watching videos with chefs creating the same dish can be helpful, but nothing can be a substitute for making it yourself. 

Bibliography
​Bloor, David. 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
This work by David Bloor repasses the strong program of sociology and the creation of knowledge. He was a proponent of a framework called the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). The strong program suggests that technological advancements are primarily a function of social factors. The alternative, the weak program, doesn’t go so far, but looks at failed technologies and asserts social factors leading to their demise. After making a number of SSK arguments, Bloor looks at mathematics as an example. From the wisdom of the crowds example of ox-weight estimation, to the arguments against crow-sourcing for understanding the world, Bloor shares chapters on ‘naturalistic’ math followed by asking if there can be ‘alternative’ math.

For Bloor, and other proponents of SSK, naturalistic views are partial and don’t go far enough. Over time, other philosophers of science have pointed to Bloor’s own argument vulnerabilities in more or less ignoring technological and scientific effects on society. He admits there is some influence, but describes the influence seemingly like a form of feedback, but not so much as a changing factor. SSK leans away from technological determinism as have many other philosophical frameworks. Perhaps David Bloor and the school of SSK takes that leaning away too far. One argument he makes relates to symmetry. In this specific definition, all ideas should be approach as having equal weight until proven different. He argues “Our everyday attitudes are practical and evaluative, and evaluations are by their nature asymmetrical” (Bloor 1991, 175). Bloor shares examples of other philosophers inducing other forms of symmetry. Bloor’s position of practicality and ‘common sense’ is part of his justification of asymmetry between social influence on technology as opposed to technological influence on society. 
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Bibliography
​Green, Venus. 2001. Race on the Line: Gender, Race, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Venus Green chronicles telephone operator employment over a century. In the early days of telephony, ‘Ma Bell’ specifically defined telephone operators as female and have a voice and demeanor that was ‘white lady’. That persona was defined by white men who were in charge of the organization. It was less about who the person was than about her mother-like persona with a white-sounding accent. A certain education was also expected since they were often tasked with answering customer questions.

Over time, white women began to move into other roles such as administrative jobs. As a result, Bell downgraded the description of operators, in part to avoid unionization. As this transition was happening, self-dialing was introduced to larger communities which caused automation to replace the human operators. The quicker this automation trend proliferated, the lower salaries became for remaining operators. By the end of the period in the book title, all human operator employment stopped.

The obvious themes were about sexist views of job requirements. Men were managers and engineers. Women were operators. The assumption was that engineering required more physical and intellectual capacity. As more valued administrative jobs opened up to women, the second theme was about race and how the jobs identified as lower on the hierarchy then became associated with women of color. Eventually, even these lower-tiered jobs disappear when they were replaced with automation. The trend seems obvious as described in this book, and during the time period covered, white male dominated management would not have seen this as an issue as American society would today.
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Bibliography
​Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘a solution looking for a problem’ that is the gist of this case study. Bruno Latour walks the read through the idea of creating a new sort of mass transit train in Paris, France. Aramis was an experimental commuter train that was not a train. The project was to form trains from train cars that were not attached to each other. Rather, each car would travel independently of others. Whenever one car approached another on the same track in the same direction, they would communicate with each other and travel like a traditional train but remaining unattached. Each car was small and was to hold only four riders. Given each car’s independent pickup and drop-off location, their routes would connect and disconnect with other equally independent cars.

Latour takes the reader through a project that lasted several decades and never successfully became more than a proof of concept with a handful of cars on an unconnected test track. Depending who was in power at the federal level, the Aramis project varied in funding and progress. People involved were excited about the technical idea then gradually became disillusioned. Others followed later with a similar pattern. Its failure was blamed on everything from lack of vision to the shortcomings of the technical state of the art of the time. Latour also shares how the design itself shifted. The car sizes changed, slowly increasing to look more like a typical train car. The independent start and stop locations became are stations, more like traditional train stations, though greater in number than the normal trains.

In Bruno Latour’s examination of a commuter train project in Paris, France, social forces are examined and their effect on a technical project that eventually was stopped through similar social forces. One example was changing the idea of a train car that held only four people. It became apparent that this approach could lead passengers to become victims of crime. If just a few strangers happened to be on the same car, there would be fewer witnesses for criminals to concern themselves with. That risk led to ever growing numbers of intended passengers. This was a form of scope creep based on a social concern. The result was lower efficiency and less benefit as compared to the traditional train system.

Bibliography
​Lampland, Martha, and Susan Leigh Star, . 2009. Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.
 
Reviewed by Michael Beach

Convention is the word of this book. The various chapter authors consider different standards of measurement we tend to take for granted. How did we choose one length, or weight, or electrical measurement over another? In fact, standards are still not really standard. Ask anyone who totes along an electrical plug converter when they travel internationally.

One area I found surprising is the chapter by Steven Epstein that relates to the ‘standard human’. I had not idea, but when dealing with medical research or treatment the world of health has set categories of humans. In reality, we are each different and are part of a mix and continuum of humanity, each with unique DNA. No one prognosis or treatment is best for all, so the medical community sort of does it work considering clumps of humans to get the symptoms and treatments mostly right most of the time.

There are a few standards examples reviewed from my profession, including metadata and ASCII definitions. One of the jokes in the industry of communications technology is that standards are so helpful because there are so many to choose from. The implication being that with so many different standards to select from, there really isn’t a ‘standard’.
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Bibliography
​Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Bruno Latour, among other things, was a French sociologist of science. This specific work was originally published in French in 1991. In the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) he is among the canonical authors. Depending on one’s philosophical bent, society, at least western society, finds itself in either a modernist or post-modernist world. The basic argument of Latour, as the title hints, is that neither is true. We are not modern in the sociological sense, and having never been so, we are also not post-modern.

Latour shares many definitions that have surfaced in explaining modernism. Latour points to the pattern in such definitions as comparative between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’. In this approach there is a winner and loser as modern supplants ancient. He argues, however, such arguments don’t reveal whether the new defeats the old or if it just brings past revolution “to fruition” (Latour 1993, 10). One aim of this work is to take on “the task of studying scientists and politicians in tandem since no central vantage point has seemed to exist” (Latour 1993, 13). Modernism can be looked at in many ways. Latour considers art, architecture, and scientific process among others. For Latour, modernism creates a dividing line between “the natural world and the social world” (Ibid.).

In this work, the author examines a famous debate between ‘natural philosophers’ such as Thomas Hobbes, and the ‘empiricists’ like Robert Boyle. The argument puts Hobbes on one side in which the world is defined through thought experiment and the theoretical. On the other side, Boyles defines science as finding truth about the natural world through planned experiments. At the heart of the debate is which brings us closer to truth. Modernism in science looks to support empiricism over philosophy. For Latour, that leaves out the influence that each has on each other. For example, experiments are formulated and carried out based on theories and assumptions constructed over time, and theories and assumptions are shaped by former experiments.

Bruno Latour is arguing for symmetry over asymmetry. “When Georges Canguilhem distinguishes scientific ideologies from true sciences, he asserts not only that it is impossible to study Darwin – the scientist – and Diderot – the ideologue – in the same terms, but that it must be impossible to lump them together” (Latour 1993, 92). Latour then argues for symmetry between the two approaches arguing that they are inextricably connected.  On page 135 is a table arguing what parts of both modernist and post-modernist approaches should be maintained, and which rejected, in order to describe a symmetrical approach that Latour argues that is more reflective of how the social and the scientific actually interact with each other to form our current scientific and technologically influenced world.
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References
​Hess, David J. 2016. Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

In this work, David J. Hess looks at controversial issues that involve “complex scientific and technological issues that can provoke sharp divisions in public opinion” (Hess 2016, 1). As a way to examine the role of scientific and technological expertise Hess includes specific topics to include climate change, industrial pollution, nanomaterials, technologies of surveillance, and products of molecular biology. It’s safe to say these topics are both ongoing and controversial. Although he looks at the political issues themselves, the point of the work is to look at epistemological perspectives by and about scientists and technologists involved in these specific focus areas.

One example of an area Hess examines is depicted in the chapter 3 title; “The Politics of Meaning: From Frames to Design Conflicts” (Hess 2016, 79). The controversial topics noted above are not the focus of this chapter so much as the setting. The focus is on how researchers tend to frame the arguments and issues that need attention, and the cultural factors that influence their analysis. How does one create an analysis (breaking down ideas into parts) then move towards a meaningful synthesis (understanding the way the parts interact)? Designing an approach to both analysis and synthesis is where many human factors can cause variation in approach that also cause variation in artifacts produced in the process. This variable process is what causes many of us who are not experts in a given controversial topic such as climate change to put stock in one political position or another using ‘science’ as one of our arguments in favor of a given position. An example Hess shares relates to high emissions by buses. The bus depots that have the highest pollution emission concentrations tend to be in lower-income parts of cities. He gives examples of studies conducted in specific cities that linked income with bus depot locations. These studies further linked low-income neighborhoods with predominantly African American residents. Yet, one needs to examine the details about bus usage, historical demographic changes in neighborhoods, and other similar factors. “More generally, the analysis of race and design in the urban transit system suggest a need for methodological caution” (Hess 2016, 91). Studies have often suffered criticism in the process of going from the general the specific (analysis), then applying the specific to the general (synthesis). Humans are making decisions all along the process of what to examine and what to ignore in collecting data. Then humans are making decisions all along the process of which variables and data are relevant and which are not. In the language of statistical analysis, what information is statistically significant, and how does one define statistically significant? How much variability in data is acceptable to call something ‘significant’? The subjectivity is ultimately what has led to an erosion of confidence by some in scientific expertise. 
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References
Ezrahi, Yaron. 1990. The Descent of Icarus: Sceince and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach

The author has looked at the cross-section of science and politics since the 1960s. In this work, Yaron Ezrahi considers the role of scientific expertise in the policy process within modern ‘liberal-democratic’ states. He shares examples of the ascension of science as an authoritative voice in coming to ‘objective’ conclusions. Over time, other factors came to have as much or more influence in policy. Since experts of similar credential don’t always agree, and some change their perspective over time, public policy makers have come to view expertise as one area of consideration when forming public policy, not so much as the area of consideration. The lowering of scientific authority from preeminence to that of one more voice of many is its descension. Science is more generally understood to have both objective and subjective components, often with ‘dueling experts’ on opposite sides of a policy question.

Ezrahi examines both political process and its relationship with scientific process. The work is divided into three sections. The first examines the political functions of science. It is followed by a look at dilemmas that arise between private persons and public actions. This includes those who act as scientific experts, but also those who create policy, and the rest of us who vote in a democratic society. The final section takes deep dive into effects caused by the privatization of science in the United States specifically.

One interesting thread for me as a reader was the author’s look at machines as a metaphor in scientific and policy processes. For example, machines can be viewed as helpful and positive, or out of control. In the first, we have influence and benefit from mechanistic processes. They create a fair and equal environment. In the second, those not directly inside the machine are powerless and fall victim to its seemingly mindless path. Where one falls in the machine metaphor as benevolent or apocalyptic, depends a great deal on the specific country or culture with which one is surrounded. 
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​Bibliography
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Sheila Jasanoff is a leading scholar on topics of how science and technology are coproduced with society. Each influences change in the other. In this work she examines how biology and politics interact with each other.

She uses examples of how scientific change is influenced differently in different societies. For example, in the US, foods using genetically modified organisms (GMO) such as grains have largely been adopted. There are parts of US society that feel uncomfortable with GMO foods. This created a market for ‘whole foods’ or ‘non-GMO’. People will pay extra for the labeling. When this same topic came up in the UK, there was sufficient public backlash to cause the government to create anti-GMO laws. Jasanoff points to several things that caused the different reactions. For one, in England there had been a health hazard created by the science community. Intending to help increase beef production efficiency through modifying cattle feed, the result was so-called ‘mad cow disease’. Much of the stock in the UK was slaughtered and burned to prevent the disease spreading to humans.

​Other areas explored in the book by Jasanoff include cloning, stem cell use, animal patenting, and reproductive technologies. She contrasts approaches in the US, the UK, and Germany. She also documents how rifts grew among these countries over how best to govern innovation in genetics and biotechnology.