Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.555
E. Ahn
Why do we remember some scientists while forgetting others who participated in the same knowledge-making process? Mount Wilson Observatory was founded in 1904 by George Ellery Hale near Pasadena in Southern California and is perhaps most famous for astronomer Edwin Hubble and his observations made with the 100-inch reflector telescope, which suggested that our universe is expanding. Moving away from the prominent astronomers, intellectual ideas, and telescopes at Mount Wilson Observatory, this article focuses on the work done by some of the forgotten participants such as human computers, who were mostly women, and telescope assistants, who were men, during the first two decades since its founding. By regarding Mount Wilson Observatory as a factory observatory that carried out specialty production, I narrate scientific knowledge-making from the perspectives of these workers by examining their labor and the products that came out of their labor. These highly skilled individuals carried out various tasks, yet the degree of their participation in scientific activities depended on the supervisor, gender, and geographical space. Efficiency was the primary driving factor in how astronomers delegated work at Mount Wilson Observatory, and gender facilitated the managerial practice of using geographical space to achieve efficiency. Such practice effectively created a glass ceiling only for women, and the gendered workspace may also have contributed toward an epistemic preference by astronomers for observation over computation.
{"title":"Finding the Invisible Workers in Astronomy","authors":"E. Ahn","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.555","url":null,"abstract":"Why do we remember some scientists while forgetting others who participated in the same knowledge-making process? Mount Wilson Observatory was founded in 1904 by George Ellery Hale near Pasadena in Southern California and is perhaps most famous for astronomer Edwin Hubble and his observations made with the 100-inch reflector telescope, which suggested that our universe is expanding. Moving away from the prominent astronomers, intellectual ideas, and telescopes at Mount Wilson Observatory, this article focuses on the work done by some of the forgotten participants such as human computers, who were mostly women, and telescope assistants, who were men, during the first two decades since its founding. By regarding Mount Wilson Observatory as a factory observatory that carried out specialty production, I narrate scientific knowledge-making from the perspectives of these workers by examining their labor and the products that came out of their labor. These highly skilled individuals carried out various tasks, yet the degree of their participation in scientific activities depended on the supervisor, gender, and geographical space. Efficiency was the primary driving factor in how astronomers delegated work at Mount Wilson Observatory, and gender facilitated the managerial practice of using geographical space to achieve efficiency. Such practice effectively created a glass ceiling only for women, and the gendered workspace may also have contributed toward an epistemic preference by astronomers for observation over computation.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84278267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.589
B. Bolman
In the mid–twentieth century, the supply and control of pound dogs was a crucial area of focus and political contestation for American researchers, teachers, and academic administrators. By tracing the growth of the University of Alabama at Birmingham from a small extension school to a center of biomedical research within that context, this article explores the political economy of pound dog acquisition, revealing how stray dogs became “salvage commodities.” Rabies, a disease that disproportionately threatened the American South during the period, was strategically instrumentalized by university actors to convert the city pound into an animal production facility and expand the supply of highly valued dogs. By analyzing how this system of production was sustained by a racially stratified labor force within an intensely segregated city, the article connects the history of laboratory organisms to ongoing studies of the history of science, medicine, and capitalism.
{"title":"In the Animal House","authors":"B. Bolman","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.5.589","url":null,"abstract":"In the mid–twentieth century, the supply and control of pound dogs was a crucial area of focus and political contestation for American researchers, teachers, and academic administrators. By tracing the growth of the University of Alabama at Birmingham from a small extension school to a center of biomedical research within that context, this article explores the political economy of pound dog acquisition, revealing how stray dogs became “salvage commodities.” Rabies, a disease that disproportionately threatened the American South during the period, was strategically instrumentalized by university actors to convert the city pound into an animal production facility and expand the supply of highly valued dogs. By analyzing how this system of production was sustained by a racially stratified labor force within an intensely segregated city, the article connects the history of laboratory organisms to ongoing studies of the history of science, medicine, and capitalism.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73048424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.485
Julia A. Marino
The critical technologies movement was an effort among Democrats and Republicans to enact policies to fund scientific research in twenty-three areas of technological growth crucial to economic competitiveness and military security. These areas included micro- and nanofabrication, ceramics, and software, among others. Unlike during the early Cold War when policymakers were unwilling to admit openly whether research and development spending constituted government intervention in the free market, with critical technologies, policymakers actively and publicly collaborated with business interests to selectively target technologies they believed were likely to proffer returns on government investment. This article traces the rise and fall of a political consensus: it discusses how and why these technologies were selected, the policies passed in this area, and ultimately, why this bipartisan convergence around critical technologies fell apart. More broadly, the critical technologies movement provides a fulcrum for understanding two key political shifts: how President Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats captured Silicon Valley and major business interests to their ascendant political coalition, and why the Republican Party compromised its free-market principles to support critical technologies in the leadup to the 1992 election.
{"title":"Fighting the Cold War and the “Market War” through Critical Technologies, 1979–1992","authors":"Julia A. Marino","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.485","url":null,"abstract":"The critical technologies movement was an effort among Democrats and Republicans to enact policies to fund scientific research in twenty-three areas of technological growth crucial to economic competitiveness and military security. These areas included micro- and nanofabrication, ceramics, and software, among others. Unlike during the early Cold War when policymakers were unwilling to admit openly whether research and development spending constituted government intervention in the free market, with critical technologies, policymakers actively and publicly collaborated with business interests to selectively target technologies they believed were likely to proffer returns on government investment.\u0000 This article traces the rise and fall of a political consensus: it discusses how and why these technologies were selected, the policies passed in this area, and ultimately, why this bipartisan convergence around critical technologies fell apart. More broadly, the critical technologies movement provides a fulcrum for understanding two key political shifts: how President Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats captured Silicon Valley and major business interests to their ascendant political coalition, and why the Republican Party compromised its free-market principles to support critical technologies in the leadup to the 1992 election.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89538618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.547
Melissa Reynolds
This essay is about horse medicine, or at least about the ways that horse medicine can help illuminate an interpretive problem within the field of the history of science. Chances are that you've heard quite a lot about one particular horse medicine lately, thanks to the popularity of the horse deworming drug Ivermectin as a (supposed) treatment for Covid-19. Despite multiple and increasingly dire warnings from medical authorities, the late summer of 2021 saw hordes of anti-vaccination activists swearing by Ivermectin as a far more effective treatment for the disease than the multiple FDA-approved vaccines available for free across the United States. Facebook groups such as "Ivermectin & how it worked for me" are overflowing with testimonies like one from a user on August 24, 2021, recording his experience taking Ivermectin after a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. This gentleman, who will remain anonymous in this essay, exercised his faculties of observation, dutifully recording his symptoms as they worsened over the course of ten days until he ended up in a hospital emergency room, where he was given an infusion of monoclonal antibodies. Did this experience affect his perspective on Ivermectin's efficacy? Hardly. He wrote on the day after his trip to the hospital that the problem wasn't Ivermectin, it was low dosage: "I needed 50 mg I was only taking 21. So I immediately took 50 mg. [...] I finally slept with my O2 levels staying up!!"(1)
{"title":"How to Cure a Horse, or, the Experience of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Experience","authors":"Melissa Reynolds","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.547","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is about horse medicine, or at least about the ways that horse medicine can help illuminate an interpretive problem within the field of the history of science. Chances are that you've heard quite a lot about one particular horse medicine lately, thanks to the popularity of the horse deworming drug Ivermectin as a (supposed) treatment for Covid-19. Despite multiple and increasingly dire warnings from medical authorities, the late summer of 2021 saw hordes of anti-vaccination activists swearing by Ivermectin as a far more effective treatment for the disease than the multiple FDA-approved vaccines available for free across the United States. Facebook groups such as \"Ivermectin & how it worked for me\" are overflowing with testimonies like one from a user on August 24, 2021, recording his experience taking Ivermectin after a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. This gentleman, who will remain anonymous in this essay, exercised his faculties of observation, dutifully recording his symptoms as they worsened over the course of ten days until he ended up in a hospital emergency room, where he was given an infusion of monoclonal antibodies. Did this experience affect his perspective on Ivermectin's efficacy? Hardly. He wrote on the day after his trip to the hospital that the problem wasn't Ivermectin, it was low dosage: \"I needed 50 mg I was only taking 21. So I immediately took 50 mg. [...] I finally slept with my O2 levels staying up!!\"(1)","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79547280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.524
C. Tabernero
In July 1974, a she-wolf allegedly killed two children in Ourense (Spain). A press outburst followed, with a heated debate about the extermination or conservation of wolf populations. This article examines that media coverage as a highly illustrative example of a multilayered process of natural history knowledge construction. The initial focus on the legal standing of wolves soon turned to an argument about Spain’s modernization, a central contention during Franco’s dictatorship, particularly in the last two decades. In a context of the rise of the natural sciences as a noteworthy field of sociopolitical negotiation worldwide, the scientific definition and management of natural heritage, intertwined with nationalist and internationalist rationales that were integral to the regime’s enduring legitimation strategies, quickly became central issues. In addition, Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928–1980), a highly influential naturalist, media icon, and celebrity champion of wolves, whose stance of a scientifically based activism elicited mixed feelings in late Franco’s Spain, was quickly drawn into the quarrel with shepherds, hunters, scholars, policymakers, and journalists. His involvement, against a backdrop of locally situated and environmentally related conflicts, allows us to analyze the ambivalent role of science, media, and celebrity in the establishment of the epistemological status of local/rural and outsider/urban knowledge in the construction of narratives about nature. In all, this case brings together official mechanisms of production of scientific knowledge, various forms of public and institutional engagement, a wide range of people’s everyday-life experiences, and the crucial involvement of the media.
1974年7月，据称一只母狼在欧伦塞(西班牙)杀死了两名儿童。随后，媒体爆发了一场关于灭绝还是保护狼的激烈辩论。这篇文章考察了媒体报道作为多层次自然历史知识建构过程的一个极具说明性的例子。最初对狼的法律地位的关注很快转向了关于西班牙现代化的争论，这是佛朗哥独裁统治期间的一个核心争论，尤其是在过去的20年里。在自然科学作为世界范围内值得注意的社会政治谈判领域兴起的背景下，自然遗产的科学定义和管理，与民族主义和国际主义的基本原理交织在一起，成为政权持久合法化战略的组成部分，迅速成为核心问题。此外，Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente(1928-1980)是一位极具影响力的博物学家、媒体偶像和狼的名人拥护者，他的科学行动主义立场在佛朗哥晚期的西班牙引起了复杂的感情，很快被卷入牧羊人、猎人、学者、政策制定者和记者的争吵中。他的参与，在当地和环境相关冲突的背景下，使我们能够分析科学，媒体和名人在建立当地/农村和外地人/城市知识的认识论地位方面的矛盾作用。总而言之，这一案例汇集了科学知识生产的官方机制、各种形式的公众和机构参与、广泛的人们日常生活经验以及媒体的关键参与。
{"title":"The Case of the Killer She-Wolf","authors":"C. Tabernero","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.4.524","url":null,"abstract":"In July 1974, a she-wolf allegedly killed two children in Ourense (Spain). A press outburst followed, with a heated debate about the extermination or conservation of wolf populations. This article examines that media coverage as a highly illustrative example of a multilayered process of natural history knowledge construction. The initial focus on the legal standing of wolves soon turned to an argument about Spain’s modernization, a central contention during Franco’s dictatorship, particularly in the last two decades. In a context of the rise of the natural sciences as a noteworthy field of sociopolitical negotiation worldwide, the scientific definition and management of natural heritage, intertwined with nationalist and internationalist rationales that were integral to the regime’s enduring legitimation strategies, quickly became central issues. In addition, Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928–1980), a highly influential naturalist, media icon, and celebrity champion of wolves, whose stance of a scientifically based activism elicited mixed feelings in late Franco’s Spain, was quickly drawn into the quarrel with shepherds, hunters, scholars, policymakers, and journalists. His involvement, against a backdrop of locally situated and environmentally related conflicts, allows us to analyze the ambivalent role of science, media, and celebrity in the establishment of the epistemological status of local/rural and outsider/urban knowledge in the construction of narratives about nature. In all, this case brings together official mechanisms of production of scientific knowledge, various forms of public and institutional engagement, a wide range of people’s everyday-life experiences, and the crucial involvement of the media.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73368047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.277
R. Leng, G. Viry, Miguel García-Sancho, James W. E. Lowe, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen
This special issue on sequences and sequencers uses new analytical approaches to re-assess the history of genomics. Historical attention has largely focused on a few central characters and institutions: those that participated in the Human Genome Project (HGP), especially its final stages. Our analysis—based on an assessment of almost 13.5 million DNA sequence submissions and 30,000 publications of human, yeast, and pig DNA sequences—followed overlapping chronologies starting before and finishing after the concerted efforts to sequence the genomes of each species: 1980 to 2000 in yeast, 1985 to 2005 for the human, and 1990 to 2015 for the pig. Our main conclusion is that when broader sequencing practices—especially those addressed to nonhuman species—are taken into account, the large-scale center model that characterized the organization of the HGP falls short in representing genomics as a whole. Instead of taking the HGP as a model, we describe an iterative process in which the practices of sequence submission and publication were entangled. Analysis of co-authorship networks between institutions derived from our data shows how linked sequence submission and publication were to medical, biochemical, and agricultural research. Our analysis thus reveals the utility of big data and mixed-methods approaches for addressing science as a multidimensional endeavor with a history shaped by co-constitutive, synchronic interactions among different elements—such as communities, species, and disciplines—as much as diachronic trajectories over time. This perspective enables us to better capture interdisciplinary and interspecies work, and offers a more fluid portrayal of the connections between scientific practices and agricultural, industrial, and medical goals. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.
{"title":"The Sequences and the Sequencers","authors":"R. Leng, G. Viry, Miguel García-Sancho, James W. E. Lowe, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.277","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue on sequences and sequencers uses new analytical approaches to re-assess the history of genomics. Historical attention has largely focused on a few central characters and institutions: those that participated in the Human Genome Project (HGP), especially its final stages. Our analysis—based on an assessment of almost 13.5 million DNA sequence submissions and 30,000 publications of human, yeast, and pig DNA sequences—followed overlapping chronologies starting before and finishing after the concerted efforts to sequence the genomes of each species: 1980 to 2000 in yeast, 1985 to 2005 for the human, and 1990 to 2015 for the pig. Our main conclusion is that when broader sequencing practices—especially those addressed to nonhuman species—are taken into account, the large-scale center model that characterized the organization of the HGP falls short in representing genomics as a whole. Instead of taking the HGP as a model, we describe an iterative process in which the practices of sequence submission and publication were entangled. Analysis of co-authorship networks between institutions derived from our data shows how linked sequence submission and publication were to medical, biochemical, and agricultural research. Our analysis thus reveals the utility of big data and mixed-methods approaches for addressing science as a multidimensional endeavor with a history shaped by co-constitutive, synchronic interactions among different elements—such as communities, species, and disciplines—as much as diachronic trajectories over time. This perspective enables us to better capture interdisciplinary and interspecies work, and offers a more fluid portrayal of the connections between scientific practices and agricultural, industrial, and medical goals. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75845154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.320
Miguel García-Sancho, R. Leng, G. Viry, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen, James W. E. Lowe
In this paper, we progressively de-center the Human Genome Project (HGP) in the history of genomics and human genomics. We show that the HGP, understood as an international effort to make the human reference genome sequence publicly available, constitutes a specific model of genomics: prominent and influential but nevertheless distinct from others that preceded, existed alongside, and succeeded it. Our analysis of a comprehensive corpus of publications describing human DNA sequences submitted to public databases from 1985 to 2005 reveals a plethora of authoring institutions, with only a few contributing to the HGP. Examining these publications in a co-authorship network enables us to propose two different sequencing approaches—horizontal and vertical sequencing—whose changing dynamics shaped the history of human genomics. We argue that investigating the extent to which different institutions combined these approaches or prioritized one of them captures the history of genomics better than using the categories of large-scale sequence production and sequence use, as much scholarly literature concerning the HGP has done. Sequence production and use became fully distinct only within the HGP model, and especially during the last stages of this endeavor. By exploring a collaboration between Celera Genomics, a large-scale sequencing institution, and two medical genetics laboratories, we show the potential of our co-authorship network and its analysis for historical research. Our study connects the historiographies of medical genetics and human genomics and indicates that the so-called translational gap from sequence data to clinical outcomes may reflect the assumption that genomics was substantially different from prior and parallel genetics research. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.
{"title":"The Human Genome Project as a Singular Episode in the History of Genomics","authors":"Miguel García-Sancho, R. Leng, G. Viry, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen, James W. E. Lowe","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.320","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we progressively de-center the Human Genome Project (HGP) in the history of genomics and human genomics. We show that the HGP, understood as an international effort to make the human reference genome sequence publicly available, constitutes a specific model of genomics: prominent and influential but nevertheless distinct from others that preceded, existed alongside, and succeeded it. Our analysis of a comprehensive corpus of publications describing human DNA sequences submitted to public databases from 1985 to 2005 reveals a plethora of authoring institutions, with only a few contributing to the HGP. Examining these publications in a co-authorship network enables us to propose two different sequencing approaches—horizontal and vertical sequencing—whose changing dynamics shaped the history of human genomics. We argue that investigating the extent to which different institutions combined these approaches or prioritized one of them captures the history of genomics better than using the categories of large-scale sequence production and sequence use, as much scholarly literature concerning the HGP has done. Sequence production and use became fully distinct only within the HGP model, and especially during the last stages of this endeavor. By exploring a collaboration between Celera Genomics, a large-scale sequencing institution, and two medical genetics laboratories, we show the potential of our co-authorship network and its analysis for historical research. Our study connects the historiographies of medical genetics and human genomics and indicates that the so-called translational gap from sequence data to clinical outcomes may reflect the assumption that genomics was substantially different from prior and parallel genetics research. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"88 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84052640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.476
Beans Velocci
{"title":"Wrenching Torque","authors":"Beans Velocci","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.476","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78248874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.361
Miguel García-Sancho, James Lowe, Gil Viry, R. Leng, Mark Wong, Niki Vermeulen
This paper examines the model of network genomics pioneered in the late 1980s and adopted in the European Commission-led Yeast Genome Sequencing Project (YGSP). It contrasted with the burgeoning large-scale center model being developed in the United States to sequence the yeast genome, chiefly as a pilot for tackling the human genome. We investigate the operation and connections of the two models by exploring a co-authorship network that captures different types of sequencing practices. In our network analysis, we focus on institutions that bridge both the European and American yeast whole-genome sequencing projects, and such concerted projects with non-concerted sequencing of yeast DNA. The institutions include two German biotechnology companies and Biozentrum, a research institute at Universität Basel that adopted yeast as a model to investigate cell biochemistry and molecular biology. Through assessing these bridging institutions, we formulate two analytical distinctions: between proximate and distal, and directed and undirected sequencing. Proximate and distal refer to the extent that intended users of DNA sequence data are connected to the generators of that data. Directed and undirected capture the extent to which sequencing was part of a specific research program. The networked European model, as mobilized in the YGSP, enabled the coexistence and cooperation of institutions exhibiting different combinations of these characteristics in contrast with the more uniformly distal and undirected large-scale centers. This contributes to broadening the historical boundaries of genomics and presenting a thicker historiography, one that inextricably meshes genomics with the trajectories of biotechnology and cell biology. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.
{"title":"Yeast Sequencing","authors":"Miguel García-Sancho, James Lowe, Gil Viry, R. Leng, Mark Wong, Niki Vermeulen","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.361","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the model of network genomics pioneered in the late 1980s and adopted in the European Commission-led Yeast Genome Sequencing Project (YGSP). It contrasted with the burgeoning large-scale center model being developed in the United States to sequence the yeast genome, chiefly as a pilot for tackling the human genome. We investigate the operation and connections of the two models by exploring a co-authorship network that captures different types of sequencing practices. In our network analysis, we focus on institutions that bridge both the European and American yeast whole-genome sequencing projects, and such concerted projects with non-concerted sequencing of yeast DNA. The institutions include two German biotechnology companies and Biozentrum, a research institute at Universität Basel that adopted yeast as a model to investigate cell biochemistry and molecular biology. Through assessing these bridging institutions, we formulate two analytical distinctions: between proximate and distal, and directed and undirected sequencing. Proximate and distal refer to the extent that intended users of DNA sequence data are connected to the generators of that data. Directed and undirected capture the extent to which sequencing was part of a specific research program. The networked European model, as mobilized in the YGSP, enabled the coexistence and cooperation of institutions exhibiting different combinations of these characteristics in contrast with the more uniformly distal and undirected large-scale centers. This contributes to broadening the historical boundaries of genomics and presenting a thicker historiography, one that inextricably meshes genomics with the trajectories of biotechnology and cell biology. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"128 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76223972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.401
James W. E. Lowe, R. Leng, G. Viry, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen, Miguel García-Sancho
The history of genomic research on the pig (Sus scrofa)—as uncovered through archival research, oral histories, and the analysis of a quantitative dataset and co-authorship network—demonstrates the importance of two distinct genealogies. These consist of research programs focused on agriculturally oriented genetics, on the one hand, and systematics research concerned with evolution and diversity, on the other. The relative weight of these two modes of research shifted following the production of a reference genome for the species from 2006 to 2011. Before this inflection point, the research captured in our networks mainly involved intensive sequencing that concentrated primarily on increasing the resolution of genomic data both in particular regions and more widely across the genome. Sequencing practices later became more extensive, with greater focus on the generation and comparison of sequence data across and between populations. We explain these shifts in research modes as a function of the availability, circulation, distribution, and exchange of genomic tools and resources—including data and materials—concerning the pig in general, and increasingly for particular populations. Consequently, we describe the history of pig genomics as constituting a kind of bricolage, in which geneticists cobbled together resources to which they had access—often ones produced by them for other purposes—in pursuit of their research aims. The concept of bricolage adds to the thicker vision of genomics that we have shown throughout the special issue and further highlights the singularity of the dominant, thin narrative focused on the production of the human reference sequence at large-scale genome centers. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.
{"title":"The Bricolage of Pig Genomics","authors":"James W. E. Lowe, R. Leng, G. Viry, Mark Wong, N. Vermeulen, Miguel García-Sancho","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2022.52.3.401","url":null,"abstract":"The history of genomic research on the pig (Sus scrofa)—as uncovered through archival research, oral histories, and the analysis of a quantitative dataset and co-authorship network—demonstrates the importance of two distinct genealogies. These consist of research programs focused on agriculturally oriented genetics, on the one hand, and systematics research concerned with evolution and diversity, on the other. The relative weight of these two modes of research shifted following the production of a reference genome for the species from 2006 to 2011. Before this inflection point, the research captured in our networks mainly involved intensive sequencing that concentrated primarily on increasing the resolution of genomic data both in particular regions and more widely across the genome. Sequencing practices later became more extensive, with greater focus on the generation and comparison of sequence data across and between populations. We explain these shifts in research modes as a function of the availability, circulation, distribution, and exchange of genomic tools and resources—including data and materials—concerning the pig in general, and increasingly for particular populations. Consequently, we describe the history of pig genomics as constituting a kind of bricolage, in which geneticists cobbled together resources to which they had access—often ones produced by them for other purposes—in pursuit of their research aims. The concept of bricolage adds to the thicker vision of genomics that we have shown throughout the special issue and further highlights the singularity of the dominant, thin narrative focused on the production of the human reference sequence at large-scale genome centers. This essay is part of a special issue entitled The Sequences and the Sequencers: A New Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Yeast, Human, and Pig Genomics, edited by Michael García-Sancho and James Lowe.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79462551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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