Tag Archives: public understandings of science

New Publication: Book Review of Rom Harré’s “Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat: Scenes from the Living Laboratory”

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I wrote a book review for the journal Public Understanding of Science of Rom Harré’s Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat: Scenes from the Living Laboratory (Oxford University Press, 2009). Here is a short excerpt:

Harré spends considerable time describing the use of plants in experiments, phenomena that demand more scholarly and public attention. He paints a picture of science teeming with diverse vital matter: animals, plants, bacteria, lichen, humans, and even “imaginary beings.” The implied thesis emphasizes research with life rather than on life.

I think the book would work well as reading material for introductory courses in science studies or animal studies.

Public Perspectives on the Utilization of Human Placentas in Scientific Research and Medicine: New Publication

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I have a new publication appearing in the journal Placenta entitled “Public perspectives on the utilization of human placentas in scientific research and medicine.” Here is the abstract:

Placental tissues are frequently utilized by scientists studying pregnancy and reproduction and in diverse fields including immunology, stem cell research, genetics, cancer research, and tissue engineering, as well as by clinicians in many therapies. Though the utilization of the human placenta in science and medicine has benefitted many people, little is known about public perspectives of this phenomenon. This review addresses placental donation, collection, and utilization in science and medicine, focusing on public perspectives. Cultural values and traditions, ethical paradigms and concerns, public understandings of science and medicine, and political considerations may impact perceptions of the utilization of the placenta in science and medicine, but systematic study is lacking. It is argued that knowledge of public views gained from empirical investigation may underpin the development of collection protocols and research projects that are more responsive to public will, spur more extensive utilization in science and medicine of this unique organ, and/or aid in the realization of the mobilization of knowledge about the placenta for clinical and educational ends. New avenues for research on public perspectives of the placenta are proposed.

Keywords: Placenta donation, Public understandings of science, Ethics, Donor perceptions

I wrote this article to point to the lack of research on public perspectives of the placenta, address the implications of this gap, and call for more research attention. The article serves as a backdrop for one of my current collaborative studies, which assesses women’s perspectives of donating the placenta to science and medicine in Campinas, Brazil.

I would like to thank the editors of Placenta and their anonymous reviewers. I was impressed by the process, feedback, and their willingness to consider publishing the work of a social scientist in a scientific journal.

I am very interested to hear comments and in particular would like to know of the perspectives of women who have given birth, women who have donated their placentas or been asked to donate, and scientists who study the organ. What is the meaning of the placenta for you? What do you think about the use of placentas in scientific research and medicine?

Intercambios: Cross-disciplinary, Cross-cultural, and Cross-language Experiences Studying the Placenta on Exchange in Brazil

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I wrote this writeup at the request of my supervisor to promote the work I am doing on exchange in Brazil.

On Exchange

I am passionate about and committed to research that moves between, beyond, and across disciplinary boundaries, particularly those that seem, to me, to be the most fortified: ones that divide the sciences from the social sciences. In my case, I work to traverse divides between sociology and reproductive biology, a project that has brought me, much to my surprise, to Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. As a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, I am currently participating in a research exchange at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Having arrived over one month ago, I can attest to the richness of the invaluable experiences I have gained here in Brazil and am pleased to report on the exciting research I am conducting.

Dr. B. Anne Croy, Queen’s biologist and Canada Research Chair, Dr. Aureo Yamada, her longtime collaborator and UNICAMP biologist, and co-applicants and Queen’s researchers Dr. Charles Graham, Dr. Chandrakant Tayade, Dr. Myra J. Hird, and Dr. Graeme Smith, received a grant to create a research exchange project for their PhD students from a program established last year by the Canadian and Brazilian governments and administered by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). Though focusing primarily on reproductive sciences and especially on using mouse models to study pregnancy, Dr. Croy and Dr. Yamada invited me, on the suggestion of my supervisor Dr. Myra J. Hird in the Department of Sociology, to participate in the exchange. When I eagerly agreed, they asked me to plan a research project for a 6 month stay in Brazil.

Current Research

As a sociologist I study science, and specifically, I study placenta science. It may be surprising to learn that the placenta has a prolific life in science. Of course, the placenta is studied extensively in reproductive biology, since it is central to pregnancy and can be highly determinative of pregnancy outcomes. Yet the placenta is also convenient to study in fields beyond reproductive biology, because the tissue is large, widely available, often considered “waste,” and has many interesting and diverse properties. It has a wide variety of scientific applications in many fields including immunology, cancer research, toxicology, and tissue engineering. Because of this, placentas are regularly collected in hospitals around the world and utilized in scientific experiments. All of my research is concerned with the practices of placental donation, collection, and use in science.

When asked to participate in the exchange, I had just completed the fieldwork for my ethnographic study of placenta science and scientists. With financial support from SSHRC, Queen’s University, and the Department of Sociology’s Blakely Student Initiatives Fund, I had the privilege of conducting fieldwork, including observation and interviewing, in 4 countries with 31 participants involved in placenta science. These participants included leading, senior, and early career scientists, graduate students, laboratory technicians, and hospital staff from different 10 countries. I sought to ascertain the social dynamics of this diverse field and to explore the relationship between it and society at large.

During interviews, placenta scientists often reported believing that, with few exceptions, women generally do not care about the fate of their placenta once it is delivered. In my analysis, I noted that this belief was used to reconcile or qualify the ethical dilemmas they experienced in working with this organ. However, given how pervasive the practice is, neither scientific nor social scientific research has adequately established pregnant and post-partum women’s level of support for placental collection and research, nor how such support might vary in different cultural contexts.

I had a vague goal of developing such a study before being invited to Brazil, but the exchange presented a funded opportunity to refine my ideas and actualize a novel and exciting research project. Brazil provides a unique and important case through which to explore women’s opinions of placental donation and use in science, as religious views, indigenous cultures, socio-economic disparities, public understandings of science, cultural values, legal structures, and familial structures may significantly shape women’s views of placental donation.

I proposed the study and it was quickly accepted as part of larger and ongoing research work on women and children’s health in Brazil. I was welcomed as a research team member at the Centro de Pesquisas Materno-Infantis de Campinas (CEMICAMP), a research centre at UNICAMP which focuses on sexual and reproductive health and rights. It works closely in interdisciplinary collaboration with the Centro de Atenção Integral à Saúde da Mulher (CAISM), the women’s hospital here at UNICAMP, where I was also welcomed as an associate. My mentors and collaborators include Dr. Maria José Duarte Osis, a CEMICAMP researcher, Dr. José Guilherme Cecatti, an obstetrician-gynecologist, graduate coordinator, and Director of Maternity Services at CAISM, and Simony Lira, a graduate student at CAISM.

We are conducting a survey to be analyzed quantitatively and interviews to be analyzed qualitatively with 384 and 10-15 women, respectively, who have given birth at CAISM, asking their opinions of and experiences with placental donation. We believe results of this research will lead to important and interesting insights regarding the relationship between science, medicine, and publics, as well as open avenues for further research such as cross-cultural, comparative studies. It is my hope that this research will not only illuminate topics of sociological and scientific interests but will also, in assessing one indicator of the level of support for scientific research on the placenta, ultimately benefit the health and wellbeing of women and children.

Experiences in Brazil

Brazil is a wonderful place in which to live and conduct research. I was immediately impressed with the welcome and level of support I received from countless new friends. I was very uncertain my first weeks in Brazil as the culture, language, climate, and city were unfamiliar to me, and indeed, I missed home. However, rarely did I have reason to worry. I have been welcomed at many parties, other social functions, and in various laboratories. I have received unlimited help in navigating the admittedly thick bureaucracy here in Brazil. Much to my delight, I have the opportunity to learn Portuguese in a language course at UNICAMP, complemented by the help of my colleagues and friends who recognize the value in developing an international literacy and collaborative network. Finally, I’m learning capoeira, a distinctively Brazilian martial art that incorporates rhythmic music and dance. This is just one example of the unique cultural experience available in Brazil.

In Portuguese, intercambios means exchanges. Each day I am in Brazil, I have the opportunity to exchange: to move between, beyond, and across not only universities, but cultures, languages, and disciplines. It is a privilege.

Coffee Shop as a Microcosm for Public Understandings of Science

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Today at a coffee shop I spied a bit on the greeting and conversation of two men who appeared to be close friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. As one of them went up to get his coffee, he asked the other if he would like one. The man said yes – even though he had already had a lot today. It wasn’t a problem, he said, as he had just heard of a new study which found that men who drink a lot of coffee have lower rates of prostate cancer.

The study he is referring to was recently widely reported in media (CBC, Science Daily, MSNBC, CBS News, etc.). It purports that men who drink 6 or more cups of coffee a day are less likely to get an aggressive form of prostate cancer (original research here).

The men had a little chuckle (and a little more coffee) and went about their reunion, while I started thinking about the encounter as reflective of the relationships between science and publics. In the CBC news article, one of the researchers is quoted:

It is premature to recommend that men increase coffee intake to reduce advanced prostate cancer risk based on this single study. In addition, the effects of coffee consumption on other aspects of health must be considered in making consumption recommendations.

So, as readers we can’t take away much more from the study than “that’s interesting. They should keep working on that.” As a supporter of and advocate for science, this notion resonates with me. But I wonder if that is enough for others.

While cautious statements like these mean much in the context of science which places so much emphasis on qualification and admitting limitations, they provide very little guidance on how publics should act on the knowledge produced. I can’t know whether the study actually informed the decision-making of the man at the coffee shop; however, I think the conversation illustrates a typical disjoint in the translation of the ‘official recommendation’ that comes from science to the everyday lives of people who are plunking along making decisions towards their short and long term health, happiness, and satisfaction. They make these decisions in a context where there is too little known and where too much of what is known is contradictory. And they make these decisions using knowledge that comes from diverse realms of life – not just science.

Since the study cannot offer any actionable advice, how are publics to “digest” the knowledge shared? Certainly if it is the case that the man decided to drink more coffee because of the study, this means that the disclaimer provided by the researchers may not be what “sticks” in the minds of readers about the research. The coffee shop encounter, then, raises ethical questions for researchers who are sharing their work. What if it is later found that the harms of drinking coffee outweigh the benefits? Or that there is some other explanation for the results of the study that are unrelated to compounds in coffee? I could go on – but the point is that uncertainty colours the knowledge produced by this study in many different ways. If it is the case that the man drank more coffee because of the study, their disclaimer does not absolve them of facing the ethical challenge posed by uncertainty in scientific knowledge. Still, if only “absolutely certain” results were shared with the public, well, we’d never hear from science again.

So my questions are: At what point in the production of scientific knowledge is it most advantageous to inform publics of what scientists are doing and finding? How should the knowledge be presented?

Congress 2010: Evelyn Fox Keller, Climate Change Science, and Scientific Literacy

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The Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science hosted a lecture by prolific science studies scholar Evelyn Fox Keller during this year’s Congress. In her talk “Climate Science, Truth, and Democracy,” Keller discussed how, why, and towards what outcomes scientific experts have thus far engaged in public and political debates on climate change. She argued that nothing in scientific training prepares scientists to communicate their findings with publics; furthermore, many scientists are unwilling to do so because they fear being perceived as being “unscientific” or “political.” Scientists are committed to the belief that science is capable of delivering value-free access to truth. Instead of strengthening the case for their claims about climate change, this has weakened them precisely because it is used as a reason to shy away from public discourses and debates, which are then not as informed by scientific knowledge as they could be.  This disengagement of scientists from public debates has enabled the climate change “deniers” to have an incredible and unbalanced amount of airtime and attention.

Scientists then, must engage with publics, and this will mean that they recognize that science is not apolitical. But confidence in science is still possible. Scientific claims are made very carefully; with proper understanding of the basis of scientific claims, we can see them as “true enough” for us to make decisions about whether and how to act on them. Keller suggested that scientific claims give us our best shot at understanding the past, present, and future – especially of climate change.

Keller’s recommendation is that their needs to be training on how to clearly and effectively articulate the findings of science built  into the education and professionalization of scientists. This is a reformulation of conventional understandings of “scientific literacy,” which normally refers to the need for publics to be better educated on how science works and why its claims are compelling. Instead, Keller advanced a kind of “public literacy” for scientists.

While I appreciated Keller’s argument for the public literacy of scientists, I felt it rested very heavily on her belief in the evidence supporting the existence of anthropogenic climate change. While I certainly support this, I wonder how her analysis would play out differently for phenomena for which there isn’t such unified scientific consensus, or for which there are competing knowledge claims coming from outside of science (like knowledge with a religious or experiential base). I’m left wondering whether Keller’s reformulation of scientific literacy is really the same thing as the dissemination model of public understandings of science, in which there is a one-way flow of information between scientists and publics – particularly if the training she argues for better equips them to “tell their story,” but not to hear the stories of others.

Do scientists make the most compelling knowledge claims? What should be the weight and credence of their expertise? For me, Keller’s talk has provided a provocative basis upon which to start to think through these questions.

Post edit: My colleague Mark Vardy is doing some great work on climate change and democracy that you should check out.