Materials

Klintman, Mikael. 2002. "The Genetically Modified (GM) Food Labelling Controversy: Ideological and Epistemic Crossovers." Social Studies of Science 32:71-91.

In the debate surrounding genetically modified (GM) food, intense controversies pertain over whether, or how, GM food products ought to be labelled. This paper examines how the GM-supportive and GM-sceptical alliances use arguments regarding labelling so as to strengthen their respective positions. It is an examination of conflicting arguments across social coalitions, corporations and policy-makers, mainly in the USA, but with certain European comparisons. The empirical material consists of written statements by the different groups. The paper suggests that the ideological and epistemological tenets are radically transformed, or even 'crossed over', between GM proponents and opponents when the focus is moved from GM per se to labelling. Two types of crossovers are identified: (i) the crossover of ideologies, and (ii) the crossover of epistemologies. The paper concludes that, while implementing mandatory GM labelling may have several democratic advantages, it is more urgent that both alliances become more reflexive and communicative concerning inconsistent or eclectic crossovers -both ideological and epistemological.
Keywords: alliances, critical realism, consumerism, epistemic relativism, framing, strategy

Levidow, Les. 2001. "Precautionary Uncertainty: Regulating GM Crops in Europe." Social Studies of Science 31:842-874.

Through the precautionary principle, governments acknowledge the limits of science as a basis for policy, while seeking to clarify scientific uncertainty. This tension is exemplified by the European risk regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops. The risk debate has been translated into various precautionary approaches, each with its own cognitive framing of the relevant uncertainties. Early safety claims took for granted intensive agricultural models; normative judgements served to downplay uncertainties which were not readily reducible, thus justifying commercial approval of products. In the late 1990s public protest strengthened broader accounts of uncertainty, for example through more stringent environmental norms and more complex causal pathways of potential harm. Fact-finding methods were debated as a value-laden choice for how best to generate more relevant knowledge. As risk-assessment research challenged assumptions in safety claims, critics cited the results as evidence of greater uncertainty. Invoking the precautionary principle, regulatory procedures delayed or restricted commercial use of GM crops. They not only increased the burden of evidence for safety, but also stimulated and requested knowledge about more complex uncertainties. Criteria for relevant evidence were implicitly linked with different framing visions for agriculture. Such value conflicts made scientific uncertainty more important -rather than vice versa. When risk research methods were challenged, fact value boundaries were blurred, thus increasing 'uncertainty' -rather than vice versa. In these ways, the risk controversy was constituted by divergent accounts of the relevant scientific uncertainty. Uncertainty was constitutive, not merely contextual. In general, then, precaution offers a means to justify uncertainty -not simply vice versa.
Keywords: Bt insect-protected maize, genetically modified (GM) crops, herbicide- tolerant oilseed rape, Precautionary Principle, risk assessment, scientific evidence

Crist, Eileen. 2004. "Can an Insect Speak?: The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language." Social Studies of Science 34:7-43.

In this paper I investigate the scientific understanding of the honeybee dance language. I elucidate the implicit and explicit reasons why the honeybees' communication system has been referred to as a 'language', and examine the ways this designation has entangled the themes of animal mind and human– animal continuity. I end with an investigation of a scientific controversy surrounding the honeybee dance language. I argue that this controversy was a battle over assumptions regarding insect capacities, and a willingness or unwillingness to abandon those assumptions in the face of a phenomenon that undermined them.
Keywords: animal mind, form of life, honeybee, human–animal continuity, language

Gottweis, Herbert. 1995. "German Politics of Genetic Engineering and its Deconstruction." Social Studies of Science 25:195-235.

Policy-making, as exemplified by biotechnology policy, can be understood as an attempt to manage a field of discursivity, to construct regularity in a dispersed multitude of combinable elements. Following this perspective of politics as a textual process, the paper interprets the politicization of genetic engineering in Germany as a defense of the political as a regime of heterogeneity, as a field of 'dissensus' rather than 'consensus', and a rejection of the idea that the framing of technological transformation is an autonomous process. From its beginnings in the early 1970s, genetic engineering was symbolically entrenched as a key technology of the future, and as an integral element of the German politics of modernization. Attempts by new social movements and the Green Party to displace the egalitarian imaginary of democratic discourse into the politics of genetic engineering were construed by the political elites as an attack on the political order of post-World War I1 Germany. The 1990 Genetic Engineering Law attempted a closure of this controversy. But it is precisely the homogenizing idiom of this 'settlement' which continues to nourish the social movements and their radical challenge to the definitions and codings of the politics of genetic engineering.

Kim, Kyung-Man. 1991. "On the Reception of Johannsen's Pure Line Theory: Toward a Sociology of Scientific Validity." Social Studies of Science 21:649-679.

There have been ongoing controversies between Barnes and Roll-Hansen as to the rationality of Johannsen's pure line theory around 7970. While RON- Hansen argues that the victory of Mendelism and pure line theory over biometry is the result obtained from the methodical application of scientific methods by the scient~fic community, Barnes argues that RON- Hansen's criticism represents a massive leap beyond the findings he makes available. According to Barnes, RoN- Hansen's study of an individual scientist (Johannsen) does not enable him to extend his rationalistic argument to the biological community in general. This paper contributes to this ongoing debate by adding a detailed description of the social process of mutual persuasion among scientists, and thereby attempts to show why and how pure line theory comes to be accepted by the biological community. By presenting four cases of biometricians who were converted to Johannsen's theory, I specifically argue that the natural world plays a much more important role in the validation of pure line theory than MacKenzie and Barnes suppose in their externalist-sociologica/studies of the biometry-Mendelism controversy.

Ramsden, Edmund. 2002. "Carving up Population Science: Eugenics, Demography and the Controversy over the 'Biological Law' of Population Growth." Social Studies of Science 32:857-899.

Using the analytical framework of boundary-work, I examine how the cultural space of demography, its borders and its territories, were constructed and reconstructed as scientists continuously struggled to maintain, increase, and defend the cognitive authority of science and particular interpretations of reality. While the emerging field of population united both biologists and social scientists in the early 20th century, the controversy over the biologist Raymond Pearl's logistic curve in the inter-war period became one of the defining features in the development of the population sciences in the United States. Pearl's use of the logistic curve reflected his biologically determinist vision of human progress and the definition and function of science within that process. Pearl's critics, the majority numbered among the social sciences, opposed such an imperialistic vision. With the weakening of Pearl's influence, American demography was clearly defined as a social science. In disciplinary histories, Pearl's defeat is attributed to scientific progress and the collapse of credibility for the eugenics movement. Thus a history of a scientific progression from biological determinism to social empiricism is combined with a shift from population ideology to population science. Yet the attack on the biological laws in the 1930s had as much to do with differing opinions as how to best regulate a population according to eugenic standards, as it was a struggle between a biologically determinist eugenics and a social science of reform.
Keywords: boundary-work, demography, eugenics, population biology

Wright, Susan. 1986. "Molecular Biology or Molecular Politics? The Production of Scientific Consensus on the Hazards of Recombinant DNA Technology." Social Studies of Science 16:593-620.

This paper examines an early phase of the controversy over the hazards of recombinant DNA technology in the United States, in the period 1976-78, during which agreement was reached within the biomedical~community that these hazards were minimal. The proceedings of three scientific meetings that are generally agreed to have been central events in the emergence of this new perception of recombinant DNA hazards are examined. Techniques previously used to examine policy making on non-technical issues are applied here to analyze the formation of this scientific consensus. These techniques are used to show how certain social characteristics of the meetings -the sponsorship and organization of the meetings, informal processes affecting the scope of the proceedings, and the dissemination of the results -acted as Social filters' for the complex set of perceptions of recombinant DNA hazards with which the scientific community started. In contrast to the received view of the recombinant DNA controversy, according to which the issue was resolved at a technical level, this paper argues that social dimensions of the decision process were crucial to the outcome.

Lewenstein, Bruce V. 1995. "From Fax to Facts: Communication in the Cold Fusion Saga." Social Studies of Science 25:403-436.

Science in the mass media is usually interpreted in terms of traditional, linear, 'dissemination and translation' models of science communication. Using the cold fusion saga that began in 1989, this paper argues that communication among scientists uses many media, which interact in complex ways. A more appropriate model for modern science must account for the permeable boundaries between formal publications, preprints, electronic computer networks, fax machines, mass media presentations and other forums for scientific discussions. The new model must account for the paradox that increased communication activity may be associated with instability rather than stability, at least in the preliminary periods of a scientific controversy.

Olazaran, Mikel. 1996. "A Sociological Study of the Official History of the Perceptrons Controversy." Social Studies of Science 26:611-659.

In this paper, I analyze the controversy within Artificial Intelligence (Al) which surrounded the 'perceptron' project (and neural nets in general) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I devote particular attention to the proofs and arguments of Minsky and Papert, which were interpreted as showing that further progress in neural nets was not possible, and that this approach to A1 had to be abandoned, I maintain that this official interpretation of the debate was a result of the emergence, institutionalization and (importantly) legitimation of the symbolic A1 approach (with its resource allocation system and authority structure). At the 'research-area' level, there was considerable interpretative flexibility. This interpretative flexibility was further demonstrated by the revival of neural nets in the late 1980s, and subsequent rewriting of the official history of the debate.

Cole, Simon A. 1996. "Which Came First, the Fossil or the Fuel?" Social Studies of Science 26:733-766.

This paper chronicles a challenge to the conventional theory of petroleum generation mounted by astro- and geophysicist Thomas Gold. Beginning in the late 1970s, Gold revived the 'abiogenic' theory, which holds that hydrocarbons are primordial, not remnants of decayed biology. By contesting the central tenet of petroleum geology, Gold precipitated a bitter scientific controversy. Both sides employed novel rhetorical strategies in order to impute interests, to contest expertise, to recruit allies from peripheral disciplines, and to claim the mantle of scientific method; and both managed to construct plausible interpretations of the available data. We follow the controversy to Sweden, where two 'crucial experiments', deep wells drilled in igneous bedrock from 1986 to 1992, still failed to resolve the controversy. The oil well proves to be an unruly scientific instrument, difficult to construct and even more difficult to keep free of various forms of 'pollution', ranging from bacteria to drilling mud to simple greed.

Del Sesto, Steven L. 1983. "Uses of Knowledge and Values in Technical Controversies: The Case of Nuclear Reactor Safety in the US." Social Studies of Science 13:395-416.

This paper addresses some sociological and political factors related to the creation, use, and control of knowledge and information in technical disputes. This is accomplished by way of a content analysis of testimony of pro- and anti- nuclear witnesses speaking on nuclear reactor safety before the US Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1973-74. The analysis attempts to show how competing social groups impose their 'world views' as cognitive, non-evaluative definitions of reality, and that some groups are in a better political position to achieve this through the use of influence and power. The findings suggest that the use of evaluative intelligence in the hearings is a function of location in the political process rather than simply a function of group affiliation as such. It is concluded that the state of cognitive knowledge itself may play a more limited role than we think in determining the kinds of informational inputs to the policy process. Future research should concentrate on the ways in which groups and individuals succeed in anchoring their claims in culture, socioeconomic arrangements, and in political parties, as well as on the ways in which opposing groups control the use of knowledge in order to validate their own world views as cognitive definitions of the situation.

Beder, Sharon. 1991. "Controversy and Closure: Sydney's Beaches in Crisis." Social Studies of Science 21:223-256.

In this paper, the controversy over sewage pollution on Sydney beaches and how it should be remedied is used to analyze the concept of 'closure', and what it means for technological controversies. Various parties to this controversy attempted to resolve it in several ways: by redefining sewage pollution as an aesthetic problem; by negotiating a consensus at the decision-makers' level about water quality standards; by putting forward what appeared to be 'sound arguments'; and by the use of rhetoric. The paper explores the difficulties in applying categories of 'closure: and its usefulness as a framework for understanding the dynamics of a controversy, and the power relationships between those involved.

Martin, Brian. 1988. "Analyzing the Fluoridation Controversy: Resources and Structures." Social Studies of Science 18:331-363.

The fluoridation issue provides a test of some of the usual approaches to the analysis of scientific controversies. One of the important features of the fluoridation debate has been the use of professional power to promote fluoridation and to attack the credibility and activities of anti-fluoridation scientists. To incorporate this feature, the 'resources' perspective must be broadened to include resources besides discourse. Even so, the resources perspective cannot touch certain key questions, such as why fluoridation was so heavily promoted originally. For this, a structural analysis is useful, though it needs to be extended to include more scope for human agency.

Levidow, Les. 2001. "Precautionary Uncertainty: Regulating GM Crops in Europe." Social Studies of Science 31:842-874.

Through the precautionary principle, governments acknowledge the limits of science as a basis for policy, while seeking to clarify scientific uncertainty. This tension is exemplified by the European risk regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops. The risk debate has been translated into various precautionary approaches, each with its own cognitive framing of the relevant uncertainties. Early safety claims took for granted intensive agricultural models; normative judgements served to downplay uncertainties which were not readily reducible, thus justifying commercial approval of products. In the late 1990s public protest strengthened broader accounts of uncertainty, for example through more stringent environmental norms and more complex causal pathways of potential harm. Fact-finding methods were debated as a value-laden choice for how best to generate more relevant knowledge. As risk-assessment research challenged assumptions in safety claims, critics cited the results as evidence of greater uncertainty. Invoking the precautionary principle, regulatory procedures delayed or restricted commercial use of GM crops. They not only increased the burden of evidence for safety, but also stimulated and requested knowledge about more complex uncertainties. Criteria for relevant evidence were implicitly linked with different framing visions for agriculture. Such value conflicts made scientific uncertainty more important -rather than vice versa. When risk research methods were challenged, facttvalue boundaries were blurred, thus increasing 'uncertainty' -rather than vice versa. In these ways, the risk controversy was constituted by divergent accounts of the relevant scientific uncertainty. Uncertainty was constitutive, not merely contextual. In general, then, precaution offers a means to justify uncertainty -not simply vice versa.
Keywords: Bt insect-protected maize, genetically modified (GM) crops, herbicide- tolerant oilseed rape, Precautionary Principle, risk assessment, scientific evidence

Palladino, Paolo. 1990. "Ecological Theory and Pest Control Practice: A Study of the Institutional and Conceptual Dimensions of a Scientific Debate." Social Studies of Science 20:255-281.

During the 1960s, the relationship between ecological theory and pest control practice was the subject of controversy between two groups of entomologists, one based in California and the other in Canada. Both groups were committed to the development of an 'ecological' pest control strategy based on the integration of 'biological control' -the use of predators and parasites to control pest populations -and the dominant chemical approach. Yet, they disagreed on the precise details of the relationship between ecological theory and the formulation of guidelines for the development of this integrated strategy. Consideration of institutional and conceptual problems shows that these different perspectives were shaped, but not necessarily determined, by the institutional context within which they were articulated. Attention is therefore drawn to the complexity of the relationship between ideas and institutions, and to the need for a broader approach to historiographical practice.

Brante, Thomas, and Margareta Hallberg. 1991. "Brain or Heart? The Controversy over the Concept of Death." Social Studies of Science 21:389-413.

Extended controversies over a new definition of death have occurred in most Western countries, providing good examples of the kind of 'science-based' disputes that increasingly characterize the policy of contemporary welfare states. In this paper, with the aim of introducing and testing a conceptual framework capable of capturing the more general features of such controversies. we reconstruct and examine the death-concept dispute in Sweden. The controversy is approached from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective. First concepts are proposed for characterizing its origin, crystallization and termination. Then. we categorize and outline its 'argumentative structure' and typically 'mixed' character. Finally, we discuss some key concepts for understanding the sources of rival contentions, and apply them in more detail. In conclusion, we suggest that science-based controversies constitute an important research site for turning extant sociology and philosophy of science into a more politically relevant research field.

Coutinho, Marilia. 1999. "Ninety Years of Chagas Disease: A Success Story at the Periphery." Social Studies of Science 29:519-549.

Peripheral countries are at a disadvantage with respect to the construction of scientific knowledge, which is mostly carried out by a small number of traditional core loci countries. However, in a few cases, groups of scientists are able to break through exclusion barriers. Sometimes they tackle relevant issues, share values and procedures with core loci representatives, and take part in heated controversies: in short, they participate in the construction of legitimate science. These scientists form 'centres of excellence' in scientifically marginal countries. In this paper, contextual conditions involving the emergence, establishment and decline of such enterprises are discussed, on the basis of examples drawn from the history of Chagas disease (Cd). In this history, we see a major discovery established, deconstructed and re-established. Quantitative analyses of publications on Cd over 70 years show the relation between the choice of different types of journals and methodological approaches, and the legitimation strategies adopted by different groups of practitioners. It also shows the outcomes of such strategies in terms of production concentration, emergence of new authors and growth of institutional work. This story shows that it is important for the pioneers to establish a different intellectual culture in their local environment. Unless they do so, and gain its acceptance among their immediate colleagues, the enterprise cannot preserve its status as a centre of excellence.

Edmond, Gary, and David Mercer. 2000. "Litigation Life: Law-Science Knowledge Construction in (Bendectin) Mass Toxic Tort Litigation." Social Studies of Science 30:265-316.

In recent decades, large-scale product liability litigation, so-called 'mass torts', have become increasingly visible on the US legal and political landscape. Invariably, mass tort litigation incorporates a range of specialist scientific knowledges. Drawing upon fairly conventional images of law and science, most judges and legal commentators attribute the apparent difficulties encountered in addressing the refractory issues involved with scientific evidence in mass torts to uncertainties, jury incomprehension, partisan scientists and the distortion of evidence caused by the adversarial legal system ('sociologies of error'). Adopting a more symmetrical social constructivist approach to scientific evidence, this paper endeavours to account for some of the complexities in the litigation surrounding the anti-nausea drug Bendectin. Rather than interpret the Bendectin litigation as an instance of the judges eventually valuing the scientific evidence properly, and thus resolving the controversy (the truth winning out), this paper explores the manner in which lawyers, scientists and judgestogether 'negotiated' a series of cases and judgments which privileged epidemiology as a means of 'resolving' a recurrent socio-legal 'problem'.
Keywords: court, expert evidence, junk science, law, product liability, scientific controversy

Fadlon, Judith, and Noah Lewin-Epstein. 1997. "Laughter Spreads: Another Perspective on Boundary Crossing in the Benveniste Affair." Social Studies of Science 27:131-141.

We suggest that comprehension of the nature of scientific controversy calls for analysis which extends beyond the confines of the professional scientific community. Linking theoretical concepts of contingent and constitutive forums with the idea of explicit and implicit rejection, we contend that the explanation for the shift between forums and modes of rejection in the course of scientific controversy can often be found outside the boundaries of the scientific community. For this reason, the interaction between the professional and lay communities and their respective concerns should be considered when analysing the intensity, duration and outcome of scientific controversy.

Garrety, Karin. 1997. "Social Worlds, Actor-Networks and Controversy: The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat and Heart Disease." Social Studies of Science 27:727-773.

Knowledge which links dietary fat and cholesterol to coronary heart disease (CHD) has been controversial for more than forty years. While policies advocating fat and cholesterol restriction are now deeply ingrained in affluent western societies, the scientific 'facts' on which they are supposedly based are highly contested. Applying concepts from actor- network theory and the symbolic interactionist social worlds approach, I argue that knowledge and dietary recommendations relating to cholesterol, fat and CHD are the outcome of complex social negotiations which can only be understood in their cultural, commercial and political contexts. Policies were framed in the 1960s before )roof' of their efficacy was available. Since then, ambiguous experimental results have been shaped to support the policies. I argue that, despite its many attractive features, actor-network theory cannot adequately deal with protracted controversies. Social worlds theory provides a much more useful framework for investigating long debates in which the 'facts' remain elusive.

Jasanoff, Sheila S. 1987. "Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science." Social Studies of Science 17:195-230.

In the United States, as in other industrialized nations, regulatory decisions to protect the environment and public health depend heavily on scientific information. Yet the process of decision-making places unusual strains on science. Knowledge claims are deconstructed during the rule-making process, exposing areas of weakness or uncertainty and threatening the cognitive authority of science. At the same time, the legitimacy of the final regulatory decision depends upon the regulator's ability to reconstruct a plausible scientific rationale for the proposed action. The processes of deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge claims give rise to competition among scientists, public officials and political interest groups, all of whom have a stake in determining how policy-relevant science should be interpreted and by whom. All of these actors use boundary-defining language in order to distinguish between science and policy, and to allocate the right to interpret science in ways that further their own interests. This paper explores the contours of such boundary disputes in the context of controversies over carcinogen regulation. It focuses on the contested definitions and strategic implications of three groups of concepts: trans-science or science policy, risk assessment and risk management, and peer review.

McCrea, Frances B., and Gerald E. Markle. 1984. "The Estrogen Replacement Controversy in the USA and UK: Different Answers to the Same Question?" Social Studies of Science 14:1-26.

Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERTI is a widely prescribed but controversial treatment for menopausal and postmenopausal symptoms. Our research shows that the dispute over menopausal estrogens has developed quite differently in the United States and Great Britain. For each country we examine claims made by physicians, feminists and consumers, regulatory bodies, and the pharmaceutical indbstry, as well as the claims of researchers. For each group the United States and British position on ERT is opposite, one country favouring the therapy, the other opposing its use. Yet within each country ERT stances are not consistent: feminists oppose physician practices, and physician practice is in opposition to research conclusions. Our comparative design allows us to conclude that for each country the positions of various interests, and their systematic opposition to one another, are the outcome of political, ideological and economic relations.

Picart, Caroline Joan S. 1994. "Scientific Controversy as Farce: The Benveniste-Maddox Counter Trials." Social Studies of Science 24:7-37.

This paper examines some aspects of the attempted construction of the 'ghostly imprint' phenomenon which resulted in a five-month controversy, pitting immunologists against homeopathists. A striking feature of this case appeared to be its farcical atmosphere -an atmosphere reminiscent of Kafka's satirical comedy, The Trial. First, I show that such a farcical atmosphere marked the initial phase of the 'ghostly imprint' episode, caused by (and generating) an underlying ambiguity in the issues, roles, types of discourse and interests in the play of events. Second, I focus on how the scientific community accomplished error counting. I examine the means by which Benveniste's results were deemed to be 'unscientific'. Crucial to my analysis of the patterns of power inscribed in the relationship of humour and rhetoric operating within the scientific community in this particular case, are the theoretical frameworks of Emerson, Collins & Pinch, and Gilbert & Mulkay.

Richards, Evelleen. 1988. "The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation: The Vitamin C and Cancer Controversy." Social Studies of Science 18:653-701.

This paper reconstructs and analyzes the content and context of the debate over the efficacy of vitamin C in the treatment of cancer, and compares it with medical responses to, and evaluations of, two other cancer drugs - the cytotoxic drug SFU lconventionally used in the treatment of gastro-intestinal cancers) and the 'naturally-occurring' (but recombinant DNA-produced) drug interferon. This comparative approach is designed to facilitate the integration of microsociological and structural levels of analysis of the processes by which knowledge claims about therapeutic efficacy are evaluated by the powerful adjudicating medical community. It is argued that the assessment of medical therapies is inherently a social and political process,, that the idea of neutral appraisal is a myth; that clinical trials, no matter how rigorous their methodology, inevitably embody the professional values or commitments of the assessors; and that judgements about experimental findings may be structured by wider social interests, such as consumer choice or mar~etforces. It is concluded that the necessarily social character of medical knowledge cannot be eliminated by methodological reform, and that this has important implications for the social implementation of medical therapies and techniques.

Crist, Eileen. 2004. "Can an Insect Speak?: The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language." Social Studies of Science 34:7-43.

In this paper I investigate the scientific understanding of the honeybee dance language. I elucidate the implicit and explicit reasons why the honeybees' communication system has been referred to as a 'language', and examine the ways this designation has entangled the themes of animal mind and human– animal continuity. I end with an investigation of a scientific controversy surrounding the honeybee dance language. I argue that this controversy was a battle over assumptions regarding insect capacities, and a willingness or unwillingness to abandon those assumptions in the face of a phenomenon that undermined them.
Keywords: animal mind, form of life, honeybee, human–animal continuity, language

Kennefick, Daniel. 2000. "Star Crushing:: Theoretical Practice and the Theoreticians' Regress." Social Studies of Science 30:5-40.

This paper presents a case study of a recent controversy among theoretical physicists modelled on case studies of experimental science conducted in recent times by sociologists and historians. The principal source is a series of interviews with leading participants in the controversy. I have also read published papers pertaining to the debate and the study is informed by my own experience as a researcher in the relevant field of theoretical physics during the earliest period of the controversy. I argue, on the basis of this study, that the work of theorists can be very like the work of experimentalists. Concepts such as 'tacit knowledge', and problems of replicability, may be just as relevant to the study of theorists as they are to experimenters. In analogy with Collins' 'Experimenters' Regress', I propose the existence of a 'Theoreticians' Regress' which expresses the difficulty theorists have in judging the correctness of rival calculations when the best or only test of their validity is their own result, which is itself in dispute.

MacKenzie, Donald. 1999. "Slaying the Kraken:: The Sociohistory of a Mathematical Proof." Social Studies of Science 29:7-60.

This paper outlines the history of the four-colour conjecture (that four colours suffice to colour in any map drawn on a plane in such a way that no countries that share a border are the same colour). It describes the conjecture's origins, the first claimed proof (in 1879). the refutation of that proof (in 1890). and the developments that led to Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken's celebrated, computer-assisted solution of the problem in 1976. There is a brief discussion of the significance of the new computerized proof by Robertson, Sanders, Seymour and Thomas. The paper describes fierce controversy over whether or not the Appel- Haken solution should be regarded as a 'proof', and contrasts the case of the four- colour theorem with lmre Lakatos' history of the proof of Euler's polyhedral formula. While Lakatos showed the negotiation of concepts such as 'polyhedron', 'face' and 'edge', the history of the four-colour theorem reveals the negotiability of 'proof' itself, and therefore of the boundary of what constitutes mathematical knowledge.
Keywords: computing controversy physics replication tacit knowledge

Beder, Sharon. 1991. "Controversy and Closure: Sydney's Beaches in Crisis." Social Studies of Science 21:223-256.

In this paper, the controversy over sewage pollution on Sydney beaches and how it should be remedied is used to analyze the concept of 'closure', and what it means for technological controversies. Various parties to this controversy attempted to resolve it in several ways: by redefining sewage pollution as an aesthetic problem; by negotiating a consensus at the decision-makers' level about water quality standards; by putting forward what appeared to be 'sound arguments'; and by the use of rhetoric. The paper explores the difficulties in applying categories of 'closure: and its usefulness as a framework for understanding the dynamics of a controversy, and the power relationships between those involved.

Bowden, Gary. 1985. "The Social Construction of Validity in Estimates of US Crude Oil Reserves." Social Studies of Science 15:207-240.

The resource estimates of M. King Hubbert, and the method he used to generate these estimates, are described. When Hubbert made his first estimate it reflected the consensus of opinion within the industry. The conclusions he drew about the future of the US oil industry, however, contradicted the conventional wisdom within both industry and government. His estimates were criticized and rejected, and a number of markedly higher estimates soon appeared. In 1974, the political econorny of the oil industry changed, government and industry estimates fell, and a consensus of opinion returned. Since Hubbert's methods and estimates remained constant throughout the period 1956-82, changes in scientific practice cannot explain the historical shifts in the treatment of his estimates as 'valid', 'invalid: and eventually 'valid' again. Through an examination of the scientific controversies involving Hubbert's estimation technique and its results, if is argued that the 'validity' of resource estimates is socially constructed through an attributional process tied to the political economy of the oil industry.

Cole, Simon A. 1996. "Which Came First, the Fossil or the Fuel?" Social Studies of Science 26:733-766.

This paper chronicles a challenge to the conventional theory of petroleum generation mounted by astro- and geophysicist Thomas Gold. Beginning in the late 1970s, Gold revived the 'abiogenic' theory, which holds that hydrocarbons are primordial, not remnants of decayed biology. By contesting the central tenet of petroleum geology, Gold precipitated a bitter scientific controversy. Both sides employed novel rhetorical strategies in order to impute interests, to contest expertise, to recruit allies from peripheral disciplines, and to claim the mantle of scientific method; and both managed to construct plausible interpretations of the available data. We follow the controversy to Sweden, where two 'crucial experiments', deep wells drilled in igneous bedrock from 1986 to 1992, still failed to resolve the controversy. The oil well proves to be an unruly scientific instrument, difficult to construct and even more difficult to keep free of various forms of 'pollution', ranging from bacteria to drilling mud to simple greed.

Collins, H. M. 1987. "Certainty and the Public Understanding of Science: Science on Television1." Social Studies of Science 17:689-713.

The notion of 'the public understanding of science' is ambiguous. It is not the findings of science that are crucial, but the public understanding of science as a knowledge-producing activity. Two television broadcasls on science are described and analyzed. Features typical of science broadcasting, with their implicit epistemological messages, are discussed. The public understanding of science is affected by the way such programmes portray science as a producer of certainty. The first programme deals with a controversy in an area of low status. While this allows an uncertain face of science to be glimpsed, it is with us only for a narrow slot in time -the present. We are shown only a small 'window of uncertainty' set within walls of certainty that extend into the past and the future. The second programme confirms this analysis. The first programme puts us in a position to follow the window of uncertainty in real time. An experiment discussed in the programme -the carbon-dating test on the Shroud of Turin -is about to happen. It is predicted that the carbon-dating test will move into the 'window of uncertainty' as we approach it.

Del Sesto, Steven L. 1983. "Uses of Knowledge and Values in Technical Controversies: The Case of Nuclear Reactor Safety in the US." Social Studies of Science 13:395-416.

This paper addresses some sociological and political factors related to the creation, use, and control of knowledge and information in technical disputes. This is accomplished by way of a content analysis of testimony of pro- and anti- nuclear witnesses speaking on nuclear reactor safety before the US Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1973-74. The analysis attempts to show how competing social groups impose their 'world views' as cognitive, non-evaluative definitions of reality, and that some groups are in a better political position to achieve this through the use of influence and power. The findings suggest that the use of evaluative intelligence in the hearings is a function of location in the political process rather than simply a function of group affiliation as such. It is concluded that the state of cognitive knowledge itself may play a more limited role than we think in determining the kinds of informational inputs to the policy process. Future research should concentrate on the ways in which groups and individuals succeed in anchoring their claims in culture, socioeconomic arrangements, and in political parties, as well as on the ways in which opposing groups control the use of knowledge in order to validate their own world views as cognitive definitions of the situation.

Perlman, Marc. 2004. "Golden Ears and Meter Readers: The Contest for Epistemic Authority in Audiophilia." Social Studies of Science 34:783-807.

Scientific claims to knowledge and the uses of technological artifacts are both inherently contestable, but both are not usually contested together. Consumers of 'specialty' audio equipment (known as the 'high end'), however, connect both forms of resistance. These 'audiophiles' construct their own universe of meaning around their equipment; they cultivate a distinctive vocabulary and set of attitudes.In this they resemble other groups of users dedicated to supposedly antiquated technology. But they also engage in controversy to defend themselves against knowledge-claims that would delegitimize their universe of meaning. These debates concern recording formats or media (the relative merits of the compact disk [CD] and long-playing record [LP]), user 'tweaks' of purchased equipment, and the supposed audibility of differences between different brands of amplifiers, cables, or CD players. In all of these cases, audiophiles resist the claims of audio engineering by privileging their personal experiences, and they argue against scientific methodologies that seem to expose those experiences as illusory. Some of these patterns of epistemic contestation resemble those in non-musical domains (such as biomedicine). But audiophiles also make epistemic use of values crucial to their identity as music-lovers. They appeal to a common understanding of music as an exemplary locus of subjectivity, emotion, and self-surrender, in order to ward off the criticisms directed at them from a science they construe as objective, detached, and dispassionate.
Keywords: absolute sound, alternative medicine, digital versus analog, double-blind testing, experimenter's regress, listening

Edmond, Gary, and David Mercer. 2000. "Litigation Life: Law-Science Knowledge Construction in (Bendectin) Mass Toxic Tort Litigation." Social Studies of Science 30:265-316.

In recent decades, large-scale product liability litigation, so-called 'mass torts', have become increasingly visible on the US legal and political landscape. Invariably, mass tort litigation incorporates a range of specialist scientific knowledges. Drawing upon fairly conventional images of law and science, most judges and legal commentators attribute the apparent difficulties encountered in addressing the refractory issues involved with scientific evidence in mass torts to uncertainties, jury incomprehension, partisan scientists and the distortion of evidence caused by the adversarial legal system ('sociologies of error'). Adopting a more symmetrical social constructivist approach to scientific evidence, this paper endeavours to account for some of the complexities in the litigation surrounding the anti-nausea drug Bendectin. Rather than interpret the Bendectin litigation as an instance of the judges eventually valuing the scientific evidence properly, and thus resolving the controversy (the truth winning out), this paper explores the manner in which lawyers, scientists and judgestogether 'negotiated' a series of cases and judgments which privileged epidemiology as a means of 'resolving' a recurrent socio-legal 'problem'.
Keywords: court, expert evidence, junk science, law, product liability, scientific controversy

Lynch, Michael, and Simon Cole. 2005. "Science and Technology Studies on Trial: Dilemmas of Expertise." Social Studies of Science 35:269-311.

This paper discusses materials from a legal case, People v. Hyatt(2001). This was a criminal case in which one of the authors (Simon Cole) agreed to appear as an expert witness for the defense. Cole's expertise derived from his research in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and so his appearance in the case exemplified STS research engaging in a public controversy about a contested form of 'scientific' knowledge. Cole's STS work and his testimony proved useful to defendants seeking to restrict the admissibility of forensic fingerprint evidence in court, but before he could testify in the Hyatt trial, his own expertise was subjected to an admissibility hearing. During his testimony, Cole faced a number of dilemmas as he attempted to accommodate his own conception of science and STS with the terms and procedures recognized by the court. The hearing was transcribed, and the co-authors of this paper discussed the details of the transcript. Their discussion itself was recorded and transcribed, and portions of the two transcripts are juxtaposed in this paper. The paper discusses Cole's difficulties and the dilemmas they exemplify, as a situated demonstration of some of the difficulties STS scholars face in their attempts to engage the 'public sphere'.
Keywords: expertise, forensic evidence, law and science, normativity, reflexivity, scientific controversy

Del Sesto, Steven L. 1983. "Uses of Knowledge and Values in Technical Controversies: The Case of Nuclear Reactor Safety in the US." Social Studies of Science 13:395-416.

This paper addresses some sociological and political factors related to the creation, use, and control of knowledge and information in technical disputes. This is accomplished by way of a content analysis of testimony of pro- and anti- nuclear witnesses speaking on nuclear reactor safety before the US Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1973-74. The analysis attempts to show how competing social groups impose their 'world views' as cognitive, non-evaluative definitions of reality, and that some groups are in a better political position to achieve this through the use of influence and power. The findings suggest that the use of evaluative intelligence in the hearings is a function of location in the political process rather than simply a function of group affiliation as such. It is concluded that the state of cognitive knowledge itself may play a more limited role than we think in determining the kinds of informational inputs to the policy process. Future research should concentrate on the ways in which groups and individuals succeed in anchoring their claims in culture, socioeconomic arrangements, and in political parties, as well as on the ways in which opposing groups control the use of knowledge in order to validate their own world views as cognitive definitions of the situation.

Gottweis, Herbert. 1995. "German Politics of Genetic Engineering and its Deconstruction." Social Studies of Science 25:195-235.

Policy-making, as exemplified by biotechnology policy, can be understood as an attempt to manage a field of discursivity, to construct regularity in a dispersed multitude of combinable elements. Following this perspective of politics as a textual process, the paper interprets the politicization of genetic engineering in Germany as a defence of the political as a regime of heterogeneity, as a field of 'dissensus' rather than 'consensus', and a rejection of the idea that the framing of technological transformation is an autonomous process. From its beginnings in the early 1970s, genetic engineering was symbolically entrenched as a key technology of the future, and as an integral element of the German politics of modernization. Attempts by new social movements and the Green Party to displace the egalitarian imaginary of democratic discourse into the politics of genetic engineering were construed by the political elites as an attack on the political order of post-World War I1 Germany. The 1990 Genetic Engineering Law attempted a closure of this controversy. But it is precisely the homogenizing idiom of this 'settlement' which continues to nourish the social movements and their radical challenge to the definitions and codings of the politics of genetic engineering.

Jasanoff, Sheila. 1996. "Beyond Epistemology: Relativism and Engagement in the Politics of Science." Social Studies of Science 26:393-418.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that work in the social studies of science and technology can be appropriated, or consciously deployed, to serve political ends. Correspondingly, pressure has risen on scholars in this field to choose sides in controversies involving science and technology. This paper argues that 'co-production' -the simultaneous production of knowledge and social order -provides a more satisfying conceptual framework than 'controversy' for understanding the relationship between science and society, and the scholar's r6le in that relationship. Political engagement is better achieved through reflexive, critical scholarship than through identification with apparent 'winners' or 'losers' in well-defined but contingent controversies. Reflexivity is especially desirable when selecting sites for research, styles of explanation, and methods of articulating normative positions.

Jasanoff, Sheila S. 1987. "Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science." Social Studies of Science 17:195-230.

In the United States, as in other industrialized nations, regulatory decisions to protect the environment and public health depend heavily on scientific information. Yet the process of decision-making places unusual strains on science. Knowledge claims are deconstructed during the rule-making process, exposing areas of weakness or uncertainty and threatening the cognitive authority of science. At the same time, the legitimacy of the final regulatory decision depends upon the regulator's ability to reconstruct a plausible scientific rationale for the proposed action. The processes of deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge claims give rise to competition among scientists, public officials and political interest groups, all of whom have a stake in determining how policy-relevant science should be interpreted and by whom. All of these actors use boundary-defining language in order to distinguish between science and policy, and to allocate the right to interpret science in ways that further their own interests. This paper explores the contours of such boundary disputes in the context of controversies over carcinogen regulation. It focuses on the contested definitions and strategic implications of three groups of concepts: trans-science or science policy, risk assessment and risk management, and peer review.

Levidow, Les. 2001. "Precautionary Uncertainty: Regulating GM Crops in Europe." Social Studies of Science 31:842-874.

Through the precautionary principle, governments acknowledge the limits of science as a basis for policy, while seeking to clarify scientific uncertainty. This tension is exemplified by the European risk regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops. The risk debate has been translated into various precautionary approaches, each with its own cognitive framing of the relevant uncertainties. Early safety claims took for granted intensive agricultural models; normative judgements served to downplay uncertainties which were not readily reducible, thus justifying commercial approval of products. In the late 1990s public protest strengthened broader accounts of uncertainty, for example through more stringent environmental norms and more complex causal pathways of potential harm. Fact-finding methods were debated as a value-laden choice for how best to generate more relevant knowledge. As risk-assessment research challenged assumptions in safety claims, critics cited the results as evidence of greater uncertainty. Invoking the precautionary principle, regulatory procedures delayed or restricted commercial use of GM crops. They not only increased the burden of evidence for safety, but also stimulated and requested knowledge about more complex uncertainties. Criteria for relevant evidence were implicitly linked with different framing visions for agriculture. Such value conflicts made scientific uncertainty more important -rather than vice versa. When risk research methods were challenged, facttvalue boundaries were blurred, thus increasing 'uncertainty' -rather than vice versa. In these ways, the risk controversy was constituted by divergent accounts of the relevant scientific uncertainty. Uncertainty was constitutive, not merely contextual. In general, then, precaution offers a means to justify uncertainty -not simply vice versa.
Keywords: Bt insect-protected maize, genetically modified (GM) crops, herbicide- tolerant oilseed rape, Precautionary Principle, risk assessment, scientific evidence

Agre, Philip E. 2001. "Legitimacy and Reason in the Florida Election Controversy." Social Studies of Science 31:419-422.