SUBJECT: COMPUTER

TOPIC: Laboratory Life

SUBMITTED BY: TAHIRA ARSHAD

ROLL # 3003 SUBMITTED TO: Inamul Haq

BS HONS BOTANY EVENING 1

Contents

• 1 Introduction and Methodology• 2 An Anthropologist Visits the Laboratory• 3 The Construction of a Fact: The Case of

TRF(H)• 4 The Microprocessing of Facts• 5 Cycles of Credit• 6 Editions• 7 See also

HISTORY

The Construction of Scientific Facts is a 1979 book by sociologists of science Bruno Latour And Steve Wolger.

This influential book in the field of science studies presents an anthropological study of Roger Guillemin's scientific laboratory at the Salk Instititute.

The book is considered to be one of the most influential works in the laboratory studies tradition within Science and Technology Studies.

Introduction and Methodology

• Latour and Woolgar state that their work "concerns the way in which the daily activities of working scientists lead to the construction of scientific facts" (40). Laboratory Life therefore stands in opposition to the study of scandalous moments in which the so-called "normal" operation of science was disrupted by external forces. In contrast, Latour and Woolgar give an account of a how scientific facts are produced in a laboratory in situ, or as it happens.

An Anthropologist Visits the Laboratory

• The initial methodology of Laboratory Life involves an "anthropological strangeness" (40) in which the laboratory is a tribe foreign to the researcher. The study of the lab begins with a semi-fictionalized account of an ignorant observer who knows nothing of laboratories or scientists. In this account, Latour and Woolgar "bracket" (44) their previous knowledge of scientific practice and ironically ask seemingly-nonsensical questions about observed practices in the laboratory, such as "Are the heated debates in front of the blackboard part of somegambling contest?

The Construction of a Fact: The Case of TRF(H)

• The next chapter aims at giving a precise account of the way in which this process operates with respect to a single scientific fact: the peptide TRF(H). This historical account, which Latour and Woolgar admit is, like all histories, a "necessarily literary fiction" (107), has the ostensible purpose of qualifying the initial account given by the observer. To this end, the chapter focuses on the specific way in which TRF(H) was constructed as a fact, describing how one scientist, Guillemin, "redefine the TRF subspecialty solely in terms of determining the structure of the substance" (119).

The Microprocessing of Facts

• This chapter turns back from grander historical accounts to the micro details of laboratory life. Through analysis of the conversations and discussions between scientists at the lab, it shows that the grander notion of science as a debate of contrasting ideas influences actual scientists only through social mechanisms.

Cycles of Credit

• Scientists frequently explain their choice of field by referring to curves of interest and development, as in "peptide chemistry [is] tapering off ... but now ... this is the future, molecular biology, and I knew that this lab would move faster to this new area" (191). Desire for credit appears to only be a secondary phenomenon; instead a kind of "credibility capital" seems to be the driving motive. In a case study, they show one scientist sequentially choosing a school, a field, a professor to study under, a specialty to get expertise in, and a research institution to work at, by maximizing and reinvesting this credibility (i.e. ability to do science), despite not having received much in the way of credit (e.g. awards, recognition).

Editions• English• 1979. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. ISBN 0-8039-0993-4.• . (1986), (online preview), Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-

691-09418-7, retrieved 9 October 2010 Paperback ISBN 0-691-02832-X OCLC 4775088

• The preface to the second edition (1986) reads:• "The most substantial change to the first edition is the addition of an

extended postscript in which we set out some of the reactions to the book's first publication in the light of developments in the social study of science since 1979. The postscript also explains the omission of the term "social" from this edition's new subtitle."

• So social construction becomes just construction of scientific facts. This change indicates a shift from social constructivism to Actor-network theory, which leaves more room for the non-social or 'natural' (albeit in a non-naturalistic / non-essentialist sense).

•

CONCLUSION

• The study of the lab begins with a semi-fictionalized account of an ignorant observer who knows nothing of laboratories or scientists. In this account, Latour and Woolgar "bracket“

• To this end, the chapter focuses on the specific way in which TRF(H) was constructed as a fact, describing how one scientist, Guillemin, "redefine the TRF subspecialty solely in terms of determining the structure of the substance" (119).