Scientific Reforms, Feminist Interventions, and the Politics of Knowing: An Auto‐ethnography of a Feminist Neuroscientist

Hypatia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Giordano
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Doctoral Work ◽  
Cultural Contingency

Feminist science studies scholars have documented the historical and cultural contingency of scientific knowledge production. It follows that political and social activism has impacted the practice of science today; however, little has been done to examine the current cultures of science in light of feminist critiques and activism. In this article, I argue that, although critiques have changed the cultures of science both directly and indirectly, fundamental epistemological questions have largely been ignored and neutralized through these policy reforms. I provide an auto‐ethnography of my doctoral work in a neuroscience program to a) demonstrate how the culture of science has incorporated critiques into its practices and b) identify how we might use these changes in scientific practices to advance feminist science agendas. I critically analyze three areas in current scientific practice in which I see obstacles and opportunities: 1) research ethics, 2) diversity of research subjects and scientists, and 3) identification of a project's significance for funding. I argue that an understanding of the complicated and changing cultures of science is necessary for future feminist interventions into the sciences that directly challenge science's claim to epistemic authority.

scholarly journals SCIENTIFIC PRACTICES AS CULTURAL ACTIVITIES: A CHALLENGE AND AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-297
Author(s):  
Peter Heering
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Key Word ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
History Of

During the 20th century, the sciences have been considered as disciplines that are significantly distinct from the humanities, C.P. Snows term of the “two cultures” has become the key word for this development. However, recent science studies produced arguments for the thesis that sciences are also a cultural activity. As a consequence, science and the related practices become time dependent – what was an accepted scientific practice in a particular period would not meet the standards of another period. Understanding science as a cultural activity poses several challenges to educators, but offers also opportunities. One approach that meets these opportunities is the implementation of the history of science in science education. In the following, two specific approaches in this respect will be discussed: storytelling and the reenactment of historical experiments.

Historization of Scientific Observation in Modern Scientific Researches

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Angelina V. Baeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Scientific Observation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This article is devoted to historization of scientific practices as one of the central points in problem field of modern science studies. The subject of our article is scientific observation as one of the epistemic practices. Historization of scientific observation in modern scientific studies is possible, because of material practices and social relations begin to problematize in the scientific field. Science is no longer characterized only by a propositional order of representations. It is an assemblage of connections and relations between different agents and network of things, people and practices. This network is complexly arranged and branched, but in the same time it is coordinated in a certain optics and it is producing the visual closure to constructed object. This new optics, that makes visible the material and routine practices, puts in a new way the task to understand, how to work with heterogeneous and historically changeable field of practices and different “ways to do science”. There is a rethinking of the self-evident epistemic categories and particularly scientific observation. As an epistemic genre and scientific practice observation begins to take shape relatively late – only in the XVII century, when there is a complication and multiplication of practices of production of the visual images, that are making concrete from abstract and visible from invisible. To historicize scientific observation is to show how it has become a self-evident epistemic category and an integral scientific function. Scientific observation can be historicized as a set of practices that emerged and spread throughout a particular historical period, on the one hand, as practices of production, coordination, presentation and description of observational data. And on the other hand, it can be historicized as practices of production of “scientific self” as instances of observation. This article attempts to show that observation as a practice and as historically varied object of science is characterized, on the one hand, by the production of “that is visible” and, on the other hand, by “scientific self”.

Science and Communication

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste M. Condit ◽  
L. Bruce Railsback
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Power ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Relational Norms ◽  
Current Definition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

Whether understood as a set of procedures, statements, or institutions, the scope and character of science has changed through time and area of investigation. The prominent current definition of science as systematic efforts to understand the world on the basis of empirical evidence entails several characteristics, each of which has been deeply investigated by multidisciplinary scholars in science studies. The aptness of these characteristics as defining elements of science has been examined both in terms of their sufficiency as normative ideals and with regard to their fit as empirical descriptors of the actual practices of science. These putative characteristics include a set of commitments to (1) the goal of developing maximally general, empirically based explanations certified through falsification procedures, predictive power, and/or fruitfulness and application, (2) meta-methodologies of hypothesis testing and quantification, and (3) relational norms including communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism, and originality. The scope of scientific practice has been most frequently identified with experimentation, observation, and modeling. However, data mining has recently been added to the scientific repertoire, and genres of communication and argumentation have always been an unrecognized but necessary component of scientific practices. The institutional home of science has also changed through time. The dominant model of the past three centuries has housed science predominantly in universities. However, science is arguably moving toward a “post-academic” era.

Troubling Figures

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Logan Natalie O'Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Environmental Toxicants ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Do So

This essay examines the figure of the pesticide-exposed intersex frog, a canary in the coal mine for public endocrinological health. Through feminist science studies and critical discourse analysis, I explore the fields that bring this figure into being (endocrinology, toxicology, and pest science) and the colonial and racial logics that shape these fields. In so doing, I attend to the multiple nonhuman actors shaping this figure, including the pesky weeds and insects who prompt pesticides’ very existence, “male” frogs who function as test subjects, and systemic environmental racism that disproportionately exposes people of color to environmental toxicants. I encourage careful examination of galvanizing environmental figures like this toxic intersex frog and I offer a method to do so.

scholarly journals The hidden side of animal cognition research: Scientists’ attitudes toward bias, replicability and scientific practice

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256607
Author(s):  
Benjamin G. Farrar ◽  
Ljerka Ostojić ◽  
Nicola S. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Free Text ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Questionable Research Practices ◽  
Replication Studies

Animal cognition research aims to understand animal minds by using a diverse range of methods across an equally diverse range of species. Throughout its history, the field has sought to mitigate various biases that occur when studying animal minds, from experimenter effects to anthropomorphism. Recently, there has also been a focus on how common scientific practices might affect the reliability and validity of published research. Usually, these issues are discussed in the literature by a small group of scholars with a specific interest in the topics. This study aimed to survey a wider range of animal cognition researchers to ask about their attitudes towards classic and contemporary issues facing the field. Two-hundred and ten active animal cognition researchers completed our survey, and provided answers on questions relating to bias, replicability, statistics, publication, and belief in animal cognition. Collectively, researchers were wary of bias in the research field, but less so in their own work. Over 70% of researchers endorsed Morgan’s canon as a useful principle but many caveated this in their free-text responses. Researchers self-reported that most of their studies had been published, however they often reported that studies went unpublished because they had negative or inconclusive results, or results that questioned “preferred” theories. Researchers rarely reported having performed questionable research practices themselves—however they thought that other researchers sometimes (52.7% of responses) or often (27.9% of responses) perform them. Researchers near unanimously agreed that replication studies are important but too infrequently performed in animal cognition research, 73.0% of respondents suggested areas of animal cognition research could experience a ‘replication crisis’ if replication studies were performed. Consistently, participants’ free-text responses provided a nuanced picture of the challenges animal cognition research faces, which are available as part of an open dataset. However, many researchers appeared concerned with how to interpret negative results, publication bias, theoretical bias and reliability in areas of animal cognition research. Collectively, these data provide a candid overview of barriers to progress in animal cognition and can inform debates on how individual researchers, as well as organizations and journals, can facilitate robust scientific research in animal cognition.

Biology is a feminist issue: Interview with Lynda Birke

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Åsberg ◽  
Lynda Birke
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Feminist Technoscience ◽  
The One ◽  
Materialist Feminist

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke (University of Chester, UK), one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies (HAS). This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of 2008 and 2010. The format allowed for comments on previous writings and an engagement in an open-ended dialogue. Professor Birke talks about her key arguments and outlooks on a changing field of research. The work of this English biologist is typical of a long and continuous feminist engagement with biology and ontological matters that reaches well beyond the more recently articulated ‘material turn’ of feminist theory. It touches upon feminist issues beyond the usual comfort zones of gender constructionism and human-centred research. Perhaps less recognized than for instance the names of Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, Lynda Birke’s oeuvre is part of the same long-standing and twofold critique from feminist scholars qua trained natural scientists. On the one hand, theirs is a powerful critique of biological determinism; on the other, an acutely observed contemporary critique of how merely cultural or socially reductionist approaches to the effervescently lively and biological might leave the corporeal, environmental or non-human animal critically undertheorized within feminist scholarship. In highlighting the work and arguments of Lynda Birke, it is hoped here to provide an accessible introduction to the critical questions and challenges that circumvent contemporary discussions within feminist technoscience as theory and political practice.

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