Post-genomic science: cross-disciplinary and large-scale collaborative research and its organizational and technological challenges for the scientific research process

We examine recent developments in cross-disciplinary science and contend that a 'Big Science' approach is increasingly evident in the life sciences-facilitated by a breakdown of the traditional barriers between academic disciplines and the application of technologies across these disciplines. The first fruits of 'Big Biology' are beginning to be seen in, for example, genomics, (bio)-nanotechnology and systems biology. We suggest that this has profound implications for the research process and presents challenges both in technological design, in the provision of infrastructure and training, in the organization of research groups, and in providing suitable research funding mechanisms and reward systems. These challenges need to be addressed if the promise of this approach is to be fully realized. In this paper, we will draw on the work of social scientists to understand how these developments in science and technology relate to organizational culture, organizational change and the context of scientific work. We seek to learn from previous technological developments that seemed to offer similar potential for organizational and social change

Chapters in the prehistory of Eastern Arizona,

v.55 (1964

How UK psychiatric geneticists understand and talk about engaging the public

The paper examines how leading UK psychiatric geneticists talk about public engagement. Scientific fields have distinctive publics, with specific goals for, concerns with, and obstacles to engagement. In psychiatric genetics these publics include people with psychiatric disorders, policymakers, and even medics. We found that psychiatric geneticists justify public engagement by using the language of ‘stigma’ in multiple ways. There is a belief in a deficit model of stigma – that stigmatizing attitudes among the general public and government are the result of insufficient knowledge of the biological causes of psychiatric disorders. ‘Stigma’ is, however, also co-opted to do rhetorical work within biomedicine, marking differences in therapeutic optimism as pathological. We suggest that the wider field of UK psychiatry is seen as mostly consisting of therapeutic pessimists, while the psychiatric geneticists are in a minority of therapeutic optimists. These attitudes are the product of the historical and social context of the field