STS in management education: connecting theory and practice

This paper explores the value of science and technology studies (STS) to management education. The work draws on an ethnographic study of second year management undergraduates studying decision making. The nature and delivery of the decision making module is outlined and the value of STS is demonstrated in terms of both teaching method and module content. Three particular STS contributions are identified and described: the social construction of technological systems; actor network theory; and ontological politics. Affordances and sensibilities are identified for each contribution and a discussion is developed that illustrates how these versions of STS are put to use in management education. It is concluded that STS has a pivotal role to play in critical management (education) and in the process offers opportunities for new forms of managin

Social Effects in Science: Modelling Agents for a Better Scientific Practice

Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information available, scientists have to rely on the reports of others. This makes it possible for social effects to influence the scientific community. Here, an Opinion Dynamics agent model is proposed to describe this situation. The influence of Nature through experiments is described as an external field that acts on the experimental agents. We will see that the retirement of old scientists can be fundamental in the acceptance of a new theory. We will also investigate the interplay between social influence and observations. This will allow us to gain insight in the problem of when social effects can have negligible effects in the conclusions of a scientific community and when we should worry about them.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Coronary Artery Reperfusion

The effects of coronary artery reperfusion 3 hr after coronary occlusion on contractile function and the development of myocardial damage at 24 hr was studied experimentally. In 14 control and 6 reperfused dogs, relationships between epicardial ST segment elevation 15 min after coronary occlusion and myocardial creatine phosphokinase activity (CPK) and histologic appearance 24 hr later were examined. The electrocardiograms were recorded from 10 to 15 sites on the left ventricular epicardium and transmural samples for CPK and histology were obtained from the same sites where epicardial electrocardiograms had been recorded. An inverse relation existed between ST segment elevation (mv) 15 min after occlusion and log CPK activity (IU/ mg of protein) 24 hr later, log CPK = - 0.06ST + 1.26. In dogs subjected to coronary artery reperfusion, there was significantly less CPK depression (log CPK = - 0.01ST + 1.31, [P < 0.01]) than that expected from the control group. In the control group 97% of specimens showing ST segment elevations over 2 mv at 15 min showed abnormal histology 24 hr later. In contrast, in the reperfused group 43% of sites exhibiting elevated ST segment at 15 min showed abnormal histology 24 hr later. In six additional dogs it was shown that the paradoxical movement of the left ventricular wall could be reversed within 1 hr of perfusion. Therefore, by enzymatic and histologic criteria, as well as by functional assessment, coronary artery reperfusion 3 hr after occlusion resulted in salvage of myocardial tissue

Scientific Perspectives, Feminist Standpoints, and Non-silly Relativism

Defences of perspectival realism are motivated, in part, by an attempt to find a middle ground between the realist intuition that science seems to tell us a true story about the world, and the Kuhnian intuition that scientific knowledge is historically and culturally situated. The first intuition pulls us towards a traditional, absolutist scientific picture, and the second towards a relativist one. Thus, perspectival realism can be seen as an attempt to secure situated knowledge without entailing epistemic relativism. A very similar motivation is behind feminist standpoint theory, a view which aims to capture the idea that knowledge is socially situated, whilst retaining some kind of absolutism. Elsewhere I argue that the feminist project fails to achieve this balance; its commitment to situated knowledge unavoidably entails epistemic relativism (though of an unproblematic kind), which allows them to achieve all of their feminist goals. In this paper I will explore whether the same arguments apply to perspectival realism. And so I will be asking whether perspectival realism too is committed to an unproblematic kind of relativism, capable of achieving scientific goals; or, whether it succeeds in carving out a third view, between or beyond the relativism/absolutism dichotomy

Mapping participation: a systematic analysis of diverse public participation in the UK energy system

This paper develops a novel approach to mapping diverse forms of participation and public engagement, using the example of the UK energy system. It builds on emerging systemic accounts of participation, which go beyond a focus on individual instances of participation, to gain an understanding of broader patterns and connections. Our approach, which forms part of an emerging family of methods that seek to map across multiple forms of public involvement in issues and systems, draws on systematic review methodology and a relational co-productionist conception of participation. The findings of a systematic mapping of public participation related to the UK energy system 2010–2015 are presented, comprising 258 cases in total. The mapping analysis reveals patterns as to the what (energy objects and issues), how (procedural formats) and who (publics) of energy participation in the UK, which go far beyond the conventionally assumed forms and sites of public participation around energy. Implications for how the dynamics of ‘whole system’ energy participation are represented and the role of approaches to mapping participation in governing energy transitions are considered

Self-Dual Bending Theory for Vesicles

We present a self-dual bending theory that may enable a better understanding of highly nonlinear global behavior observed in biological vesicles. Adopting this topological approach for spherical vesicles of revolution allows us to describe them as frustrated sine-Gordon kinks. Finally, to illustrate an application of our results, we consider a spherical vesicle globally distorted by two polar latex beads.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX2e+IOPar

Marxism and science studies: a sweep through the decades

This paper outlines the distinctive contribution of marxism to science studies. It traces the trajectory of marxist ideas through the decades from the origins of marxism to the present conjuncture. It looks at certain key episodes, such as the arrival of a Soviet delegation at the International History of Science Congress in London in 1931 as well as subsequent interactions between marxists and exponents of other positions at later international congresses. It focuses on the impact of several generations of marxists who have engaged with science in different ways. It examines the influence of marxism on contemporary trends in science studies. It concludes that marxism survives in circuitous and complex ways. It argues not only for a positive interpretation of its contribution in the past but for its explanatory and ethical power in the present and future

Live to cheat another day: bacterial dormancy facilitates the social exploitation of beta-lactamases

The breakdown of antibiotics by β-lactamases may be cooperative, since resistant cells can detoxify their environment and facilitate the growth of susceptible neighbours. However, previous studies of this phenomenon have used artificial bacterial vectors or engineered bacteria to increase the secretion of β-lactamases from cells. Here, we investigated whether a broad-spectrum β-lactamase gene carried by a naturally occurring plasmid (pCT) is cooperative under a range of conditions. In ordinary batch culture on solid media, there was little or no evidence that resistant bacteria could protect susceptible cells from ampicillin, although resistant colonies could locally detoxify this growth medium. However, when susceptible cells were inoculated at high densities, late-appearing phenotypically susceptible bacteria grew in the vicinity of resistant colonies. We infer that persisters, cells that have survived antibiotics by undergoing a period of dormancy, founded these satellite colonies. The number of persister colonies was positively correlated with the density of resistant colonies and increased as antibiotic concentrations decreased. We argue that detoxification can be cooperative under a limited range of conditions: if the toxins are bacteriostatic rather than bacteridical; or if susceptible cells invade communities after resistant bacteria; or if dormancy allows susceptible cells to avoid bactericides. Resistance and tolerance were previously thought to be independent solutions for surviving antibiotics. Here, we show that these are interacting strategies: the presence of bacteria adopting one solution can have substantial effects on the fitness of their neighbours

Representation and Re-Presentation in Litigation Science

Federal appellate courts have devised several criteria to help judges distinguish between reliable and unreliable scientific evidence. The best known are the U.S. Supreme Court’s criteria offered in 1993 in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. This article focuses on another criterion, offered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that instructs judges to assign lower credibility to “litigation science” than to science generated before litigation. In this article I argue that the criterion-based approach to judicial screening of scientific evidence is deeply flawed. That approach buys into the faulty premise that there are external criteria, lying outside the legal process, by which judges can distinguish between good and bad science. It erroneously assumes that judges can ascertain the appropriate criteria and objectively apply them to challenged evidence before litigation unfolds, and before methodological disputes are sorted out during that process. Judicial screening does not take into account the dynamics of litigation itself, including gaming by the parties and framing by judges, as constitutive factors in the production and representation of knowledge. What is admitted through judicial screening, in other words, is not precisely what a jury would see anyway. Courts are sites of repeated re-representations of scientific knowledge. In sum, the screening approach fails to take account of the wealth of existing scholarship on the production and validation of scientific facts. An unreflective application of that approach thus puts courts at risk of relying upon a “junk science” of the nature of scientific knowledge