Proving or Improving: On Health Care Research as a Form of Self-Reflection

As it is, clinical trials are the gold standard of health care research, employed to prove that the care practices they study are good. Here, the author suggests that we would do better to develop research methods that work toward another goal: to improve care practices. This requires that we no longer foreground the effectiveness but, instead, investigate the various effects of interventions. If undesirable, they might then be tinkered with. As a part of this, the effects on bodily parameters and on the intricacies of daily lives should not be separated out but studied in connection. With examples drawn from studies into care practices for patients with diabetes or atherosclerosis, the author argues that instead of trying to turn the clinic into a laboratory, we should strive to support and strengthen clinical ways of working

Local entanglements and utopian moves : an inquiry into train accidents

In 1996 after nearly fifty years in public ownership the British rail network was privatised. As a part of this what had been single organisation, British Rail, was broken into a set of different units which were individually sold off. Prominent among these were Railtrack plc (owner of the track, stations, signalling and other infrastructure), more than twenty train operating companies (TOCs) which received franchises to run trains (usually with government subsidies), and three companies which owned and leased rolling stock

Who knows what a woman is...

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