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The existing literature on modelling provides two main ways of viewing model migration: a modular view, which seeks to decompose models in their constitutive elements, and thus provides a view on what it is that migrates; and a practice-based view, which focuses on modelling as an activity, and understands a model as intricately entangled with its context of use. This article brings together these two sensitivities by focusing on ontologies of modelling. The paper presents a case study of the appropriation of modern finance theory's 'no-arbitrage' models by British actuaries – a process that gradually unfolded at around the turn of the century and led to significant friction within the UK's insurance industry. We can distinguish two main modelling ontologies: a 'risk-neutral ontology', which underpins no-arbitrage models and holds that the value of financial instruments is determined by 'arbitrage'; and, a 'real-world ontology', which assumes that the economic world consists of real probabilities that may be approximated through a combination of archival-statistical methods and expert judgment. The appropriation of the risk-neutral modelling ontology was made possible by the declining legitimacy of actuarial expertise as 'financial stewards' of life insurance companies. The risk-neutral modelling ontology provided an 'objective' alternative to the traditional actuarial models, which explicitly required actuaries to make 'prudent' judgments. Despite the fact that the no-arbitrage modelling was considered an 'objective' affair, the valuation models that insurers use today are strongly shaped by political compromises, a result of the 'rough edges' of models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological therapy today plays a key role in UK public mental health. In large part, this has been through the development of the (specifically English) Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Through IAPT, millions of citizens have encountered interventions such as cognitive behaviour therapy, largely for the treatment of depression and anxiety. This article interrogates how this national response to problems of mental ill-health – and the problematization itself – was developed, accounted for, and sustained. By imbricating economic expertise with accounts of mental ill-health and mechanisms of treatment, IAPT has revivified psychological framings of pathology and therapy. However, it has done so in ways that are more familiar within biomedical contexts (e.g. through recourse to randomized controlled trial studies). Today, the initiative is a principal player in relation to which other services are increasingly developed. Indeed, in many respects IAPT has transformed from content to context within UK public mental health (in a process of what I term 'contextification'). By documenting these developments, this paper contributes to re-centring questions about the place and role of psychology in contemporary healthcare. Doing so helps to complicate assumptions about the dominance of linear forms of (de)biomedicalization in health-systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars researching the commercialization of science focus on biomedicine, this paper explores the changing commercial frameworks for meteorology in the UK and the US. The organization of meteorology in both countries increasingly reflects a political-economic approach that treats science as an economic entity in which market-based criteria can be used to allocate scientific resources. The differences are equally significant in terms of the production and dissemination of meteorological forecasts and other data to public and private services. Alongside this commercialization has been the emergence of weather derivatives markets -- financial products that enable trading on weather indices in a way similar to oil or gas futures -- which have re-shaped how some businesses interact with meteorologists. This paper explores how weather derivatives traders engage with, shape, and are frustrated by a commercialized approach to funding meteorological data and forecasts. It highlights how commercial imperatives raise questions about the collection and quality of meteorological data, and how forecasting and weather modelling is being adopted within the private sector to enable trading strategies in the weather derivatives market. The consequences for commercial actors are highly variable, suggesting that any account of commercialization of science, while recognizing extant policy shifts, must be sufficiently nuanced in its interpretation of such effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the efforts of a small number of ornithologists and bird surveyors to design and implement a national census for the corncrake (Crex crex), a rare migratory bird, in north-west Scotland. Drawing on concepts and methodologies from the sociology of science and the recent ethological turn in social theory, it follows corncrake scientists as they tune in to the bird's ecology and behaviour and devise and distribute a standardized set of methods for a national census. It examines how these methods were implemented in practice in the field and explores the embodied skills and emotions involved in counting corncrakes. Finally, it follows how, as the outcome of the census, the corncrake was framed for the first time as a dynamic population and given voice through a representing assemblage. The paper concludes with some more general observations about the benefits of understanding the field sciences as affective practices and draws attention to the importance of embodied skill, emotion and an ethical sensibility in the generation of scientific representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to develop exhibitions that engender new forms of participation that contribute to the public's understanding of science. Information and communication systems play an important role in this regard, enabling new forms of 'interaction' with and around exhibits. In this paper we consider how visitors respond to these exhibits and explore the forms of interaction that arise within these new exhibition areas. The analysis addresses the ways in which these so-called 'interactives' create highly constrained sequences of action that prioritize the individual user while undermining the opportunities for co-participation and collaboration. It examines the ecologies of participation that arise with, around and within different types of exhibit and exhibition. The paper suggests that many 'interactive' exhibits rely upon a model of 'interaction' and the 'user' that pervades computer-based systems, a model that has been subject to sustained criticism over some years. In other words, the paper points to the ways in which 'interactivity' is conflated with social interaction and how the seemingly innovative and entertaining exhibits may fail to engender the coparticipation and collaboration that is seen as critical to learning and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Logo’ is the name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization. Developed in the USA in the late 1960s, it became the material embodiment of a radical educational philosophy and a potential vehicle for the transformation of education. In the early 1980s, Logo was introduced into mainstream education in both the USA and the UK. Within an increasingly conservative social and political context with different education policy priorities, Logo was gradually stripped of its radical potential, marginalized and, where it survived, remoulded as harmless to the mainstream educational system. This paper draws on empirical research that explored the evolution of Logo between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. The paper focuses on the social processes involved in the initial development and evolution of Logo. It shows that these processes were heavily contested. Logo was the product of complex social, technical, political and economic decisions, and the product of negotiation shaped by the concerns of the social players involved. The evolution of Logo was not linear or even primarily technical. Rather, it was a seamless web in which the technical was interwoven with the social, economic and political in ways that illustrate the dialectical interaction between historical contingency and the intentions and aspirations of individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria (Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the early 1960s, declining into the 1970s, and rising again in the 1980s and 1990s. Media coverage in both countries shows similar swings in public appeal. The trends in the medicalization of science news, the reporting of controversy and the evaluation of science diverge in the two contexts. The paper concludes with speculative explanations of these results. Similarities and differences in these long-term trends point to common factors and specific differences at work on either side of the (former) 'Iron Curtain'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The privatization of the British electricity supply industry (ESI) in the late 1980s and early 1990s was associated with a transformation in electricity generation technology. In a sudden and unexpected 'dash for gas', previously unused combined cycle gas turbine plant was adopted for all new large power stations. Gas turbine technology, politically and institutionally excluded from the industry before privatization, gained ascendancy due to the coincidence and interaction of FSI liberalization with lower fuel prices and greater availability, improved turbine performance, pollution abatement legislation, and the manifestation of institutional tensions accumulated under nationalization. An earlier paper found that the demise of established generation technology, particularly the British nuclear power programme, exposed the inadequacies of autonomistic and deterministic notions of technological change. The present paper considers the value of a more subtle framework — Hughes' sociotechnical systems model — for analysing the rise of gas turbines in the British ESI. The systems perspective enables the dash for gas to be understood, rather than as a result of technical and economic imperatives, or structural and regulatory reform, as a contingent and largely unplanned outcome of the interplay of previously excluded international forces with latent local interests, mediated by policymaking expediency. Liberalization swiftly led to the replacement of centralized system building with fragmented 'postmodern' change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to enrich our understanding of the history and substance of cybernetics. It reviews the work of three British cyberneticians — W. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask — paying attention particularly to the materiality of their practice — the strange and fascinating devices and systems that were at the heart of their work — and to the worldly projects they pursued — scientific, technological, artistic, organizational, political and spiritual. Connections are drawn between cybernetics and recent theoretical work in science and technology studies, in the hope of illuminating key features of both. The paper concludes by suggesting that the antidisciplinary impulse of contemporary science studies might find inspiration in the work of cyberneticians — that theory does not have to remain confined to the realm of theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some fundamental issues pertaining to the use of, as well as to the distinctive characteristics of, information technology in relation to the development of information systems within the UK National Health Service (NHS). The paper refers to the current Resource Management initiative in the NHS, which involves the fabrication of information systems to connect medical activity to resource usage, and thus to costs. Examining the features of some of the rival inscriptions undergoing development of make this connection visible, the paper highlights the properties of information technology in enhancing their mobilization. It also addresses the immutability and combinability of these inscriptions, and discusses some of the implications, in terms of medical practice and knowledge, which may follow from their use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While trust is seen as central to most social relations, most writers, including sociologists of science, assume that modern trust relations – especially those in regulatory relationships – tend towards the impersonal. Drawing on ethnographic material from one kind of scientific oversight body – research ethics committees based in the UK NHS – this paper argues that interpersonal trust is crucial to regulatory decision-making and intimately bound up with the way in which these oversight bodies work, and that as such they build on, rather than challenge, the trust-based nature of the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pharmaceuticals are not permitted on to the market unless they are granted regulatory approval. The regulatory process is, therefore, crucial in whether or not a drug is widely prescribed. Regulatory agencies have developed standards of performance that pharmaceuticals are supposed to meet before entering the market. Regulation of technologies is often discussed by reference to the precautionary principle. In contrast, this paper develops the concept of the 'permissive principle' as a way of understanding the departure of regulators' practices from standards of drug efficacy to which regulatory agencies themselves subscribe. By taking a case study of antidepressant regulation in the UK and the USA, the mechanisms of permissive regulatory practices are examined. An STS methodology of both spatial (international) and temporal comparisons of regulatory practices with regulatory standards is employed to identify the nature and extent of the permissive regulation. It is found that the permissive principle was adopted by drug regulators in the UK and the USA, but more so by the former than the latter. Evidently, permissive regulation, which favours the commercial interests of the drug manufacturer, but is contrary to the interests of patients, may penetrate to the heart of regulatory science. On the other hand, permissive regulation of specific drugs should not be regarded as an inevitable result of marketing strategies and concomitant networks deployed by powerful pharmaceutical companies, because the extent of permissive regulation may vary according to the intra-institutional normative commitments of regulators to uphold their technical standards against the commercial interests of the manufacturer. Likely sociological factors that can account for such permissive regulatory practices are 'corporate bias', secrecy and excessive regulatory trust in the pharmaceutical industry in the UK, political expediency and ideological capture in the USA, combined in both countries with some regulatory deference to the clinical autonomy of the psychiatry profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize the classifications of race and ethnicity, and analyse how a sample of UK genetic scientists used the concepts in their research. Our content analysis of 11 editorials and related guidelines reveals variations in the guidance on offer, and it appears that there has been a shift from defining the concepts to prescribing methodological processes for classification. In qualitative interviews with 17 scientists, the majority reported that they had adopted socio-political classification schemes from state bureaucracy (for example, the UK Census) for practical reasons, although some scientists used alternative classifications that they justified on apparently methodological grounds. The different responses evident in the editorials and interviews can be understood as reflecting the balance of flexibility and stability that motivate standardization processes. We argue that, although a genetic concept of race and ethnicity is unlikely to wholly supplant a socio-political one, the adoption of census classifications into biomedical research is an alignment of state bureaucracy and science that could have significant consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation in technological decision-making is increasingly seen as de rigueur, but the limits and purpose of such participation remain open to debate. In this paper we explore the tension between different rationales for widening participation and examine their implications for its practice. Taking debates about medical genomics in the UK as an illustrative example, we argue that more heterogeneous participation and debate have the potential to improve the scrutiny and accountability of science within representative democracies. In doing so we also argue that it is necessary to replace the language of `lay expertise' with a more systematic and rigorous treatment of the expertise or its absence that characterizes different participants. Drawing on the theoretical work of Collins & Evans (2002), we distinguish between those processes where expert knowledge is required and debate is conducted within the public domain, rather than by the public itself, and those where the views of non-expert lay citizens are needed and valued. The effect of adopting this approach is to permit a more inclusive treatment of the `technical' while also providing a positive role for non-expert citizens in the democratic control and oversight of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the development of genetic testing for breast cancer (BRCA testing) in the USA and the UK. It argues that national political cultures played an important role in how these genetic testing technologies were shaped, and that the shapes of these technologies had important implications for the users of these systems. In order to demonstrate the roles of national social and political elements in the development of new genetic testing technologies, I introduce the concept of a technology's architecture, which is made up of component and the specific ways in which these components are assembled to fulfill particular functions. In the USA, four very different BRCA testing systems initially emerged. However, one biotechnology company, Myriad Genetics, eventually used its legal and economic position to become the sole provider of testing. It offered BRCA testing the way many other laboratory tests were provided in the USA, available to anyone through any physician. The shape of this testing service had important implications for its participants, defining the client as a consumer who could demand access to any of Myriad's laboratory services, but could not choose among testing systems. In the UK, the government-run National Health Service provided testing through regional genetics clinics, using family history information to assess risks and triage care. Clients in the UK were defined as citizens and patients, who had the right to equal access to the testing system but could not demand any specific services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their obvious limitations as explanatory concepts, 'technological autonomy' and 'determinism' have often been associated with nuclear power. This paper reviews the persistency of notions of 'autonomy' and 'determinism' in the context of the British nuclear power programme. In the corporatist and technocratic setting of the nationalized British Electricity Supply Industry (ESl), the perceived imperatives of nuclear power technology were often allowed priority in policymaking, to the extent that an appearance of the technology's autonomy and determinism was maintained for 30 years. This had its conveniences: technical rationales disguised more contestable institutional and political interests supporting the programme. At the same time, senior politicians and scientists at times displayed a faith in the technology approximating a belief in its autonomy and deterministic power, particularly during geopolitical or industrial crises. ESl privatization was associated with the marginalization of nuclear power in Britain. Once the Government's wider mission to liberalize electricity supply was threatened by unanticipated disclosures regarding the cost of nuclear electricity, it proved willing to abandon its longstanding support for the technology. As institutional and political support for the nuclear programme was removed, the fallacy of its supposed autonomy was exposed. Whilst Langdon Winner accurately identified the preconditions necessary for the introduction of inherently political technologies such as nuclear power, in reality these were ever-present requirements, however hidden by the apparent power of the technology itself. Nevertheless, the persistence of notions of autonomy and determinism reflects a significant aspect of the sociotechnical relations of nuclear power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA 'fingerprinting' and other methods of genetic profiling have been used in connection with hundreds of criminal trials in the UK, USA and other nations. These molecular biological techniques are employed by the prosecution (and less often by the defense) to produce forensic evidence. By means of these techniques, selected DNA fragments extracted from a suspect's blood sample or cheek swab are compared with residues of blood, semen, skin, excreta, saliva and hair follicles collected at a crime scene. DNA-profiling evidence has been successfully challenged in a few highly publicized cases, but in the vast majority of cases such evidence has been accepted. The extensive testimony and documentation arising from cases like the 1994-95 double-murder trial of OJ Simpson in Los Angeles enable a close study of how the credibility of experts and their practices is fashioned and undermined in testimony. The arguments by the Simpson defense team delved into the practical contingencies and sources of uncertainty associated with forensic uses of DNA-profiling techniques. These arguments resemble many of the general conceptions of scientific practice within the sociology of scientific knowledge. Indeed, the resemblance is so close that the paper faces an interesting dilemma: what can be said about this case that has not already been said as part of the production and public discussion of its details? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study in the production and interpretation of regulatory science, focusing on the conflicting British and American clinical risk assessments of triazolam (Halcion) — the most controversial sleeping pill in the world. The regulation of triazolam is shown to be more permissive in the USA than in the UK. Six principal socio-political factors are put forward to explain this: differential regulatory trust; regulators' socio-technical data selections; medico-scientific disciplinary influences; organizational and professional interests; conflicts of interest of expert advisers; and the growth of the neo-liberal regulatory state. The risk assessments of both the British and American regulatory agencies are shown to be complacent relative to technical standards which the agencies themselves later accepted. It is suggested that, when the interests of pharmaceutical manufacturers and patients diverge, regulatory assessments are crucially affected by whether regulators are predisposed to award the benefit of the scientific doubts to the manufacturers or patients, and by the balance of such predispositions both within and between regulatory institutions of scientific expertise. The triazolam case indicates that the amount of trust placed in the pharmaceutical industry by the British and American regulatory systems may hamper detection of flaws in manufacturers' medical data in a timely manner and, as a consequence, compromise patients' interests. Some policy implications for drug regulation are sketched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years ago, the technology of in vitro fertilization created a new artefact: the human embryo outside the woman's body. In many countries, political debates developed around this artefact. One of the central questions in these debates is whether it is permissible to use human embryos in research and, if so, under what conditions. To date, no uniform answer to this question has been given by the governments and parliaments of the different nation states. This highlights the importance of national cultures and local dynamics in the process of crafting the space for human embryo research. In this paper I approach the issue of the national context by comparing the Dutch and British parliamentary debates on human embryos. Though some arguments used in both debates were similar, the outcomes were very different. In the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was passed in 1990. In the Netherlands, several bills on human embryos have been drafted, but each of them was withdrawn from the proceedings before reaching Parliament. To understand the processes which led to these different outcomes, I scrutinize the rôles in the Netherlands of the political parties, of the scientists' lobby and of women speakers, and compare them with the findings on the UK debate. I also reflect upon the rôle played by gender in these two culturally different political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the proposition put forward by Solly Zuckerman that the nuclear arms race has been driven by scientists and engineers. The history of British nuclear weapons developments is described with particular attention to both their changing organizational relationships and the fluctuating interface between the UK and the USA on the exchange of nuclear weapons assistance. The relationships between the nuclear weapons communities and their governments in the UK and USA are briefly compared, and it is concluded that Zuckerman's thesis cannot be sustained. Technologists do engage in 'heterogeneous engineering' in pursuit of their goals, but they are far from all-powerful in achieving these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is usual in science studies to focus attention on either science policy or laboratory practice. This paper examines the mutual shaping of science and policy through the case of the Human Genome Mapping Project in the UK. It is argued that the evolution of policy was not merely a series of administrative choices. The strategies, boundaries and accounting methods of the programme, together with eh organization and conception research among grant-holders, can be shown to reflect the, often competing, demands from the worlds of science to support was translated into debates over the best way to do science, what scientific knowledge was for and what was to count as worthwhile knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actor-network theory has, until recently, narrated the co-evolution of science and society in terms of dramatic triumphs and betrayals. This paper attempts to incorporate 'ambivalence' into the process of enrolment and black-boxing so central to the construction and continuation of actor-networks. Though ambivalence towards one's own and others' attributed roles in the network would seem to threaten the integrity of a given network, we suggest that it might reinforce it. Drawing upon fieldwork on the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP), we show how General Practitioners seriously problematize their own roles and the black-boxed status of the Cervical Smear Test within the CSP network. However, we also show that it is this very problematization that serves to render the network durable and workable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]