Stephen Hilgartner

Cornell University | CU · Department of Science and Technology Studies

This article argues that there is a mismatch between traditional intellectual property doctrine and the politics of intellectual property today. To examine the nature of this mismatch, I contrast two frameworks that both appear in contemporary debate about intellectual property: the traditional discourse, which focuses on innovation, and a newer, l...

Behind the headlines of our time stands an unobtrusive army of science advisers. Panels of scientific, medical, and engineering experts evaluate the safety of the food we eat, the drugs we take, and the cars we drive. But although science advice is enormously influential, its authority is often problematic, leading to the struggles over expertise t...

In the life sciences and beyond, new developments in science and technology and the creation of new social orders go hand in hand. In short, science and society are simultaneously and reciprocally coproduced and changed. Scientific research not only produces new knowledge and technological systems but also constitutes new forms of expertise and con...

The rise of genomics engendered intense struggle over the control of knowledge. In Reordering Life, Stephen Hilgartner examines the “genomics revolution” and develops a novel approach to studying the dynamics of change in knowledge and control. Hilgartner focuses on the Human Genome Project (HGP)—the symbolic and scientific centerpiece of the emerg...

The abstract and keywords below were produced by a publicly available chatbot (setting aside this first, italicized portion). The paper was inspired by a series of unsolicited emails to a professor from prospective PhD students. Suspecting some of the emails were chatbot-generated, he decided to undertake further investigation. This paper presents...

This report provides a preliminary distillation of Comparative Covid Response: Crisis, Knowledge, Politics (CompCoRe) – a cross-national study of the policy responses of 16 countries across five continents. Led by a team based at Harvard, Cornell and Arizona State Universities, CompCoRe is a collaborative undertaking involving more than 60 research...

On 7 November 2020, moments before Kamala Harris and Joe Biden began their victory speeches, giant screens flanking the stage proclaimed, “The people have chosen science.” Yet, nearly 74 million Americans, almost half the voters, had cast their ballots for Donald Trump, thereby presumably not choosing science. Prominent scientists asserted that “sc...

The Handbook provides an essential resource at the interface of Genomics, Health and Society, and forms a crucial research tool for both new students and established scholars across biomedicine and social sciences. Building from and extending the first Routledge Handbook of Genetics and Society, the book offers a comprehensive introduction to pivot...

In February 1996, the genome community met in Bermuda to formulate principles for circulating genomic data. Although it is now 20 years since the Bermuda Principles were formulated, they continue to play a central role in shaping genomic and data-sharing practices. However, since 1996, “openness” has become an increasingly complex issue. This comme...

This article surveys the rise of biotechnology since the closing decades of the twentieth century, examining both scientific developments and social and institutional change. As an area of science and technology with the explicit goal of intervening in the machinery of life, biotechnology often disrupts traditional ways of distinguishing “nature” f...

This article surveys the rise of biotechnology since the closing decades of the twentieth century, examining both scientific developments and social and institutional change. As an area of science and technology with the explicit goal of intervening in the machinery of life, biotechnology often disrupts traditional ways of distinguishing 'nature' f...

In the life sciences and beyond, new developments in science and technology and the creation of new social orders go hand in hand. In short, science and society are simultaneously and reciprocally coproduced and changed. Scientific research not only produces new knowledge and technological systems but also constitutes new forms of expertise and con...

Behind the headlines of our time stands an unobtrusive army of science advisers. Panels of scientific, medical, and engineering experts evaluate the safety of the food we eat, the drugs we take, and the cars we drive. But although science advice is enormously influential, its authority is often problematic, leading to the struggles over expertise t...

This breathless quotation from Intrexon Corporation is a typical specimen of the genre of the startup company website. Intrexon, a publicly traded firm devoted to synthetic biology, has assets in excess of half a billion U.S. dollars. The statement positions the company at the vanguard of a revolution, one that is ushering in not only material chan...

This paper comments on a special issue of Social Epistemology, vol. 28, no. 1 (2014) on absences of knowledge. The articles in this special issue make a strong case that studying absences of knowledge is important for the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). As single works and through the literature that they cite, they also illustrate h...

This article examines how a regime for governing the US Human Genome Project (HGP) emerged during the early years of the project, paying special attention to the construction of what might be called its ‘governing frame’. This governing frame provided an interpretive scheme that constituted a set of entities (agents, spaces, things and actions) and...

In recent years, the selective flow of knowledge has emerged as an important topic in historical and social studies of science. Related questions about the production of ignorance have also captured attention under the rubric of agnotology. This paper focuses on information control in interaction, examining how actors seek to control the flow of sc...

Synthetic biology is typically described as an arena in which new kinds of biological entities are being created via novel ‘engineering-based’ means of tinkering with life and its component parts. This research domain is also an arena of social experimentation, in that some advocates of synthetic biology are actively promoting new property regimes...

The medialization concept was developed using differentiation theory and has been applied analytically at the level of systems. This paper develops a complementary perspective for considering medialization that focuses on media orientation as it is expressed in interaction. How do individual scientists or science-intensive organizations manifest an...

Anticipatory knowledge is a rich and multifaceted object of investigation by virtue of the epistemic difficulties associated with ensuring its reliability, the blend of descriptive and performative dimensions contained within it, and its complex and often ambiguous temporality. This paper draws attention to the particular importance of anticipatory...

This paper argues that the field of risk communication should pay more attention to studying experts and the knowledge that they produce. In particular, I suggest that examining the social dimensions of expert knowledge about risk is worthwhile for both instrumental and theoretical reasons. From an instrumental point of view, understanding what sha...

A Life Decoded. My Genome: My Life. By J. Craig Venter. Viking, New York, 2007. 416 pp. $25.95, C$31. ISBN 9780670063581. Allen Lane, London. £25. ISBN 9780713997248. The author recounts the course of his life to date and his quests in genome sequencing and synthetic life.

Given the OECD’s role in creating economic indicators and metrics suitable for comparative analysis across countries and over time, the goal of creating quantitative means for measuring the bioeconomy has the potential to be especially significant.

In reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, so soon after it struck the Gulf Coast, I want to consider what one might expect from the public inquiries and official investigations of the disaster. Prediction, whether of meteorological or social phenomena, is a risky business, but by now the field of science and technology studies (STS) has produced a substa...

To better understand the variety and prevalence of data withholding in genetics and the other life sciences and to explore factors associated with these behaviors. In 2000, a sample of 2,893 geneticists and other life scientists (OLS) at the 100 most research-intensive universities in the United States were surveyed concerning data withholding and...

In many ways, science and technology studies (STS) seems poised to become one of the most dynamic and influential areas of social scientific and humanistic inquiry during the twenty-first century. The intellectual sophistication and empirical strength of much work in the field is impressive, and its subject matter is of undeniable importance. The f...

Context The free and open sharing of information, data, and materials regarding published research is vital to the replication of published results, the efficient advancement of science, and the education of students. Yet in daily practice, the ideal of free sharing is often breached.Objective To understand the nature, extent, and consequences of...

The free and open sharing of information, data, and materials regarding published research is vital to the replication of published results, the efficient advancement of science, and the education of students. Yet in daily practice, the ideal of free sharing is often breached. To understand the nature, extent, and consequences of data withholding i...

Dramatic components: construction of personae / character / self-presentation narrative structure created by protagonists stage management - controlling what is publicly displayed/concealed backstage and frontstage controlling what is seen creation of non-audiences (who has access)

The failure to consider the Sokal affair in light of related episodes has contributed to a wholesale misreading of its significance. The episode has often been offered as evidence for the bankruptcy of a broad and diverse collection of fields, various referred to as cultural studies of science, sociology of science, history of science, and science...

Between Bench and Bedside. Science, Healing, and Interleukin-2 in a Cancer Ward. ILANA LÖWY. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996. vi, 370 pp., illus. $39.95 or £26.50. ISBN 0-674-06809-2.

During the past two decades, computerized biomolecular databases have rapidly expanded and have been prominently integrated into laboratory work in biological sciences. This article offers an exploratory look at the potential significance of these databases as novel tools for scientific communication. The article develops the concept of a science c...

Issues surrounding data access, ownership, and control raise important issues for science policy. The new sociology of science has examined many features of scientific knowledge and practice, but has made only preliminary efforts to study data access. Building on ethnographic studies of scientific laboratories (and other constructivist work), this...

The culturally-dominant view of the popularization of science rests on a two-stage model: first, scientists develop genuine knowledge; second, popularizers spread streamlined versions to the public. At best, popularization is seen as a low-status educational task of `appropriate simplification'. At worst, it is `pollution' — the distortion of scien...

Analysis of hearings reveals a wide range of issues. The hearings brought out, first of all, different images of the risk itself. How is the risk of AIDS defined? What, in the minds of the protagonists in the hearing, are the scenarios of risk? Second, a central issue in the debate was the adequacy of current scientific knowledge? How much scientif...