The analysis in this chapter focuses on how life scientists working in the field of human population genomics ancestry studies (HPGA) produce and re-use scientific knowledge. We understand re-situation as a process of accommodating the direct or indirect transfer of objects of knowledge from one site/situation to (one or many) other sites/situations. Our take on the concept borrows from Mary S. Morgan’s work on the traveling of scientific facts and the re-situation of knowledge (Howlett and Morgan 2010; Morgan 2014) while expanding it to include other objects of knowledge such as models, data, software, findings, and visualizations. We structured a specific case study by tracking the use of the objects above between research laboratories/projects studying human population diversity reported in three articles in Science, Genome Research, and PLoS Genetics between 2002 and 2005. These articles reflect on whether clines (geographic gradients of genetic variation) rather than clusters (discrete genetic populations) best characterize the distribution of human genetic variation at a global scale through time and space. We portrayed these three engagements as a unit of analysis, a “skirmish,” in order to compare the divergence of interests in how life scientists answer comparable research questions, and to track the challenging transformation of workflows in their research laboratories as these scientific objects are re-situated individually or in bundles.

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Introduction to “Re-situations of Scientific Knowledge: A Case Study of a Skirmish Over Clusters vs Clines in Human Population Genomics”

  • Carlos Andrés Barragán

摘要

The analysis in this chapter focuses on how life scientists working in the field of human population genomics ancestry studies (HPGA) produce and re-use scientific knowledge. We understand re-situation as a process of accommodating the direct or indirect transfer of objects of knowledge from one site/situation to (one or many) other sites/situations. Our take on the concept borrows from Mary S. Morgan’s work on the traveling of scientific facts and the re-situation of knowledge (Howlett and Morgan 2010; Morgan 2014) while expanding it to include other objects of knowledge such as models, data, software, findings, and visualizations. We structured a specific case study by tracking the use of the objects above between research laboratories/projects studying human population diversity reported in three articles in Science, Genome Research, and PLoS Genetics between 2002 and 2005. These articles reflect on whether clines (geographic gradients of genetic variation) rather than clusters (discrete genetic populations) best characterize the distribution of human genetic variation at a global scale through time and space. We portrayed these three engagements as a unit of analysis, a “skirmish,” in order to compare the divergence of interests in how life scientists answer comparable research questions, and to track the challenging transformation of workflows in their research laboratories as these scientific objects are re-situated individually or in bundles.