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Bigger, faster, better? Rhetorics and practices of large-scale research in contemporary bioscience

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Notes

  1. As the commentary by Lezaun points out, there is a double act of value creation and destruction in these collaborative practices. Devaluation is an equally significant process if researchers are to be encouraged to share resources previously held by individual laboratories or institutions.

  2. For a critical discussion and review of the concept of scale in geography see Marston et al (2005), Leitner and Miller (2007), and Moore (2008). The relations between scale, size and different orders of complexity have also been a focus of work in STS; see, for example, Law (2004) and Kwa (2002). A recent interdisciplinary workshop on Scalography in 2009 bought together scholars in STS, geography and other disciplines to explore the potential of turning the problem of scale into a object of productive enquiry. See http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/sts/research/Pages/scalography.aspx, accessed 21 August 2013.

  3. There are now a large number of global and regional studies of science and innovation outside of Europe and the United States, most notably in China, India and Brazil (see, for example, Sunder Rajan, 2006; Salter et al, 2009). These explore the situated nature of knowledge production in modern value knowledge networks that are increasingly globalised, even while distribution of therapeutic and other benefits of the biosciences remains uneven.

  4. We are not in a position to address potential parallels between contemporary developments in biology and physics, owing to the relatively scarce literature available on large-scale physics today. Forthcoming publications by Sharon Traweek and collaborators will undoubtedly facilitate comparison.

  5. There is also growing demand for databases capable of integrating research across diverse research areas, focusing on different organisms, levels of organisation and types of data.

  6. Philosophers of biology have reflected extensively on what it means for biological claims to be aggregated, and how one can think about unification and ‘theory’ in biology (see, for example, the Biological Theory special issue on ‘The Meaning of Theory in Biology’ edited by Pigliucci et al (2013)).

  7. There are growing concerns about who might be left ‘outside’ of these research projects and thus be in a position to review them from what scientists would deem an objective position (Xin and Yidong, 2006).

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Acknowledgements

The assembled papers have been developed, discussed and refined in response to the workshop ‘Making it Big? Tracing collaboration, complexity and control in the biosciences’ held in Exeter on 17–18 March 2011, organised by the guest editors of this special issue (Davies, Frow and Leonelli) and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We would like to acknowledge the assistance of the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, Egenis and the University of Exeter in facilitating this workshop, and offer our thanks to all workshop participants for their contributions, with particular thanks to Kaushik Sunder Rajan and Javier Lezaun for their commentaries on the event.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK

    Gail Davies

  2. Science Technology & Innovation Studies, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Emma Frow

  3. Egenis & Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Sabina Leonelli

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  1. Gail Davies
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Davies, G., Frow, E. & Leonelli, S. Bigger, faster, better? Rhetorics and practices of large-scale research in contemporary bioscience. BioSocieties 8, 386–396 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2013.26

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