What is a scientific knowledge skirmish?
Griesemer and Barragán track a laboratory exchange in human population genomics: Rosenberg’s clusters, Serre and Pääbo’s challenge, and Rosenberg’s response.
Source
Re-situations of scientific knowledge: a case study of a skirmish over clusters vs clines in human population genomics
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What is a scientific knowledge skirmish?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Objects of knowledge?
objects of knowledge.” This provides us with a generic term for the sorts of “things” that might be “re-situated” when one team builds a project that relat
What field?
human population genomics ancestry studies (HPGA). We call it “ancestry studies” in part to distinguish this kind of work from biomedical or forensic appli
What they did
They treat models, data, software, and visualisations as objects of knowledge that get pushed into a new project, and they reconstruct the STRUCTURE workflow, circularity worries, and a later ‘clusters and clines’ settlement.
What they found
Without using cultural labels, Rosenberg’s team reported five continent-scale clusters. The challenge questioned whether those objects should keep circulating. Popular media still drew race readings the skirmish tried to block.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is a philosophy-of-science case study of one published exchange, not a new genomic analysis. It does not decide whether human races are biological.
Key terms
- Re-situation
- Moving objects of knowledge from one research situation into another, where they may not fit.
- Skirmish
- A unit of original project, challenge, and response around those travelling objects.
- STRUCTURE
- Bayesian clustering software whose runs require experimental ‘art’ in settings and priors.
- HPGA
- Human population genomics ancestry studies, distinct here from forensic or biomedical uses.
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Re-situation moves?
Common questions
Clusters or clines?
The response framed the issue as clusters and clines, not an either/or.
What travels besides facts?
Models, datasets, software configurations, and visualisations.
Why care about race media?
The challenge also aimed to block race-related readings beyond the specialist community.
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