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Indiana University Bloomington

Director: Domenico Bertoloni Meli

Center for the History of Medicine

News & Events

anatomical drawing of human body, showing muscles with skin removed (from Vesalius)

2009 Workshops

The Representation of Animals in the Early Modern Period
Saturday March 7
Goodbody Hall 107

Accounting for Methods:
The Nature and Roles of "Methods Talk" in the Life Sciences
Saturday March 28
Goodbody Hall 107

There is a mismatch between what researchers do in the lab and what they state they did when they communicate their findings in their research reports. Scientific papers and articles rarely contain detailed accounts of the nitty-gritty of experimental practice, of the methods applied, of failed trials, serendipity, and surprises. Instead, the prototypical paper presents the experimental results obtained, marshals evidence, and discusses implications. Research processes are communicated - if at all - in highly schematic "methods sections". For several decades, historians, sociologists, and, occasionally, philosophers of science have therefore declared that to understand the nature of scientific research, we need to go beyond the published research reports and investigate scientists' activities at the bench or in the field, study their lab notebooks, examine extant historical instruments, replicate past experiments, and so on.

This workshop re-directs attention to "methods talk" (broadly construed): the accounts of experimental procedures scientists give to their peers. The guiding assumption is that recent developments in the life sciences such as increased attention to ethical standards of conduct, incidents of fraud, areas of extreme specialization, and "big science" projects have made accounts of experimental methods and procedures much more relevant and indeed much more precarious than ever before. The contributions discuss questions including: How do the forms and functions of research reports change over time and across different scientific fields? What constraints do professional conventions, publication guidelines, institutional and organizational factors place on "methods talk", and what are the implications of these constrains for experimental practice? What roles does "methods talk" play in scientific justification in different argumentative contexts?