1452 - Genetics, Identity, and Other Controversies

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

Case studies of controversies in science and technology have been a mainstay of SKAT for several decades. Historical, resolved controversies have been explored to help better understand the features of theoretical debates, the internal and external dynamics of the professions, the alignment and realignment of social networks, and the consolidation of new intellectual paradigms. Today’s ongoing controversies involving science and technology, which are increasingly playing out in the public sphere, also warrant sociological attention. From concerns about data privacy spurred by the practices of powerful technology platform companies, and debates about emergent techniques such as CRISPR and predictive policing, to the “crisis” over scholarly replication, and the uptake of genetics in political claims about gender and racial identity, technoscience is both the site of and the stuff of contemporary public debate. This session will use “the controversy” as an heuristic that can help to illuminate the stakes of past and present scientific and technological practices.

Sub Unit

• Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology / Genetics, Identity, and Other Controversies

Session Organizer

• Aaron Panofsky, University of California-Los Angeles

Presider

• Aaron Panofsky, University of California-Los Angeles

Individual Presentations

• Boundary Battles in the Autism Field: Genetics, RCTs and Undone Science - Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois-Chicago

• The Banality of Scientific Progress: An etiology of the #CRISPRbabies controversy - Santiago José Molina, University of California Berkeley

• Voodoo science and the missing controversy: Neuroscience as an integration project - Torsten H Voigt, RWTH Aachen University

• Transparency versus Autonomy: Meta-Science, Fields, and the Political Theory of Pure Science - David Peterson, University of California, Los Angeles; Aaron Panofsky, University of California-Los Angeles

• The Effect of Genetic Ancestry Testing on Ethnoracial Network Diversity - Wendy D. Roth, University of Pennsylvania; Rochelle R. Cote, Memorial University of Newfoundland