When Scientific Fields Emerge: Tracing the Production of the Epistemology of HIV/AIDS

• In Event: Travelling Knowledge (II): Health, Disease and Pharma

Abstract

How do disparate epistemic communities coalesce to form larger research fields? In this paper we chart the production of medical knowledge around HIV/AIDS in its earliest instantiations. Prior to the discovery of HIV, the virus now known to be responsible for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was recognized not for its root causative agent (a virus) but for weakening immune systems and a group of rarely encountered secondary diseases that were killing those afflicted. As patients presented with a variety of different complementary diseases, various medical communities from oncology to veterinary medicine to virology and dermatology became linked in the search for the root cause of this immunodeficiency and these secondary illnesses. To examine how these fields combined to form the present field of HIV/AIDS research we collected citation data of all journal articles published between 1965 and 1990 on the major conditions, diseases and terms associated with HIV/AIDS in the period prior to the discovery of the virus in 1983. Using network and principle component analysis, drawing on co-citation, keyword and author networks, we examine how this previously unrelated set of scholarships from around the globe came together into a cohesive research field. In exploring how the centrality of this network shifts and by charting the dominant actors over time as well as an analysis of publishing dynamics such as the most productive labs, journals and countries, we sketch the dynamics of this developing research field before and after the discovery of the HIV virus.

Authors

• alexandre White, Boston University

• Marina Richard, Boston University