Biomedical Research on the International Space Station: Knowledge Accumulation and Cross-Boundary Expertise

• In Event: Science, Technology and Society in Outer Space - II

Abstract

This paper examines biomedical research as a domain of knowledge production on the International Space Station focusing on NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP). HRP promotes biomedical research to support future missions to the Moon and Mars, and to develop countermeasures to the various risks and physiological deconditioning resulting from spaceflight. With these goals, HRP uses a particular instrument of knowledge accumulation: the Integrated Path to Risk Reduction (IPRR), a single chart that guides, integrates and assesses research in light of existing gaps in knowledge, displaying sources of risk, and the current status of strategies and countermeasures for their mitigation.

The paper is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a sociologist of science and a biomedical researcher who served for three years as chief scientist for HRP. From the sociological side, data results from ethnographic observations, interviews with program managers and researchers, and documentary analysis; and from the biomedical side, data results from participation in research and management roles at HRP. We address the following questions about the IPRR: how does this instrument balance basic, applied and operational research? What are the possibilities and limitations of crafting a research portfolio within the framework of risk? How does the process of “buying down risk” constitute a type of knowledge accumulation? How does the program integrate evidence across disciplinary domains? What are the kinds of expertise involved in this integration? On these bases, the paper provides a broader reflection on the problems of cumulativity and the valuation of scientific practices that rely on cross-boundary expertise.

Authors

• Paola A Castano, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences

• Mark Shelhamer, Johns Hopkins University