Paper short abstract:

This paper is about the uncertainties raised by a period of conflict on the production of scientific data in a clinical trial conducted in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), on early antiretroviral treatment of HIV-1 infected people.

Paper long abstract:

A clinical trial is a hybrid system, a scientific experiment mainly grounded in clinical practices. It therefore confers a specific status to the people who are enrolled in it, at once subjects of the experimentation and patients for the medical staff, and can be considered as an "experiment without borders" (to quote Sheila Jasanoff), depending on the wider context in which it is located. Objectifying an organism is a very complex process, which necessitate people, time, instrument, follow-up, papers, and traces. It is an even more complex, and an even more uncertain process when it comes to a human being, possessing its own life and its own history, belonging to different social worlds. In this paper, I want to explore the way data are produced in a clinical trial conducted in Abidjan on early antiretroviral treatment of HIV-1 infected people. How can we ascertain that people respect the trial protocol once they are at home? And, to quote Isabelle Stengers, how can we ascertain that an individual constitute a good "scientific object"? These questions are even more salient when we consider the events that punctuated life in Ivory Coast during the year 2011, and which had big repercussions on people lives, but also, and inevitably, on the progress of the trial and the data produced. How scientists manage uncertainties in a period of crisis? And what does it learn about the way science construct and define bodies and people?