Paper short abstract:

Reflecting on my research concerned with unconventional medicine, I will think through the ways in which STS can and should relate to "alternatives" in the today "post-truth" world. I will argue that the ontological openness of a concrete practice is a key characteristic to be examined and valued.

Paper long abstract:

Since 1970s STS has been invested in making visible and supporting epistemic and political alternatives. It has contributed to opening up policies and democratising knowledge. Recently, with the rise of "post-truth" and the strengthening leverage of various "alternative facts" in established institutions and debates, STS started reconsidering some of its normative positions and research strategies (including on the pages of EASST Review). In this paper I reflect on my ethnographic research which deals with unconventional and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Czech Republic and, in particular, the interfaces and frictions between CAM and biomedicine in daily practices of therapists, doctors and patients. In our study, we try to look at CAM and the realities it makes "visible, audible, tangible, knowable" (Mol 2002) without measuring them with the yardstick of established 'evidence-based' (EBM) knowledge. We witnessed many stories of better and good lives with CAM, stories that tend to be dismissed by current biomedicine. However, we also encountered CAM practices that seemed rather dubious to us and potentially harmful for their users. How should we face them as researchers? I want to argue that, in principle, opening up biomedicine to questioning and interference from 'other' branches of medicine deserves support. However, CAM should also be able to face critical questions and the ontological openness and inclusivity of a given practice seems as a key characteristic to be examined and valued in this context as it is a precondition for reflexive agency and the re-building of the shared ecologies of life.