Paper short abstract:

Working through relationships of asymmetry informing interactions within and between STEM and social scientists involved in early cancer detection projects, I reconstruct the place and value of the ethnographic method within molecular research infrastructures.

Paper long abstract:

Situated within novel translational and transatlantic research infrastructures for the early detection of cancer, major science funders bring together many STEM professionals, economists and social scientists. The aim is to accelerate the discovery and validation of molecular biomarkers to uncover and intervene in the natural history of early-stage or premalignant lesions. Whilst researchers and various publics need to first get on board and be persuaded by the narrative of early detection to realise its vision, the process of integrating multidisciplinary approaches has been mired by as many opportunities as tensions. In this presentation, I unpack some of the concerns scientists articulated when invited to participate in an ethnographic study about cancer early detection within a British academic research centre. I underline the imagined boundaries around ‘ownership’, ‘competence’ and ‘confidentiality’ that scientists erected to protect what they saw as a sensitive intellectual project. I then outline the mutual implications of carrying out ethnographic work in STEM scientists’ professional lives and spaces. Finally, I explore the imagined divides that separated my work from the scientists’ projects, teasing apart the practices through which those divides were sometimes negotiated: from the idea of participating in a social science study as a token of public engagement to investing in an ongoing process of what I call ‘disciplinary catching up’. Working through relationships of asymmetry informing interactions within and between STEM and social scientists, I reconstruct the place and value of the ethnographic method within molecular research infrastructures.