Abstract This article suggests to focus on the history of human variation instead of focussing on the history of race science. It views the latter as a subset of the former, hence views race science ...as embedded into the larger field of life scientists' investigations into human variation. This paper explores why human variation is such an attractive and productive object particularly for the life sciences. It proposes that knowledge about human variation is incomplete in a promising way, and that it is of high instrumental value in the life sciences. I briefly illustrate the main points with an exemplary case, namely, population genetic studies of 'Roma'.
Greater scrutiny and demands for innovation and increased productivity place pressures on scientists. Forensic genetics is advancing at a rapid pace but can only do so responsibly, usefully, and ...acceptably within ethical and legal boundaries. We argue that such boundaries require that forensic scientists embrace 'ethics as lived practice'. As a starting point, we critically discuss 'thin' ethics in forensic genetics, which lead to a myopic focus on procedures, and to seeing 'privacy' as the sole ethical concern and technology as a mere tool. To overcome 'thin' ethics in forensic genetics, we instead propose understanding ethics as an intrinsic part of the lived practice of a scientist. Therefore, we explore, within the context of three case studies of emerging forensic genetics technologies, ethical aspects of decision-making in forensic genetics research and in technology use. We discuss the creation, curation, and use of databases, and the need to engage with societal and policing contexts of forensic practice. We argue that open communication is a vital ethical aspect. Adoption of 'ethics as lived practice' supports the development of anticipatory capacity-empowering scientists to understand, and act within ethical and legal boundaries, incorporating the operational and societal impacts of their daily decisions, and making visible ethical decision making in scientific practice.
Health and difference Widmer, Alexandra; Lipphardt, Veronika
2016., 20160901, 2016, Volume:
8
eBook
In this volume, contributors follow physicians, demographers, nutrition experts, physical anthropologists, colonial agents, military officials and missionaries in colonies all over the globe, with ...specific attention to how they tried to sort out pressing health problems of populations they perceived to be diverse.
Historians have drawn a line between scientific racism, exemplified in the typological approach of German race scientists, and population-based approaches toward races or human genetic diversity. The ...postwar time is often understood as a watershed in this respect. My argument is that typological and population-based race concepts cannot be so easily segregated either before or after World War II. In spite of noteworthy differences between the two, on closer inspection, one finds population-based concepts in German race science before World War II as well as typologies and typological aspects in human population genetics after World War II, and continuities between them. In this paper I aim at viewing German race science in its contemporary international context up to the 1960s. With regard to its theoretical groundings, research problems, research designs, methods, practices, results, and interpretations, German race science was far more embedded in contemporary research on human diversity around the world than is generally assumed. Most notably, researchers in the field have been preoccupied with identifying and examining “isolated” and “mixed” populations from the mid-nineteenth century until the present. Yet instead of rendering German race science harmless, this contextualization aims at drawing attention to the generally precarious aspects of research into “human variation” or “human diversity.”
After WWII, physical anthropologists and human geneticists struggled hard to demonstrate distance from ‘racial science’ and ‘eugenics’. This was a crucial factor in the ‘revolution’ of physical ...anthropology in the 1950s, as contemporary accounts referred to it. My paper examines the apparent turn during this period from anthropometric measurements to blood-group analysis, and from ‘races’ to ‘small endogamous populations’, or ‘isolates’, as the unit of study. I demonstrate that anthropometry and blood-group analysis were used simultaneously and in the same research projects until the 1960s. Isolated populations were the new target groups of human population geneticists, from large continental groups to small village populations. Colonial infrastructures provided suitable conditions for these kinds of transnational research projects. I argue that this new framework helped to translate much of the content of earlier racial studies into a less attackable approach to human variation.
•Examines the turn from anthropometry to serology in studies of human variation.•Highlights the importance of concepts of “isolation” in human population genetics.•Questions the abandonment of race concepts in the post-war period.
Critical Interventions in the Life Sciences – not a Task for the History of Science? This brief paper asks whether historians of science – along with scholars from Science and Technology Studies – ...should intervene if, in their research, they come across ethically and societally problematic behavior of scientists. I discuss whether and how interventions can be made in such a case that go beyond publishing scholarly articles. In contrast to Nicholas Rose, who claims that determinism and reductionism are no longer driving forces in the life sciences and that scholars from history of science and STS should hence form new relationships with life scientists, I hold that such a general understanding of ‘life scientists’ is at odds with the reality of scientific communities. The challenge is rather to find those colleagues in the life sciences who agree with our criticism. At the same time, such discipline‐crossing collaborative interventions need to carefully watch out for responsible communication in all directions.
Wasted Chances? The Current Political Debate on DNA Phenotyping and Biogeographical Ancestry Analysis in Criminal Investigation in Germany. This paper discusses diverse understandings of ‘responsible ...science’ in heated political debates. It takes a current public debate around a German law amendment draft concerning the use of novel forensic genetic techniques, namely DNA‐phenotyping and biogeographical ancestry analysis, as an example. A distinction is being made between an understanding that emphasizes scientific debate and precision, and another one that focuses on political agency. The paper also addresses the question whether and how science studies scholars, given their depth of expertise in the analysis of complex problems spanning disciplinary boundaries, should contribute to national debates in policy fields where no such dialogue exists yet.
Protect minorities in genetic research Lipphardt, Veronika; Rappold, Gudrun A; Surdu, Mihai
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2021-Sep-24, Volume:
373, Issue:
6562
Journal Article
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