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April 2010

Containers that actively interfere with the biomedical research process

By Biomedicine in museums

We here at Medical Museion have a special love for containers. For example, one of the most conspicuous installations in the Split & Splice exhibition was ‘the container wall’ — a blown-up model of a 96-microwell filled with containers of all kinds used in medical practice and laboratory research.

But containers aren’t just innocently passive biomedical objects. It turns out that they interfere with experiments. In addition to the phenomenon of ‘sticky containers’, there’s just been published a paper which claims that DNA and protein assays may accidentally be affected by leaching of contaminants from plastics which interfere with the spectroscopic measurements of proteins and DNA:

Here we demonstrate that normal handling of laboratory microtubes causes leaching of light-absorbing chemicals into biological samples that interfere with spectrophotometric measurements … Some common laboratory techniques, including sonication and PCR, were particularly effective inducers of leaching … Leaching was ubiquitous among commercially available brands of microtubes, indicating a persistent source of error in biomolecule detection and concentration measurements.

I wouldn’t go so far as putting the ANT-ese labels ‘actor’ or ‘actant’ on plastic containers, but it’s nevertheless interesting that what was previously considered an inert container is now a active parameter that may have distorted millions of assays and research results.

The historiography of the interaction between science and medical practice — conflict or coop?

By Biomedicine in museums

I’m not sure I understand which historians of contemporary medicine Steve Sturdy is arguing against in this talk next Wednesday:

Recent accounts of the role of science in the development of medical practice have tended to concentrate on instances of tension between scientists and practitioners. This paper revisits the historiography, and suggests that historians have often inadvertently adopted essentialised accounts of scientific and clinical culture, and assumed that those cultures necessarily exist in tension with one another. Historians have reinforced these assumptions by seeking out instances of conflict, while neglecting the many ways in which science and medicine have developed in concert with one another. In so doing, they have restricted their own ability to comment on the multiple forms that modern medicine has taken, and might take in future.

If you want to find out, the answer will be given in the 5th floor lecture room on 183 Euston Road (The Wellcome Bldg) in London on Wednesday 5 May at 5pm.

Museums and social media

By Biomedicine in museums

Ready for some digital intoxication again:

Adrienne Fletcher, a graduate student in the Department of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida has made a social media museum research survey which says something about how (American) museums intend to and actually use social web media.

Facebook is considered the most effective medium, with Twitter on a second place. Typical time spent is 1-2 staff members for an average of 45 minutes a day. Fletcher’s summary of the results is that:

American museums believe that social media are important but are not currently using it for high levels of dialogic engagement. For the moment, museums are mostly involved with one-way communication strategies using mostly Facebook and Twitter to focus on event listing, reminders, reaching larger or newer audiences, and promotional messaging. However there does seem to be some evidence to suggest that museums are trying to increase their use of social media for more two-way and multi-way communication strategies.

Sounds pretty plausible, also for European ears.

Just had a digital detox week

By Biomedicine in museums

Anyone who’s wondered why we’ve been idle for a week? Well, this was the second year that Adbusters promoted Digital Detox Week; it started on 19 April and ended last Saturday.

The first Digital Detox Week was announced in an article
by Zachary Colbert titled ‘The Era of Simulation: Consequences of a digital revolution’:

The World Wide Web has infused our society with an all-encompassing reliance on media technologies … at all times we are obligated to communicate and to be tuned in to entertainment and information. We are objectified as ‘users’ not people. The products of our digital revolution run our daily routines. We are no longer free agents – technical extensions to our physical selves have become as vital as a limb or an organ.

And further:

This is what Jean Baudrillard called ‘the era of simulation’, we are being herded in preordained directions, dictated by omniscient authors. By following hyperlinks on Wikipedia, for example, we are following someone else’s premeditated path through information and jumping from one piece of subject matter to another. All too often users mistake these connections as their own and continually follow externalized thought processes, relying less and less on their natural associations.

Colbert is pretty dystoptic:

As we move from an industrial civilization into an information civilization, we’re online and we’re locked in. Try a digital detox for even just a day, I bet you will fail, I already have.

You the lost the bet! With one post exception, we’ve been able to stay away for a whole week.

See also my earlier post on this.

The rising star of the brain

By Biomedicine in museums

Even though the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is heading towards its ultimate death, it is still organising some pretty interesting seminars. For example, Maximilian Stadler’s (MPI-WG, Berlin) talk, titled ‘Cerebro-centrism and the History of the Neurosciences’, on Thursday 13 May at 4pm:

‘Surely the rising star of body parts in the 1980s’, historian Elaine Showalter noted in 1987, must have been the brain. Its rising star – largely, of course, thanks to the impressive expansions of the neurosciences ever since – then also made coalesce a field of historical scholarship which usually, and perhaps a bit too sloppily, is labeled just that: the history of the neurosciences. Timely enough an endeavor it is; histories of the neurosciences, however, are hard to come by in the history of the neurosciences. In a sense, no such histories yet exist. What exists, more properly, are cultural histories of the brain: stories of its cultural meanings, the social malleability of concepts, and the historicity and historical specificity of brain-centred discourses and practices.

The brain is indeed hardly a surprising choice of subject matter for the history of neuroscience; but, as I am going to argue in this talk, it is a historiographically far from unproblematic one. The case against the casual conflation of a history of the neurosciences with that of the brain I am going to develop by way of detour through the case of cybernetics – a particularly cerebral, and insufficiently problematized, vision of the neuroscientific past.

On my reading, the centrality accorded to cybernetics in historical accounts of mid-twentieth century neuroscientific developments is, more than anything else, a function of the public and intellectual visibility of cybernetics. As such, it is symptomatic of the broader, cerebro-centric tendency that is the subject of this talk: at best, the tendency to obscure crucial spaces of inquiry that are indeed all-too-easily glossed over in the necessarily manifold origins of neuroscience – devoid as they were, as I shall suggest, of the brain, of ‘culture’, and the philosophical excitement cybernetics once generated; at worst, the tendency to conflate cultural histories of the brain, of the mind-body problem, and of discourses of human nature with the diverse and, more often than not, quite mundane nature of neuroscientific advances.

Can a university museum also be a science communication unit?

By Biomedicine in museums

I’ve just had my abstract for the Universeum meeting in Uppsala in mid-June accepted. I’m posting a somewhat expanded version of the abstract here as a contribution to our ongoing discussion about Medical Museion’s identity:

Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen is currently in a process of changing its identity. Founded in 1906, the Medical-Historical Museum in Copenhagen was one of the many traditional medical collections/museums that emerged in Europe in the late 19th and early 20 centuries. In 2001, the museum changed name to Medical Museion to emphasise the close connection between museological and historical research, heritage production and exhibitions, but otherwise the institution kept its identity as a ‘museum’.

However, Medical Museion is currently reframing its identity, from merely a ‘museum’ to an institution for science communication. The point of departure for this identity shift is a growing dissatisfaction with the state of science communication. Traditional dissemination of science through mass media (either printed, electronic, or web 1.0-based) is no longer viable. Science communication needs to embrace the rapid emergence of the full spectrum of social web media (web 2.0), and many museums are adopting the practices of museum 2.0.

But social web media have a serious limitation — they can only operate with mediated texts and images and cannot convey the immediacy of our relation with the material aspects of science. This is exactly what historical artefacts can do. By emphasising the material aspects of science (its ‘thingness’), artefact collections can add a ‘presence’ dimension to science communication.

By reframing this particular university ‘museum’ into a science communication institution that explores the limits of both traditional mass media and new social web media, we are forced to focus, both practically and academically, on the notion of ‘materiality’. By doing so, we believe that we can further stimulate the search for a philosophical underpinning of the new identity.

I’m not sure this short abstract makes sense, but now it’s out for public response.

Want to renew Wellcome Library's outreach activities, web presence etc.?

By Biomedicine in museums

The Wellcome Library is announcing a vacancy as Head of Discovery and Engagement. The successful applicant is supposed to play a pivotal role in making the Library’s outstanding collections accessible, help revolutionise the Library’s web presence and reading-room services, and lead its outreach, communication and marketing activities. For more info, see here. Closing date is 10 May.

The conservatism of science journalism

By Biomedicine in museums

It is difficult to believe, but when Gustav Holmberg, Malin Sandström and I organised a session on science communication and social web media at the 10th conference of The International Network on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST-10) two years ago, ours was the only session which discussed social web media (especially blogging) in relation to traditional science communication. The rest of the PCST-10 was about traditional paper and ether media; the venue was filled with journalists and media scholars interested in traditional media.

Coming from the social web media world, we wrongy believed that the traditional science communication discourse was in decline. But science journalists is a conservative profession; they still largely believe science communication is about science journalism. For example, even when the Media for Science Forum 2010 starts a blog, it is all about science journalism in traditional media. I had expected a blog about science communication to involve discussions about social web media, but the journalism scenario lingers on.

The future of medical history — the swansong conference of the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine

By Biomedicine in museums

The Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicne at UCL has circulated an announcement for a conference which “represents our swansong and statement of what we would have liked to have been allowed to achieve in the history of medicine”. Appropriately titled ‘The Future of Medical History’, the conference will take place on 15-17 July 2010 at Goodenough College in London. Send an abstract and contact details to Lauren Cracknell (l.cracknell@ucl.ac.uk) by 1 June 2010. “Due to current circumstances”, the
Centre will not be able to cover the cost of travel or accommodation. Look for further details on the Centre’s website soonish.

More on the closing of the Centre for the History of Medicine

By Biomedicine in museums

As you can see from the comments on yesterday’s post, the closing of the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine seems unbelievable (or a April Fools Day prank). The Centre’s  outreach historian, Carole Reeves, has asked for the following message to be posted:

It is with regret that the Wellcome Trust and University College London announce the decision to work towards closure of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.

Both the Wellcome Trust and UCL acknowledge the significant achievements of the Centre over the years. The decision follows discussions between the senior staff of both organisations and consideration by the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust.

In accordance with Trust practice, the closure of the Centre will be phased over a two year period, allowing time for discussion and planning with regard to the current staff.

The Wellcome Trust remains firmly supportive of the study of the history of medicine and the medical humanities. It is keen to ensure that there is continued access and accommodation available for academics wishing to use the facilities of the Wellcome Library.

I regret that yesterday’s post about the closing of the Centre could be misinterpreted: I wrote that “The decision probably doesn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have followed the Centre closely during the last couple of years”. It’s more accurate to say that “The decision probably doesn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have followed the policy of the Wellcome Trust closely during the last couple of years”.