Demands for public participation in technical decision-making are currently high on the agenda of Science & Technology Studies. It is assumed that the democratisation of technical decision-making processes generally leads to more socially desirable and acceptable outcomes. While this may be true in certain cases, this assumption cannot be generalised. I will discuss the case of the so-called ‘South African AZT debate’. The controversy started when President Thabo Mbeki, after reading some scientific papers on the toxicity of AZT, decided to (...) bar the use of the drug in the public health sector as a means to reduce the transmission of HIV from mothers to children. While the scientific mainstream accepts the effectiveness of AZT in reducing the risk of vertical HIV transmission, a few maverick scientists reject the clinical evidence and argue that the risks of using AZT by far outweigh its benefits. Based on various textual sources and using the ‘Periodic Table of Expertises’ developed by Collins and Evans, Mbeki’s expertise at the time of his intervention into the technical question whether AZT is a medicine or a poison can be classified as primary source knowledge. It is shown that this type of expertise is insufficient for technical decision-making. Mbeki’s primary source knowledge legitimated his presentation of the claims of maverick scientists as a serious contribution to the debate—with tragic consequences for tens of thousands of babies.Keywords: Primary source knowledge; Expertise; Technical decision-making; South Africa; AZT; AIDS. (shrink)

On the face of it, the directors of new large scientific projects have an impossible task. They have to make technical decisions about sciences in which they have never made a research contribution—sciences in which they have no contributory expertise. Furthermore, these decisions must be accepted and respected by the scientists who are making research contributions. The problem is discussed in two interviews conducted with two directors of large scientific projects. The paradox is resolved for the managers by their use (...) of interactional and referred expertise. The same analysis might be applicable to management in general. An Appendix, co-authored with Jeff Shrager, compares the notion of referred expertise with contributory expertise.Keywords: Management; Referred expertise; Interactional expertise; LIGO; Thirty Meter Telescope; Big science. (shrink)

The phrase ‘trading zone’ is often used to denote any kind of interdisciplinary partnership in which two or more perspectives are combined and a new, shared language develops. In this paper we distinguish between different types of trading zone by asking whether the collaboration is co-operative or coerced and whether the end-state is a heterogeneous or homogeneous culture. In so doing, we find that the voluntary development of a new language community—what we call an inter-language trading zone—represents only one of (...) four possible configurations. In developing this argument we show how different modes of collaboration result in different kinds of trading zone, how different kinds of trading zone may be ‘nested’ inside each other and discuss how a single collaboration might move between different kinds of trading zone over time. One implication of our analysis is that interactional expertise is a central component of at least one class of trading zone.Keywords: Trading zones; Interactional expertise; Interdisciplinarity; Creole. (shrink)

‘Interactional expertise’ is developed through linguistic interaction without full scale practical immersion in a culture. Interactional expertise is the medium of communication in peer review in science, in review committees, and in interdisciplinary projects. It is also the medium of specialist journalists and of interpretative methods in the social sciences. We describe imitation game experiments designed to make concrete the idea of interactional expertise. The experiments show that the linguistic performance of those well socialized in the language of a specialist (...) group is indistinguishable from those with full blown practical socialization but distinguishable from those who are not well socialized. The imitation game can also be used to indicate whether an individual can enter an esoteric domain and master the interactional expertise, a skill required by interpretative sociologists of science, anthropologists, ethnographers, and the like.Keywords: Expertise; Interactional expertise; Imitation game; Turing test; Colour blindness; Interpretative methods. (shrink)