Since the second half of the twentieth century, biomedical research has made increasing use of epidemiological methods to establish empirical evidence on a population level. This paper is about practices with data in epidemiological research, based on a case study in Denmark. I propose an epistemology of record linkage that invites exploration of epidemiological studies as heterogeneous assemblages. Focusing on data collecting, sampling and linkage, I examine how data organisation and processing become productive beyond the context of their collection. The (...) case study looks at how a local population database established in 1976 to investigate possibilities for the prevention of cardiovascular disease is used thirty years later to test hypotheses on the aetiology of breast cancer. For two breast cancer investigations based on the same core data set, I follow the underlying record linkage practice and describe how research objects such as molecular markers become relevant with respect to public health through information networking. Epidemiological association studies function as tools that performatively enrol different contexts into statistical risk estimation, thereby configuring options for research as well as for clinical testing and public health policy. (shrink)

Existing accounts of the early history of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on Alois Alzheimer’s (1864–1915) publications of two ‘peculiar cases’ of middle-aged patients who showed symptoms associated with senile dementia, and Emil Kraepelin’s (1856–1926) discussion of these and a few other cases under the newly introduced name of ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ in his Textbook of Psychiatry. This article questions the underpinnings of these accounts that rely mainly on publications and describe ‘presenility’ as a defining characteristic of the disease. Drawing on archival (...) research in the Munich psychiatric clinic, in which Alzheimer and Kraepelin practised, this article looks at the use of the category as a diagnostic label in practice. It argues that the first cases only got their exemplary status as key referents of Alzheimer’s disease in later readings of the original publications. In the 1900s, the published cases rather functioned as material to think about the limits of the category of senile dementia. The examination of paper technologies in the Munich psychiatric clinic reveals that the use of the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was not limited to patients of a certain age and did not exclude ‘senile’ cases. Moreover, the archival records reflect that many diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease were noted in the medical records as suspicions rather than conclusions. Against this background, the article argues that in theory and practice, Alzheimer’s disease was not treated as a well-defined disease entity in the Munich clinic, but as an exploratory category for the clinical and histopathological investigation of varieties of organic brain diseases. (shrink)

Focused on the material practices of making insect specimens, I explore how shifting concepts of potential are intricately crafted on the lab bench. Different types of time—from personal histories to imagined futures—are created and entangled as butterflies are made into specimens. Transforming a butterfly into a scientific tool does not merely transform the butterfly, I suggest, but also reciprocally folds back to transform the scientist who makes it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with scientists in the labs and workrooms at the (...) Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California, I follow butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) as they are collected, euthanized, pinned, genetically sampled for rewilding projects, such as reviving a Californian sand dune ecology, and frozen in biobanks for as-yet-unknown future uses. Through a comparative study of practices at these two sites, I examine how a butterfly can contain multiple types of potential: manifesting its inherent potential as it transforms from caterpillar to butterfly, the plasticity of the butterfly body as it is crafted into a scientific specimen, and the potential of that specimen to be used as a site for extracting genomic data. Perceptions of time, salvation, loss, and care emerge as specimens are prepared, sampled, and reimagined as solutions for recreating lost ecologies. (shrink)