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40‘Extreme’ organisms and the problem of generalization: interpreting the Krogh principleHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (4): 65. 2018.Many biologists appeal to the so-called Krogh principle when justifying their choice of experimental organisms. The principle states that “for a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied”. Despite its popularity, the principle is often critiqued for implying unwarranted generalizations from optimal models. We argue that the Krogh principle should be interpreted in relation to the historical and scientific con…Read more
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40Process epistemology in the COVID-19 era: rethinking the research process to avoid dangerous forms of reificationEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 1-22. 2022.Whether we live in a world of autonomous things, or a world of interconnected processes in constant flux, is an ancient philosophical debate. Modern biology provides decisive reasons for embracing the latter view. How does one understand the practices and outputs of science in such a dynamic, ever-changing world - and particularly in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific knowledge has been regarded as bedrock for decisive social interventions? We argue that key t…Read more
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36Symposium issue: Philosophy of biology in Flanders and the netherlandsActa Biotheoretica 53 (2): 55-56. 2005.
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35Focusing on scientific understandingIn Henk De Regt, Sabina Leonelli & Kai Eigner (eds.), Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives, University of Pittsburgh Press. 2009.
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35Model OrganismsCambridge University Press. 2020.This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the concept of the 'model organism' in contemporary biology. Thinking about model organisms enables us to examine how living organisms have been brought into the laboratory and used to gain a better understanding of biology, and to explore the research practices, commitments, and norms underlying this understanding. We contend that model organisms are key components of a distinctive way of doing research. We focus on what makes model organisms…Read more
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34Bioethics Authorship in Context: How Trends in Biomedicine Challenge BioethicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 11 (10). 2011.The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 10, Page 22-24, October 2011
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34Where health and environment meet: the use of invariant parameters in big data analysisSynthese 198 (Suppl 10): 1-20. 2018.The use of big data to investigate the spread of infectious diseases or the impact of the built environment on human wellbeing goes beyond the realm of traditional approaches to epidemiology, and includes a large variety of data objects produced by research communities with different methods and goals. This paper addresses the conditions under which researchers link, search and interpret such diverse data by focusing on “data mash-ups”—that is the linking of data from epidemiology, biomedicine, …Read more
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34How to choose your research organismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 80 101227. 2020.
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34Understanding in biology: the impure nature of biological knowledgeIn Henk De Regt, Sabina Leonelli & Kai Eigner (eds.), Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 189--209. 2009.
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26Concealment and Discovery: The Role of Information Security in Biomedical Data Re-UseSocial Studies of Science. forthcoming.This paper analyses the role of information security in shaping the dissemination and re-use of biomedical data, as well as the embedding of such data in the material, social and regulatory landscapes of research. We consider the data management practices adopted by two UK-based data linkage infrastructures: the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage, a Welsh databank that facilitates appropriate re-use of health data derived from research and routine medical practice in the region; and the Medic…Read more
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26Documenting the emergence of bio-ontologies: or, why researching bioinformatics requires HPSSBHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (1). 2010.
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25An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of LifeInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (4): 420-422. 2011.International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 4, Page 420-422, December 2011
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21Data Shadows: Knowledge, Openness, and AbsenceScience, Technology, and Human Values 42 (2): 191-202. 2017.This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible, which unvaryingly but often implicitl…Read more
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21Data Journeys in the Sciences (edited book)Springer. 2020.This groundbreaking, open access volume analyses and compares data practices across several fields through the analysis of specific cases of data journeys. It brings together leading scholars in the philosophy, history and social studies of science to achieve two goals: tracking the travel of data across different spaces, times and domains of research practice; and documenting how such journeys affect the use of data as evidence and the knowledge being produced. The volume captures the opportuni…Read more
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20How Does One “Open” Science? Questions of Value in Biological ResearchScience, Technology, and Human Values 42 (2): 280-305. 2017.Open Science policies encourage researchers to disclose a wide range of outputs from their work, thus codifying openness as a specific set of research practices and guidelines that can be interpreted and applied consistently across disciplines and geographical settings. In this paper, we argue that this “one-size-fits-all” view of openness sidesteps key questions about the forms, implications, and goals of openness for research practice. We propose instead to interpret openness as a dynamic and …Read more
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19The scientific importance of asking questions at meetings: Why virtual debate is not enoughBioessays 33 (1): 35-37. 2011.
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16Process-Sensitive Naming: Trait Descriptors and the Shifting Semantics of Plant (Data) SciencePhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14 (16). 2022.This paper examines classification practices in the domain of plant data semantics, and particularly methods used to label plant traits to foster the collection, management, linkage and analysis of data about crops across locations—which crucially inform research and interventions on plants and agriculture. The efforts required to share data place in sharp relief the forms of diversity characterizing the systems used to capture the biological and environmental characteristics of plant variants: …Read more
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15Intellectual directions for History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2019–2023History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (3): 28. 2019.
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157. Valuing Data in Postgenomic BiologyIn Sarah S. Richardson & Hallam Stevens (eds.), Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome, Duke University Press. pp. 126-149. 2015.
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14How Do Scientists Define Openness? Exploring the Relationship Between Open Science Policies and Research PracticeBulletin of Science, Technology and Society 36 (2): 128-141. 2016.This article documents how biomedical researchers in the United Kingdom understand and enact the idea of “openness.” This is of particular interest to researchers and science policy worldwide in view of the recent adoption of pioneering policies on Open Science and Open Access by the U.K. government—policies whose impact on and implications for research practice are in need of urgent evaluation, so as to decide on their eventual implementation elsewhere. This study is based on 22 in-depth interv…Read more
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14In response to broad transformations brought about by the digitalization, globalization, and commodification of research processes, the Open Science [OS] movement aims to foster the wide dissemination, scrutiny and re-use of research components for the good of science and society. This Element examines the role played by OS principles and practices within contemporary research and how this relates to the epistemology of science. After reviewing some of the concerns that have prompted calls for m…Read more
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13Repertoires: how to transform a project into a research communityBioScience 65 (7): 701-708. 2015.How effectively communities of scientists come together and co-operate is crucial both to the quality of research outputs and to the extent to which such outputs integrate insights, data and methods from a variety of fields, laboratories and locations around the globe. This essay focuses on the ensemble of material and social conditions that makes it possible for a short-term collaboration, set up to accomplish a specific task, to give rise to relatively stable communities of researchers. We ref…Read more
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12From FAIR data to fair data use: Methodological data fairness in health-related social media researchBig Data and Society 8 (1). 2021.The paper problematises the reliability and ethics of using social media data, such as sourced from Twitter or Instagram, to carry out health-related research. As in many other domains, the opportunity to mine social media for information has been hailed as transformative for research on well-being and disease. Considerations around the fairness, responsibilities and accountabilities relating to using such data have often been set aside, on the understanding that as long as data were anonymised,…Read more
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12Why the Current Insistence on Open Access to Scientific Data? Big Data, Knowledge Production, and the Political Economy of Contemporary BiologyBulletin of Science, Technology and Society 33 (1-2): 6-11. 2013.The collection and dissemination of data on human and nonhuman organisms has become a central feature of 21st-century biology and has been endorsed by funding agencies in the United States and Europe as crucial to translating biological research into therapeutic and agricultural innovation. Large molecular data sets, often referred to as “big data,” are increasingly incorporated into digital databases, many of which are freely accessible online. These data have come to be seen as resources that …Read more
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12Circulating bodies: human-animal movements in science and medicineHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (1): 1-7. 2023.
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10Accelerating agriculture: Data-intensive plant breeding and the use of genetic gain as an indicator for agricultural research and developmentStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C): 167-176. 2022.
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9Cultivating Responsible Plant Breeding Strategies: Conceptual and Normative Commitments in Data-Intensive AgricultureIn Hugh F. Williamson & Sabina Leonelli (eds.), Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Data Challenges for Agricultural Research and Development, Springer Verlag. pp. 301-317. 2022.This chapter argues for the importance of considering conceptual and normative commitments when addressing questions of responsible practice in data-intensive agricultural research and development. We consider genetic gain-focused plant breeding strategies that envision a data-intensive mode of breeding in which genomic, environmental and socio-economic data are mobilised for rapid crop variety development. Focusing on socio-economic data linkage, we examine methods of product profiling and how …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |