Genetic fallout in biocultural landscapes: molecular imperialism and the cultural politics of (not) seeing transgenes in Mexico

Values and vendettas: Populist science governance in Mexico

This article aims to diversify STS perspectives on populism by addressing a sequence of episodes of Mexican science policy in terms of clashes between populism and scientific communities. The article describes a reorientation of Mexican science policy that has destabilized the academic system during the present administration. Specifically, it looks at the legislative project initiated by Mexico's National Science and Technology Council (Conacyt) to overhaul the national regulatory framework on science, technology and innovation, and controversial political actions taken by Conacyt against the scientific community. Contextualizing these grievances, the article concludes that at stake is a form of 'trickle-down populism' that, through systematic authoritarianism, seeks to impose on the academic community a model of 'populist science governance'.

Thinking differently with Chinese medicine: 'Explanations' and case studies for a postcolonial STS

In Mandarin, the English word 'nature' translates as 'ziran' (zìrán) in science, biomedicine and everyday life. At the same time, ziran indexes a second older set of meanings that make little immediate sense in English. Current in many Chinese medical practices as well as in classical Chinese philosophy, these include 'what is spontaneously so' or 'let the character of the self unfold'. In this article we explore how these two families of meaning are related by particular Taiwanese Chinese medical practitioners as they describe how they negotiate the relations between biomedicine and Chinese medicine in daily professional practice. At the same time, inspired by related logic-shifting writing in anthropology, postcolonial studies and postcolonial STS, we draw on the 'art of patterning' ( biàn zhèng) to understand how ziran-nature relations are specified in those accounts. Patterning is the art of specifying the shifting arrangements and misalignments that lead to ill health. Treating this as a way of thinking about ziran-related overlaps between biomedicine and Chinese medicine, we show that patterning attends not to objects 'out there' but to appearances (xiang, xiàng). Put into use as an STS term of art it therefore shifts the epistemological basis of inquiry because case-stories no longer reveal underlying mechanisms, but instead narrate patterned appearances. One implication of this is that any particular pattern diagnosis lies alongside a galaxy of alternatives that might be equally good to think with. Within the limits set by referential academic conventions, we thus attempt a postcolonial shi ()-inflected STS in this paper by resisting the use of a single analytical framework, instead setting different forms of patterning alongside one another.

When citizen science is public relations

Amid rising interest in participatory research, some industries have recently begun to practice public relations citizen science (PRCS). Unlike citizen science and crowdsourcing projects that generate raw materials for product development, PRCS benefits capitalist firms primarily by improving their public image and deflecting accusations of causing harm. Three cases illustrate how PRCS works: (1) a growing assortment of citizen science projects associated with Antarctic tourism, (2) an initiative to document biodiversity, linked to Canada's oil and gas industry, and (3) a study sponsored by Biology Fortified, a nonprofit organization that works to communicate positive information about agricultural biotechnology. Scientists and research organizations may have legitimate reasons for entering into these partnerships, but PRCS can benefit industries in problematic ways. First, by supporting environmental science, PRCS can attach a 'sustainable' image to a polluting industry, without changing its core practices. Second, PRCS can accumulate data and steer volunteers' observations in ways that undermine claims about the harms caused by the industry's practices or products. Finally, in some cases, PRCS organizers hope to induce people to view an industry more 'rationally' than those who make 'emotional' or 'ideological' claims about its harms.

Glyphosate ban in Mexico: potential impacts on agriculture and weed management

Since glyphosate was classified as potentially carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, public debate regarding the environmental impact and health risks from its use has intensified. Almost all regulatory agencies throughout the world have concluded that the judicious use of glyphosate does not pose risks to the environment and human health. However, on the last day of 2020 the Mexican government decreed a ban of this herbicide beginning January, 2024. In current Mexican agriculture there are no safer chemical and/or other weed management technologies that allow for the economical substitution of glyphosate for weed control. Many Mexican weed scientists agree that glyphosate use should be reduced, but not banned outright. This decree could have more negative economic and social consequences as well as environmental and human health risks than benefits, which could compromise the country's food and public security. Crop yields are projected by some to decline by up to 40% with this ban, increasing food prices, making food less accessible to low-income consumers. In addition, a black market for the smuggling and illegal sale of glyphosate is possible. The possible environmental, economic and social impacts caused by the glyphosate ban in Mexico are discussed, emphasizing the impact on weed management. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.

Automating the Horae: Boundary-work in the age of computers

This article describes the intense software filtering that has allowed the arXiv e-print repository to sort and process large numbers of submissions with minimal human intervention, making it one of the most important and influential cases of open access repositories to date. This article narrates arXiv's transformation, using sophisticated sorting/filtering algorithms to decrease human workload, from a small mailing list used by a few hundred researchers to a site that processes thousands of papers per month. However, there are significant negative consequences for authors who have been filtered out of arXiv's main categories. There is thus a continued need to check and balance arXiv's boundaries, based on the essential tension between stability and innovation.

A Delphi Technology Foresight Study: Mapping Social Construction of Scientific Evidence on Metagenomics Tests for Water Safety

Access to clean water is a grand challenge in the 21^st century. Water safety testing for pathogens currently depends on surrogate measures such as fecal indicator bacteria (e.g., E. coli). Metagenomics concerns high-throughput, culture-independent, unbiased shotgun sequencing of DNA from environmental samples that might transform water safety by detecting waterborne pathogens directly instead of their surrogates. Yet emerging innovations such as metagenomics are often fiercely contested. Innovations are subject to shaping/construction not only by technology but also social systems/values in which they are embedded, such as experts’ attitudes towards new scientific evidence. We conducted a classic three-round Delphi survey, comprised of 107 questions. A multidisciplinary expert panel (n = 24) representing the continuum of discovery scientists and policymakers evaluated the emergence of metagenomics tests. To the best of our knowledge, we report here the first Delphi foresight study of experts’ attitudes on (1) the top 10 priority evidentiary criteria for adoption of metagenomics tests for water safety, (2) the specific issues critical to governance of metagenomics innovation trajectory where there is consensus or dissensus among experts, (3) the anticipated time lapse from discovery to practice of metagenomics tests, and (4) the role and timing of public engagement in development of metagenomics tests. The ability of a test to distinguish between harmful and benign waterborne organisms, analytical/clinical sensitivity, and reproducibility were the top three evidentiary criteria for adoption of metagenomics. Experts agree that metagenomic testing will provide novel information but there is dissensus on whether metagenomics will replace the current water safety testing methods or impact the public health end points (e.g., reduction in boil water advisories). Interestingly, experts view the publics relevant in a “downstream capacity” for adoption of metagenomics rather than a co-productionist role at the “upstream” scientific design stage of metagenomics tests. In summary, these findings offer strategic foresight to govern metagenomics innovations symmetrically: by identifying areas where acceleration (e.g., consensus areas) and deceleration/reconsideration (e.g., dissensus areas) of the innovation trajectory might be warranted. Additionally, we show how scientific evidence is subject to potential social construction by experts’ value systems and the need for greater upstream public engagement on metagenomics innovations.

Zapatista corn: a case study in biocultural innovation

In November 2001, Nature published a letter in which University of California Berkeley's biologists claimed to have found evidence of genetically modified (GM) DNA in regional varieties of maize in Oaxaca, even though the Mexican government had banned transgenic corn agriculture in 1998. While urban protesters marched against the genetic 'contamination' of Mexican corn by US-based agricultural biotech firms, rural indigenous communities needed a framework for understanding concepts such as GM before they could take action. This article analyzes how the indigenous organization, the Zapatistas, mobilized a program to address this novel entity. Their anti-GM project entailed educating local farmers about genetics, importing genetic testing kits, seed-banking landrace corn and sending seeds to 'solidarity growers' around the world. This article explores material-semiotic translations to explain one of the central aspects of this project, the definition and circulation of Zapatista corn--an entity defined not only through cultural geography, but also technological means. Through its circulation, Zapatista corn serves to perform a biocultural engagement with Zapatista's political project of resistance to neoliberalism. While much has been written about both regulatory policy and consumer activism against GM in the Global North, Zapatista corn also provides a case study in indigenous, anti-GM activism founded on biocultural innovation and the creation of alternative networks for circulating corn.