[The relevance of Public Health Journals in informing research, education, health services, and citizenship]

This text presents in a synthetic manner the discussions of the working group of the same name, held during the international conference commemorating the twenty years of the SciELO Program. The objective is to inform the Public Health professional field about chronic problems affecting scientific periodicals in Brazil - financing, classification of journals, the impact of published works, among others.

[Specialism, specificity and identity - the controversiessurrounding autism in the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS)]

The passing of federal law 12,764/2012 marked a victory for the political activism of parents of autistic individuals in Brazil, but it also drew attention to the serious antagonism between parents of autistic individuals and the mental health network. This article examines the perspectives of social actors involved in the controversy that took place after the enactment of this law and seeks to show why this controversy precedes the passing of the law and is not resolved by it. The argument is that the troubled relationship between the political movement of parents of autistic individuals and the mental health network can be better understood when the construction and consolidation of a network of expertise around autism spectrum disorders as being inseparable from the construction of a social and political identity for autistic people in Brazil is taken into consideration. The article draws inspiration from the Studies of Expertise and Experience, which discuss the new regime of relations between scientific research and civil society. Nevertheless, it is also seen that the consolidation of this expertise network has arisen despite the absence of a broad specialized treatment network and of a profound reconfiguration in the regime of scientific research and production of knowledge about autism in Brazil.

[From human to number in the construction of toxoplasmosis from the logic of the human sciences]

Based on an empirical analytical study conducted in a biology laboratory, the article investigates the construction of scientific knowledge in the process of toxoplasma DNA extraction. It accompanies all stages in the construction of this knowledge, from selection of humans through their transformation into numbers. Latour's concept of circulating reference, along with the concepts Hacking employs to explain the construction of the objects of science and of ideas, marks, and things, are vital to understanding this shift from human to number. The present study hopes to stimulate a more critical attitude towards the construction of the objects of science. It also stresses that it would be problematic to use numbers or marks as our sole references in health interventions.