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Welcome to my mini-website |
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For my corporate science paper in BioSocieties, click here. Corporate science and the husbandry of scientific and medical knowledge by the pharmaceutical industry BioSocieties 2008; 3: 355-382 This article analyses the role of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries (“pharma”) in the construction of scientific and medical knowledge. Pharma’s activities are part of the broader dispositif of institutions, enterprises, regulations and constituencies within which medical-scientific knowledge is generated, but pharma’s contributions exhibit a specific character reflecting commercial pressures. As drug development proceeds, research and marketing activities coalesce around “product canons” that integrate scientific truth-claims and commercial positioning, generating knowledge with implicit commercial functionality. From this platform, pharma stamps consensus-building “narratives” into medical-scientific discourse, in which “problems” arise and are “solved” by drugs. Concurrently, pharma modulates the structure of discourse and the social networks through which discourse proceeds. Implicit within these activities is a meta-science whose goal is to understand and technologize the operation of science to an external end. This mode of knowledge production can be viewed as a normative transformation of Kuhnian normal science, characterised by the attachment (and at times subordination) of paradigmatic tenets to extrinsic goals; exaggerated control of belief, research and consensus formation; and a capacity for infringement of traditional norms of scientific truthfulness. An International Standard of Integrity in Science would strengthen pharma’s contributions to medical and scientific knowledge. © Cambridge University Press |
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For my short piece in Clinical Chemistry on the metabolic syndrome, click here. From syndrome to spectrum: what evolution suggests about the status of the metabolic syndrome Clinical Chemistry 2007; 53: 2218-2219 There are several reasons why the metabolic syndrome continues to thrive as a concept. First, there is a widespread sense that its components are sufficiently coupled mechanistically to suggest some kind of disease entity. Second, the term and concept retain utility simply for want of a fuller description of the underlying pathology. Third, the concept is self sustaining, in that the existing body of research attracts further research and comment. Fourth, industry promotes the syndrome in symposia and review articles, alongside related concepts such as the “cardiometabolic syndrome” and “cardiometabolic risk”.
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My chief commercial interests are in analysis, consultancy and writing in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, with emphasis on the development of novel therapeutics.
I also work as a Scientific Associate to the ARCAD initiative, an international programme launched to improve clinical trials design in oncology.
My main academic interests are in knowledge construction, disease classification, science policy, cell biology, and the relationship between biology and anthropology.
Click to contact me at amatheson@blueyonder.co.uk. Please remember to include your contact details!