Table Of ContentStudies in ethnomethodology Art and artifact
in laboratory science
Edited by Harold Garfinkel
Professor of Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles
A study of shop work and shop talk
in a research laboratory
Michael Lynch
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley
QP 356 .L9 1985
Lynch, Michael, 1948-
Art and arti-fact in
laboratory science
First published in 1985
This book is dedicated to my parents, James and
by Routledge & Kegan Paul pic
Helen Lynch
14 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7PH, England
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
464 St Kilda Road, Melbourne,
Victoria 3004, Australia and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 lEN, England
Set in Linotron Times
by Input Typesetting Ltd, London
and printed in Great Britain
by Hartnoll Print, Bodmin, Cornwall
Copy right© Michael Lynch1 985
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the publisher,
except for the quotation of brief passages
in criticism
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lynch, Michael, 1948-
Art and artifact in laboratory science.
(Studies in ethnomethodology)
Revision of thesis (Ph. D.)—University of California,
Irvine, 1979.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Neurology—Research—Social aspects. 2. Communi
cation in science. 3. Science—Social aspects. I. Title.
II. Series.
QP356.L9 1985 306'.45 84-9919
British Library CIP data also available
ISBN 0-7100-9753-d
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
1 Introduction: methodological issues in the study
of scientific work 1
Part I Ethnographic accounts of shop work 23
2 The lab setting 25
3 Projects and the temporalization of lab inquiry 53
4 An archeology of artifact 81
Part II Agreement in laboratory shop talk 141
,
5 Laboratory shop talk 143
6 Two notions of agreement 179
7 Objects and objections: modifications of accounts
of objects in laboratory shop talk 202
8 Conclusion 274
Appendix The transcript symbols 297
Bibliography 302
Index 313
vii
. ;
Figures
1.1 Electron micrograph of brain tissue (approx. 22,000 X) 13
2.1 Cross-sectional rendering of hippocampus 30
2.2 Schematic of a single granule cell in the molecular layer
of the dentate gyrus of the dorsal hippocampus 36
2.3 "Early" version of micrographie montage 40
2.4 "Recent" version of micrographie montage 42
2.5 Enlargement of low-power montage from Figure 2.3
showing placement of high-power montage in the field
"above" the granule cell bodies 44
2.6 Enlargement of photographs from "5-day" montage
(Figure 2.3) 46
2.7 Enlargement of a micrograph showing "intact" neural
synapse 48
3.1 Apparatus used for vascular perfusion of the central
nervous system 69
4.1 The apparent microglia in a capillary 102
8.1 Reconstruction of the "paper doll" method, showing
comparison for "traced" outlines of "2-day" and "10-
day" microscopic preparations 286
ix
Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to Harold Garfinkel for the teachings and
advice that inspired and guided my studies. Melvin Pollner was
and continues to be a source of insight and guidance for my work.
Duane Metzger provided critical appreciation and warm support,
and John O'Neill and Ken Morrison provided valuable advice,
comments, and moral support while I prepared this work for
publication. I am also grateful to Craig Mac Andrew for carefully
editing and criticizing a draft of the manuscript, and to Henry
Beck for introducing me to the writings on meta-science, pheno
menology, and ethnomethodology which catalyzed my intellectual
development during my early years of graduate training.
Gail Jefferson gave me valuable help with the analysis of
scientific conversations, and Anita Pomerantz's writings and
comments were an excellent resource for my analysis of agreement
in scientific discourse. I am also grateful to Louis Narens for
facilitating my contact with the research laboratory I studied,
and 1 am extremely thankful to Gary Lynch and Kevin Lee for
instructing me on most of what I know of brain science research.
I would also like to thank Gary Tsutsui for photographic work
used in preparing Figures 2.3-2.7. The Van Nostrand Reinhold
Company was kind enough to grant permission to reprint copy
righted materials from M. L. Hayat, Basic Electron Microscopy
Techniques, which are used in Chapter 3. I thank Emanuel Scheg-
loff for giving me permission to use the long quotations in Chapter
6 taken from the late Harvey Sacks's lecture notes.
I am especially grateful to my friends, David Weinstein, Alene
Terasaki, Nancy Fuller, and Nancy Richards, and Scot Carlson
for endless hours of help on the manuscript, and for being major
influences on my intellectual development.
xi
Preface
These prefatory remarks are actually written as a postscript to the
volume that follows. The volume is a descriptive study of social
activities in a neurosciences laboratory which focuses on how
electron-microscopic phenomena were made sensually available
and objectively accountable. It is based on fieldwork I conducted
in the laboratory during 1975 and 1976. A draft of the volume was
written by the end of 1978, and was accepted as my dissertation at
University of California, Irvine in March, 1979.
I mention this because the situation in the science studies field
has changed dramatically since the time I conducted the study and
wrote the chapters in this volume. "Laboratory studies," also
known as "the anthropology of science," have become something
of a minor fashion in the sociology of science since 1978. At
roughly the same time as I was doing my fieldwork, Bruno Latour
and Steve Woolgar performed a field study of a biochemistry
laboratory at Salk Institute, which they published in 1979,' and
Karin Knorr-Cetina performed an ethnographic study of a protein
chemistry lab in Berkeley, California.^ I did not know of these
other studies until after I had completed my fieldwork and had
finished most of my writing in 1978. In addition to the coincidence
of there being three concurrent and independent studies of labora
tories in California, each described scientific practice in its
"natural" setting in remarkably similar ways. This is not to say
that there were no differences between the studies,^ but that
their criticisms of previous accounts of scientific methods, and the
alternative view of scientific practices they developed covered
much common ground.
In addition to the studies mentioned above, a number of other
laboratory ethnographies have been produced by Zenzen and
Restivo," McKegney,' Law and Williams,® Collins,^ Pinch,»
xiii
PREFACE PREFACE
Travis,® Pickering,i" Woolgar,^ Traweek,!^ Star,i3 and developed an approach to the study of work that directly guided
Goodfield.i'* A growing body of analytic studies of scientists' my selection of topics, methods of study, and manner of exposi
written and oral discourse has complemented the ethnographies tion. This approach, known as, ethnomethodological studies of
of scientific work.i^ The various studies have added contempor work, is discussed in Chapter I.20 Despite the changes in the
aneous empirical content to certain historians' and theorists' sociology of science mentioned above, ethnomethodological
claims that the science that exists in practice is not at all like the studies of scientific work are still very distinct from all other
science we read about in textbooks.A principled demarcation variants in the science studies field, as should be evident by
between science and common sense no longer seems tenable since comparing the present volume to other laboratory ethnographies.
lab studies have shown that scientific projects are performed by Ethnomethodological studies of work in the sciences are explic
common-sense reasoners handling exotic materials and complex itly concerned with the technical production of order in specialized
equipment. Successful experimentation would be impossible scientific and mathematical disciplines. They are exclusively pre
without unformulated rules of thumb, and decisions to proceed occupied with the production of social order, in situ, and not with
in ways not defined a priori by canons of proper experimental defining, selecting among, and establishing orders of relevance for
procedure. When viewed up close, scientific labs begin to look like the antecedent variables that impinge upon "actors" in a given
workshops studied by sociologists in so many other occupational setting. Accordingly, readers of the present volume will notice,
settings. Day-to-day laboratory actions are not unilaterally guided and some will be frustrated by the fact, that there will be little or
by a distinctive set of occupational norms, or for that matter, no discussion of the general norms and reward structure^i in
"counter-norms,"I'' or an oscillation between the two. science, of "cycles of credit,"22 or of how the microstructure of
Besides debunking an image of "The Scientist" that admittedly the lab is connected to larger social and historical "forces." The
served the purpose of scientific autonomy and proved invaluable neglect of such issues will be complemented by a peculiar interest
as an educational prod and a defense against the assaults of crea in the details of conversation and co-ordinated practice within the
tionists, among others,lab studies have raised to a new level confines of a particular laboratory.
the discussion of such traditional topics as rationality, consensus I have chosen not to devote extensive discussion to my theoret
formation, discovery, and scientific controversy. Sociologists can ical motives for studying the details of laboratory talk and action.
now treat these topics as matters to be observed and described in I hope that the descriptions and analyses of laboratory shop work
the present, and not as the exclusive property of historians and and shop talk that follow will be of sufficient interest that the
philosophers of science. reader will not demand a special warrant for why anyone would
I mention these recent lab studies not in order to claim the want to be concerned with such matters. Aside from the rather
present volume is as original as others which were published brief exposition in Chapter 1, I do not spell out such a warrant
earlier. Instead, I write this to apologize for the scant treatment in advance, but present my reasons and arguments in a more or
given to the above "lab studies" in the chapters that follow. To less piecemeal fashion throughout the body and notes of the
adequately reference the various studies, and more importantly volume. The vision of social order that animates this work is one
to develop upon the many issues and controversies that have been which insists that reasons and justifications are occasional, that is,
taken up in social studies of science since 1978, would necessitate suited to the situation at hand and not to a transcendental context
a thorough reconstruction of the text. I have chosen not to of inquiry. Therefore, I have attempted to refer to established
perform such a reconstruction because it seemed to me that it scholarly themes and literary works in an almost tangential way;
would do more harm than good to reconstruct this text in order as they are touched off by descriptions of specific laboratory
to provide a sense that it was completely up to date. situations.
My concerns in the text hopelessly reflect my perspective at the Newport Beach, CA
time I conducted the ethnography and wrote my fieldnotes. When
I conducted my research, publications in the sociology of science,
especially the American studies with which I was most familiar,
seemed to have little bearing on my interests in laboratory prac Notes
tices and the methods I chose for pursuing those interests.In 1 Latour and Woolgar (1979).
contrast, Harold Garfinkel and his students and colleagues had 2 Knorr-Cetina (1981); also see Knorr (1977).
xiv XV
PREFACE
1 Introduction: methodological
3 Differences in approach are discussed in Latour (1982), Knorr-
Cetina (1983), and Lynch (1982a). Programmatic discussion of
issues in the study of scientific
different programmes is presented in the edited volume by Knorr-
Cetina and Mulkay (1983). work
4 Zenzen and Restivo (1982).
5 McKegney (1979).
6 Law and Williams (1982); Williams and Law (1980).
7 Collins (1975) provides an early ethnography on the topic of
replication, although his approach was mainly limited to interviews
about scientific work. A body of later papers by Collins and his
colleagues are presented together in Collins (1981).
8 Pinch (1983). Also see Collins and Pinch (1979).
9 Travis (1981).
10 Pickering (1981).
11 Woolgar (1981).
12 Traweek (1981).
13 Star (1983). This volume is a study of science which confronts its topic in the
14 Goodfield (1981) closely chronicles the life of an individual scientist shop work of a particular brain science laboratory. Throughout
but makes little attempt to encompass the social process of
the following chapters scientific inquiry is identified with the
laboratory research.
production of technical work and technical talk on the lab floor.
15 Some of the better analyses of scientific discourse are: Morrison
The fundamental matter of interest in this study is the pheno
(1979; 1981), O'Neill (1980); Woolgar (1980); Mulkay and Gilbert
menon of the social accomplishment of natural scientific order.
(1982); Bazerman (1981); and Knorr and Knorr (1978).
16 See Medawar (1969); Holton (1978); Barnes (1974); and Bloor This topic entails an examination of the substantively scientific
(1976; 1973), among numerous other programmatic treatments which work and technical talk in the laboratory as a proper object of
are cited in later chapters. sociological inquiry. It is proposed in this study that the detailed
17 Merton, in a classic article (1942) argues for a set of norms for contents of scientific accounts, as they implicate a referential
science, while Mitroff (1977) formulates a set of "counter-norms." environment of scientific objects and events, are socially organized
18 See Mulkay (1976) and Gieryn (1984) for discussions of ideological in ways that do not merely reiterate formulations of scientific
uses of normative versions of science. method. It is the aim of the study to substantiate the possibility
19 Although in an early statement Merton (1952) called for case studies
of an analyzable social basis in the local production of accounts
of science, case studies in the Mertonian tradition, such as Barber
of natural objects in laboratory research.
and Fox (1958) and Gaston (1973) do not critically examine technical
The analyses of scientific shop work and shop talk which are
activities in science in any way comparable to the later
presented in the following chapters are based on a field study
ethnographies in the constructivist and ethnomethodological
traditions. of a particular university research laboratory. I was given the
20 A number of written works by members of that community were opportunity to visit this biological sciences laboratory in January
completed since 1978, and are not given the ample coverage they 1975 through arrangements made by a professor in the School of
deserve in this volume. These include Livingston's study of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine who was a
mathematicians (1983), Morrison's studies of written accountabihty friend of the lab's principal investigator. I visited the lab several
in science (1979; 1981), Garfinkel et al.'s study of the optical times a week for a six-month period after making the initial
discovery of a pulsar (1981), Wieder's study of primate experiments
contact. These visits continued on a less frequent basis for another
(1980), and Schrecker's study of didactic experiments in chemistry
year and a half. During this "field work" I attempted to learn as
(1980). Some of these studies are discussed in Lynch, Livingston
much as I possibly could, given the amount of time I had available
and Garfinkel (1983). Representative works by the above authors
and given my limited background in the biological sciences, about
are scheduled to appear in Garfinkel (ed.) (forthcoming).
21 Merton (1942). the natural science practices that composed the lab's research and
22 See Latour and Woolgar (1979), ch. 5, "Cycles of Credit." training programs. I was given a rather informal course of training
in the substantive and methodological features of the lab's
1
xvi
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
research into a regenerative process in the brain. During this I also made note of sequential aspects of the ordinary work of lab
training I took the opportunity to inquire into several topics on members as they went about their daily tasks. These temporal
the social organization of lab inquiry. These topics were informed features of the work's performance were interesting to me for the
and enriched during my attempts to understand the technical way they showed an actual order to the performance of "method"
details of talk and conduct in the lab environment and were not in contrast to the schematic order of a "methods" recipe.
strictly founded on a naturally theoretic interest in the "social Tape recordings wefe^made of spontaneously occurring conver
aspects" of science. sations between lab members while they were engaged in lab
During my earlier visits to the lab facility I was given "tours" practices. In my analysis of these tapes I focused on those conver
by lab members who were kind enough to show me the various sations which had a demonstrable relevance to the collaborative
instruments and data formats used in the lab work and to give work being performed along with the talk. This shop talk was
me patient explanations about the lab's research problems and analyzed for how it was integrally part of the courses of action
methods. At this time I was also told about informal aspects of which made up the daily work of the lab, as that work involved
lab work which were not available in reports of research findings substantive determinations of neural events and structures.
or typified descriptions of scientific logic and method. This field experience gave access to features of natural scientific
After these "tours" I focused on a particular specialized area practice which are not elaborated upon in scholarly treatments of
of the lab's researches, the electron microscopic documentation scientific theory and method. In addition, such features are not
of a neural regeneration phenomenon, "axon sprouting." It was reported in methods sections of scientific research papers.
impossible for me to monitor the total range of technical Methods reports supply step-by-step maxim.s of conduct for the
approaches which were used in the lab, and I found that "speci already competent practitioner to assimilate within an indefinite
fying" my inquiry to a single one of the lab's several competences mix of common sense and unformulated, but specifically scientific,
facilitated a more detailed understanding of the shop work and practices of inquiry. These unformulated practices are necessarily
shop talk. Even within the narrow area I studied, my competence omitted from the domain of study when science studies rely upon
with electron microscopic work never approached a practitioner's the literary residues of laboratory inquiry as the observable and
skills with preparing brain tissues for microscopic photography. I analyzable presence of scientific work.
was unable to participate in the lab's researches, though I achieved
a competence in some of the analytic skills used in assembling
and interpreting electron microscopic displays of brain tissues.
Science studies
These hmited competences gave me considerably more access to
the talk and conduct which I witnessed in the lab than would have Almost without exception, philosophical accounts, biographical
been possible had I relied solely on the analytic skills of a social stories, historical interpretations, and "empirical studies" in the
scientist while observing members' activities. science studies literature address the practices of science as
While I was engaged in the largely practical inquiry of learning achievements to be explained in a language disengaged from any
about brain research in the lab, I compiled ethnographic field laboratory task at hand.' It is not as though these accounts deny
notes and audiotape recordings. In the field notes I kept a journal that science is accomplished in laboratory settings, but that they
of the particular troubles I had in learning about the lab's do not provide detailed access to the practical achievement of
researches, as well as a daily log of events which struck me as day-to-day inquiries.^ They instead give decontextualized versions
particularly interesting. These notes were not organized under any of methodic production and logical reasoning, reconstructions of
well-defined set of topics, though they tended to focus on events citation networks and historical lineages, after-the-fact interpreta
in the work which were conspicuously tied to the local circum tions of historical records, remembrances of prominent figures in
stances of the work. Such matters as arguments over visible micro science, and abstracted "social aspects" of science's institutional
scopic phenomena, mistakes and other "troubles" in the routine and administrative organization.' These studies do not, so to
work, remarks about research artifacts, and expressions of uncer speak, take the reader into the contemporaneous achievement of
tainty by practitioners were of particular interest because of the science as it unfolds in the daily routines of shop work. It is as
way they exhibited features of scientific work which often go though what scientists do qua scientists in their day-to-day prac
unmentioned in written accounts of scientific theory and method. tices is presupposed in the literature as an unproblematic working
2 3
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
out of the methodological details of a science which is understood 3 Scientific inquiry: "inquiry" is identified in this study with the
more generally. tangibiUty of technical labor and technical talk, in contrast to
Although it is not the task of this volume to systematically abstract chains of inference which make up "hypotheses" which
confront or refute romantic ("storybook")-» or formal-rational are temporally isolated from the ways in which they are tested or
versions of science in the science studies literature, the observa "worked out" in the practical domain. Instead, technical work
tions of scientific work which are reported here are perspicuous and technical talk are described here as occasions for "reasoning"
for the incongruities they reveal between science as practical or "planning" in the course of projects of inquiry.
action and science as presented in extant science studies. These 4 Scientific methods: methods are described here as particular
contrasts are elaborated upon throughout the volume as they courses of action with materials at hand, instead of as step-by-
are brought into specific relevance in discussions of particular step programs. The difference between methods observed in this
phenomena in the production of laboratory shop work and shop manner and methods formulated as standardized programs is that
talk. These contrasts are cited here only for the purpose of intro routines of conduct are described here complete with their inter
ducing the proposal that a study of the locally organized details of ruptions, errors, repairs, and occasional abandonment. Accord
scientific conduct in a laboratory yields far more than an empirical ingly, regularities in conduct are formulated, not as stipulative
"filling out" of common understandings about science expressed ideals of error free procedure, but as practical constituents of
in the science studies hterature. actual instances of the performance of projects in real time. The
A few of these contrasts are suggested in the following list of sequential organizations supplied by schemes of conduct as they
redefined concepts. These terms which are common to literary are used within occasions of performance as recipes or "instruc
formulations of "science in general" are "redefined" as a way of tions" are not disregarded in this approach. However, these
bringing the reader into the specific inquiries which follow. They formulas are not appropriated as paradigms which programmat-
are not presented as operational definitions stipulated in advance ically describe each trial of their repetition. Instead each trial is
of the research and used as theoretical resources. They rely upon observed as a unique and at times vivid accomplishment (vivid,
the already completed studies reported in the following chapters often in light of unforeseen discoveries and foul-ups arising from
and should be read as a textual device for orienting readers to the non-compliant character of the materials at hand). That any
what will follow. particular run of an experiment is achieved as a "run" in a corpus
1 Scientific community: in this study the community of science is of runs is attributed here to the achievement of its singular
identified in the local scene of its technical production in shop performance and to assessments of the adequacy of the particular
work. Such communities as professional associations, academic run as an instance within the corpus. The work of assessing the
disciphnes or sub-discipHnes, and "invisible colleges"^ are treated practical adequacy of any this-time accomplishment is observably
here as "exterior" to the laboratory community. In hght of the part of a method's performance.
amount of attention paid to these exterior communities it is
curious that the place where the labor of science is performed has Despite the contrasts outlined above, these remarks do not make
rarely been visited in studies of science and investigated in terms up a general critique of any or all of the existing theoretic divisions
of its productive relation to the material domains of scientific within the science studies literature.^ Particular accounts in that
inquiry. literature are interesting and deeply illuminating in their general
2 Scientific facts: in this study scientific facts are viewed as discussions of science.^ There is no intent here to denigrate the
outcomes which are inseparable from the courses of inquiry which achievements which some of the great works on science represent.
produce them. Throughout the following chapters, scientific facts What the above contrasts point to is a phenomenon which is
are treated as social accomplishments. This contrasts with treat largely indifferent to the well respected theoretic and analytic
ments of facts as either independent natural objects or constructs approaches to studying science; a phenomenon that is nevertheless
of a theoretical imagination. Instead, facts are viewed here in the orderly and observable when estabhshed provisions for "methods"
context of the practical activities of discovery and description. are radically re-examined. Analytic or observational methods used
These activities of discovery and description among collaborators in this research are, therefore, not derived from extant studies in
in lab projects are treated as substantive phenomena for a social the literature on science. Since that literature does not direct its
inquiry. inquiry to the ordinary settings of scientific shop work, its discus-
4 5
