by<\/span>\u00a0 Mike Loukides<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0<\/span>January 16, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n http:\/\/radar.oreilly.com\/2015\/01\/beyond-lab-folklore-and-mythology.html<\/em><\/p>\n Labs where there was a shared common knowledge of how to do things, but where that shared culture never made it outside, not even to the lab down the hall. There\u2019s no need to write it down or publish stuff that\u2019s \u201cobvious\u201d or that \u201ceveryone knows.\u201d As someone who is more familiar with literature than with biology labs, this behavior was immediately recognizable: we\u2019re in the land of mythology, not science. Each lab has its own ritualized behavior that \u201cworks.\u201d Whether it\u2019s protocols, lucky machines, or common knowledge that\u2019s picked up by every student in the lab (but which might not be the same from lab to lab), the process of doing science is an odd mixture of rigor and folklore. Everybody knows that you use 42 C for 45 seconds, but nobody really knows why. It\u2019s just what you do. I’d just like to point out some obvious references that\u00a0I believe are worth bringing in these synbio\/lab automation discussions (all are 30+years old). If I have time, I’ll put more ref and descriptions.<\/p>\n Latour, B. (1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts<\/i>. Princeton University Press. Collins, H. (1974). The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks. Science Studies<\/i>, 165\u2013185. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.2307\/284473<\/p>\n In\u00a0Tacit and Explicit Knowledge,<\/i>\u00a0Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept\u2019s disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi\u2019s term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if someone put effort into describing them),\u00a0 somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe how, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins\u2019s book will at last unravel the complexities of the idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n (http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/T\/bo8461024.html)<\/em><\/p>\n Collins showed\u00a0that Western laboratories long had difficulties in successfully replicating an experiment (in this case, measuring the quality, Q, factors of sapphire) which the team led by Vladimir Braginsky at Moscow State University had been conducting for twenty years. Western scientists became suspicious of the Russian results and it was only when Russian and Western scientists conducted the measurements collaboratively that the trust was reestablished. Collins argues that laboratory visits enhance the possibility for the transfer of tacit knowledge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tacit_knowledge)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beyond lab folklore and mythology:\u00a0What the future of science will look like if we\u2019re bold enough to look beyond centuries-old models. by\u00a0 Mike Loukides\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0January 16, 2015 http:\/\/radar.oreilly.com\/2015\/01\/beyond-lab-folklore-and-mythology.html Labs where there was a shared common knowledge of how to do things, but where that shared culture never made it outside, not even to the lab down …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5,11,13],"tags":[62,140,142,191,208],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automation","category-educate","category-references","category-synthetic-biology-2","tag-collins","tag-lab-automation","tag-latour","tag-robots","tag-ssk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ladam.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDespite all of this, we\u2019ve gotten fairly good at doing science. But to get even better, we have to go beyond mythology and folklore.<\/strong> And getting beyond folklore requires change: changes in how we record data, changes in how we describe experiments, and perhaps most importantly, changes in how we publish results.
\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\nParallels with SSK:<\/h2>\n
Latour:\u00a0Anthropologist in the lab (1986)<\/h3>\n
\n“concerns the way in which the daily activities of working scientists lead to the construction of scientific facts”
\nChapter 2: An Anthropologist Visits the Laboratory<\/p>\n\n
Collins: Tacit Knowledge (1974)<\/h3>\n
\n