Publicly Private: Legitimacy and Power in the Laboratory

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Date

2024-05

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The Ohio State University

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Abstract

The role of laboratory spaces in the construction of scientific knowledge has been well established. From the first uses of the word “laboratory” or “laboratorium” in the sixteenth century, questions of what’s public and what’s private have been salient. As laboratories shifted from early forms to university-based models to complex mixes of industrial, academic, and government-funded spaces, public/private divisions became built into the material design—both obviously and less obviously—of laboratories. Scientists and institutions give a range of coproductively legitimized explanations for the nearly-unquestioned scientific practice of privacy in labs as well as the need for them to be public-facing. The growing popularity of open science prompts questions around the more intangible aspects of laboratories, how they tend to disappear, and how access is negotiated. An awareness of the need to balance public and private activities as a means to bolster scientific authority is apparent in contemporary laboratory designs through their performances of transparency. Combining historical perspectives on laboratories and current material and social reflections of laboratories with what leaves the lab and how helps us critically engage with sites of scientific knowledge production, the transfer of scientific authority, and reflect on our own practices of defining the public and the private.

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Marilyn R. Waldman Undergraduate Essay Award

Keywords

Laboratory, Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Public Science, Secrecy, Scientific Spaces

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