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Pharmacogenetics as Alien Science

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 14:04 authored by Adam Hedgecoe
This paper takes Harry Collins’ concept of the ’core set’ and combines it with emerging work in the sociology of sociotechnical expectations to explore the continued citation in review papers of a research result that is widely rejected by experts. The result in question, a putative pharmacogenetic link between carrying the APOE4 allele and reduced response to the anti-Alzheimer’s disease (AD) drug Tacrine, was first reported in 1995. Since then it has been widely cited, helping to create expectations about pharmacogenetics or ’personalized medicine’. To the majority of clinicians and researchers specialized in AD (the core set) this result is of little value – both scientifically defunct and ethically risky – although some supporters continue to suggest that the value of the result has been masked by commercial interests. This paper shows how the value of this result as an example of pharmacogenetics leads commentators outside the core set to ignore its controversial qualities and use it as a resource for expectation-building, but in the process producing a representation of AD pharmacogenetics that resembles an ’alien science’ (an inaccurate picture an outsider conveys of a scientific topic based on the literature, rather than interviews with the scientists involved).

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Social Studies of Science

ISSN

1460-3659

Issue

5

Volume

36

Page range

723-752

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2008-02-13

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