Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, 2nd Edition

Classic after four decades

This is the best and most subtle exposition I have read of the claim that science is socially constructed. The observer spent two years in a neuro-endocrinology lab, beginning as a naive observer and ending with a thorough understanding of subject matter and culture of the lab. The beginning section, in which the observer does an anthropology of the lab is extremely interesting--what does such an ignorant but observant person see? The much later discussion of how the scientific community negotiates whether a given result is a fact or an artifact contains important insights. As a trained scientist, I found this book refreshing and informative.

This is a famous sociological study of scientists. Unfortunately, I believe that this book, and the academic work behind it, are both overrated. Latour is inconsistent in his own reasoning and is not as "pure" in his observations as he claims to be. Perhaps he should have engaged in some more self-examination at the same time.

A classic in the field and a groundbreaking study in the philosophy of science. Latour and Woolgar's "anthropological" journey into the laboratory was the tipping point for an entire new subfield among anthropologists. A must read for any social scientist interested in social studies of science.

Unless you're an all out scientist - and I'm not - this is one of the most tedious and excruciatingly navel-gazing books in existence.

As described

It seems to me that the previous reviewer is either a wooly-head theoretician or that the previous reviewer hasn't actually done any research in a laboratory. Because in this book, there are many sparkling insights into the way that science is practised.It takes a while for Latour to get going as he is quite verbose in the early section, where he discusses his "anthropological" approach to science studies. However, after that, he makes a couple of points that as far as I know, he was the first philosopher of science to make.First, Latour demonstrates the intimate relationship between the publication of scientific papers, scientific prestige, laboratory finances and actual experiments. He makes the seemingly obvious, though not so when the book came out, that the possibility of experiments in a lab requires the influx of an amazing out of money. The acquisition of this research money takes up a large proportion of the time of the head honcho scientist in a laboratory .Second, Latour shows that entities in science are always defined by a network of properties that are experimentally determined. Scientific entities are hardly ever seen as objects with a few simple analytical properties. In fact, the more properties the better. And it doesn't matter if the mesh of properties is convoluted and seemingly contradictory. For each property concerned, there must be a vast array of material techniques to measure, control and manipulate that property. A new entity in science is accepted as real only when there are enough inter-locking properties to guarantee its existence. No method, by itself, is ever convincing.Latour points out that once an object is deemed to be real, scientists often invert the logic and argue that the reason why the combined set of experiments worked in the first place was that the object was in fact real. Whether this inversion of logic stands up to philosophical scrutiny - I do not know - but I have seen many practising scientists make this jump in logic. I've even used it myself. It is here that the "realist" and "anti-realist" debate rages. However, I think Latour reports it just as he sees it.Third, Latour carries out an analysis of scientific texts, which I have yet to see anywhere else. Scientific statments take on 5 modalities - from speculative hypothesis to proven statements to unspoken assumption. Latour gives a account of how the modalities of each statement are modified by how every other scientist in the field cites the statement in future scientific papers. They can ignore it, attack it as a useless hypothesis, bolster it by citing it as a supporting statement, adulate it by assuming that is a proven statement, and finally they just assume it's true. This scrutiny occurs continuously both inside the lab and in conferences.However, the difference between this process in the sciences as opposed to the humanities, is that these statements are often associated with machines that act in the material world. Proving a statement means that a material effect is generated.Using this method, Latour can analyse the fortunes of the scientists in a lab. And analysing the citations of scientific papers results in a reasonably good definition of scientific credibility. As a grad student in a biophysics lab, I've seen this happen - albeit on an intuitive level.Although Latour has since gone onto to more and more abstract studies, the beauty of Laboratory Life is that it is firmly grounded in the actual practises of an existing laboratory, the Guillemen Lab at the Salks Institute.

I give this book a high rating because of its influence in the field. It is the first case study of laboratory science ever published, and is often quoted in anthropology, sociology, and philosophy of science. The book's conclusion is social constructivist in nature, to a very extreme degree. Scientific facts are not discovered, they are constructed through social processes. The actual study was done by Latour, a French philosopher, and the method was to assume strangeness. That is, Latour pretended he didn't know anything about what the scientists were doing and tried to make up (construct) an account. The usual problems with relativism plague Latour and Woolgar's brand of social constructivism, most notably issues with reflexivity. If scientific accounts are constructed and do not have to do with the phenomena, why should we think that Laboratory Life tells us anything about the phenomena of laboratory science? Their answer is that we shouldn't. The only question in evaluating texts is, "are you convinced?" If not, fine. Come up with a better (more persuasive) account. People who think that science, philosophy, and academe in general should have something to do with the real world will be horribly frustrated by this conclusion. But everyone should be frustrated by the fact that the conclusion just doesn't follow from the data Latour gathered. It seems to come entirely from prior convictions of the authors. I recommend reading the book, however, because of its popularity and because it is a fantastic exemplar of a bad relativist and constructivist argument. Get the revised edition, which has a postscript and extra references. For a chuckle, look up some of the reviews (cited in the 2nd ed. references) from scientific journals. They are mostly cheerful recognitions of the book's subject matter (laboratory science) without any reference to--or argument with--the strong anti-realist claims. It makes you wonder if these people acctually read the book.

good copy promptly delivered

This is actually one of the worst non-fiction books I have ever read. Given Latour's reputation I wasn't expecting much, but this book will manage disappoint even if you have the lowest of expectations. This book is not about doing good social science. It is also not about crafting good arguments. It is about saying something scandalous, and getting attention from it. On that, it succeeded big time...The philosophical arguments in there are extremely uninformed, basically the authors do not even seem to know what deductive logic is and how it works - there are many, MANY instances where they use the term "logic" like it is used in ordinary day-to-day conversations, and then they demonstrate how science is not that "logical" after all... For example, at one section they demonstrate that scientists reason not via deriving one explanation that is determined by "logic", but instead they follow a process of creating and eliminating different hypothesis until they find one that fits the problem situation they encountered. This is supposed to show that scientists do not reason "logically." Well, you might wonder how they eliminate a hypothesis without implicitly utilizing some version of the law of noncontradiction. You'll find Latour and Woolgar not asking this question, as they apparently do not know what the law of noncontradiction is.Philosophically, the awkwardness does not stop here. We learn that science has no connection to some objective reality, but that instead reality is created by science. Facts and statements about facts are the same thing. At the same time, the authors make no effort to explain the progress in empirical accuracy and technology that makes science so remarkable. You'll maybe wondering how this position is different from an empiricist stance? Or from a Feyerabend/Kuhn kind of approach? Or from a Popperian approach? Or from the Edinburgh School approach? Well, keep wondering, as you'll not find any comparative arguments in this book. Latour/Woolgar are rarely mentioning alternative postition, and they never discuss them in any deepness. I suspect they simply have not studied alternative positions, thus they do not really see what kind of arguments they would need to adress in order to establish their position.So the philosophy in this book is pathetic. What about the social science? Guess what, its also extremely bad. The general methodological position defended here is that if you do a participating observation, it does not matter whether your resulting hypothesis/explanation stands the test of empirical criticism. It only matters whether you as an observer are satisfied with your results. INTERESTING. The only thing that you as an observer have to make sure of is that you do not have any prejudice - in this particular case this means, that you have to make sure that you do not understand ANY science before studying sciene via participating obervation. INTERESTING AGAIN. Hello? Ever heard of this insight called theory-ladenness? Already well established in the field at least by 1950 (probably before that)? Well, as our heroic authors do not even mention the concept, it seems like they actually have never heard of it. (The only thing that they managed to pull of consistently from that method is that they do not know any science whatsoever. great achievement.) Impressive level of ignorance, really. Anyways: As they realize that it is basically impossible to not have any prejudice, Woolgar/Latour are making up a fictional story of a guy that does not have any prejudices and visits a lab to observe it. This fiction is than used to argue in favor of social constructivism. I am not making this up. This is actually the methodology they follow; I guess if you are a social constructivist it does not matter whether your evidence is a fiction story or something that actually happened. The most outrageous thing about there methodological position is that they do not even follow it consistently. They are telling us in chapter one that participating observation is the basis of their insights. Then, throughout the whole book, they are talking about a period of around 10-15 years. Their participating obersvation however lasted only 2 years. So how can they jump from that basis to a more general conclusion? Problem of induction, anyone? As they do not know about these basic philosophical problems, they do not care. They just propose an absurd methodology for their social study, and then do not even care enough to follow it consistently. Based on that we basically learn that science is just another social process that does inform us only about our own fictions, not at all about whats happening in the world. The book ends with an awkward chapter containing an argument that supposedly demonstrates that the social sciences and the 'hard' sciences are equally valid, as they are equally just fictions that are independent from truth or empirical accuracy. If it wouldn't be that these guys actually accumulated quite some fame with this pathetic book, this would at least be funny joke: Doing the worst social science ever leads to finding out that nobel price winning science is equally bad... WELL, I guess actually your social science was just extremely bad, thus your conclusions are extremely worthless, Mr. Woolgar and Mr. Latour.Historically, it is funny to witness nowadays how Latour shies away from the 'innovative' arguments that made him famous. I guess back in the days it was very fashionable among left-wing ideologists to demonstrate that science cannot be used to override ideological arguments, as it is an ideology itself. Well OOOPS. Not so fashionable anymore, with the climate change and all that. The frustrating thing about this is that philosophers (and serious social scientists that studied science) pointed out the special status of scientific knowledge many, many years before Latour wrote his first book. They did so again, replying to Latour (and others). But only when it became unfashionable among leftist to be anti-science, did Latour change his position. The arguments existed for a long time, whithout him caring or studying them, as "Labaroty Life" clearly demonstrates. This guy is all about fashion, not about reason. Have fun reading the book.

Llegó antes de la fecha señalada, el libro cumple con la calidad de los libros gringos papel muy delgado y probablemente no durará más de 20 años, pero se puede leer y subrayar.

O autor, um sociólogo, passou dois anos estudando uma "tribo" de cientistas em seu meio, o laboratório.O relato e a anãlise da observação constroem um trabalho não apenas sobre a sociologia dos cientistas, mas da própria ciência.Escrito em 1979, acredito que não muito tenha mudado na forma como cientistas vivem, se comportam, e como veem a ciência.Devido ao tamanho do texto e a razões comerciais para o formato do livro, a tipografia ficou um pouco pequena, cansativa para leitura prolongada. Para quem tem problema com isso a edição em kindle é mais adequada.