Setting the agenda for social science research on the human microbiome
Setting the agenda for social science research on the human microbiome
复制标题
DOI：
10.1057/s41599-020-0388-5
复制
发表时间：
2020-01-31
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Wills, Jane
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Greenhough, Beth;Read, Cressida Jervis;Wills, Jane
人类微生物组是交叉、多学科和跨学科研究的重要新兴领域。该主题的复杂性导致了相互矛盾的叙述和监管挑战。它提出了对其商业化好处的质疑，并引发了关于与公众、患者和其他潜在受益者互动的替代模式的辩论。社会科学和人文学科已经开始探索微生物组作为实证研究的对象和理论创新的机会。它们可以在促进与社会相关的研究的发展方面发挥重要作用，这些研究结合了有关微生物的文化规范和期望，并调查了社会和生物生命如何交叉。这是在微生物组研究中建立合作关系的有利时机，将社会科学和人文科学以及自然科学和学术界以外的相关利益相关者的关注点和能力结合起来。本文提出了社会科学参与微生物组研究的议程及其对公共政策和社会变革的影响。我们的方法借鉴了现有的多学科科学政策议程设定练习。我们招募了 36 名学者和利益相关者，并要求他们列出一份关于微生物组的重要问题清单，这些问题需要进一步的社会科学研究。我们将这份初始清单细化为包含 32 个问题的议程，并将它们组织成八个主题，以补充和扩展现有的研究轨迹。该议程是通过一次结构化研讨会进一步制定的，其中 21 名参与者完善了议程，并反思了演习本身的挑战和局限性。该议程确定了研究的必要性，以解决人类微生物组对人类健康、公共卫生、公共和私营部门研究以及自我和身份概念的影响。它还提出了对人类微生物组关系的复杂性和异质性敏感的新研究方向，以及这些关系如何与环境治理、社会和空间不平等以及公众参与科学等问题相交叉的问题。
The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human-microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.