Pharmacogenetics as Alien Science
Pharmacogenetics as Alien Science
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药物遗传学作为外星科学
DOI：
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发表时间：
2006
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Hedgecoe
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文献类型：
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作者：
A. Hedgecoe
本文以哈里柯林斯的“核心集”的概念，并将其与社会技术期望社会学中的新兴工作相结合，探讨了评论论文中对一项被专家广泛拒绝的研究结果的持续引用。1995年首次报道了这一结果，即携带APOE 4等位基因和对抗阿尔茨海默病（AD）药物他克林（Tacrine）反应降低之间的假定药物遗传学联系。从那时起，它就被广泛引用，帮助人们对药物遗传学或“个性化药物”产生了期望。对于大多数专门研究AD（核心集）的临床医生和研究人员来说，这一结果几乎没有价值-无论是在科学上还是在伦理上都是不存在的-尽管一些支持者继续认为该结果的价值被商业利益所掩盖。本文展示了这一结果作为药物遗传学例子的价值如何导致核心集之外的评论者忽视其有争议的品质，并将其用作建立期望的资源，但在此过程中产生了类似于AD的药物遗传学的代表性“外星科学”（局外人根据文献而不是对相关科学家的采访传达的科学主题的不准确图片）。
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).