Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement:Evolving notions of objectivity: changing conceptions of what counts as clinical evidence in 20th and 21st century Russia.

该科学与学会博士论文研究改进基金旨在从1972年开始的30年期间检查俄罗斯肿瘤学临床研究实践。该项目将调查在此期间关于临床证据的有效性和产生这些证据的适当方法的观念的变化，以及谁被批准产生这些证据。在研究俄罗斯生物医学的认知基础时，这项工作也将遵循这些知识基础在苏联解体后如何经历深刻变革的过程。这种转变与苏联解体引发的俄罗斯社会经济动荡直接相关。这项工作将分析美国和苏联研究人员在癌症化疗方面的合作项目，该项目是在1972年开始的苏美医疗交流的主持下进行的。对这个交换项目的档案记录的研究提供了一个极好的机会来描绘苏联和美国在临床证据的产生和评估方法上的差异，并形成苏联认识论的清晰图景。对交流项目的考察也揭示了那个时期的生命政治。该项目将采用定性研究方法，如在俄罗斯领先的肿瘤中心进行人种学观察和半结构化访谈，以及对已发表的科学文献的仔细审查，追踪后苏联时期临床试验方法和数据评估标准的变化，这些变化是为了应对资金消失、全球制药行业进入俄罗斯市场、以及俄罗斯政府和国际援助机构在医疗改革方面的努力。这项研究旨在为各种社会科学和政策文献提供信息，通过展示人类受试者的癌症研究如何在随时间变化的社会背景下进行完全不同的构思和实践。

This Science & Society Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant seeks to examine clinical research practices in oncology in Russia over a thirty-year period beginning in 1972. The project will investigate changing ideas during this period about the validity of clinical evidence and the proper methodology for producing such evidence, as well as who is sanctioned to produce it. In researching the epistemic foundations of Russian biomedicine, this work will also follow the process of how these foundations of knowledge have undergone a profound transformation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This transformation is directly related to the socio-economic upheavals in Russia precipitated by the collapse of the USSR. This work will analyze a cooperative project between American and Soviet researchers in cancer chemotherapy, which was conducted under the auspices of the Soviet-American healthcare exchange beginning in 1972. A study of archival records from this exchange program provides an excellent opportunity to delineate differences between Soviet and American approaches to the production and evaluation of clinical evidence, and to develop a clear picture of Soviet epistemology. An examination of the exchange program also sheds light on the biopolitics of the period. Employing qualitative research methods such as ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews at leading Russian oncology centers, as well as careful review of published scientific literature, the project will trace the changes during the post-Soviet period in clinical trial methodology and data evaluation criteria that have been introduced in response to the disappearance of funding, the entrance of the global pharmaceutical industry into the Russian market, and the attempts at healthcare reform by the Russian government and international aid agencies. This research stands to inform a variety of social science and policy literatures, by presenting a picture of how cancer research on human subjects can be conceived and practiced quite differently in social contexts that change over time.