Standard Grant: Reconstructing Nuclear Environments and the Downwinders Case

该奖项支持一个混合项目，该项目既涉及加强STS研究的基础设施发展，也涉及科学史上的基础研究。该项目的重点是在汉福德环境剂量重建项目中重建过去的环境污染和人类辐射暴露的科学，以及通常被称为Downwinders案件的相关法庭案件。该项目和案例对历史和社会科学研究特别有意义，因为它们涉及科学家在没有专门为此目的采集的数据的情况下想象和计算过去暴露的数据的努力。研究小组将与俄勒冈州立大学特殊收藏和档案研究中心合作，开发一项重要的研究收藏，即最近获得的伯杰/哈伯汉福德核保留Downwinders案例收藏。团队成员将把这个集合中相当大的一部分数字化，并用口述历史访谈补充它。他们还将对剂量重建项目进行第一次详细的历史研究，将其与科学史、环境史和更广泛的科学和技术研究领域的问题联系起来。研究生研究助理将与俄勒冈州立大学的Downwinders Case Collection合作进行数字化项目，并在PI的指导下进行口述历史访谈。将召开三次研讨会，其中将包括历史学家、科学家和辐射暴露历史上的其他利益相关者。尽管辐射暴露本身可以追溯到20世纪40年代，但汉福德环境剂量重建项目从80年代末一直延伸到90年代末。它的各种出版物不仅对法律程序至关重要，而且还继续作为汉福德关于甲状腺暴露的大多数参考点的基础。这些研究是有争议的，批评来自在国家研究委员会的赞助下工作的其他科学家，以及居民、受害者权益倡导团体和美洲原住民部落委员会等利益攸关方。这种截然不同的观点引发了学术研究，分析了历史剂量是如何被重建和谈判的。科学家们获得了生态、气象、地质和公共卫生数据，以及甲状腺癌患者的证词。这些科学家在一系列领域拥有学科专业知识。科学家们认为哪种数据是可靠的？他们问了什么问题？哪些数据被排除在外，哪些论据没有被听取？谁的观点被纳入，谁的观点被排除在外？这些问题对历史学家和科学学者的社会研究都是基础性的。它们将为科学家的社会动态、科学思想的构建以及在重要法律纠纷中部署的科学事实的重建提供新的见解。

This award supports a hybrid project that involves both infrastructure development for enhancing STS research and basic research in the history of science. The project focuses on the science of reconstructing past environmental contamination and human exposures to radiation in the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project, and a related court case often referred to as the Downwinders Case. The project and the case are of particular interest for historical and social scientific study because they involve efforts by scientists to imagine and calculate past exposure in the absence of data taken specifically for that purpose. The research team will develop an important research collection, the recently-acquired Berger/Haber Hanford Nuclear Reservation Downwinders Case Collection, working in collaboration with the Special Collections and Archives Research Center of Oregon State University. Team members will digitize a sizeable portion of this collection and supplement it with oral history interviews. They will also produce the first detailed historical studies of the dose reconstruction project, linking it to issues in the History of science, Environmental History, and the broader field of Science and Technology Studies. Graduate student research assistants will work with the Downwinders Case Collection at Oregon State University on the digitization project and conduct oral history interviews with guidance from the PI. Three workshops are to be convened that will include historians, scientists, and other stakeholders in the history of radiation exposure.Although the exposures themselves date from the 1940s, the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project stretched from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Its various publications were not only critical to legal proceedings, they also continue as the basis for most points of reference about thyroid exposure from Hanford. The studies were controversial, with criticism coming from other scientists working under the auspices of the National Research Council, and from stakeholders such as residents, victim advocacy groups, and Native American tribal councils. Such disparate views invite scholarly work analyzing how the historical doses were reconstructed and negotiated. The scientists had access to ecological, meteorological, geological, and public health data, as well as testimony from the people with thyroid cancer. The scientists had disciplinary expertise in a range of fields. What kinds of data did the scientists view as reliable? What questions did they ask? What kinds of data were excluded, and what arguments went unheard? Whose perspectives were included, and whose were excluded? These questions are foundational to both historians and social studies of science scholars. They will provide new insights into the social dynamics of scientists, the construction of scientific ideas, and the reconstruction of scientific facts as deployed in important legal disputes.