Doctoral Dissertation Research: Translation, Scientization, and Branding in Medical Markets

广泛来源于植物和动物部分的天然产品在世界范围内被消费，以增进一般健康和福祉。作为药品和膳食补充剂的天然产品的生产和销售是一个利润丰厚的行业，越来越依赖于医学专家、科学家、营销人员和政府机构在官方报告和日常谈话中传达的这些产品的医疗有效性的科学证据。这个语言人类学论文项目研究如何将关于天然产品有效性的科学研究转化为日常语言，以推销其治疗特性。研究结果将传播给制药业的医疗专业人员、科学院、政府机构和非政府组织，他们寻求进行科学素养教育，以帮助公众对天然产品的消费作出知情决定。这项研究将进一步帮助决策者在国家卫生保健系统中引入和管理天然产品。这项研究调查了如何使用科学术语和语言来给天然产品贴上有效药物的标签，并在不同的国家和全球医疗市场上传达它们的价值。研究人员将在农场、实验室和天然产品种植、生产、研究和销售给消费者的市场进行语言和人种学研究。研究人员将采用参与式观察研究工作活动、半结构化访谈、分析科学论文、媒体和档案研究等方法，研究政府、农业、科学家、制药公司和消费者之间的网络如何促进关于天然产品科学特性的交流。这项研究的结果将通过提供在创造科学证据时使用语言的经验数据，为有关科学在塑造社会制度、政府和全球市场中的作用的人类学理论做出贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Natural products, broadly sourced from plants and animal parts, are consumed worldwide to enhance general health and well-being. A lucrative industry that manufactures and sells natural products as medicines and dietary supplements increasingly relies on scientific evidence of these products’ medical effectiveness as communicated by medical professionals, scientists, marketers, and government agencies in official reports and routine conversations. This linguistic anthropological dissertation project investigates how scientific research on the effectiveness of natural products is translated into everyday language to market their therapeutic properties. Research findings will be disseminated to medical professionals in the pharmaceutical industry, scientific academies, government agencies, and NGOs who seek to educate about scientific literacy to help the public make informed decisions about the consumption of natural products. The research will further aid policy makers in introducing and regulating natural products in national health care systems. The research investigate how scientific terminologies and language are used to brand natural products as effective medicine and communicate their value in different national and global medical markets. The researcher will carry out linguistic and ethnographic research in farms, laboratories, and marketplaces where natural products are cultivated, manufactured, studied, and marketed to consumers. Using the methods of participant observation to study work activities, semi-structured interviews, analyzing scientific papers, and media and archival research, the researcher will examine how networks between the government, the farming industry, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and consumers facilitate communication about the scientific properties of natural products. The results of this research will contribute to anthropological theories about science’s role in shaping social institutions, government, and global markets, by providing empirical data on the use of language in creating scientific evidence.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.