Why historians need to take scientific fieldwork more seriously | Science - Times Higher Education (THE)

Much important scientific research takes place outside laboratories but this work is not always recognised by historians of science. An expert on the topic argues why equal attention must be given to other sites in one of our features this week, says Ellie Bothwell, International reporter and global rankings editor at Times Higher Education. 
 

Photo: Times Higher Education

Photo: Dr Vanessa Heggie

Much important scientific research takes place outside laboratories. The history of science can only be enriched, argues Vanessa Heggie, lecturer in the history of medicine and science at the University of Birmingham, if we give equal attention to other sites.

If you do an image search for the word “scientist”, the results are extraordinarily standardised. Not only are most of the scientists themselves white and male, but they will also be in white coats, at a laboratory bench, looking down a microscope or peering at some glassware.

There have been important efforts to diversify the images of scientists. Yet it’s equally vital that we diversify our images of scientific activity. And we simply cannot understand how science operates if academic studies continue to ignore the vast amounts of work done away from the lab bench. 

When I was researching my first book, A History of British Sports Medicine (2011), I was surprised to find almost no scholarship on the history of 20th-century physiology. Part of the motivation for my new book, Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration, was a desire to fill in some of the gaps.

Physiology was neglected for two related reasons: it was often a field-based, non-laboratory form of science – and it was not genetics or molecular biology.

The story of the 20th-century life sciences is dominated by the molecular revolution and genetics, and by an overall narrative – at least in our introductory undergraduate classes – that emphasises experimental “big science”. Although historians have argued that there was not really a scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, the rise and eventual dominance of experimental practice is a canonical part of the history of modern Western science...

There is one final hidden truth revealed by field science: a lot of scientific work is boring and repetitive. Whether it is hours of pipetting tiny aliquots of liquid (one of the reasons I left the discipline of genetics) or struggling to fill in sleep record cards while wearing thick gloves in the Antarctic desert, many of the essential tasks are physically challenging, tiring or numbingly routine. Although being in the Arctic or halfway up Everest might add a little heroic glamour to the activity, physiologists in these places found themselves overwhelmed by paperwork and disappointed in their food, much like a laboratory scientist with a dull university canteen.
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Source: Times Higher Education (THE)