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Evidence and Ethicality 

In the two communities of lab and clinic (both focused on stem cell therapy, or neusoscience) there is a valuing of different values: ‘proper experimental procedures’ versus ‘commitment to patient well-being’. Put slightly differently, there are different ethical values in operation: an investment in scientific evidentiary robustness versus a responsibility to the desperate patient. At the same time these distinctions map onto certain sorts of cultural practices. For instance, within lab science culture, what is most valued is scientific excellence, and academic ‘voice’ is attended to on the basis of the quality of one’s science. In contrast to this meritocratic culture of the lab, within clinical science, hierarchy on the basis of seniority (and presumably ‘experience’) structures who can have voice.  It is not surprising, then, that when a research centre comprised of both clinical and laboratory scientific teams have research meetings, attendance is affected by the disciplinary type of research that is being presented. Not only is the substance of a topic in need of translation (determining the ‘value’ and ‘validity’ of this or that finding), but so too is the form of discussion and debate (who is ‘permitted’ to have voice and to value and validate). 

This sort of patterning also appears in the enactment of biomedical centres and peripheries. Thus, in relation to xenotransplantation with its associated albeit disputed pandemic risks, Mexican innovation and implementation of pancreatic stem cell therapy was derided in the ‘global north’ on the basis of, for instance, lack of peer review, lower local regulatory infrastructure, and medical tourism (low cost, opportunism, lack of biomedical seriousness). The response to this included the valorisation of patient need, and the derogation of global north monopoly of regulation best practice (and thereby monopoly of medical innovation and intervention). 

Affectivity and Evidence 

The above examples can be translated into the terms of affect: such terms as commitment, investment, responsibility, derogation, valorisation etc all point toward the ways in which affect is structured by, and structuring of, the credibility of evidence. There are all sorts of theorizations of affect, though I’m particularly drawn to Ben Anderson’s view on affect as a circulation that features both being affected and being able to affect, and how the shaping of this circulation takes different forms (including discrete disciplinary procedures and diffuse atmospheres). Fox Keller’s account of Barbara McClintock’s ‘feeling for the organism’ maybe suggests, in relation to the microbiome, something like a feeling through the organism. In other words, is it possible to expand the body so that it includes its complement of microbiome communities? This also entails, presumably, a reconfiguration of the sensorium (an expansion to include various micro-biochemical interactions). Even if the discursability of the sense-data derived from an expanded sensorium is highly problematic, we might ask whether, or how, this formulation impacts on what can count as evidence, or rather, how we pose the question of the value and role of evidence and its relation to affectivity. 

Mike Michael