Negotiating openness in Alternative Science: the case of epidemiological data from rural communities

ARZA, VALERIA; FRESSOLI, MARIANO; ARANCIBIA, FLORENCIA

Curitiba

Conferencia; XI JORNADAS LATINO AMERICANAS DE ESTUDIOS SOCIALES DE LA CIENCIA Y LA TECNOLOGÍA,; 2016

Our paper reflects on the political barriers and challenges for the practices of open science in the context of what we call ?alternative science? (AS). We define AS as scientific research on problems neglected by incumbent scientific & funding institutions, but for which there is a wider social demand. Through a case study of an initiative to produce community-based epidemiology data to identify environmental illnesses in rural Argentina, we found that there is a spontaneous and increasing process of opening-up different research stages. However, we also found important obstacles that might prevent further development of openness.These obstacles are related to power asymmetry between ?mainstream science? and AS, and the derived legitimation problems faced by the latter. AS results are usually scientifically and politically contested (AS is attacked for not being as ?scientifically valid? as mainstream science) and those who want to pursue it have to deal with lots of constraints (lack of funding, and infrastructure; barriers for publication, and dissemination of results, etc.). Openness is usually a ?mean? to gain legitimacy. This implies that actors participating in our case-study are not necessarily committed to ?openness? as a principle. When science is produced in a context of strong political conflict methodological decisions -which include the degree and the type of openness- are considered political decisions as well. This explains why researchers might be very willing to open their research agendas to the communities that they work with, as well as make research outcomes more accessible to lay audiences, but, at the same time, resist open data. While they consider that the first two types of practices of open science would empower communities/social movements, they think that the latter could easily derive in data misuse by powerful stakeholders.