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     4 years ago  

    here is the second translation I did:

    The history of virus research in the 20th century is usually portrayed as a continuous process, as a history of progressive revelation of virus nature (see Waterson 1978: xii; Hughes 1977: 75 ff.; for a critique of this concept see van Helvoort 1994a:187).

    However, our analysis of the case study material has revealed some things that lead away from such a view of history. In particular, it was shown that the refinement and expansion of experimental means and procedures, which is generally seen as a guarantee for uninterrupted progress in the knowledge of nature, had rather led to setbacks in the period under consideration (for example, in the development of virus classification) and had deepened the gap between the contending parties in virus research.

    With the "filterable" virus, something had been discovered of which, according to the concepts handed down, which had after all mostly proven themselves in the research of infectious diseases, no picture could be formed which all researchers could have shared.

    Very different interpretations of the nature of this phenomenon emerged and were put forward against each other. No experimental proof for this or that concept, which all researchers would have had to recognise, could be presented by either side.

    This means that the decision as to whether this or that explanation most accurately expresses the "true" nature of the virus could not be "objectified" empirically.

    For me, it's quite a valuable statement, made by an established scientific institute. What do you think?

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     4 years ago  

    I think that "science" does not automatically equal "science" from how it is or was understood by those, who said, that real science always leaves a doubt, is open and even appreciates to be questioned and that every theory is refutable, it must be refutable in order to develop progressive understanding of scientific matters.

    Here, I have translated what I found important in that paper:

    INTRODUCTION

    Scientific experiments are generally ascribed a compelling character,
    to which the gain of consistent knowledge of nature is due.Methods for appropriate control and performance of procedures and their repetition are understood as a means of resolving differences of opinion about what may be considered the "correct" extension of scientific knowledge (see Collins 1985b: 137).

    In evaluating an instrument, its reliability is seen as the key criterion by which information transformation can be made possible, the transformation of input information about the outside world into outputs that can be received by our sensory apparatus, a view cultivated in education and wherever spectacular experiments are used for demonstration purposes.

    In order to do "normal" science, this understanding, which omits reflection on assumptions of reality, has proved its worth. From this perspective, the development of scientific knowledge presents itself as a process of progressive elimination of subjective perceptions in favour of measurable quantities and theoretically founded invariants, as a process in which subjective constructions are continually replaced by objective knowledge.

    In contradiction to this, the newer sociology of science, when commenting on the connection between empirical laboratory practice and theoretical knowledge, works towards an understanding according to which objects of research, as they are "given", are indistinguishable from the way in which they are known.

    Scientific meanings are not something already contained in the facts and immutably given to researchers, as if experiment and observation not only help to acquire practical skills for reproducing studied phenomena, but at the same time reveal to the researchers' senses otherwise hidden "information" that could be guided towards an adequate ("consistent" with the phenomena) theory-language expression (see Latour 1987: 27 and 30; Latour/Bastide 1986; Collins/Pinch 1982: 7 ff. Collins 1985a, 1985b; Krohn/Küppers 1989: 28; Woolgar 1988: 28 f.).

    The development of scientific knowledge does not owe itself to the adaptation of patterns of interpretation to found phenomena. Rather, what is studied and interpreted is patterned by the researchers themselves.

    Research activity is instructed by given theories and methods of a discipline, so that the results lead back to a certain extent to the preconditions of the research.

    If discrepancies arise between what was observed in the experiment and what should have occurred according to the theory, efforts are made to change the experimental procedures and conditions in such a way that the objects studied behave as expected. This connection can be fixed in abstraction as a cycle; ...

    So much for some basics. How is your interpretation of this text?

    I will send also one passage from page 57 later on. There the paper refers to virus-theory in particular.

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