“Another Science Is Possible!”

The becoming‐methadone‐body: on the onto‐politics of health intervention translations

“…We entertain implementation science as something other than a mere technical service intervention in an evidence-based intervention approach. Indeed, in an evidence-making intervention approach, we move towards what might be described as a more speculative implementation science attuned to noticing and exploring what might be otherwise (Stengers 2018).…”

Mathematical models as public troubles in COVID-19 infection control: following the numbers

“…This frictionacting adaptively in-the-now in relation to shocks of an unpredictable futureinevitably materialises contingency in the moment, in every moment, of evidence-making and intervening. The question then, is not whether science can hold on to the ideal of an 'evidence-based' approach which tames uncertainty through the hope of objective knowing, and which proceeds to an imagined stable truth through iteration, but how science and policy can be done differently to live with uncertainty in an emergent approach in relation to multiple matters-of-concern (Stengers, 2018). This is not a way of 'working through contingency' in the sense of moving beyond it, as a realist version of iterative science would presume, but a way of 'working through contingency' as the matter, as the material, through which science is being done (Latour, 1987).…”

“…This gets to the core of the ontoepistemological challenge in doing adaptive policy through an emergent science in and against time: How to act with emergent precision in-the-now. We are not only arguing that the business-as-usual of evidence-based intervention is insufficient in times of emergency (the idea that iteratively moving towards greater certainty and an objective measure of knowing is complicated by time), but that another science is possible, one which works with, and through, contingency in an emergent approach (Stengers, 2018). In our view, the 'problem' with handling science and pandemics as contingent is fundamentally a problem of holding on to the narrow ideal of science as we know it, that is, as an objective matterof-fact that can know with certainty.…”

“…The participatory model acts here as a boundary object which does not so much seek to 'bring-in' the expertise of publics into models (as consultative approaches might do) than 'bring science out' of its networks of bounded expertise into publics (Landström et al, 2011). The model becomes a situated intervention in staging collaboration between experts and their different tools, repertoires and practices of evidencemaking (Stengers, 2018).…”

Book Review: Skin in the Game

“…But if we go past above remarks, we find that it is in the scientific realm that the book offers valuable insights to some of the epistemological and ethical aspects pestering contemporary science. The first insight is the uncertainty and knowledge unreliability of our models, especially applicable to those fields having to do with risk management: An insight of theoretical and statistical concern when modeling risk and risk taking, but also of concern when applying research knowledge to practice (also Stengers, 2018 ).…”