The trouble with brain imaging: Hope, uncertainty and ambivalence in the neuroscience of autism

Fitzgerald, Des

doi:10.1057/biosoc.2014.15

Cited by 37 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…About this, our participants raised a range of views, both optimistic and M a n u s c r i p t sceptical. In fact, their accounts resonated with the vacillating hopeful and sceptical views evident among neuroscientists and clinicians as to the potential therapeutic benefits of neuroscience research Fitzgerald, 2014;Pickersgill, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

Morphett

Carter

Lucke

et al. 2016

International Journal of Drug Policy

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Please cite this article as: Meurk, C., Morphett, K., Carter, A., Weier, M., Lucke, J., and Hall, W.,Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: people with addictions deliberate about neuroscience, International Journal of Drug Policy (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/j.drugpo.2016.03.004 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. AbstractBackground According to the 'brain disease model of addiction', addiction is a chronic condition the symptoms of which reflect persistent changes in neural functioning produced by long-term drug use. Scholars have argued both for and against the validity and usefulness of this way of conceptualising addiction, which has been variously described as emancipatory and detrimental to addicted persons. In this paper we explore how people with addictions make sense of the brain disease concept and the extent to which they find it useful. Methods: We conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with persons in treatment for drug and alcohol addiction recruited through a variety of channels. Transcripts were analysed by combining a health identity approach with thematic analysis. Results: We describe participants' understandings of how they became addicted and what role, if any, neurobiological conceptions play in their explanations. Our findings highlight the hopeful and sceptical viewpoints of addicted individuals on the value of addiction neuroscience ideas and neurotechnologies. Conclusions: These viewpoints shed some light on the diverse and divergent ways that people with addictions make sense of neurobiological ideas and technologies. It also describes when, and how, neurobiological explanations and the 'brain disease' model can be helpful to addicted persons. Some of the limitations of the brain disease model become apparent in the complex ways in which neurobiological explanations and labels are incorporated into lay understandings. In order to be more useful to addicted persons, neurobiological explanations should be provided as part of a more complex explanation of addiction and the brain than the BDMA offers, and should not be given a 'disease' label.

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confidence: 99%

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

Morphett

Carter

Lucke

et al. 2016

International Journal of Drug Policy

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“…The empiricist-style discourse-which comes, perhaps paradoxically, to be positioned within a regime of hope (Moreira and Palladino 2005)-serves important instrumental and symbolic functions (Boswell 2008). While the contingent, reflexive aspect of the respondents' talk could relate in part to the relatively private nature of the sociological interview (Fitzgerald 2014), we argue that our data imply that contingent repertoires can also play an important and explicit public role in, for example, engaging with service users. Assuming such engagements are "successful," we might consider whether neuroscience can be regarded as sparking not just the imaginations of policy actors and service innovators, but also those of the communities they seek to service-connecting these actors together and aligning them around particular goals based on such "mutual imagined understandings" (Martin, Brown, and Kraft 2008, 38).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…They regard biomedicine as encapsulating both a "regime of hope" that is "characterized by the view that new and better treatments are always about to come" (p. 67) and "a regime of truth" that is situated in what is positively known, including how hopes can lead to disappointment and failure. Low expectations, then, are generally situated in a regime of truth (Gardner, Samuel, and Williams 2015) and they have been analyzed in different forms; for example, the pessimistic and cautionary claims made by industry actors (Tutton 2011), the modification of patient expectations (Gardner, Samuel, and Williams 2015), and the dialectic between hope and skepticism about the translation of neuroscience into clinical practice (Fitzgerald 2014;Pickersgill 2011). With regard to the latter, Fitzgerald attributes the low expectations evident within his data in part to the "private, reflective and conversational mode of sociological intervention," i.e., interviews with researchers wherein they felt able to reflect carefully and candidly on the possibilities and problems of (translational) research (Fitzgerald 2014, 258).…”

Section: Conceptual Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, we will contribute to discussions around (low) expectations by considering them within policy discourse (rather than within narratives emerging from healthcare settings, scientific institutions, or industry (Gardner, Samuel, and Williams 2015;Tutton 2011;Fitzgerald 2014;Pickersgill 2011)). Second, our analysis will augment literatures concerned with the ways in which different actors draw on (neuro)science for policy and service design and delivery (Broer and Pickersgill 2015;Edwards, Gillies, and Horsley 2015;Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish 2015a;Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish 2015b) especially through underscoring the ambiguities and uncertainties present in their accounts.…”

Section: Neuroscience In Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

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(Low) Expectations, Legitimization, and the Contingent Uses of Scientific Knowledge: Engagements with Neuroscience in Scottish Social Policy and Services

Broer

Pickersgill

2015

Engaging STS

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Neuroscientific research increasingly sparks the imaginations and hopes of policymakers. Whilst the diversity of assertive statements being made on the basis of neuroscience has been well documented, less frequently explored are more contingent discourses regarding studies of the brain. In this paper, we analyze how social policy and service actors discuss their engagements with neuroscientific terms, concepts and findings. These are mobilized, for one, to substantiate and enlarge the focus of existing policy-for example to attract funding for different target groups (such as babies, people who just retired, etc.)-as well as to help develop (new) policies and services. We show how, in so doing, invocation of the neurosciences can act to align "mutual imagined understandings" among policy actors, practitioners and parents. Tentativeness and ambivalence also figured within our respondents' accounts of the use of the neurosciences. They argued that research had to be simplified in order to make it relevant for wider stakeholders (including politicians), whilst simultaneously considering simplification problematic in some cases. Our analysis foregrounds the different complexities, ambivalences, reductions and instrumentalizations involved in policy and service engagements with the neurosciences, rendering challengeable any notion that (ideas about) neuroscientific research "determines" policy in a linear sense.

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“…Fitzgerald reaches quite different conclusions, arguing that his interviews reflect ‘mundane and private reflections of neuroscientists who are working to understand and articulate their own scientific practice, in the midst of more or less low stakes and anonymous conversation’ (2014, p. 253). Thus, Fitzgerald concludes that:

I do not see ambiguity in this piece as a rhetorical strategy that papers over the cracks.

…”

Section: Analytical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Autistic Heterogeneity: Linking Uncertainties and Indeterminacies

Hollin

2016

Science as Culture

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Autism is a highly uncertain entity and little is said about it with any degree of certainty. Scientists must, and do, work through these uncertainties in the course of their work. Scientists explain uncertainty in autism research through discussion of epistemological uncertainties which suggest that diverse methods and techniques make results hard to reconcile, ontological uncertainties which suggest doubt over taxonomic coherence, but also through reference to autism’s indeterminacy which suggests that the condition is inherently heterogeneous. Indeed, indeterminacy takes two forms—an inter-personal form which suggests that there are fundamental differences between individuals with autism and an intra-personal form which suggests that no one factor is able to explain all features of autism within a given individual. What is apparent in the case of autism is that scientists put uncertainty and indeterminacy into discussion with one another and, rather than a well-policed epistemic-ontic boundary, there is a movement between, and an entwinement of, the two. Understanding scientists’ dialogue concerning uncertainty and indeterminacy is of importance for understanding autism and autistic heterogeneity but also for understanding uncertainty and ‘uncertainty work’ within science more generally.

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The trouble with brain imaging: Hope, uncertainty and ambivalence in the neuroscience of autism

Abstract: Abstract:This paper is about ambivalent dynamics of hope and uncertainty within neurobiological autism research. While much literature has commented on the positive hopes and expectations that surround technoscientific projects (van Lente and Rip, 1998;Brown et al., 2000)

Cited by 37 publications

References 52 publications

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

(Low) Expectations, Legitimization, and the Contingent Uses of Scientific Knowledge: Engagements with Neuroscience in Scottish Social Policy and Services

Autistic Heterogeneity: Linking Uncertainties and Indeterminacies

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