Contexts of scientific discourse: social accounting in experimental papers

Almost all analysis in the sociology of science has involved attempts to describe scientists’ social actions and ‘technical’ beliefs. For example, much effort has been devoted to investigating whether scientists, in the course of their research, act in a detached, impersonal, universalistic manner and whether these forms of action are required for the regular production of valid scientific knowledge (1). Other investigators have sought to provide definitive descriptions of the ‘main features’ of particular scientists’ beliefs as a preliminary to explaining the beliefs as having been moulded by the actors’ socially derived interests (2). In recent years, however, there has been a growing although by no means widespread recognition that neither social action nor technical belief in science can be identified unequivocally for the purposes of sociological analysis (3). This is because it has become increasingly clear that different scientists can and do give quite divergent, yet equally plausible, accounts of the ‘same’ act or the ‘same’ belief; and that particular actors tend to alter their accounts of their own and of others’ actions and scientific ideas as they respond to new social situations.(4). As a result, some sociologists concerned with the study of scientists’ meaningful actions, as distinct from scientists’ ‘behaviour’, have come to see that meaning does not reside in the actions themselves but in the context-dependent procedures of social accounting whereby actions are interpreted.