A critique of Latour and Woolgar''s argument for the social construction of scientific facts in laboratory Life: the construction of scientific facts (1986)

by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar. This is done by: presenting a summary of the arguments in the text; contextualising the text (and the authors) in the scholarship of the time; and assessing whether the authors have succeeded in carrying out the overall purpose of the book. Suffi ce to say that much as they argue for the social construction of scientifi c facts, their account of the social construction of facts is probably unconvincing to those researchers who still conceive the social (or human aff airs) and the scientifi c as two incompatible worlds.