Search

International audience; This article follows the introduction of COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic tests in France. It shows how, at the intersection of science, medicine, politics, and policy-making, the test, trace, and isolate (TTI) strategy played out during the first months of the pandemic against a backcloth of multiple shortages. In so doing, the authors move beyond trite explanations (such as ‘French public health’s backwardness’) to highlight how successive policy inflections affected the national response to the pandemic. The piece analyses the shifting French political discourse surrounding (scarce) COVID-19 tests while exploring ad-hoc regulations and guidelines as well as the intense ‘bricolage’ that they triggered in the field of clinical medicine. The authors contend that the limitations of the testing infrastructure in France during the first half of 2020 shaped the decision to resort to lockdown. The research article sheds light on two coexisting registers of professional uses of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays—a ‘public health use’ and a ‘clinical use’—and highlights the changing political and social relevance of these two registers, with scarcity as a major determinant of these changes. One of the striking aspects of the introduction of COVID-19 tests in France therefore lies in the enduring gap between the dynamics of the epidemic and the dynamics of testing. In this respect, the French situation is neither extreme nor unique, which makes this case study a relevant basis for the international comparison of testing practices in different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The expression “rare earth crisis” was used by a collection of actors in the United States, Europe and Japan to describe the situation created by the 2010-2011 surge in the global market prices of 17 metals occupying a strategic place in many industrial sectors and the fear that supplies would be disrupted following China’s adoption of export quotas. Yet this crisis – described both as a trade crisis and a geopolitical one – concealed a financial operation and major damage to the environment. This article adopts several perspectives to study what may be described as “interwoven crises”, paying special heed to J. Roitman and M. Dobry’s call to be attentive to the processes by which crises are labelled in addition to their dynamics and effects. Analysis is further enhanced by extending the timeframe of the analyzed circumstances, thus providing a better grasp of their longer-term dynamics and re-situating these critical situations in their temporal and spatial contexts.

International audience; The importance of clarifying and disclosing uncertainties in risk assessment (RA) has been acknowledged for several decades. However, even today, these uncertainties do not receive the attention they deserve to well inform decision makers. To overcome this situation, diverse regulators, health and safety agencies, and other bodies involving in RA at national, European or international level have recently mobilized themselves by reasserting the need to integrate uncertainty analysis in the RA process and making practical recommendations. The French agency for food, environmental and occupational health and safety (Anses) is one of them. This work presents the general framework developed by the Anses Expert Working Group on Methodology in Risk Assessment. Two critical points were addressed: A typology of uncertainties and a homogenized approach to deal with uncertainty analysis in different areas (human health related to the environment, work and food, animal health and welfare, and plant health). The proposed typology is divided into four classes (Context, Corpus of knowledge, Assessment methodology and Communication), according to the logic of an expert appraisal process. A five-step iterative approach, systematically preceded by a stage for planning the assessment, was proposed as a generic approach of uncertainty analysis. Especially, the importance of considering the decision-making context of the assessment from the planning stage is stressed. The iterative approach was developed to be flexible enough to enable the assessors ensure the analysis is proportionate to and fit for purpose of the assessment As part of a testing stage, the general framework was applied to different case studies dealing with diverse areas (health RA in humans, animals and plants). This testing phase was carried out in collaboration with different expert panels. It concluded that the generic and flexible nature of the proposed framework should be able to harmonize the practices in RA.

This essay offers a new approach for conceptualizing the environmental impact of chemicals production, consumption, disposal, and regulation. Environmental protection regimes tend to be highly segmented according to place, media, substance, and effect. Existing scholarship often reflects this same segmentation, by focusing on a locality, specific chemical, social movement, or regulatory body. In turn, as new environmental measures are introduced to deal with pollution and toxicity, they tend to focus on controlling future effects rather than dealing with the accumulated contamination from past industrial activity and waste. In chemical substances we encounter phenomena that are at the same time voluminous and miniscule, regulated yet unruly. Inspired by recent work on materiality and infrastructures, we focus on the concept of residues as both material and political entities. Following residues, we argue, helps us see how the past has been built into our chemical environments and regulatory systems, and why contaminants seem to always evade control.

Cet article vise a comprendre comment l’analyse des risques, une demarche de prise de decision fondee sur l’expertise scientifique, est devenue un instrument generique d’action publique. Comment ses categories et procedures, construites aux Etats-Unis dans les annees 1970 et 1980 et formalisees dans des rapports d’experts, en particulier, celui du National Research Council intitule Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process, ou le Red Book, en sont-elles venues a etre appliquees a un large ensemble de problemes sanitaires et environnementaux (du nucleaire aux nanotechnologies en passant par les additifs alimentaires, les produits chimiques industriels ou les organismes genetiquement modifies), dans une diversite de contextes institutionnels nationaux ou transnationaux, sans discontinuite jusqu’a nos jours et ce malgre de nombreuses critiques ? L’article etudie la longue serie de tentatives de formalisation de la demarche d’analyse des risques, et notamment les etapes-cles de la production du Red Book. Il montre que cette genericite tient au type de savoirs mobilises dans la construction de l’instrument et a la demarche procedurale qu’il met en œuvre, qui le rendent transposable a differents contextes. Mais l’article montre surtout que ces proprietes sont le produit historique des controverses publiques autour des risques, qui ont agi comme autant d’epreuves pour les experts promouvant l’evaluation quantitative des risques, et pour leur projet de rationalisation de la prise de decision.

In recent years, historians have debated the prospect of offering new ‘transnational’ or ‘global’ perspectives in their studies. This paper introduces the reader to this special issue by analysing characteristics, merits and flaws of these approaches. It then considers how historians of science have practised transnational history without, however, paying sufficient attention to the theoretical foundations of this approach. Its final part illustrates what benefits may derive from the application of transnational history in the field. In particular, we suggest looking at the construction of transnational networks in science, and discuss some of the methodological consequences of adopting this approach.

This paper describes the instrumentation developed by Pierre and Jacques Curie in the 1880s to perform very precise charge and low current measurements. Using this set-up, which is nearly as precise as most present digital electronic charge measurement apparatuses, Jacques Curie established the absorption current law for insulating materials. A detailed analysis is made of the experimental path followed by Marie Curie from the choice of her research subject to her first discoveries, using the same Curie quartz– electrometer set-up. From the Curie ‘‘discovery notebooks'' and a modern reconstitution of this experiment, it is possible to reconstruct what were her main experimental difficulties concerning the measurements of the picoampere leakage currents produced by the radioactive rays. We will underline that the availability for Marie Curie of a precise ready-to-use electrostatic measurement technique played an important, if not decisive, part in her career and her research. A more general issue addressed here is that laboratory techniques are not only a prerequisite of modern scientific work, but in a great part influence knowledge production.

De l’examen de travaux historiques, il ressort que plusieurs systemes d’expertise scientifique ont ete faconnes dans le cadre de controverses publiques. En s’appuyant sur le cas des risques sanitaires et environnementaux de la radioactivite, cet article cherche a rendre compte d’une double dynamique a l’œuvre dans la constitution et/ou la reconfiguration des systemes d’expertise scientifique : l’expertise comme ressource pour gerer des mobilisations publiques et comme vecteur par lequel une partie des critiques est integree dans les dispositifs institutionnels existants, par leur reconfiguration ou par la creation de nouvelles structures.

Objet de la saisine Dans l’objectif d’améliorer la transparence du processus d’expertise requise pour un organisme certifié ISO 9001, l’Anses a confié au Groupe de Travail « Méthodologie de l'Évaluation des Risques » (GT MER) la conduite d’une analyse critique sur les approches d’évaluation des niveaux de preuve à l’étape d’identification des dangers. Les objectifs de cette autosaisine sont de : - Décrire les pratiques actuelles de l’Anses et les comparer avec celles d’autres organismes/agences sanitaires. - Réaliser une revue critique des approches sur les niveaux de preuve. - Proposer des procédures harmonisées pour évaluer la qualité des études et des données disponibles, ainsi que des niveaux de preuve par rapport aux questions ou hypothèses avancées. - Proposer des procédures harmonisées pour évaluer et communiquer le niveau de preuve global associé à l’ensemble des données et études disponibles. - Démontrer l'applicabilité des recommandations grâce à des études de cas. Les résultats de cette saisine contribueront à améliorer la transparence et la reproductibilité de l’évaluation du poids des preuves à l’Anses.

Since the mid-1980s “risk” has constituted a sort of banner to which the social sciences have rallied. It has given rise to a whole range of research in the political science, sociology and economics spheres. This paper is a general introduction to a History and Technology special issue which attempt to construct analytical frameworks and research proposals that may contribute to a historization and a denaturalization of risk. This paper considers the role of history in analyzing risks in the fields of science and technology. It aims to show the importance of history in considering risk and the societal mutations to which it gives rise or in which it plays a central role. Ultimately, our aim is to stress the necessity not only to compile a history of “risk”, but also to account for the emergence, development and uses of risk and “risk society”.

International audience; This paper examines the determining role of nuclear hazards in the emergence of a new category of risks—‘global risks'. It retraces how an international structure for expertise and regulation of these risks was constructed as a result of American foreign policy, international relations in the context of the Cold War, public mobilization against nuclear weapons, criticism and demands for ‘social measures' as well as scientific research interests and professional legitimatization. By focusing on the role of scientists in this process, this paper aims to discuss the political and social role of these regulatory activities.

This chapter analyses the emergence and development of the 'low-dose' exposure issue, taking the iconic case of nuclear power as its starting point. At the end of the 1940s, on the basis of the observation that radiation caused genetic mutations whatever the dose may be and that it was impossible to confirm their safety, various American scientists suggested changing the term for exposure limits from 'tolerable dose' to 'permissible dose'. At the end of 1969, American scientists John Gofman and Arthur Tamplin presented an exhaustive summary of six years of work funded by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), on the links between exposure to low doses of radiation and cancers. One of the main traits of the low-dose controversy was the shift back and forth between a precise criticism, of a technical order, relating to the link between exposure and effects, and a generalized criticism of the nuclear industry and decision-making modes within this area.

Le theme de la mondialisation occupe une place croissante dans les debats publics. Cet ouvrage traite des dimensions les moins visibles du phenomene : la mondialisation des risques sanitaires et environnementaux. Qu'il s'agisse de catastrophes majeures, comme Bhopal, Tchernobyl ou Fukushima, ou des effets deleteres des pesticides et des polluants chimiques, ces risques se deploient a des echelles inedites et font l'objet d'une attention accrue de la part d'un ensemble d'acteurs. Redige par un collectif de chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales (sociologie, science politique, anthropologie, sociologie et histoire des sciences), ce recueil d'articles propose une histoire politique et transnationale de la mondialisation des risques sanitaires et environnementaux, en explorant un ensemble de situations et de dynamiques scientifiques, institutionnelles, sociales et politiques. Attentif aux tensions et aux asymetries de pouvoir ainsi qu'a la temporalite et a la spatialisation, il montre que cette mondialisation resulte d'un fort investissement politique et souleve des questions fondamentales liees aux modes de gouvernement des societes contemporaines.

One Hundred years ago this month, on 28 December 1898, Pierre Curie, Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Gustave Bemont published a paper in Comptesrendus–the journal of the French Academy of Sciences – entitled "Sur une nouvelle substance fortement radioactive". In the paper they announced that they had discovered a new element with astonishing properties: radium. But for one of the authors, Marie Curie, the paper was more than just the result of outstanding work: it showed that a woman could succeed in what was then very much a male-dominated scientific world.

The Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS), currently involving the collaboration of 140 countries across the world, was conceived during the late 1960s within the wider context of growing environmental consciousness—and the availability of instruments and programs that could provide a truly global data set. Under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), its mission is to collect and process data from transnational monitoring systems observing the effects of human activities on the environment and health. GEMS is based on the expertise and infrastructure of specialized United Nations (UN) agencies, and encompasses a number of scientific and professional communities.

The Curie laboratory played an important role in the standardization of radioelements, and the establishment of a first metrology of radioactivity. This laboratory contributed to the birth and the organization of the radioelements industry, and supplied procedures and instruments, as well as educated technicians, to it. In the second decade of the 20th century the convergence of the needs of several groups having different motivations and logics, in particular the radioactivity community, the radium therapists, and the radium industry, led to the formation of the International Commission for the Radium Standard. It adopted Marie Curie's standard as well as her measurement unit, the curie. The Commission also established a certification network in which the measurement service set up at the Curie laboratory had a central role. Even if the adoption of this metrology helped homogenize a discipline, that of the study of radioactivity, the specificities of each laboratory persisted.

National audience

International audience; For many years, scientific heritage has received attention from multiple actors from different spheres of activity—archives, museums, scientific institutions. Beyond the heterogeneity revealed when examining the place of scientific heritage in different places, an authentic patrimonial configuration emerges and takes the form of a nebula of claims and of accomplishments that result, in some cases, in institutional and political recognition at the national level, in various country all around the world. At the international level, the creation of the international committee dedicated to University Museums and Collections (UMAC) within the International Council of Museums (ICOM) certainly testified from this raising interest in academic heritage and the existence of a specific community concern with it.This article presents numerous initiatives for the preservation of scientific heritage in France, with the goal of analysing the relationship scientists have with their heritage. We argue that scientific communities have a special relationship with heritage, which is characterized by a number of ambiguities. We show that such ambivalences allow analysis of identity, discipline, professional, and social issues operative in defining heritage and being redefined by heritage. To explore these dimensions, we have chosen to present three different case studies. The first traces the institutional uses of heritage by a scientific institution, the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA), through the transformation of the first French atomic reactor (ZOE) into a museum. The second example describes the initiatives of French astronomers from the mid-1990s to construct a national programme for the protection of astronomy heritage. Lastly, we recount the case of universities, with the example of the Université de Strasbourg.

National audience; Cet article présente un regard sur les travaux de l'atelier « Risques, situations de crise, droit, éthique » dont l'objectif était la production d'un effort synthétique pour identifier les thématiques et points d'approfondissement de futures recherches. Dans une première partie sont exposées les thématiques qui ont structuré les échanges afin d'éclairer les différentes manières dont le risque existe et se trouve pris en charge : Domaines, territoires et échelles du risque ; Gouverner par le risque ; et, Risques et savoirs. La seconde partie présente les six fronts de recherche émergents qui ressortent des présentations des participants et d'une synthèse des débats qui s'en sont suivis. Il en ressort l'importance de poursuivre les efforts engagés tant sur le plan théorique qu'avec des études de terrain et de les renforcer par une mise en oeuvre de perspective interdisciplinaire en SHS pour explorer les différentes dimensions de la prégnance des risques sur les sociétés postindustrielles et ses effets sur les formes de gouvernementalité.

Among scientific public controversies, those concerning the effects of radioactivity have a special place due to the fact that they regularly return into the public stage. This article examines the birth of these recurring controversies by analysing the role of this particular form, controversy, in the public formulation of an issue and in its political treatment. It deals especially with the Cold War period during which the principal terms of a debate between science and politics were formulated and paradoxical answers to crisis management were formed., Parmi les controverses publiques à caractère scientifique, celles sur les effets de la radioactivité tiennent une place particulière du fait de leur retour régulier sur la scène publique. Cet article examine la naissance de ces « controverses à rebond » en analysant le rôle de cette forme particulière qu'est la controverse dans la formulation publique d'un problème et dans sa prise charge politique. Il s'intéresse tout particulièrement à la période de la guerre froide au cours de laquelle ont été formulés les principaux termes d'un débat entre science et politique et ont été forgées des réponses paradoxales de gestion de crise.

L'histoire des sciences, notamment enseignée au grand public, est souvent un récit trop linéaire, reconstruit postérieurement, à la lumière des développements ultérieurs en se focalisant essentiellement sur l'histoire d'un cheminement intellectuel. Un facteur essentiel est souvent négligé : celui des conditions matérielles et sociales de production de la science, qui incluent aussi bien la construction de réseaux et la recherche de financements, que l'instrumentation. Les travaux récents en histoire des sciences sur Marie Curie, montrent ainsi que la découverte du radium et les premières années d'histoire de la radioactivité doivent être remises en perspective. Nous présentons ici un aspect de ces travaux, à savoir que le fait de disposer d'une technique de mesure bien particulière a joué un rôle essentiel dans l'orientation initiale des travaux de Marie Curie sur les rayons, et a ensuite contribué à imprimer une originalité particulière, pendant plusieurs décennies, à son laboratoire. Cette technique est fondée sur la mesure précise de la charge électrique produite dans l'air par la matière radioactive, et est issue directement des travaux de Jacques et Pierre Curie, sur la piézoélectricité et les électromètres. Il nous a paru intéressant de la reconstituer, et de la présenter à la Société Française d'Electrostatique

La prégnance du risque dans les cadres d’action et d’organisation, comme dans l’énonciation de problèmes sociaux, constitue une caractéristique forte des sociétés industrielles. C’est là une évidence largement admise depuis la parution de l’ouvrage à succès d’Ulrich Beck en 1986. Des auteurs britanniques n’évoquent-ils pas une « colonisation des risques », voire « the risk management of everything » ? (...).

National audience