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We are a historian and a sociologist of contemporary biomedical research.
Having completed a book on the history of the discovery and development
of monoclonal antibodies (Alberto Cambrosio and Peter Keating, Exquisite
Specificity. Aspects of the Monoclonal Antibody Revolution, Oxford U.P.,
forthcoming in 1995), we are now working on flow cytometry. A first
article on the history of the fluorescent-activated cell sorter and T-cell
subsets is due to appear shortly: Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio,
"'Ours is an engineering approach': Flow Cytometry and the Constitution
of Human T-Cell Subsets," Journal of the History of Biology
27 (1994), 449-479. We are presently working on a paper dealing with
flow cytometric imagery (dot plots, contour plots, etc.). We reproduce
below a letter that was sent to a sample of about 50 researchers. In the
meantime, we have discovered the existence of this list. If anyone
subscribing to the list has any information/comment concerning the
questions raised in the letter, we would appreciate hearing about it. If you
prefer, you can send your answer directly to Cambrosio's e-mail address
(CYCO@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA). We can also be contacted at the
following address:
Alberto Cambrosio
Department of Social Studies of Medicine
McGill University
McIntyre Medical Sciences Building
3655 Drummond Street
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3G 1Y6
Tel.: (514) 398-4981
Fax.: (514) 398-1498
Many thanks!
Alberto Cambrosio
Peter Keating
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COPY OF THE LETTER SENT TO A SAMPLE OF RESEARCHERS:
We have been working for several years on the historical and social aspects
of contemporary biomedical research and our focus has been on
immunology. As part of a project on the introduction and use of flow
cytometry in fundamental and clinical immunology, we are presently
analyzing the evolution and diffusion of flow cytometric imagery, i.e., the
diagrams which, more often than not, accompany papers reporting results
based on flow cytometric analysis. Our interest in this matter was
prompted by a 1989 remark that: "Virtually any issue of an immunology
journal will contain at least one example of how FACS analysis or sorting
is used to define the characteristics of a T or B lymphocyte subpopulation,
to investigate the origin of such subpopulation, or to chart the influence of
disease processes or drug treatments on subpopulation representation"
(Parks et al., in Fundamental Immunology, 2nd ed., W.E. Paul ed., Raven
Press, p. 794). This claim is indeed warranted when one considers, for
instance, that while in 1980 only 1-2% of the articles published by the
Journal of Immunology contained flow cytometric imagery, by 1990 that
percentage had risen to 25%.
Given the extremely rapid increase in the number of flow cytometric
images in biomedical journals, we thought it worthwhile to investigate how
the biomedical community reacted to the appearance of what could be
termed rather unconventional data representation techniques (dot plots,
contour plots, etc.). One way of assessing this reaction is to analyze referee
reports on articles containing flow cytometric imagery. Did the referees
comment on the quality, usefulness, intelligibility, etc. of the article's
figures? In what terms?
We would greatly appreciate if you would be willing to help us in
any of the following ways (for the confidentiality issue, see subsequent
paragraph):
a) By sending us copies of referee reports of your articles (with a copy or
the reference of the related article) containing remarks concerning flow
cytometric imagery. A sample of older and more recent reports would, of
course, be most welcome.
OR
b) If you do not keep copies of referees reports, by sharing with us
information about your experience in this domain: do you remember
specific referee comments on the imagery used in your articles?
OR
c) If, as it is highly probable, you have yourself acted as a referee for other
researchers' papers, have you ever commented on the flow cytometric
imagery used in those papers? Could you send copies of those reports or
summarize for us the kind of remarks you made?
We understand that there are many problems related to our admittedly
unusual request, chiefly among them being the problem of confidentiality.
Our research project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, the main public granting agency for social
research in Canada. SSHRC has a strict ethical code which all its grantees
are bound to obey. Only our research team will have access to the original
materials and we will not use names of persons or institutions who gave us
confidential information in published versions of our work. It goes without
saying, that we have no links whatsoever with companies involved in the
production and sale of flow cytometers and related reagents and software.
Last, but not least, we would like to stress that we are not interested in
assessing whether peer-review judgments are well-founded or reliable; our
research project is not evaluative. Rather, we are interested in
understanding the dynamics of scientific research and, in particular, the
relationship between scientific and technological developments.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if we would like to obtain further
information on our past or present research projects.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
_________________________________________________
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