FACT MAKING, EPISTEMIC TENSIONS AND THE 'QUALIFICATION' OF DRUGS IN AN INDUSTRIAL LABORATORY: NARRATIVES FROM THE BENCH

<strong>Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences </strong> <strong>CSSS Colloquium</strong> <strong>Dr. Parvathi K. Iyer</strong> (Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar) a talk on <strong>FACT MAKING, EPISTEMIC TENSIONS AND THE 'QUALIFICATION' OF DRUGS IN AN INDUSTRIAL LABORATORY: NARRATIVES FROM THE BENCH</strong> Date: <strong>April 16, 2015 (Thursday)</strong> <strong>Abstract:</strong> The culture of industrial research and testing in the pharmaceutical industry is ethnographically a relatively uncharted area, especially in the Indian context. The present paper, an effort in this direction, attempts to understand the processes driving fact making and the 'qualification' of drugs in an industrial laboratory in a pharmaceutical firm in Hyderabad. The notion of 'qualification' (Callonet al, 2002), may broadly be understood in terms of the attribution of some qualities or characteristics to a product. It also includes the processes that the product undergoes to acquire these attributes. Discovery research at the firm level is generally referred to as pre-clinical testing, involving various laboratory level procedures and animal testing. Through an examination of the scientists' narratives about their everyday routines and practices in relation to pre-clinical testing, the paper discusses how fact making and 'qualification' occur in an interdisciplinary context, involving a 'hybrid forum' largely composed of medicinal chemists, biologists, pharmacologists and management committees, who negotiate with each other to transform indeterminate and amorphous entities in the laboratory into molecules, which have therapeutic value. In doing so, the paper examines the resolution of epistemic tensions among the actors in this 'hybrid forum'. It also attempts to demonstrate how the 'qualification' of molecules in pre-clinical testing is a socio-technical process, involving a complex interplay of cognitive, normative and politico-economic imperatives, which eventually shapes the fate of these molecules as 'candidates' for further testing on human beings and their potential for commercialization. <strong>Bio-Data:</strong> Parvathi K. Iyer is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, Central University of Gujarat. Her PhD on the social construction of drug quality in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, and her M.Phil in the domain of Gender and Science, was awarded from the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad. She has previously worked at NISTADS, a science policy institute of the Council of Scientific &amp;Industrial Research (CSIR) and has also held research positions at IIT, Delhi and University of Hyderabad. Her area of specialization is Sociology of Science and Technology. Her research interests revolve around the areas of public engagement with S&amp;T, gender and science in India and governance, risk and regulatory issues in S&amp;T.