Towards a method for evaluating technological expectations: Revealing uncertainty in gene silencing technology discourse

Technology Analysis and Strategic Management

Volumn 18, Issue 3-4, 2006, Pages 345-359

  Sung, John J ^a   Hopkins, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ASYMMETRY; GENETIC ANALYSIS; INFORMATION PROCESSING; RNA; TECHNOLOGY; UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS;

EID: 33746312031     PISSN: 09537325     EISSN: 14653990     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09537320600777119     Document Type: Article

References (70)

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10. Our term 'conceptual distance' is similar but distinct from Nooteboom's 'cognitive distance' (B. Nooteboom, Learning by interaction: Absorptive capacity, cognitive distance and governance, Journal of Management & Governance, 4(1-2), 2000, pp. 69-92). Nooteboom uses the term cognitive distance to describe how differences between corporate cultures can hinder alliances. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for bringing Nooteboom's work to our attention.
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25. We do not go so far as to suggest only geneticists are sufficiently knowledgeable to evaluate the claims of other geneticists. However we do highlight the importance of a comprehensive scientific background knowledge for social scientists and others undertaking analysis of expectations related to science and technology, and do not hold a view that frameworks by themselves will help to distinguish between the 'quality' of expectations.
26. Expression of this information is generally described as a cascade of events: First the gene is 'read' in a process whereby its DNA is transcribed into a ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule in the nucleus of the cell. This RNA sequence is built on the surface of the DNA and so its structure is almost a mirror image of the DNA. This RNA sequence becomes a messenger molecule, carrying the information encoded within its structure to the cytoplasm of the cell. Here the messenger RNA is used as a template for the assembly of a string of amino acids to create proteins by organelles called ribosomes. These proteins in turn form the machinery and infrastructure involved in cellular and extra cellular processes. The revelation of this cascade of sub-cellular events was accompanied in the 1950s and 1960s by the notion, known as the 'central dogma of DNA', that DNA 'controls' the cells and ultimately the body by mediating the production of proteins from within the nucleus of the cell (see R. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix: The Discovery of DNA (New York, Dover, 1994), pp. 432-433).
27. While feedback systems from gene-gene interactions, intra-cellular, inter-cellular and environmental factors may reduce the true dominance of the 'gene', the central dogma has had enormous rhetorical influence - as illustrated by the funding support given to the human genome project (see E. Keller, The Century of the Gene (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000).
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50. Although we might speculate that investors, patient groups, and some social scientists could be included among those following the technology's progress at a distance.
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52. Ibid.
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56. Ibid.
57. Fire et al., op. cit., Ref. 25.
58. Ibid., pp. 807-808.
59. Most functional genomics experiments tend to focus on bringing about a loss of function through gene silencing so that the resulting phenotype may be observed. However establishing a true causality for the resulting phenotype remains a challenge as a result of the complexity of interactions and contingencies within even simple models.
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62. Couzin, op. cit., Ref. 52.
63. Rosenberg, op. cit., Ref. 1
64. David, op. cit., Ref. 1.
65. Fillmore, 1982, op. cit., Ref. 7
66. Fillmore, 1985, op. cit., Ref. 7.
67. Rosenberg, op. cit., Ref. 1
68. David, op. cit., Ref. 1.
69. Guice, op. cit., Ref. 5
70. Brown & Michael, op. cit., Ref. 6.