The Discursive Production of Uncertainty: The OJ Simpson ‘Dream Team’ and the Sociology of Knowledge Machine

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 28, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 829-868

  Lynch, Michael ^a  

^a BRUNEL UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84992791822     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631298028005007     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Collections of constructivist (and related) studies include: Karin Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay (eds), Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science (London & Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983)
2. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch (eds), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987)
3. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociological Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992); and
4. Andrew Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992).
5. For a summary account of the notion of ‘black-boxing’, see Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 131.
6. See Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Judicial Construction of New Scientific Evidence’, in PaulT Durbin (ed.), Critical Perspectives in Non-academic Science and Engineering (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1991), 215–38; and
7. Jasanoff, Science at the Bar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 211–215.
8. Also see the paper in this Special Issue by Saul Halfon: ‘Collecting, Testing and Convincing: Forensic DNA Experts in the Courts’, Social Studies of Science,Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 801–827.
9. This does not imply that routine cases in which the stakes are not very high are unworthy of detailed attention. Melvin Pollner, for example, gives an illuminating treatment of that least glamorous of legal settings, the traffic court: see Pollner, Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
10. For a discussion of Scheck and Neufeld's role in the Castro case, see the paper by Linda Derksen, ‘Towards a Sociology of Measurement: Making Subjectivity Invisible and Negotiating Measurement in the Case of DNA Fingerprinting’ (unpublished paper, Department of Sociology and Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, June 1998).
11. The scientific controversy is also discussed briefly in this special issue by Arthur Daemmrich, ‘The Evidence Does Not Speak for Itself: Expert Witnesses and the Organization of DNA-Typing Companies’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 741–72, esp. 759–761.
12. National Research Council, DNA Technology in Forensic Science (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1992)
13. National Research Council, The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996).
14. For an early account of the controversy written by a molecular geneticist who was in the thick of it, see Eric S. Lander, ‘DNA Fingerprinting on Trial’, Nature,Vol. 339 (15 June 1989), 501–05. The two NRC Reports (see note 6) also review the background and technical issues. Many other sources in a large literature are cited elsewhere in this paper, and in other papers in this Special Issue.
15. John Henry Wigmore, Wigmore's Code of the Rules of Evidence in Trials of Law (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 3rd edn, 1940), §1043, at 29.
16. For a discussion of the ‘machinery’ of interrogation, see Michael Lynch and David Bogen, The Spectacle of History: Speech, Text and Memory at the Iran-Contra Hearings (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 128–143.
17. For a discussion of how patent disputes are relevant to science-studies questions about discovery, invention and replication, see Alberto Cambrosio, Peter Keating and Michael MacKenzie, ‘Scientific Practice in the Courtroom: The Construction of Sociotechnical Identities in a Biotechnology Patent Dispute’, Social Problems, Vol. 37, No. 3 (August 1990), 275–293.
18. For a demonstration of methods used by defense attorneys for undermining expert testimony, see J.S. Oteri, M.G. Weinberg and M.S. Pinales, ‘Cross-Examination of Chemists in Drugs Cases’, in Barry Barnes and David Edge (eds), Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science (Milton Keynes, Bucks.: The Open University Press, 1982), 250–259.
19. ‘What Judges Should Know about the Sociology of Science’, Jurimetrics, Vol. 32 (1992), 345–359.
20. ‘Motion to Exclude DNA Evidence’, in Dept. 103, Los Angeles County Superior Court (5 October 1994). Submitted by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld. This motion for a KellylFrye hearing was withdrawn by the defense, but after the trial was underway the defense again requested a hearing. This unusual motion was denied by the court. The Motion nevertheless provides a compact summary of the defense's strategies for undermining the prosecution's use of DNA profiling, and in many other respects it is a rich and informative document. After the trial, William Thompson, a prominent critic of DNA profiling who was a member of the Simpson defense team, published an article that included many of the key arguments in the Motion: William C. Thompson, ‘DNA Evidence in the OJ Simpson Trial’, University of Colorado Law Review,Vol. 67 (1996), 827–857.
21. see the paper in this Special Issue by Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch: ‘The Dissemination, Standardization and Routinization of a Molecular Biological Technique’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 773–800.
22. See Thomas F. Gieryn, ‘Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 48, No. 6 (December 1983), 781–95; and
23. Gieryn, ‘Boundaries of Science’, in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald Markle, James Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Newbury Park, CA: 4S/ Sage, 1994), 393–443.
24. The Motion here cites M. Udall and J. Livermore, Law of Evidence (2nd edn, 1982), Sec. 102.
25. ‘Impartiality’ is one of the four tenets of the strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. As I understand it, impartiality is part and parcel of the other three principles: symmetry, causality, and reflexivity. It implies a stance toward scientific knowledge that neither accepts it on its own terms nor dismisses it as illusory. In the case of a scientific controversy, the impartial analyst examines the entire field of contending arguments without adopting any single argument as a basis for characterizing the others. See David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 4.
26. D.C. Stove, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (New York: Pergamon, 1984), 23.
27. Marcus Stone, Cross-Examination in Criminal Trials (London: Butterworth, 2nd edn 1995 [1988]), 48.
28. For an argument on why credibility also is the counterpart of truth as far as history of science is concerned, see Steven Shapin, ‘Cordelia's Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Science’, Perspectives on Science,Vol. 3 (1995), 255–275.
29. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: Verso, 1975), 301–302.
30. See Peter J. Neufeld and Neville Colman, ‘When Science Takes the Witness Stand’, Scientific American,Vol. 262, No. 5 (May 1990), 18–25.
31. Neufeld was a member of the Simpson defense team. A member of the prosecution has also written on the subject: see Rockne P. Harmon, ‘Legal Criticisms of DNA Typing: Where's the Beef?’, The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Spring 1993), 175–188.
32. The interview was conducted by Kathleen Jordan at the Forensic Science and Research Training Center, FBI Training Academy (Quantico, VA, 6 October 1992), as part of a US National Science Foundation research award, ‘The Polymerase Chain Reaction: The Mainstreaming of a Molecular Biological Tool’, Michael Lynch, Principal Investigator (NSF SBE-9122375, 1992–93). A similar point was made in a quotation from John Hicks, director of the FBI laboratories, who characterized the (perceived) controversy as ‘much ado about not very much’: Leslie Roberts, ‘Fight Erupts over DNA Fingerprinting’, Science, Vol. 254 (20 December 1991), 1721–1723, at 1723.
33. I have been able to draw on the interviews and other material obtained during our collaborative NSF-funded project: for further details of the research methodology employed by the authors in this Special Issue, see the ‘Introduction’ by Michael Lynch and Sheila Jasanoff: ‘Contested Identities: Science, Law and Forensic Science’, Social Studies of Science,Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 675–86, at 681–82.
34. Eric S. Lander and Bruce Budowle, ‘DNA Fingerprint Dispute Laid to Rest’, Nature, 371 (27 October 1994), 735–738.
35. A basis for the Motion's argument on this point was provided by decisions by Michigan and California courts, which indicated that ‘the validity of a technology needs to be established, not just for the relatively ideal samples encountered in the research laboratory, but also for the less than ideal samples often encountered in forensic medicine. These may be hours or days old, contaminated with bacteria or fungi, dried out, or exposed to hostile environmental conditions such as heat, humidity and sunlight’: Jean L. Marx, ‘DNA Fingerprinting Takes the Witness Stand’, Science, Vol. 240 (17 June 1988), 1616–1618, at 1618.
36. Also see Marcia Barinaga, ‘DNA Fingerprinting Database to Finger Criminals’, Nature,Vol. 331 (21 January 1988), 203.
37. See Richard C. Lewontin and Daniel L. Hartl, ‘Population Genetics in Forensic DNA Typing’, Science, Vol. 254 (20 December 1991), 1745–50; and
38. For a well-argued example, see Dick Pels, ‘The Politics of Symmetry’, Social Studies of Science,Vol 26, No. 2 (May 1996), 277–304.
39. For an argument in favour of combining error rates with profile frequency estimates, see Jonathan J. Kohler, ‘On Conveying the Probative Value of DNA Evidence: Frequencies, Likelihood Ratios, and Error Rates’, University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 67 (1996), 859–886.
40. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 22–23.
41. For a discussion of laboratory tours, see Michael Lynch, Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 147–150.
42. The most familiar discussion of the theme of irony in social studies of science is Steve Woolgar, ‘Irony in the Social Study of Science’, in Knorr-Cetina & Mulkay (eds), Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science note 1, 239–66. My use of the term derives from long-standing ethnomethodological usage, and especially unpublished lectures by Harold Garfinkel in which he speaks of the common expository theme in the social science literature of demonstrating a difference between official occupational culture and informal practice. An earlier account of sociologists' use of irony is provided by Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969 [1950]), 127ff.
43. For an illuminating discussion of this issue, see D.R. Watson, ‘Ethnomethodology, Consciousness and Self’, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5 (1998), 281–294.
44. Facts, in this interrogative context, are statements (often presented in the form of ‘questions’) that the witness confirms or does not dispute. For further discussion, see Augustine Brannigan and Michael Lynch, ‘On Bearing False Witness: Perjury and Credibility as Interactional Accomplishments’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 16, No. 2 July 1987), 115–46;.
45. As Robert Merton recognized in his classic typology of deviance, a ‘ritualistic’ adherence to a rule can be no less deviant than rejecting or transgressing the rule. The import of ritualism can depend upon the rule, the circumstances, and the conventions in force. See Robert K. Merton, ‘Social Structure and Anomie’, American Sociological Review,Vol. 3 (1938), 672–682.
46. Aside from struggling to establish that a rule is (or should have been) available as a guide to practice, interrogators can have a difficult time with establishing just how determinately or flexibly a given normative object ‘governs’ a practice. A nice exhibit of this occurred during the Sir Richard Scott Inquiry into UK arms sales to Iraq: this excerpt is from Richard Norton-Taylor, Truth is a Difficult Concept: Inside the Scott Inquiry (London: Guardian Books, 1995), 43–44. In this instance, a witness, cross-examined by Presiley Baxendale, insists upon a distinction between ‘strict law’ and ‘guidelines’ to counteract the implication that agents in her government did not enforce certain ‘constraints on exports’ of weapons to Iraq formulated in documentary guidelines
47. This is one of many occasions in which questions about ‘seeing’ came up in the trial. See the paper in this Special Issue by Sheila Jasanoff: ‘The Eye of Everyman: Witnessing DNA in the Simpson Trial’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 713–740.
48. Harvey Sacks observes that this sort of argument is characteristic of reportedly revolutionary treatises [dating] back to the pre-Socratics and extending up to at least Freud. … [E]ach major treatise that has set up scientific fields starts out by saying that what people know and use is wrong …’: Harvey Sacks, transcribed remark in Richard J. Hill and Kathleen S. Crittenden (eds), Proceedings of the Purdue Symposium of Ethnomethodology (Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Institute for the Study of Social Change, Institute Monograph No. 1, 1968), 12–14.
49. The most influential exposition on the role of consensus in scientific ‘progress’ remains Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1970).
50. SSK does not reject natural realism, or the role of'nature’ in historical explanations of scientific change. Partly because sociologists are not in the business of deciding whether particular physical or biological theories are ultimately correct, the emphasis in SSK is on the communal acceptance or rejection of such theories. Such an emphasis is not ultimately incompatible with naturalism or realism. For an articulation of this point, see Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press; London: Athlone Press, 1996), 117–121.
51. The difference between idealized experimental methods and the, often ad hoc, local practices of the laboratory has animated many ethnographic studies. See, for example, Karin Knorr Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981), 58.
52. The best known work in the science studies literature on the problems of replicating experiments is by Harry Collins. A group of his studies is collected together in H.M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1992).
53. Many forms of social explanation use a concept of'interests’. For an influential book on the role of interests in the promotion and acceptance of scientific theories, see Barry Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
54. For an alternative account of the ‘dispersion’ of innovation, see Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch, ‘The Sociology of a Genetic Engineering Technique: Ritual and Rationality in the Performance of the Plasmid Prep’, in Adele Clarke and Joan Fujimura (eds), The Right Tools For the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 77–114.
55. ‘Methodological horrors’ is a term Steve Woolgar uses to summarize a list of practical and epistemological troubles which arise in scientific practice: see Woolgar, Science: The Very Idea (London: Tavistock, 1988), 32ff.
56. see Roger Smith and Brian Wynne (eds), Expert Evidence: Interpreting Science in the Law (London: Routledge, 1989)
57. Gary Edmond and David Mercer, ‘Representing the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Law’, Science Communication, Vol. 19, No. 4 (June 1998), 307–27; and
58. Mike Redmayne, ‘Presenting Probabilities in Court: The DNA Experience’, ‘Expert Evidence and Scientific Disagreement’, University of California Davis Law Review, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Summer 1997), 1027–80.
59. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2nd edn, 1986), 256–257.
60. Foucault describes a gradual replacement, in the late 18th century, of'an art of unbearable sensations' by ‘an economy of suspended rights’. For the most part, he refers to the gradual replacement of violent corporal punishment by ‘gentler’ means of incarceration aiming to reform the individual. However, as he makes clear, the use of torture to extract confessions was part of the same ‘art’ which was replaced by an ‘economy’ of open courtroom examination: see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1979), 11.
61. The intersection of race, police batons and videotape featured in the Rodney King police trial is another perspicuous instance of a ‘transformation of systems of knowledge and ways of seeing’ in the courts that engendered perverse effects (see note 85). As Charles Goodwin's analysis of testimony during that trial shows, a defense expert's frame-by-frame analysis of the celebrated tape translated the videotaped beating of the prone King by several police officers into a proper response to King's aggressive movements. This professionalized ‘way of seeing’ apparently helped to persuade the white jury to exonerate the police defendants: Charles Goodwin, ‘Professional Vision’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 96, No. 4 (September 1994), 606–633.
62. The extent to which this mundane mode of ‘deconstruction’ is related to the literary-theoretical practice that goes under that name is a vexed issue. For a critical exchange on the matter, see Stephen Fuchs and Steven Ward, ‘What is Deconstruction, and Where and When Does it Take Place? Making Facts in Science, Building Cases in Law’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (August 1994), 481–500
63. For an argument about the difference between epistemological scepticism and the more circumscribed expressions of scepticism, see Wes Sharrock and Bob Anderson, ‘Epistemology: Professional Scepticism’, in Graham Button (ed.), Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 51–76, at 51–52.