ArticleScience, technology & human values2015
Sociology of Low Expectations: Recalibration as Innovation Work in Biomedicine.
Article in Science, technology & human values, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Promises past and future - Gene therapy and the actualisation of future expectations.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2026Article
- Self-tracking in endometriosis: Evolving expectations around a gynecological app developed by a Finnish patient organization.Social studies of science · 2025Article
- Shifting Expectations of Novel Immunotherapy Treatments in Oncology: Practitioners' and Patients' Calibration Work in Conditions of Uncertainty.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- Hope and Optimism in Pediatric Deep Brain Stimulation: Key Stakeholder Perspectives.Neuroethics · 2023Article
- Beyond the hype: 'acceptable futures' for AI and robotic technologies in healthcare.AI & society · 2023Article
- Psychomotor Predictive Processing.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Population health AI researchers' perceptions of the public portrayal of AI: A pilot study.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2021Article
- Comparison of Patient and Expert Perceptions of the Attainment of Research Milestones in Parkinson's Disease.Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society · 2021Article
- Accomplishing an adaptive clinical trial for cancer: Valuation practices and care work across the laboratory and the clinic.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2020Article
- Learning from deep brain stimulation: the fallacy of techno-solutionism and the need for 'regimes of care'.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2019Article
- Psychiatry and the Sociology of Novelty: Negotiating the US National Institute of Mental Health "Research Domain Criteria" (RDoC).Science, technology & human values · 2019Article
- Genomic research and the cancer clinic: uncertainty and expectations in professional accounts.New genetics and society · 2019Article
- Genomics England's implementation of its public engagement strategy: Blurred boundaries between engagement for the United Kingdom's 100,000 Genomes project and the need for public support.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2018Article
- Autistic Heterogeneity: Linking Uncertainties and Indeterminacies.Science as culture · 2017Article
- UK science press officers, professional vision and the generation of expectations.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2017Article
- Securing a future for responsible neuromodulation in children: The importance of maintaining a broad clinical gaze.European journal of paediatric neurology : EJPN : official journal of the European Paediatric Neurology Society · 2017Review
- The dispositions of things: the non-human dimension of power and ethics in patient-centred medicine.Sociology of health & illness · 2016Article
- (Low) Expectations, Legitimization, and the Contingent Uses of Scientific Knowledge: Engagements with Neuroscience in Scottish Social Policy and Services.Engaging science, technology, and society · 2015Article
- Neurotechnology through the lens of users and as a novel field for society.Frontiers in neurologyReview
- Deep Brain Stimulation for Childhood Treatment-Resistant Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Mental Health Clinician Views on Candidacy Factors.AJOB empirical bioethicsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Social scientists have drawn attention to the role of hype and optimistic visions of the future in providing momentum to biomedical innovation projects by encouraging innovation alliances. In this article, we show how less optimistic, uncertain, and modest visions of the future can also provide innovation projects with momentum. Scholars have highlighted the need for clinicians to carefully manage the expectations of their prospective patients. Using the example of a pioneering clinical team providing deep brain stimulation to children and young people with movement disorders, we show how clinicians confront this requirement by drawing on their professional knowledge and clinical expertise to construct visions of the future with their prospective patients; visions which are personalized, modest, and tainted with uncertainty. We refer to this vision-constructing work as recalibration, and we argue that recalibration enables clinicians to manage the tension between the highly optimistic and hyped visions of the future that surround novel biomedical interventions, and the exigencies of delivering those interventions in a clinical setting. Drawing on work from science and technology studies, we suggest that recalibration enrolls patients in an innovation alliance by creating a shared understanding of how the "effectiveness" of an innovation shall be judged.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.