ArticleScience as culture2026
Research participants as 'pioneers'? Exploring how neurotechnology research is adapting the rhetoric of scientific risk-taking, exploration and trailblazing.
Article in Science as culture, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The theme of pioneers charting new frontiers has long been a staple of scientific and technological discourse in the United States. Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs perceived as doing groundbreaking work are lauded as pioneers in their fields. In recent years, the application of the pioneer label has expanded to include research participants in clinical trials for neurotechnologies such as Neuralink or other brain-computer interface (BCI) devices: 'BCI pioneers.' What might explain this new popular usage of the pioneer label? American science policy in the mid twentieth century drew on the mythos of the American frontier as a way of mobilizing public interest in scientific and technological innovation on a mass scale. One such way of mobilizing interest was to use frontier rhetoric to attribute novelty to scientific undertakings and technological developments: dubbed the new frontiers. A less explored aspect of this history is the application of the pioneer label to patients and research participants in scientific, mostly biomedical, studies. Through the use of frontier rhetoric, articulations of novelty can be attributed to patients and participants, and their participatory practices, including being the first to undergo a new medical procedure, as well as being explorers and trailblazers in their own right. Such rhetoric may be understood as mobilizing support for research participants by acknowledging their bravery, altruism and contributions to science, with implications for participatory science and scientific and technological innovation.
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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.