Managing Laboratory Work through Skepticism: Processes of Evaluation and Control

Abstract

Laboratory ethnographies are the shop-floor studies of the knowledge economy. Observational data from 11 months of fieldwork in a multidisciplinary neuroscience lab suggest that scientific skepticism, long understood as an evaluative mechanism, also serves social control and monitoring functions. The author applies insights from organization theory, social psychology, science studies, and the sociology of science to demonstrate that skepticism is socially organized at the microlevel of laboratory interactions. This organization makes skepticism a solution to the problems of control, coordination, and evaluation raised by uncertain scientific work conducted in a physically dispersed multidisciplinary setting. The diverse roles skepticism plays in laboratory interactions resonate with examinations of work in a number of occupational settings while providing direct insight into mechanisms that may account for the patterning of rewards and status across knowledge-intensive workplaces.